Soil-less agriculture helps save planet
Posted by meb at February 11th, 2008
With global warming becoming a bigger threat with every passing day, organic farming methods are becoming more popular. Among them, soil-less agriculture is an alternative method that is likely to contribute to protecting the future of the planet.
Called hydroponics, this system is also helpful in the prevention of soil damage, the growth of natural vegetables free of pesticides and increased productivity.
Soil provides a stable base, nutrients, air and water for successful growth. Soil also gives physical support to plants. However, the presence of organisms causing diseases, irregular soil reaction, unfavorable soil composition, poor drainage and degradation due to erosion can cause serious problems for plant growth. Moreover, continuous cultivation of crops can result in poor soil fertility, which in turn leads to poor yield and quality.
Yet with the alternative ways that plants consume water, nutrients, oxygen and the physical support that they need to grow, they can grow without soil. Soil-less farming is a method for growing plants in nutrient-infused solutions that supply all the required elements needed for optimum plant growth. Plants grown using this technology are supposed to be planted in an inert medium like rock wool, gravel, vermiculite, peat moss, saw dust, coir dust or coconut fiber.
“In contrast to conventional agriculture, with the soil-less methods we can abrogate all the disadvantages of traditional farming. These types of greenhouse methods help us prevent all the conditions that reduce output and quality,” explained Netafim Irrigation Systems Greenhouse Department Turkey Sales Manager Harun Kendir.
“Among the projects we developed are UMG Agriculture’s 20 acres of soil-less tomato growing facility in Denizli, AGRION’s 40 acres of soil-less tomato growing facility in Dikili-İzmir and AGH Technical Agriculture’s 15 acres of turnkey soil-less vegetable growing facility in Antalya.”
Gökşin Tarım, owned by Zafer Gökşin the owner of Gökşin Chemicals and Textile Industry, has a similar project. Gökşin Agriculture is growing 58,000 tomatoes in its greenhouse farm that costs 2 million euros to operate. Tomato flowers are pollinated by bees and grown using the soil-less technology. “With this technology we can obtain a larger yield of higher quality,” said Gökşin.
Efficiency and conservation
With conventional farming using soil, excess water can drain and evaporate before plants can use it. In a re-circulating hydroponic system, water is conserved in the system. There are no losses to drainage and as long as evaporation is controlled, hydroponics uses as little as one tenth of the water that a conventionally grown crop would require. Therefore, it would be very useful to apply this system in the age of global warming to protect the water resources.
Hydroponics greenhouse gardening is a way to feed the plant and not the soil. This type of agriculture is capable of producing greater yield and helping to free up the land used for commercial farming in earth that could be used for actual organic farming. It also prevents the soil becoming contaminated by the chemicals, thus giving soil a chance to regenerate and replenish the minerals and nutrients it needs to be rich and fertile.
Moreover, in soil, nutrients that have not yet been absorbed by the plant can be washed away by rain or irrigation water. Ending up in groundwater they contaminate rivers and lakes. Also salt can build up in groundwater reserves making them too saline to use for drinking or irrigation.
In a re-circulating hydroponics system, there is no loss of nutrients to the environment the plants use all the nutrients put into the system. This results in a very efficient pollution free method of growing which requires fewer nutrients than a conventional system.
Source: Turkish Daily News
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