Breakthrough: “Electronic soil” boosts crop growth by over 50%::This research introduces an innovative approach to soilless cultivation, or hydroponics, by integrating electronic soil, or eSoil.
Breakthrough: “Electronic soil” boosts crop growth by over 50%::This research introduces an innovative approach to soilless cultivation, or hydroponics, by integrating electronic soil, or eSoil.
This is so false it’s not even funny. Hydro is way more efficient and aero even more so.
With farming indoors you can control the day/night cycle which not only increases the growth rate it also let’s you manipulate fruiting and flowering.
Hydro and aero use a fraction of the water dirt farming does. More water is being taken up by the plants and none of it is being lost to the environment. On top of that evaporation is controlled so less is lost that way.
As mentioned above the growth rate is increased not only by the light cycle but also by being able to more strictly control and fine tune the amount of fertilizer and you use way less of it. Just like the water, fertilizer isn’t lost to the environment.
Seems like some of you need to learn more about this stuff. There is a growing number of vertical farms popping up all over the world. Hopefully one day soon we will be buying lettuce, carrots, etc that were grown if not in the same building but on the same block.
If that was the case, why isn’t every industrial farm doing it?
In part because traditional farms scale better than aeroponics or hydroponics. In part because farms don’t pay for the environmental damage they cause. Because of these two points, there is little incentive to industrialize aeroponics or hydroponics.
What is true right now is that traditional farms use more water, fertilizer, and space, cause more environmental damage, but require less labor. And the labor problem can be mitigated with robotics, if we’re willing to invest in that.
The Venn diagram of farmers and early adopters is harry potter’s glasses
Have you seen all the crazy stuff get up to? Geospatial analysis of fields, drones for spot fertilizing, the acres covering water systems, turning waste crops into ethanol, etc
Farmers are quick to jump on an opportunity to refine their current processes in ways that reduce their inputs and increase their yields, especially when it only costs them a few grand in capital investment (drones for surveying and spot treatment) or is hilariously over-subsidized by the government (bioethanol). Wholesale change from the literal ground up, not so much, and perhaps understandably so – farmers have massive, often generational investment in infrastructure and equipment for farming in specific ways and with specific crops, operate on narrow margins, and don’t have much available liquidity to change things up on a whim. For that reason, major innovations in agriculture don’t usually come from farmers; instead they usually come from university research.
Which is why “rurality” is a synonym for modernity, and why “rural electricity/telephone/internet access” reminds you of a high tech data center. Ok.
Or you could save $62,000/year by letting the mycorrhizal fungi and bacteria do their job.