Healthy, nutritious and tasty food keeps us going each day. But when we sit with that bowl of greens and other colorful salads thinking we are eating healthy food, are we really sure it’s healthy? It may look fresh, green, and nutritious, but there are also very harmful chemicals like urea, sulfur, chlorides and other chemicals along as well. These nasty chemicals are present in the produce we eat in varying levels due to the fertilizers and pesticides used to grow the crops. But it’s labeled organic, which means you don’t have to worry about that, right? Well, the growers can claim they didn’t spray the crops with these pesticides or fertilizers, but do they have control over underwater tables and air that has the runoff and chemical aerosol from a much polluted environment?

The science of Hydroponics offers an innovative path to a healthy food supply where you know how your food is produced, and what went into it. Hydroponics is the growing of plants in nutrient solutions with or without an inert medium (as soil) to provide mechanical support. Simply put, Hydroponics is the science of growing plants in mineral and nutrient enriched water without soil. This may sound strange to some, but plants really don’t need soil to grow because the nutrients and minerals they need are not part of the soil itself. The most important thing to the plants are the select nutrients that they require to synthesize their food. The mechanical support of soil can well be substituted by coir, wood fibre, gravel, sand and various other media. Hydroponics can be used for large scale agriculture and right in your home as well. Hydroponics has many advantages such as less labor and garden maintenance, pests and diseases are easily avoided as the climate can be controlled, plants are free from weeds and will thus grow healthy ensuring that we get good, wholesome and non-toxic food on our table.

Hydroponics is a great way to grow our crops and other plants in a pollution free and controlled environment. The yield from hydroponics is typically much higher than conventional farming and may very well have the solution to the food shortage problem on earth. It may also help us save the flora and fauna of the earth which is nearing extinction by replacing large-scale agriculture. The water usage for Hydroponics is as little as 1/20th of the water required for conventional agriculture, thus reducing the strain on earth water resources as well.

Choosing Hydroponics over conventional agriculture and gardening will help our environment and may be part of the answer to global warming and climate change. We can then ensure that our future generations will inherit an earth where their eyes can still feast on the verdant green of forests and when they enjoy a meal, they can be sure that no nasty chemicals are making their way into their bodies.