Aeroponics: Boon to Organically Grown Produce

While I’m in the studio next week shooting another round of videos, I plan to highlight 2GreenEnergy’s relationship with Waters Wheel, a company with a bright vision of the future of organic, local-grown farming. The secret sauce here, if there is one, is a clever, extremely inexpensive approach to aeroponics, growing produce in a minimum of space, using a tower (pictured here) in which the root systems receive a carefully maintained balance of air, water, and nutrients.

I have to say that I wasn’t an instant convert to this idea; it seemed to me that the concept of growing plants in dirt, developed about 8000 years ago, was an idea that really didn’t require much innovation. But here are a couple of facts that bear on the matter:

1) If you’re an average American and you look in your pantry, the average item you’re looking at traveled 1200 miles by truck to reach you. That’s an appalling and completely unnecessary amount of diesel fuel that’s attached to what you’re eating.

This is even true of markets that pride themselves on some level of eco-consciousness. Trader Joe’s, for instance, encourages re-use of grocery bags, but ships tomatoes thousands of miles from Southern Mexico. When I asked why, I was told, “We need uniformity. We need to make sure someone buying a tomato in Pennsylvania is having the same experience as a tomato buyer here in California.” Of course, I replied, “No you don’t. Trust me, I would LOVE to buy locally grown tomatoes, and I couldn’t care a whit where you source tomatoes for your stores in Pennsylvania.” I got a smile, but that was about it; I really don’t think my sentiments are going to change corporate policy.

2) Plants grown aeroponically are fast growing, bigger, healthier, and tastier than those grown in dirt. They can be grown indoors, on rooftops, or in any of a great many other convenient places. Because of their density, they’re very easy to keep pest-free without insecticides, herbicides, and other toxic chemicals.

Good stuff all around.  

I don’t want to come off here as anti-business, because I’m not.  But let me conclude by saying that the real “win” here, as I see it, is gradually returning agriculture back to the hands of the people, wresting it from agribusinesses like Monsanto that have so clearly and often demonstrated their blatent disregard for the health and safety of the consumer — their interest in absolutely nothing other that profit at the consumer’s expense.