There’s So Much To Like About Aeroponics

The more I learn about aeroponics (growing fruit and vegetables in a mist of air, water, and minerals), the more I like. Of course, when you look at a piece of plastic with an electrical cord attached to it, you think immediately we’re trading in one set of resource hogs for another. I.e., we’re reducing certain ecologic and financial costs:

• the water for irrigation
• the fossil fuel resources to plant, harvest, process, and transport
• the chemicals necessary to fertilize
• the toxins necessary to kill an ever-evolving set of weeds and insect pests

But, we’re using plastic that comes from petroleum, and we’re using electricity, almost half of which comes from coal.

True, there is no such thing as a free lunch; everything comes with a certain environmental impact. Yet, here we have a method of growing produce that’s  many hundreds of times cleaner that farming as it appears on Earth in the 21st Century. The pump in the tower pictured here is rated at 17 Watts, and it’s shut off most of the time; it consumes about a kilowatt-hour of electricity a week. Moreover, future versions of the tower will be made of bioplastic.

At the same time, aeroponics hands you a product that is far higher in nutritional value than what you’re buying through agribusiness. It’s organic – and it’s at your doorstep.