Humans are unique on Earth in that we live outside of the balance provided by Nature. In other words, the Lion on the plain does not eat all the Zebra's, attempt to clone them, or even attempt to domesticate them. Primarily because they do not hold the intellectual capacity, but the evolutionary reason is that Lion's and Zebra's live amongst a delicate balance of supply and demand. At the point that the Lion's are eating too many Zebra's the Lions die back from lack of food. At the point that the Zebra's become abundant the Lion population increases to reflect the plentiful food source. Humans do not abide by this check and balance as our intrinsic population growth attests to. It is our consciousness and corresponding ingenuity that sustains and proliferates human life on Earth- via domestication, research, technology, breeding, etc. Thomas Malthus recognized this in "An Essay on the Principle of Population", published in 1798. This important essay first identified the geometric role of natural population increase in outrunning subsistence food supplies. This essay actually prompted one of the most influential minds in the history of humanity, Charles Darwin, to ponder and explore the patterns of evolution. The "Food Movement" is a phrase we at PG coined to embody the essence of what we should be focused on in our quest to ensure that there is Food Security for all people on Earth.

	Thomas Malthus		Charles Darwin

The "Organic Movement" was an initial step in the realization that we do not live on the Earth, but in the Earth. The result of this thinking is the Rule of Return, IPM's, USDA Organic standards, etc. but is ultimately insufficient for long term food production on Earth because the focus is on the health of the soil, not the nutritional value of the end product. The resulting nutrition is simply a positive benefit, or simply taken for granted. For example, in his book "The Origins of the Organic Movement" Philip Conford states, "Organic farming is not about rejection; it is about positive acceptance of the natural order and the intention to work within its laws (16-17)." Or completely separate right? The misconceptions regarding hydroponics are so

"You are a very nasty person to be thinking that anyone would not be able to tell the difference between a hydro growing and harvesting process being completely different from an organic one, it's easy to tell just by reading about how they both work." (quote from a response on soilassociation.org forum)

Immediately there is a backlash born of misunderstanding, but also easily understood. Many of the same fertilizers used in hydroponics are utilized by Big Ag as field fertilizers. This backlash is entirely relevant relative to field-based growing, but not growing in general. Plants are not concerned with the genesis of their food as much as humans are. In other words, a phosphorous ion from "organic" guano is received and utilized by the plant in the same way a phosphorous ion would be from a synthetic salt- in an inorganic form. It is the human condition that heeds the genesis of fertilizer production, hence "synthetic" or man-made. These are the same synthetic fertilizers that we are used to hearing cause runoff problems, such as algal blooms in lakes and estuaries and fish kills in rivers and lakes. The keyword here is "runoff". Too much focus and attention is put on the fertilizers themselves, not on how they are utilized. A recirculating hydroponic system elicits no runoff. It is a common misconception that the results found by implementing synthetic fertilizers into a field-based growing scenario- pesticides, GMO's, etc.- are a result of the fertilizers themselves and that they might be similar to the results from a properly quantified hydroponic scenario. The fact is the poor results from field-based synthetic fertilizer agriculture are due to the inability of plants to deter pests and diseases due to the weakening of the biological systems surrounding them. It has nothing to do with the nature of the fertilizer itself. This is also why large amounts of harmful pesticides must be used in the field-based synthetic scenario in order to compensate for this relative weakness of biology.

"Well I personally thought about doing the hydroponic thing many years ago. They made it sound real attractive but looking further into it it really didn't seem real healthy to me. I personally find it hard to believe that a sollution of anything can provide all the nutrients that a plant may pull from the soil. I think there are things that we're not even aware of otherwise god would have created the plants in our world a little differently. It's neat how every plant has it's different requirements and growing areas and still they all give us something that we need and can use. i'm sorry I tried the hydroponic tomatoes in the grocery store but they weren't the same as homegrown which tells me they lacked something that god provided when he put them in the soil." (response on organicgardening.com forum)

Here's another response from an "organic" forum. The interesting thing here is the comparison between store-bought tomato's and homegrown tomatoes.The responder rightly points out that most tomatoes purchased in supermarkets are below par. However, they wrongly lay the blame on hydroponics. The state of tomato taste has nothing to do with the method of growth and everything to do with the cultivation techniques. Tomatoes shipped in from Canada or Israel are cut green for shipment. They may say "vine-ripened", but the proof is in the pudding. Without letting them ripen on the vine all of the simple sugars and acidic properties that make tomatoes taste so good are not given a chance to mature. If you cut Grandma's backyard special green it would taste like cardboard too. Prove it to yourself! Hydroponics offers a compromise between synthetic fertilizers and food production. By completely separating the growing scenario from the ambient environment, in fact, by creating your own environment, the negatives associated with synthetic field-based growing are eliminated. Hydroponics offers recirculating systems that not only prevent harmful runoffs, but also use up to 1/20th of the water compared to traditional field-based growing. In a replicated or controlled environment scenario utilizing existing

Another common diatribe hurled at hydroponic technology is that it is somehow attempting to replace field-based growing. This is the sentiment that the Food Movement is trying to overcome. Squabbling over which method of growing is better than another is simply wasted energy and results in detest not progress. Food production is not a contest. The focus should be placed on the nutrition and availability of the end product, not the method of growth or the health of the soil. If we can combine efforts and work to make our food production methods and systems more efficient and harmonious there is hope for feeding the masses that only become more prevalent and voracious by the day. Hydroponics is "not natural". A statement made without a proper perspective. Define "natural"- "produced or existing in nature".

Not many years ago, most of our fresh and processed food was produced within a 100 miles of our homes. There were hundreds of local farmers and food processors, each competing for our business. In those days "fresh" meant fresh. Local farmers were not as skilled in the techniques of disguising poor quality. Today, the process is Big Ag. Local farmers are almost extinct and are at a disadvantage to large corporations in that the relative amount of subsidies paid to Big Ag is astronomically higher and unfair. In fact, 60% of all farmers and ranchers do not collect any subsidies, according to the Environmental Working Group, which cites U.S. Department of Agriculture figures. Among those that do, the top 20% collected 71% of all subsidies -- approximately $35,000 a year -- and the remaining 80% received an average payment of approximately $800 a year, according to 2003 EWG findings. Roger Stone, in his book The Nature of Development, estimates that industrialized nations spend $300 billion a year subsidizing farmers (29). We now have larger and more centralized farms, larger food processors, and larger chemical companies supplying farmers and food processors. This results in enormous armies of lobbyists enlisted to protect these vast sums of money, leaving the little guy as the loser. There have been estimates that sometime in the near future 1% of our farms will control over half our food supplies. Further, over 60% of farm profits will go to as few as 50 major corporations (Deutschman, Gary Sr.). Even if these prognostics are off base, any trend in this direction does not benefit the end consumer.

This trend is facilitated by the need for more food from fewer acres attributed to more people and less arable land.According to the American Farmland Trust America loses two acres of farmland to development every minute! But in order to get more using less in our current state of food production, sacrifices will have to be made. Among these sacrifices will be "fresh" food, less control over food quality, higher food prices, and a much higher ration of processed food over fresh food. Through processes such as Food Irradiation and pesticide use, studies are suggesting an unsettling reality- we don't know what we are eating. According to California Day-Fresh foods, irradiating orange juice strips away 48% of its beta-carotene, 13% of its Vitamin C, and 10% of its Vitamin A (www.citizen.org). Many of the beneficial bonds involving simple sugars and amino

Another option is simply being more creative with the space we have available to us. Why not utilize skyscrapers or underwater food production mechanisms for cultivation. We could grow up instead of out with skyscrapers and down instead of out with underwater growth. The Earth's surface is over 70% water, so it seems the ability to utilize this reality along with the three-dimensional nature of the ocean to our advantage would eliminate the land stress we are currently experiencing. The possibilities and repercussions of this are overwhelmingly positive and endless!

Something can also be said about the efficiency of large produce corporations. It is estimated that 20% of all food produced in America (about 137 million tons, worth $31 billion) is wasted every year. Of that, about 60 million tons, worth $5 billion is simply left in fields for lack of commercial value (USDA). Add to that the increasingly high costs of packaging, storing, preserving, handling, and transportation after it leaves the field, not to mention the fossil fuels burned in route, and the result is clear- we have a very inefficient way of producing and supplying food.

Hydroponics shows the most potential in third world countries. There is a growing understanding that on Earth we are trending towards the scenario of "more people, less space". For example, standard US agricultural practice today requires at least 45,000 square feet of land to feed a person on a high-meat diet, or about 10,000 for a vegetarian. Developing nations aspiring to similar diets have only about 9,000 square feet of land per person available for cultivation, and that amount will probably shrink with further urbanization, desertification, erosion, soil salinization, and other stresses ("Natural Capitalism", 210). Reference the chart below:

This chart elicits the potential for increasing the efficiency of food production via hydroponics. What is not quantified in this chart is the potential for year-round production via controlled environments. The increase in food production can be magnified up to two-fold considering the projected production mechanisms above can be experienced in the winter months as well as the traditional growing season with no interruptions. The concept of hydroponics allows for the production of the same relative amount of food in an average of as little as 1/5th the space.

Not only does it increase the efficiency of food space, but it saves water as well. Because hydroponics is recirculatory by nature, up to 1/20th the amount of water is used in hydroponics relative to field-based growing, respectively. Around 30% of the water dumped on a field is actually utilized by crops. The other 70% simply runs through the root zone or is lost via erosion. Further, agriculture is responsible for about twice as much of total US water withdrawals as all buildings, industry, and mining combined. It accounted for 81% of all 1995 consumptive use. 88% of the nations 1995 irrigation water went to 17 western states, where the great majority of all water districts were mining groundwater faster than it is being recharged ("Natural Capitalism", 214). There is something further to say about the use of water on specific crops. For example, 80% of California's water goes to irrigation. A full 20% of that water is used to grow alfalfa. Alfalfa is not very water efficient in that the amount of water used relative to the amount of usable foodstuff received is very low, especially when it's grown in the deserts of southern California. All of this alfalfa is cultivated to feed to dairy cows (www.worldwatch.org, Brian Halweil, June 07, 2002). To be clear, California is using 25% of its TOTAL available water supply to produce a crop they're feeding to cows! Individual situations such as this if recognized and alleviated can have a dramatic effect on the overall efficiency of our food production mechanisms.

Couple these statistics with the fact that demand for water is increasing at a dramatic rate and there is cause for creeping alarm. The supply of available water on Earth is not much more now than it was 2,000 years ago. (WATER PIC) Yet some 6 billion more people exist now than at the dawn of civilization, and all of them need water for agriculture, industry, and private consumption and this number and demand is growing daily. As world population tripled between 1900 and 1995, global water consumption rose sixfold- that is, twice as fast as population! Demand for water will continue to grow rapidly. Since 1970, global demand for water has grown by 2.4% a year. Projections indicate that water withdrawals will increase by 35% between 1995 and 2020, reaching 5,060 billion cubic meters. A primary pressure on water supplies is the need for irrigation. Since most of the land suitable for agriculture is already being cultivated, or even decreasing, increases in food production must be achieved by raising yields by, among other things, increasing irrigation farming. In the first half of the twentieth century, the acreage of land under irrigation doubled worldwide. Between 1950 and 1990 this feat was repeated. Water consumption in the agricultural sector has risen by a factor of five since the fifties. Around half the increase in food production achieved since the end of World War II is due to the expansion of the artificially irrigated proportion of the world's arable land. Were it not for this spread of irrigated farming, the world would already be faced with major food supply problems. According to Mark Rosegrant of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI- http://www.ifpri.org/), global consumption of irrigation water will increase by 4% by 2025, while that of non-irrigation water is expected to rise by 62%, mostly due to increases in industrial uses in developed countries. Should this volume of water be unavailable, local food shortages may be unavoidable ("Six Billion and Counting", 42-43).

It is interesting the relative lack of perspective prevalent in literature dealing with food production and in most of the world organizations that deal with food security. In the book "Six Billion and Counting", by Klaus Leisinger, et al, it is noted that "although suitable arable land is a prerequisite for any agricultural operation, around 600 million hectares of potentially arable land suffer from lack of water that inhibits production." Why do we not begin to articulate the potential positive repercussions of hydroponic technology in the mainstream? They go on to say that without sufficient water, the arsenal of technical possibilities and hence the opportunities for higher yields and multiple cropping cannot be exploited. On average, irrigated farming is twice as productive as rainfed agriculture and almost 40% of all foodstuffs are grown on the irrigated 17% of the world's arable land. Data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO- http://www.fao.org/) demonstrates the effectiveness of controlled irrigation for developing countries increasing the per hectare yield of most food crops by 100 to 400%. These advances in food production are positive steps, but doesn't it make sense to further the progress we have already made, particularly since the relative availability of water despite these steps is being discussed? How about doubling that 100-400% to 200-800% by creating environments that allow year-round growing conditions? Instead of concentrating on means of production that seek to enhance a relatively unenhancable technique- run to waste irrigated soil growth- why not focus on means of food production that have our goals of water conservation, maximum per square foot food production, no pesticides, Food Security, and overall food nutritional value in mind- recirculating controlled environment hydropnic cultivation? Further, it seems logical that with irrigated farming becoming more prevalent due to its ability to increase yields, increase the demand for labor and create jobs, and enhance the ability of farmers to grow cash crops that recirculation, or the conservation of water, should be the main focus.

Think about the repercussions of retrofitting and augmenting our food production systems with hydroponics. Food producers could receive tax breaks or subsidies based on water or energy conservation as opposed to the current subsidy programs that wastes taxpayer money due to the lack of control the farmer has over our market logistics and weather. The total energy consumed by US agriculture per year is equivalent to more than 30 billion gallons of gasoline (714,285,000 barrels), and represents more than 5 times the energy content of the food produced ("Solviva", 95)! Hydroponics can reduce this energy imbalance via more efficient production and cultivation techniques. Further, freshwater flows from rivers are provided to agriculture under a program of federal subsidies that go back to the 19th century. California has built a vast agribusiness sector on water so heavily subsidized that 57% of its agricultural water grows four crops that produce only 17% of its agricultural revenue, as attested to regarding alfalfa above (Natural Capitalism, 215). From these examples it is easy to see that we have a relative imbalance in our water distribution and energy consumption in regards to food production. This is not something that only affects big corporations. It affects the homeowner when we cannot water our lawns during water sensitive periods or we cannot wash our car due to drought or the price of our produce is higher than we expect it to be. If the average individual could make the connection between these unnecessary sacrifices and food production do you think there would be more of an impetus to create change? Exactly.

The other major advantage over our current food production mechanism regarding hydroponics is the ability to grow produce without the use of pesticides. Currently, the utilization of pesticides is so widespread due to the unhealthy nature of the soil biology being cultivated. Using synthetic fertilizers in a soil scenario weakens the surrounding biology, in turn, warranting the use and overuse of pesticides to compensate for plant weakness. The best defense against pests and diseases is a healthy plant. By

The Food Movement's sole focus is healthy food. Do we really know what we eat? The answer is no. This is not for lack of effort or interest or a scare tactic, simply a repercussion of the nature of our food production systems. There is no "countertop analysis" available to the consumer to test what may be in or on our produce. We must rely on the integrity of the production methods. This is the impetus behind the "organic" labeling implemented by the USDA. By maintaining guidelines for "organic" food production the consumer can have a better idea about how their food was produced and have the piece of mind that they really know what they're eating. The problem is that by mandating "organic" food as the sole assurance of Governmentally recognized healthy food, we have effectively pigeonholed ourselves by excluding equally, if not more, prolific and healthy means of production. Consumers Union, a non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports, did a study on pesticide residues across 8 fruits and 12 vegetable crops grown "organic", IPM/NDR, and conventionally. The study showed that 73% of conventionally grown samples had pesticide

Our Federal programs are unimaginative and outdated. The problem is that the Federal Government is reactionary by nature. The USDA did not come up with the idea of "organic" guidelines the same way the FCC did not originate the idea of the Internet. These progressions stem from the human ingenuity that is the hope of the future in terms of food production, water conservation, Food Security, and overall human sustainability. The Government is a conduit of the people, not the other way around. The potential positive repercussions of reprioritizing our food

The reality is that unless we become more creative, flexible, and willing to adopt more efficient and healthy means of producing food our current systems of production will not be able to sustain the intrinsic population growth we are currently experiencing and expect to experience over, at least, the next 40-50 years. The idea is summed up nicely in an old Chinese proverb:

"Three thousand years ago in the province of Chu lived a wise man who knew the right answer to any question. This annoyed two young men, who set out to play a trick on him and prove that he did not know everything. One of them took a small bird in his hands and hid it behind his back. The other asked the old man: "What is my friend holding behind his back?" The old man answered: "A sweet little bird." Thereupon the young man slyly asked his second question: "And, honorable sage, is the bird alive or dead?" The young men had agreed that if the old man answered that the bird was dead they would release the bird to prove he was wrong. If however, the old man replied that the bird was alive, the young man would crush the bird and show its corpse to the old man as proof of his fallibility. "Well, old man, is the bird alive or dead?" repeated the young man. The old man smiled and said, "That lies entirely in your own hands." ("Six Billion and Counting", 128)

The bottom line is that we are caught in a mindset that has the reigns over our innate intellect as a population. We cannot allow ourselves to step outside the box regarding food production in order to ensure its safety simply because of the lack of general public recognition and education on these concepts. It is a safe bet to assume that if people really knew what they were eating on a day-to-day basis regarding the nutritional value and prevalence of pesticides in our food there would be a public reaction demanding a reallocation of our priorities in food production. Our priorities and focus should not be method of growth, or profit, or cost, or tradition, or soil integrity, but overall availability and nutritional value of the final product. Express your Buying Power and purchase organically, locally, and hydroponicly grown produce. Better yet, grow your own! Contact your local elected Representatives to discuss the value of healthy food today!

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