All, or most, fertilizers start as organic. It's just refined to take out the heavy metals and toxic stuff in it so the fertilizer is pure. I think heisenburg mentioned that most of these "synthetic" nutes are sustainable as well. You do have some good points though... But my main concern is the amount of space needed for organic farming. In the future, cities will be bigger, there will be more roads. There will be more people. If all the land is used for organic or even regular commercialized farming, where will this farm land be able to grow to sustain the population? Hydroponics main strong point as I said somewhere in this thread, is it uses much less space and grows more food. I like the idea of anyone being able to grow what they want at home and the only way to sustain yourself if you do not have land is with a hydroponic system. Also, on a larger scale, hydroponics just makes sense. That's not to say that organic gardening is bad, I just don't think it can be the future of farming.
Well, no and yes. Organic fertilizers yes. Inorganic fertilizers are mined or created from fossil fuels. I summarized this here: https://www.rollitup.org/t/is-hydroponics-better-for-the-environment-i-think-it-is.863910/page-4 (scroll down to the bottom). The source for this is from a Wikipedia page:
don't forget the third stoner going...WTF?
Phosphates are only organic when they're in complex organic molecules.
I apologize in advance if this has already been mentioned as I haven't read every post....The opposition is hydroponic farming vs commercial organic or even "industrial" farming. What's better for the environment. I thought that was clear as we've had some good responses about exactly that.
Outdoor weed is different because of the different light spectrum compared to indoor lighting. Also, bugs poop on buds, the plants get drenched in rain. I think you were trying to say outdoor bud is better than indoor bud, not better than hydro? Either way, I think you're smoking the wrong stuff. While some DANK buds are grown outdoor, indoor bud should be getting you way more higher. And not burning you're through. All the thc % testing you see in high times, or anywhere for that matter, are 95% indoor grown. Being in a med mj state, I can say that's just rubbish. I have some indoor I grew that I can't smoke during the day because it makes me go on an outterspace vacation.
I mentioned livestock because, well, I just think of it as part of farming really. Someone also mentioned cows fed antibiotics or something.
Hydroponic nutrients do not contain any more npk than their organic counterparts. If they did, we wwould be killing our plantsthe dry salts I use I think are 12-6-9 npk value.
You asked for counter-views, and I'm a little skeptical about this idea that hydro will someday supplant dirt farming but only skeptical. So, what do you mean by growing all our own food hydroponically? I originally questioned the idea of growing wheat using hydro and you replied that you thought that hydro wasn't appropriate for wheat and I think you said other grains as well. Other than animal fats and proteins (yumm), we eat nuts, fruits, grains and vegetables. Hydro veggies, check. But hydro nuts, fruits, and grains?
Here in Detroit there is actually a pretty robust urban gardening scene. We go to a market in Detroit for some of our fruits and veggies, and a lot of the booths have produce that was grown right downtown in organic soil plots.
I did say that hydroponic wheat/ grains probably would be hard to make work while. There will always be a place for certain crops in the good ol faithful ground. With that said, if every crop that would do much better in hydroponics, carrots, beets, tomatoes, pretty much all fruits, cucumber, lettuce.. A lot of farm land I think would be sparred by growing many things hydroponically, this would also make much more land available for other crops, or pastures, making even more available food. I'm starting to get a little hungry now lol. Orchards will always be here IMO. There are some things that will never be accomplished with hydroponics, at least not in your near future. It's always ok to be skeptical, I am about most things as well. I also am a little skeptical about how future hydroponics would pan out if it does become the standard, but with quite a bit of hydro knowledge, I do think it could be a very good thing.
Totally. There are some areas (I can't remember where) that are putting gardens on top of school roofs. As I'm not really biased between organic or non organic, what would your opinion be if the urban gardeners used hydroponics and could yield even more food which would lower the prices?
You make some good points Alpha. My only concern is how would this be practiced? Someone like you who seems to care about the environment is not the issue. It's the giant corporations that put profit above all else that makes me wonder.
I would support that 100%. I touched on my concerns over this in the post above. If we could count on every farmer to be responsible in their practices this would be a moot point
You are right, sustainability is a systems problem and can't be fixed by any one variable. Unrestrained population growth? not sustainable; Mining fertilizers to make food? not sustainable.
So of the main food groups are we now just talking about mainly growing vegetables? I don't think this is going to move the needle much when we look at the total farmland needed to feed the people of this world. Not that it's bad its just that this becomes a smaller part of the overall solution to this problem.
Moving away from eating meat would go a long way in this regard. I don't think it's too far off where we'll be seeing very high prices for meat. Its going to be a delicacy. It just takes too much grain/corn to fatten up a cow for slaughter. I forget the stat, but it's a staggering amount of grain that needs to be consumed by a cow for every lb of meat that is yielded.