The global population is expected to exceed 10 billion by the year 2050, which means that mankind will face a big challenge ahead in providing enough food for everyone.
Today, we need to grow food in an efficient, sustainable, and cost-effective way, in order to conserve the natural resources that are used today on a mass scale for food production.
Hydroponics Definition
Hydroponics is an advanced gardening technology that promotes a quick, clean and controlled plant growth without soil, but using water, light and mineral nutrient solutions.
Hydroponics is one of the advanced gardening technologies used by vertical farming to grow food that overcomes the restrictions imposed by seasonal weather patterns and transportation challenges, while significantly enhances the crop yield.
For thousands of years, the human population has farmed the land for food, but the rapid rise of the world population over the last centuries (due to the industrial revolution, improved living standards and reduced mortality rates), have put an immense pressure over the traditional farming.
Modern technology was used to enhance the food production rates, and today about 11% of the world’s total land area is used for crop production, which creates environmental challenges such as soil degradation and habitat clearing.
This puts an immense pressure on the planet’s resources because these natural resources are actually limited.
Cities expand due to the fact that the world’s population continues to grow and this increases the distances between suitable farming lands and the large number of consumers concentrated in cities.
Transportation needs to deliver food at greater distances which increases the level of air pollution released into the atmosphere.
As a result of our activity on the planet, the climate changes and this is disrupting seasonal weather patterns, which affects conventional agriculture.
Vertical farming could be one of the solutions to the lack of resources used for food production because this technology creates urban farms condensed into much smaller factory-like sites.
In these vertical farms where conditions are optimised, the yields are significantly increased, and food is much closer to the consumer, which reduces CO2 emissions because transportation on long distances is no longer needed.
Indoor Gardening Using Vertical Farming
Vertical farming has created the possibility for indoor gardening in a controlled environment, which means that you can create food in the comfort of your own home.
If you want to grow your own organic vegetables and herbs in a controlled environment, and you have limited space, you can start by creating an indoor garden that uses a hydroponic system.
Because the space inside the house is limited, the hydroponic system uses vertical farming to grow food in a very different and sustainable way compared to conventional farming, which requires a large area of land and consumes an impressive amount of resources.
Tools for Indoor Gardening
Today, we can find on the market a large list of tools to grow food at home.
However, if you want to grow enough herbs to reduce the number of trips to the grocery store, you have to use an indoor garden kit.
The best indoor garden kits on the market today can even automate the entire process of food production through the hydroponics system, which means the these kits can be used even by people that don’t know much about gardening.
Using an indoor garden kit will allow you to grow herbs and vegetables in a controlled environment that is not affected by the outside weather or bug bites.
The herbs and vegetables grown in your own house will be fresh, tasty and very healthy for you and your family.
Conclusion
To become self sustainable, is not enough to produce our own energy using the renewable energy sources available on the planet, we also need to produce our own food through vertical farming because only this way we can conserve the limited resources of the planet.
