Hydroponics: The Future Of A Dystopian Future

1137 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Human population growth trend

Imagine a world with almost ten billion people, thirty percent more than the population of today, the rising standard of living in developing nations causing the global demand for food resources to skyrocket. Now, at the same time, imagine a world that has almost no way to support a population of this size. In fact, this world is slowly losing its ability to support life at all. This scenario is not a pitch for a novel set in a dystopian future, nor is it a prediction made for a time so far in the future that it can be easily ignored. This prediction will most likely come to be within the lifetimes of many alive today, researchers in the ecological field believe that this will become the reality even within the next thirty-five years if significant …show more content…

Hydroponics, literally meaning “water working”, is the method of growing plants in solution comprised of water with all the essential nutrients required by the plants to grow and thrive.(Resh) Due to the very nature of the system, soil cannot be used, the fine particles that it contains clog up the system too easily and the trace minerals in it can upset the carefully managed nutrient and pH levels. The practice of growing plants hydroponically has been done for many years, one of the earliest instances of hydroponically grown plants was during World War II. Small islands in the Pacific that were used as fuel stop for planes making the long journey sometimes grew vegetables in mineral water to supplement their rations. (Donaldson) Interest in hydroponics continued somewhat after the war but never on a large scale because of the large and expensive concrete structures that were required at the time. The real jump in hydroponic interest came about with the new advances in plastics.Now the materials that previously had to be made of glass or metal could now be made quickly for a much smaller price. Because of this, greenhouses began springing up all across the country and with some of them even sporting a hydroponic system. Since then, a large percentage of greenhouse grown vegetables are being grown hydroponically.

Show More
Related

  • Anna Lappe's The Climate Crisis At The End Of Our Fork)

    825 Words  | 2 Pages

    Humans are damaging the planet to live comfortably, we must change the way food is distributed worldwide, support local farmers and switch to a healthier diet in order to stop global warming. The current global has been getting better for us humans over the years, from eating bread and eggs 3 times a day in the XV century, now we can eat better than the kings of those times, however the much of the food in not healthy and the global food system still fails in getting food to every individual in the planet and in addition it contributes to the destruction of our world. Ms. Anna Lappe explains how the food system contributes to around 1/3 of the global warming issue in her essay “The Climate Crisis at the End of Our Fork”, while a group of Plos one explains the issues about the export and import of food growth over the last 50 years in the

    Read More

  • DBQ: The Green Revolution

    927 Words  | 2 Pages

    Even tho the green revolution had stopped starvation in some of the world, it has also caused some. The green revolution was the use of new technology to grow food for the people of the world that started in the 1950’s. These new technology were such things as Gmo’s, pesticides, fertilizers. The main goal was to stop hunger and make second and third world countries better and not living in poverty. The green revolution Raised the amount of food in the world, made the world's population increase in a dangerous rate and harmed and damaged the earth and its people.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of Forget Shorter Showers By Derrick Jensen

    1293 Words  | 3 Pages

    As Jensen points out, farming and industry accounts for the vast majority of total water usage in the world (477). The increasingly scarce resource is a necessary ingredient when growing food. Technology continuously improves to make it easier for farmers to grow crops while using less water. Scientists at the University of Georgia utilize what they term “variable rate irrigation” to let farmers automate the current systems of irrigation to water only the crops that need it (Gies). This is an example of retrofitting current farms, but there is a new way of farming coming to cities that reuses practically all of its water and stakes claim much less acreage in the process. The future of agriculture belongs to vertical and urban farming. These types of farms reduce the use of water, chemicals (such as pesticides, herbicides and fungicides), soil and space (The Economist). These farms are so cutting edge that they are mostly in the experimental stages. Firms like Famgro farms are testing “stackable” farming systems that can scale with demand, even further reducing waste. Famgro’s stackable farms are ideal for cityscapes where land is at a premium; furthermore, reaping the added benefit of being in close proximity to the customers that they serve. Customers will enjoy high quality, fresh produce at only a slightly

    Read More

  • The Aponic System: The Benefits Of The Aquaponics System

    1853 Words  | 4 Pages

    Aquaponics systems are the combination of aquaculture (raising fish in a tank) and hydroponics (growing of plants in a soil-less environment) that facilitates the growth of the fish and plants simultaneously in one integrated system. The waste produced by the fish would provide a source of nutrition for the growing plants and the plants naturally filter the water in which the fish live in. Another process involved in the aquaponics system is the participation of microbes (nitrifying bacteria) and composting red worms that flourish in the growing media. They convert the ammonia present in the fish waste into nitrites, then into nitrates and the solids into vermicompost that serves are food for the plants. By combining both aquaculture and hydroponics, aquaponics capitalizes on the benefits of both and eliminates the downsides associated with them.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Garrett Hardin's The Tragedy Of The Commons

    983 Words  | 2 Pages

    It is a known fact that the world population is increasing without bound; however, there is a debate if this increase is a good thing or if it will prove catastrophic. The article “The Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin discusses how the ever-increasing world population will exhaust the world of its natural resources, and eliminate human’s capability for survival. On the other side of the argument is Julian L. Simon who wrote “More People, Greater Wealth, More Resources, Healthier Environment.” This article proposes the theory that with an increase in population, humans’s quality of life is amplified. One particular issue that they both mention and have drastically different views on is the future of agriculture and human’s ability to sustain it.

    Read More

  • Sustainability of The Global Food System

    1117 Words  | 3 Pages

    In order for us to maintain our lives, we need to consume food to supply nutrient-needs for our bodies. As the global population increased, the demand for food also increased. Increased population led to mass production of foods. However, even with this mass production, in under-developed countries, people are still undernourished. On other hand, in developed and developing countries, people are overfed and suffering from obesity. In addition, the current methods of industrial farming destroy the environment. These problems raised a question to our global food system. Will it be able to sustain our increasing global population and the earth? With this question in my mind, I decided to investigate the sustainability of our current global food system.

    Read More

  • Aquaponics Advantages And Disadvantages

    880 Words  | 2 Pages

    Growing food with Aquaponics is more efficient than growing food the traditional soil garden way. In a typical soil garden, growers end up spending hours of their time doing back breaking work on their garden, but not anymore, with Aquaponics the need for any tilling, digging, or weeding is eliminated. Aquaponics combines Aquaculture (Raising fish in tanks), and Hydroponics (Growing plants without soil). The outcome is a working system that provides plants with all the nutrients they need, while using a minimum of space, effort, water, fertilizers, and pesticides. Aquaponics allows farmers to use up to 90% less water than normal farming would use, so instead of watering your soil and having the majority of your water either lost by run off or evaporated by the sun, the water is recycled repeatedly through the system saving farmers hundreds of dollars on their monthly water bills. Also when growing with Aquaponics, much more food can be produced in a smaller space, in some cases growers have produced around twenty times the amount of produce in the same area a soil garden would. In addition, with the closed, controlled environment of the system, the need for the use of any pesticides a basically eliminated. Finally, Aquaponics enables growers to grow bigger, better and more quality produce.

    Read More

  • We Can End World Hunger

    1425 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the past ten years the world population exceeded six billion people with most of the growth occurring in the poorest, least developed countries in the world. The rapidly increasing population and the quickly declining amount of land are relative and the rate at which hunger is increasing rises with each passing year. We cannot afford to continue to expand our world population at such an alarming rate, for already we are suffering the consequences. Hunger has been a problem for our world for thousands of years. But now that we have the technology and knowledge to stamp it out, time is running short.

    Read More

  • Aquaponics Essay

    1116 Words  | 3 Pages

    Aquaponics is the combination of both aquaculture, which is fish farming, and hydroponics, which is farming without the use of soil. In aquaponics, plants form a symbiotic relationship with fish allowing for fish to get nutrients from plants, and plants get a supply clean water from the fish. With aquaponics, the plants and fish can grow faster than average due to naturally fortified water from the fish, and nutrient-rich water from the plants. Aquaponics also allows for two types of farming happening at the same time, fish and plants, if the system the fish are in is large enough. Furthermore, aquaponics allows for plants to grow anywhere, without arable land. Many countries are not able to meet the demand for food because of the climate or

    Read More

  • Population Growth, Industrialization, and the Environment

    1509 Words  | 4 Pages

    One of the major effects of the huge population increase has been the depletion of natural resources and the destruction of ecosystems. In the 1960's, theorist Paul Ehrlich predicted that, given the skyrocketing figures of human population, the amount of food produced would not grow at a fast enough rate for human survival (Professor Carr Everbach, personal communication). He predicted mass starvation and death by the year 2000 as the result of uncontrolled population growth. Clearly, this did not occur. Ehrlich did not foresee the advancements ma...

    Read More

  • Food Shortages

    742 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sandra Postel, on the other hand, has a different opinion than Danielle’s. She proposed that “without increasing water productivity in irrigation, major food-producing regions will not have enough water to sustain crop production”.

    Read More

  • The 2030 Agenda For Sustainable Development

    837 Words  | 2 Pages

    Humans have become a threat to our own way of life by consuming more resources than needed, blind to the consequences that we may face in the future. As of 2016 the world population is at 7.4 billion and it is estimated to be at 11.2 billion by the year 2100. However 10 billion is the maximum population that can be sustained in terms of food security, only one of the many factors to global sustainability. Due to the fact that human consumption exceeds the amount of resources available, the United Nations “recognizes that eradicating poverty is the greatest global challenge” in A/RES/70/1. Sustainable development is not only required to fulfill the necessities of the present but to guarantee the capability for future generations to satisfy theirs.

    Read More

  • Agriculture Technology

    2189 Words  | 5 Pages

    People have depended on agriculture for years as the primary source of getting food. We have developed all kinds of ways to manipulate nature so what we can produce higher yield crops, more nutritious crops, bigger crops, crops that withstand cold, and farming equipment that allows us to manufacture these crops with relative ease. Why then are there five billion people being malnourished and forty thousand children dying each day from hunger? It seems as though world hunger is more a result of the lack of distributing the food properly than the lack of quantity. agriculture has turned into a high profit business and biotech companies like Monsanto are constantly trying to come up with better and more efficient ways of farming. Are they doing this to try to solve the world hunger crisis, or merely to make a profit?

    Read More

  • Gardening Essay

    809 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ocess helps reducing the loss of a large variety of species which is one of the biggest environmental concerns. Many of the vegetables travel in materials such as plastic and cardboard, by the time they arrive at the grocery store they absorb unwanted material and may lose nutrients. Growing your own vegetable garden benefit the environment by reducing the carbon emission and waste created by shipping and packaging vegetables. Environmental benefits of gardens include increasing previous surfaces and allowing for groundwater recharge, improving air quality through the addition of plants to the landscape, beautifying the environment and promoting sustainability. Of course, there are potentially negative environmental impacts associated with gardening the use of power tools uses energy, and water use is rising every year therefor we have to use wells and solar systems.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Environmental Philosophy

    1229 Words  | 3 Pages

    Overpopulation can be seen as one of the key factors responsible for the state of our rapidly decaying earth. Developments in medicine, agriculture and technology have allowed for the human race to take over all other species and be excluded from the natural food chain. Humans, particularly westerners, lead lives of extreme consumption that take huge tolls not only on the earth but also on certain groups within society. A great division has developed between the western world and the third world.

    Read More

More about Hydroponics: The Future Of A Dystopian Future

Open Document