True costs of industrial food production system
• 1 000 tonnes of water are consumed to produce one tonne of grain
• 10 energy units are spent for every energy unit of food on our dinner table
• Up to 1 000 energy units are used for every energy unit of processed food
• 17% of the total energy use in the United States goes into food production & distribution, accounting for more than 20% of all transport within the country; this excludes energy used in import and export
• 12.5 energy units are wasted for every energy unit of food transported per thousand air-miles
• Current EU and WTO agricultural policies maximise food miles resulting in scandalous “food swaps”
• Up to 25% of CO2, 60% of CH4 and 60% of N2O in the world come from current agriculture
• US$318 billion of taxpayer’s money was spent to subsidize agriculture in OECD countries in 2002, while more than 2 billion subsistence farmers in developing countries tried to survive on $2 a day
• Nearly 90% of the agricultural subsidies benefit corporations and big farmers growing food for export; while 500 family farms close down every week in the US
• Subsidized surplus food dumped on developing countries creates poverty, hunger and homelessness on massive scales
Some benefits of sustainable food production systems
• 2- to 7-fold energy saving on switching to low-input/organic agriculture
• 5 to 15% global fossil fuel emissions offset by sequestration of carbon in organically managed soil
• 5.3 to 7.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide emission disappear with every tonne of nitrogen fertilizer phased out
• Up to 258 tonnes of carbon per hectare can be stored in tropical agro-forests, which in addition, sequester 6 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year
• Biogas digesters provide energy and turn agricultural wastes into rich fertilizers for zero-input, zero-emission farms
• 625 thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions prevented each year in Nepal through harvesting biogas from agricultural wastes
• 2- to 3-fold increase in crop yield using compost in Ethiopia, outperforming chemical fertilizers
• Organic farming in the US yields comparable or better than conventional industrial farming [33, 34], especially in times of drought
• Organic farms in Europe support more birds, butterflies, beetles, bats, and wild flowers than conventional farms
• Organic foods contain more vitamins, minerals and other micronutrients, and more antioxidants than conventionally produced foods
• 1 000 or more community-supported farms across US and Canada bring $36m income per year directly to the farms
• £50-78m go directly into the pocket of farmers trading in some 200 established local farmers’ markets in the UK
• Buying food in local farmers’ market generates twice as much for the local economy than buying food in supermarkets chains
• Money spent with a local supplier is worth four times as much as money spent with non-local supplier
The Source

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

How to save $40 or more a year on the family food bill..by growing fresh, succulent salads right on your favorite windowsill!

The “new, improved” hydroponic tank designed and built from odds and ends and a few purchased items. James Dekorne states that this—byfar—has been the most successful of his homebuilt windowsill hydroponic systems. “These four mini-gardens have a combined surface area of 5.1 square feet … which is roughly four square feet smaller than the top of an average-sized card table. And the window we placed them in faces a full seventy-five degrees east of due south . . . which is certainly not the best orientation for growing anything, but was the only orientation we had to work with so we used it.

Despite the small size of our four-sectioned salad plot and despite their less-than-ideal exposure to the sun, during the one-month period between February 19 and March 19, we picked a total of 6.15 pounds of greens from our 5.1-square-foot hydroponic garden. That’s almost 1.2 pounds of edible tissue per square foot of growing space.

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

AeroGrow International, Inc. was founded in July of 2002 to develop and market the world’s first hydroponic kitchen-crop appliance for the mass-consumer market. Funded with $5 million of initial capital, it has 1 issued U.S. patent, 10 U.S. patents pending, and 2 pending international patent applications.

The AeroGrow Kitchen Garden has been designed for the mass-consumer market and uses a new, patent-pending technology to create a self-watering, self-feeding, high-yield “Smart Garden.” The Kitchen Garden is intended to provide a fun, convenient, simple-to-use way to enjoy an ongoing, year-round supply of tasty, organic, vine-ripened herbs, vegetables, and tomatoes, ripe from the garden in homes, apartments and offices, regardless of climate and space restrictions.

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

South Pole inhabitants can now indulge on self-grown, fresh veggies, instead of living off canned and frozen cuisine.

Gene Giacomelli, director of the controlled environment agriculture program, built a growth chamber that is currently producing lettuce and other goodies at the South Pole. He also works on another chamber that is planned to go to Mars or the moon in a NASA spacecraft, he said.
How does it work? In extreme environments, such as those of the South Pole or Mars, plants can be grown in controlled rooms without windows, using artificial light sources, Giacomelli said. “We believe that we can grow any crop anywhere, anytime,” he said. “What I don’t add on there is at what cost.” But despite the high costs of such a project, researchers at the South Pole were demanding for fresh vegetables because it is impossible to maintain any supply traffic to and from the pole during the long winters, Giacomelli said.

The plants had to grow from sterile seeds that were brought to the pole because it is illegal to import soil and live plants, Giacomelli said. Therefore, all the plants grow hydroponically, which means they grow in a nutrient solution without soil. A glass wall divides the chamber and the real growth room, where the plants get warm lights, humidity and greenery. Hypothetically, 10,000 heads of small lettuce could be grown in the costly $500,000 chamber annually, but the pole residents also grow herbs, tomatoes and cucumbers in it, Giacomelli said. “We provided a product that solves problems down there. And we will see in the future how well it works.”

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

While many of today’s rivers, lakes and groundwater reservoirs continue to be overexploited, a new report launched today by leading scientists at the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development warns that unless steps are taken to improve the way water is managed, twice the world’s current water consumption may be needed by 2050 to feed a global population of some 9 billion.

The scientists from the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), World Conservation Union (IUCN) and International Water Management Institute (IWMI) said that the ambitious international commitment to halve the number of people facing hunger have missed a fundamental question: where is the water needed to grow the food to feed future generations properly?

The report, “Let It Reign: The New Water Paradigm for Global Food Security” points out that feeding the world is in many ways a daunting water challenge.

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

AGRICULTURE dominates land use and has a fundamental role in maintaining the countryside and protecting the environment. The development of intensive farming practices and the increased use of agrochemicals, which more than quadrupled food production last century, has resulted in potential environmental problems, which are being addressed by codes of good practice and a more positive integration of agricultural and environmental policies.

With agriculture becoming more mechanised and intensive, the productivity of the soil and crop yields have been markedly improved by fertilisers and pesticides. These changes have resulted in a wide range of potential environmental impacts on water quality. These impacts can be controlled by good farming practice through guidance given in the Scottish Executive’s “Prevention of Environmental Pollution from Agricultural Activity” – the PEPFAA Code.

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

“Mad cow is telling us something,” Mike Eliason said. “I think mad cow is a wake-up call to say there’s a better way,” to raise and eat cattle.
The cattle in Mike Eliason’s organic herd are raised on a chemical-free grass acreage. On his farm near Centerville, Eliason has been working on producing all-natural beef for 15 years. He guarantees mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform enceph-alopathy (BSE), has no place in his herd now or in the future.
Eliason originally wanted to get away from plowing his fields every year. The grasses on his farm are perennial, so now he never plows and the grasses are ready for cattle to eat each spring, summer and fall. “I let the cows do my harvesting,” he said. Now he continues to let his farm evolve into a facility that produces all-natural beef raised on all-natural grass, as opposed to the grains that mainstream cattle are fed.
AEVIA Reveals the Source

The European Commission has adopted a proposal for a second EU programme for the conservation, characterisation, collection and use of genetic resources in agriculture. The new programme, covering the period 2004-2006, will promote genetic diversity and the exchange of information including close co-ordination between Member States and between the Member States and the European Commission for the conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources in agriculture. It will also facilitate co-ordination in the field of international undertakings on genetic resources. The budget allocated to this programme is €10 million.
“Biological and genetic diversity in agriculture is essential for the sustainable development of agricultural production and of rural areas. This new Community programme will contribute to maintaining this biological diversity and to improving the quality of our agricultural products as well as promoting the diversification in rural areas and the reduction of inputs and agricultural production costs”, said Franz Fischler, Commissioner for agriculture, rural development and fisheries. The EU has long been keen to promote diversification in the food chain. When the genetic diversity of crops and breeds diminishes and genes are lost, this can lead to a higher susceptibility to diseases and stress factors. It can also lead to a loss of genes which allow the crop or breed to adapt itself to specific local growth conditions.
AEVIA Reveals the Source

A STATE-of-the-art computerised system has been installed at Blackmans Point where a new 3000 square metre greenhouse is embracing new technology to grow hydroponic tomatoes. Some 7000 tomato plants were planted recently and are being computer-control fed and watered every hour between 7am and 10pm with each plant getting exactly the right amount or nutrients.

Part-owner Anthony Sarks said the operation was “controlled environment agriculture” which wastes no water and uses up to 75 per cent less water than the open field system and where nutrients are recirculated. “This packaging shed contains the most up-to -date technology in Australia at present,” Mr Sarks said. “We believe this is the agriculture of the future. It is more efficient and environmentally sustainable.”

The new equipment is Australian-made for Australian conditions, but based on Dutch technology. The greenhouse has double-skin plastic walls with roof vents to control circulation. Pipes circulate hot water at ground level and they double as running rails for work trolleys that run up and down the rows of tomatoes. A glass panel in the packing shed wall enables people to see what’s going on in the greenhouse without going in. Mr Sarks said the only function the computer did not complete was picking. The computer control is constantly monitoring and can be adjusted according to needs. “We would like to think that what we are doing here would enco-urage other operations. “Many crops can be grown in a similar way, but not in the same shed as tomatoes.”

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

It’s ancient speculation. Surely, even the earliest humans looked to the stars and wondered if perhaps somewhere “out there” someone was looking back at them. President George W. Bush has recently proposed a new initiative to build a moon base as a precursor to a manned mission to Mars. However, in spite of these lofty goals, numerous obstacles still remain before us. Associate professor of biological and agricultural engineering Ronald Lacey and fellow researchers at Texas A&M are working to help overcome some of those obstacles. “Right now, even when the planets are aligned right, it will take us about 900 days round trip to go to Mars,” said Lacey. “If we want to do these kind of extended, manned space flights then they will have to vastly improve life support systems.”

Astronauts cannot afford to bring enough provisions with them to survive extensive space flights. The substantial amount of money and room required to “pack” for such a trip is simply not feasible, but the answer to this problem may be found all around us. “If you look at life support, it’s air, food and water,” Lacey said. “If we could somehow grow plants on these trips or on the planets we visit then they could supply all these things.” Lacey has developed a low-leak, translucent chamber that allows long-term studies of plant growth under various pressure conditions. It is hoped that the chambers will offer insight into the response of plant life during extended space voyages.

Specifically, if NASA wishes to grow plant life on cold, barren planets, then low-pressure containment chambers will need to be used. The keywords here: low pressure. To eliminate leakage, the chambers will need to operate near the pressure level of the planet they are on, which promises to be a very low atmospheric pressure. “We have actually seen that plants do better under lower pressures,” Lacey said. “We have found that plants produce less ethylene, which allows for better growth, and at lower pressures we found better gas exchange and transpiration rates.”

Lacey’s plant chambers boast exceptional “tightness.” Even under large pressure differences, the plant chambers have minimal leakage, allowing for wide-scale growth testing under numerous pressure levels and gas compositions. The chambers are capable of maintaining pressures as low as 5 percent of atmospheric (14.7 psi) for weeks while exhibiting leak rates as low as 1.5 percent of the volume. The chambers were built to accommodate gas supply, nutrient supply, water drainage, instrumentation, fans and a cooling system. They were designed to support solid plant growth or hydroponic systems. They also ensure that the plants will receive ample light availability – almost the entire surface area allows for photosynthetic radiation.
While the initial motivation for developing the plant chambers was for extended space travel, they could soon become useful to biological research here on Earth. Due to the exceptionally low leak rate and ability to precisely alter the composition of gas in the chamber, environmental concerns such as the effects of global warming and air pollution could be studied more precisely.

Tooling Up for Hydroponics