From the comments section on this NYT article: "No Soil. No Growing Seasons. Just Add Water and Technology/A new breed of hydroponic farm, huge and high-tech, is popping up in indoor spaces all over America, drawing celebrity investors and critics."
July 7, 2021
"Here in the Netherlands, where there is little land and a lot [o]f rain, hydroponic farming is almost all there is."
"Frankly, the vegetables and fruits such as strawberries have almost no flavor. Tomatoes taste like red sponges. It’s efficient but that’s it. Many of us live for the summer to travel to France, Spain or Italy where fruits and vegetables are grown in the ground and have real flavor."
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5 comments:
Temujin writes:
"Interesting that hydroponic vegetables are tasteless, according to that commenter. I find virtually ALL of the fruit and vegetables sold in our groceries these days are almost tasteless, or a pale version of what they used to be. Fruit in particular has become almost inedible, unless I buy it at a local farmer's market. I believe that the grocery industry has been pushed to have such magnificent displays all year round that they (and the industry that supplies them) have created a system where fruit is sent to market well before it's ready, gassed to look ready (ethylene gas), and set up in bountiful displays. You get the fruit home, bite into it and realize it should not have even been picked yet.
"But how do they supply enough fruit to fill bountiful displays in thousands of grocery chain locations from coast to coast just in the USA? We get Chilean fruit in winter, US fruit in spring/summer/fall. We have 'fresh' fruit all year round. But is that actually doable?
'As for vegetables grown on a wall with nutrient water flowing over their roots, I'll point to the wine industry as the rebuttal to this process. Wine is grown all over the world. Various grapes grow best in certain climates, on hillsides or in valleys, in different temperatures. But the one thing that is the creator of the flavor of the wine (beside the things previously mentioned) is what wine people call the 'terroir'- the soil and climate. The earth in any given vineyard contains minerals and essences of millenia of growth, undergrowth, decay, etc. Why are Napa Cabernets so good? And why are no two Napa Cabernets exactly the same? So many reasons, but it starts with the terroir, the soil. What is imparted into the vines, and through to the grapes is what makes the difference between a great wine or a fair wine. The best wines sit on coveted land. They don't use grapes grown hydroponically.
"It doesn't work for wine grapes. It won't work for my tomatoes either. The earth has to be a part of the growth or we're missing essential flavors, aromas, and nutrients."
Joe writes:
""The best wines sit on coveted land. They don't use grapes grown hydroponically."
"Soil and climate are really big in the final product...even water can play a lesser role. Many vineyards (including one that I manage) are dry-farmed. Essentially the grapes only get what falls from the sky.
"Re: harvesting walls of produce...good thing the Dutch are so damned tall : )"
Tina writes:
"I don’t trust the organics obsessives. I gave them a chance, checked out one famous conference, and found a bunch of doltish anarchist types with the sorriest-looking tiny bits of produce bragging about growing a rutabaga or two pear trees. None of them could scale up to feed one family. Two real farmers who were invited speakers were actually pleading with participants to stop trying to raise goats they couldn’t handle and mushrooms that could get dangerous spores and trying to explain why farm animals need antibiotics sometimes. It was all just protest and politics. Ditto the silly food desert movement by the FDA, handing out big wads of tax dollars to the usual “nonprofit” grifters to pretend to plant lettuce in empty city lots.
"Hydroponics get better every year. Between them, greenhouses, and no-till planting, we’re doing great things. Florida has a lot of natural sunshine hydroponics, and the lettuces, peppers, greens and herbs are flavorful, leaving farmland for things that grow better there. Even tomato technology is improving. I know some small farmers getting great crop yield and an extra season using combinations of hydroponics and greenhouse tunnels, natural sun and electrical lighting. And we don’t need to use the massive amounts of fertilizer and water — which all soil farmers, including organic ones, use and waste. This is a very good way to encourage small family farms. And we are studying the microbiome all the time. That angry guy apparently doesn’t know what ag schools do."
Ruth writes:
"Our local grocer has been selling hydroponic strawberries. Maybe it has
to do with how they are picked, but they are the sweetest, least likely
to spoil, I have seen in many years. I haven't had strawberries this
good, ripe and well formed, since I went to a pick your own in Ventura
County, CA. If you can find some hydroponic strawberries give them a try.
"I am shocked to see that the veggies grown in the Netherlands are spoken
of as tasteless. I have a friend who immigrated to the Netherlands who
loves the fruits and veggies there. She is from Louisiana where
everything grows well and her family knows their veggies."
Bart writes:
"As a soil chemist, some 35 years ago I was contracted by an emerging west-coast strawberry producer to develop a fertility program to maximize the flavor of their strawberries, which I did, and it launched them on a path to the worldwide brand recognition they enjoy today.
In the last decade, however, they have converted an ever greater proportion of their production to hydroponics and also rapidly expanded their production to include raspberries and blueberries. They are now actively growing on five continents, much of it using hydroponics.
I was once again contracted by that same company to develop key agronomic guides for their field agronomists in assorted countries, including Spain, Morocco, Mexico and others.
Two things became rapidly clear -- their cadre of agronomists in all the places they're producing berries, including the US are now nowhere near as good as those I worked with back in the '80s, **and** essentially none of them have practical field production experience.
More importantly, the "leadership" of the company is now focusing on YIELD, rather than quality, and their hydroponic fertilizer formulæ clearly demonstrate that shift in focus.
Hydroponics are quite clearly nowhere near as good for flavor or nutrition as the same crop grown outside in a healthy, well-balanced, and microbially active soil."
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