{"id":15025,"date":"2012-10-22T08:38:53","date_gmt":"2012-10-22T14:38:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress-367309-1145705.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=15025"},"modified":"2012-10-22T08:38:53","modified_gmt":"2012-10-22T14:38:53","slug":"hydroponic-garden-sustainable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/hydroponic-garden-sustainable\/","title":{"rendered":"How Sustainable is Food from a Hydroponic Garden?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/hydroponic-garden-lettuce.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-15026\" title=\"hydroponic garden lettuce\" src=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/hydroponic-garden-lettuce.jpg\" alt=\"lettuce grown in a hydroponic garden\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/hydroponic-garden-lettuce.jpg 500w, https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/hydroponic-garden-lettuce-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I first started thinking about this particular question when I wrote about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sundancechannel.com\/sunfiltered\/2011\/06\/hydroponic-farms-on-grocery-store-roofs-does-it-get-any-more-local\/\">the Brightfarms concept<\/a> in mid-2011. No doubt, food grown on-site has a lot to recommend it: no energy used for transportation or refrigeration, and you couldn&#8217;t ask for fresher produce. But, after reading about Vancouver&#8217;s new &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.vancouversun.com\/2012\/10\/03\/living-produce-aisle-grows-the-greens-it-sells-right-in-the-store\/\">Living Produce Aisle<\/a>&#8221; store, which opened earlier this month, I began to wonder &#8211; again &#8211; if this concept, which is definitely &#8220;local,&#8221; is truly sustainable?<\/p>\n<p>The big question here involves energy use. Plants, regardless of how they&#8217;re grown, need light. If that light doesn&#8217;t come directly from the sun, it has to be provided through artificial means. <a href=\"http:\/\/eatdrinkbetter.com\/2011\/09\/21\/growing-food-on-your-supermarket\/\">The Brightfarms model<\/a> uses natural light (though I wouldn&#8217;t be surprised if its supplemented by artificial light); the Living Produce Aisle, however, makes use of self-contained hydroponic cultivation units&#8230; so all light is artificial. In both cases, of course, water and nutrients have to be pumped to the plants, requiring more energy. Yes, you could do this with renewable energy; I see no indication that this is what&#8217;s really happening in either case, though. You could also use super-efficient lighting like <a href=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/2012\/07\/solar-led-lights-the-key-to-developing-world-productivity\/\">LEDs<\/a> (which may be happening here).<\/p>\n<p>The other question that comes to mind is the range of produce that can be grown in a given hydroponic setting. Brightfarms can grow <a href=\"http:\/\/brightfarms.com\/how-it-works\/our-produce\">almost anything that&#8217;s not a root vegetable<\/a> (which you can&#8217;t ever do hydroponically); they don&#8217;t bother with staple grains as they couldn&#8217;t compete on price. The Living Produce Aisle concept is limited to herbs, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/blogs\/thesalt\/2012\/08\/29\/160274163\/introducing-microgreens-younger-and-maybe-more-nutritious-vegetables\">micro-greens<\/a>, and sprouts. Yes, this produce can be grown quickly &#8211; up to four crops a month in some cases, according to owner\u00a0Tarren Wolfe &#8211; but at what cost? The numbers in the <em>The Vancouver Sun<\/em>&#8216;s blog post give us an indication: the 2000 square foot store can grow between 1000 and 2000 pounds of food a month, and Wolfe projects earnings of $50,000 a month. Yes, they&#8217;re serving smoothies and other value-added items, but that still strikes me as really large earnings for herbs and greens&#8230; which leads me to believe that the costs of producing them is pretty high, also.<\/p>\n<p>Am I just not seeing other benefits? Or am I right in thinking that the Living Produce Aisle concept creates a &#8220;local&#8221; product that&#8217;s stripped of many of the advantages of its local-ness? Let us know what you think.<\/p>\n<p>via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/Permaculture\/comments\/11p3rb\/living_produce_aisle_grows_the_greens_it_sells\/\">Permaculture at reddit<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Image credit:<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/lori_greig\/6307087995\/\">Lori Greig<\/a> via <a href=\"http:\/\/photopin.com\">photopin<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/2.0\/\">cc<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Growing food on-site in hydroponic gardens is catching on in a number of locations. But does this approach create truly &#8220;local&#8221; produce, with all of the health and environmental benefits?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":15026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,13,7],"tags":[6130,395,904,19,23,6131,6132,25,2498,4883],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Does Hydroponic Farming Give Us Truly Local Food?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hydroponic gardening can cultivate food on-site. Yes, this is very local, but what costs are created by growing produce in this manner?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/hydroponic-garden-sustainable\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Does Hydroponic Farming Give Us Truly Local Food?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Hydroponic gardening can cultivate food on-site. Yes, this is very local, but what costs are created by growing produce in this manner?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/hydroponic-garden-sustainable\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sustainablog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-10-22T14:38:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/hydroponic-garden-lettuce.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"333\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeff McIntire-Strasburg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jeff McIntire-Strasburg\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/hydroponic-garden-sustainable\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/hydroponic-garden-sustainable\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Jeff McIntire-Strasburg\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/#\/schema\/person\/9b578e764fdaeb0c31f2d565d3f02b30\"},\"headline\":\"How Sustainable is Food from a Hydroponic Garden?\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-10-22T14:38:53+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-10-22T14:38:53+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/hydroponic-garden-sustainable\/\"},\"wordCount\":408,\"commentCount\":24,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"brightfarms\",\"canada\",\"farming\",\"food\",\"gardening\",\"hydroponics\",\"living produce aisle\",\"local\",\"produce\",\"vancouver\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Business\",\"Sustainability\",\"Technology\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/hydroponic-garden-sustainable\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/hydroponic-garden-sustainable\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/hydroponic-garden-sustainable\/\",\"name\":\"Does Hydroponic Farming Give Us Truly Local Food?\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-10-22T14:38:53+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-10-22T14:38:53+00:00\",\"description\":\"Hydroponic gardening can cultivate food on-site. 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