A quick search on the web seems to indicate that hydroponic farming is as good as or even superior to organic soil farming. And there’s a current debate over whether to allow hydroponic tomatoes to be classified as organic. This seems simple enough: logically, if only organic nutrient solutions are supplied to the hydroponically-grown tomato plants, then why not?
Let’s dig deeper…Green City Growers Horticulturist Laura Feddersen shares her expertise on the difference is between soilless hydroponics and organic soil: “The simplest characterization of organic growers is that they feed the soil, not the plant,” explains Laura. “This distinction is of great importance. The presence of life and once-living things in soil is crucial to organic methods, whereas conventional farming treats the soil like a dead matrix to feed and hold the plant in place, and hydroponic growing simply provides an easier delivery system to feed the plant directly." Laura referenced the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) article On Building Organic Soil to explain in greater detail.
Hydroponic growing is an easy step for conventional growers, but not for organic ones. The importance of the soil to organic growers is that soil life is the means by which plants flourish. Whether it is nitrogen, fixed from the air by rhizobia or other bacteria, or organic acids which break down soil rock and release available minerals, or a symbiotic relationship between the plant and mycorrhizal fungi that provides the fungi with carbohydrates for energy and the plant with the mycelium’s large surface area for water and mineral absorption, or the complex organic residue humus which, among other things, chelates ions of trace elements and makes them available for uptake, the presence of life and once-living things in soil is crucial to plants and flourishing organic crops.
According to NOFA, hydroponics is the growing of crops in nutrient solutions, usually indoors and under lights. Organic Standards clearly require that only biologically and ecologically based growing practices qualify as organic.
However, the National Organic Program (NOP) is allowing some certifying agencies to OK hydroponic operations and is ready to issue a directive that completely bypasses the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) 2010 recommendations and review process to give hydroponic operations the full go-ahead.
Some biologically active, ecologically-balanced operations such as aquaponics (utilizing fish-based nutrient systems) may well qualify but should the NOP not first take on the difficult task of writing standards - based on the required NOSB guideline input - before allowing hydroponics as an organic practice?
A petition to persuade the NOP to undertake this review process was begun by a Vermont farmer earlier this month and is spreading all around the country. This is your chance to weigh in: you can sign the petition at www.keepthesoilinorganic.org.
Register today to join Laura and the Green City Growers team at a weekend-long intensive Urban Farming Workshop March 21-23 to learn more about soil and organic farming at your home and in your community.
