Hi Dr M...,
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There's something about growing food in soil that intuitively feels natural. Hydroponics, by comparison, can sound technological. But the ideas behind it are much older than the word itself.
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The word “hydroponics” is less than a hundred years old, from the Greek hydro for water and ponos for labor. In the 1930s, Berkeley plant physiologist William Gericke made headlines growing enormous tomato vines in tanks of nutrient-rich water, their roots directly in the solution, no soil at all.
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Outside Mexico City, in a place called Xochimilco, the Mexica built chinampas: extraordinarily fertile growing plots raised out of shallow lakes, surrounded by canals and replenished with nutrient-rich sediment from the water.
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People still farm them today, five hundred years later. It's a brilliant system. Technically, though, it's not hydroponics. The plants still grow in soil. The canals keep that soil extraordinarily well supplied with water and nutrients.
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For a closer match, travel halfway around the world to Bangladesh. For generations, farmers there have built floating gardens called dhap out of water hyacinth and other organic matter. Crops grow directly in the floating beds. When monsoon floods submerge the land for months at a time, farmers figured out how to grow on the water instead.
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The images of these systems are incredible. But what strikes me more than the methods themselves is the ingenuity behind them. People were solving the problem long before anyone thought to give it a name.
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For thousands of years, people have looked at the place they lived, the land and water they had available, and figured out how to grow within those constraints. They adapted the way they grew to the way they lived.
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Over the last century, our growing cities faced the same basic challenge. And we came up with almost the opposite solution. Instead of figuring out how to keep farms close to us, we figured out how not to need them close at all.
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For four decades, from 1910 to 1950, Los Angeles County ranked #1 in agricultural production among every county in America. In the most recent Census of Agriculture, it ranked #817.
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Today, our most abundant crop may be aspiring actors. The land didn't become less valuable for growing food.​It simply became more valuable for everything else. Studio lots included. Refrigeration, highways, and an increasingly sophisticated supply chain made that possible.
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Today lettuce can be grown a thousand miles away, harvested, cooled, packaged, trucked, warehoused, put on a grocery store shelf, and brought home. And yet, somehow, that feels perfectly normal. But normal and natural aren't necessarily the same thing.
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I think we've simply confused familiar with natural. Growing a plant a few feet from where you'll eat it, giving its roots the water and nutrients it needs directly, doesn't strike me as particularly unnatural. At least not compared to the alternative.
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Maybe the next evolution is using what we know now to make growing fit the way we live now: on a rooftop, a balcony, a patio, or a little patch of concrete.
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Growing food close to where we eat it isn't a new idea. Maybe what's changing is simply our idea of where growing belongs.
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J...

[1] Hydroponics vs. Traditional Farming: 10 Major Differences https://www.edengreen.com/blog-collection/hydroponics-vs-traditional-farming
[2] Crop Management: Comparing Hydroponic and Traditional Agriculture https://puregreensaz.com/blog/crop-management/
[3] Hydroponics: current trends in sustainable crop production - PMC https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10625363/
[4] Hydroponics and Traditional Farming: A Side-by-Side Analysis https://www.hydroponicsfarming.uk/blog/hydroponics-and-traditional-farming-a-side-by-side-analysis/
[5] Hydroponics vs Traditional Farming: A Comparison of Future ... https://briohydroponics.com/blog/Hydroponics-vs-Traditional-Farming
[6] The Cost of Hydroponic Farming vs Traditional Agriculture https://balconycrops.com/the-cost-of-hydroponic-farming-vs-traditional-agriculture/
[7] Why is hydroponics not widely used instead of conventional farming? https://www.reddit.com/r/farming/comments/hiljyo/why_is_hydroponics_not_widely_used_instead_of/
[8] Controlled comparisons between soil and hydroponic systems ... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7885021/
[9] Vertical Farming – No Longer A Futuristic Concept - USDA ARS https://www.ars.usda.gov/oc/utm/vertical-farming-no-longer-a-futuristic-concept/
[10] Vertical Farming Crop Yield per Acre vs. Traditional Farming https://www.edengreen.com/blog-collection/vertical-farming-crop-yield-per-acre
[11] Financial Returns from Farmland Investments: What to Expect https://agronosotros.com/financial-returns-from-farmland-investments-what-to-expect/
[12] Average U.S. Farmland Investment Returns - AcreTrader https://acretrader.com/resources/farmland-values/farmland-returns
[13] Farmland's Superior Performance Over The Past 30 Years https://farmtogether.com/learn/blog/farmland-superior-performance-over-the-past-30-years
[14] Hydroponic Farming ROI: Costs, Profits & Payback Time https://skyfieldagritech.com/return-on-investment-roi-of-hydroponic-farming-how-long-until-you-recover-your-investment/
[15] How Can Investors Maximize Returns with Hydroponic Greenhouse ... https://www.cfgreenhouse.com/news/how-can-investors-maximize-returns-with-hydroponic-greenhouse-farms-in-2025/
[16] An average ROI of 30% with hydroponic farming - is it really possible ... https://www.instagram.com/reel/C9XJr3VvMLy/?hl=en

OK, if you came here from a link elsewhere among our publications, you might be feeling that we led you (far) astray, but we're in hope you'll forgive the excursion. After all, if gardening isn't fun, why would we do it?

What we have in mind is another excursion, into "space" you already control. Why not start an indoor garden?

Start with a single tray of microgreens or even a flower pot with a few spinach seeds. Add basic nutrition for your family, and if you enjoy it and want to generate some additional income, consider expanding to more food for your family or even a small business.

Enjoy the rest of our gardening world.

Bueno, si llegaste aquí desde un enlace de otra publicación, puede que sientas que te hemos llevado muy por mal camino, pero esperamos que nos perdones la incursión.

Lo que tenemos en mente es otra incursión, en un espacio que ya controlas. ¿Por qué no empezar un huerto interior?

Empieza con una bandeja de microvegetales o incluso una maceta con semillas de espinaca. Añade nutrientes básicos para tu familia y, si lo disfrutas y quieres generar ingresos adicionales, considera expandirte a más alimentos para tu familia o incluso a un pequeño negocio.

Disfruta del resto de nuestro mundo de la jardinería.