The lousy economy over the past few years boasts a silver lining in the temperate Floridian climate where I live. Some folks who lost their jobs have started small farms or expanded existing ones, many of them growing local, organic produce.
While this is a fantastic turn of events, unfortunately, some of these farms have chosen to grow organic hydroponics instead of soil based produce.
Why do I use the word “unfortunately” and “organic” in the same sentence, you may ask?
The reason is because organic hydroponic produce produces big, watery fruit that is very low in mineral content. In a nutshell, organic hydroponics is not nutrient dense food and is basically a waste of money!
The essential problem with hydroponic farming arises through its use of a mineral based solution to grow and nourish the plants instead of soil. Some hydroponic operations even rely on artificial lighting. Proponents of organic hydroponics claim that their produce is just as good as organic produce grown in soil. Such claims are extremely short sighted. To actually assume that an artificial growing environment could ever come close to the perfection of nature is just plain silly!
No mineral solution can ever take the place of black, worm filled, organic soil that is carefully tended and worked by the farmer season after season.
Organic Hydroponics Test Poor Nutritionally
The proof that organic hydroponic produce is relatively nutritionless can be easily and quickly measured with an instrument called a refractometer. Nutritional measurement is performed by squeezing a couple of drops of liquid from the produce to be tested onto the prism of the refractometer and reading the results. The juice should be from the part of the plant that you would actually eat, not the stem or the roots, for example.
The refractometer (click here for a picture of one) measures the amount of carbohydrate and dissolved minerals in the juice. Sweeter, riper produce will therefore test higher brix than unripe produce. Calcium is one of the minerals that increases substantially in high brix produce. The minerals in high brix produce are readily and easily assimilated when eaten because they are in naturally chelated form. This means they are attached to amino acids and are biologically active unlike the same minerals found in a rock, for example.
High Brix Produce Tastes Better
Animals instinctively prefer high brix plants. Cows given a choice of hay will choose the one with higher brix. Cows which graze on high brix grass will produce more nutrient dense milk, butter, and cream too!
Given a choice, humans will choose high brix produce as well because the taste is so much better! Taste will always tell you if the produce is high brix or not. Ever had tomato sauce made from 15 brix tomatoes? It is an experience you will never forget! Organic hydroponic tomatoes generally test at a measly 2 or 3.
Pathetic indeed for the organic price premium you pay per pound!
High Brix Produce Lasts a Long Time Without Rotting
High brix produce is resistant to insects, disease and rot. Have you ever noticed how that box of organic hydroponic strawberries from the store looked so beautiful on the shelf but a mere 2 days later, the berries have developed large spots of rot that have to be cut away?
Produce that rots quickly is indicative of low nutrition, poor quality fruit – organic or not!
What to Choose? (Hint: NOT Organic Hydroponics)
Even local produce grown in soil using conventional means will generally beat out organic hydroponics when measured for mineral content. This is why I tell folks to seek out local produce at farmer’s markets that is grown in dirt, not hydroponically. Buying at farmers’ markets is a great way to seek out quality produce as you can ask the farmer directly how the produce was grown.
Ultimately, the highest brix produce I’ve ever come across is from people’s personal gardens. Working the soil on a small, personal patch of ground yourself is an activity that consistently produces spectacular results. My Mother-in-Law in Australia has a small garden that has the thickest layer of worm filled, black dirt I’ve ever seen. She has been working this soil with compost and other natural fertilizers for over 10 years. There is no doubt that the produce she grows in this dirt is more nutritious and higher brix than any organic produce to be found at the store!
So, actively seek out high brix produce, not just organic and especially not organic hydroponics. Your taste buds and your wallet will thank you.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Sources and More Information
Weston A. Price Foundation
4 Steps to Keep Monsanto OUT of Your Garden!
Heirloom vs Hybrid Produce
Hydroponic Invasion of USDA Organic
With all due respect, Sarah, there is plenty of research readily available to read that make hydroponic growing a valuable alternative.
In practice, one of the major health problems from vegetables have been associated with the external contamination of produce, rather than what’s been inside them.
Instead of differentiate whether the produce has been grown by hydroponics or by any other method, we should concentrate on the quality of the produce.
To produce a good vegetable product requires good horticultural practice and hydroponics is no different.
It’s not technology, it’s just a different, if more sophisticated, horticultural technique.
Hydroponics is a good alternative only in a dystopic world where there is no soil based source of fruits and veggies. When I have the choice, which everyone fortunately still does, hydroponics is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to nutritional quality of fruits and veggies … and yes, I know all about how hydroponic farmers are falsely spiking/reporting the brix of their produce. Test it yourself at home people! A refractometer is not that expensive!
I am considering an organic hydroponic garden in my house. Here’s why; a) I live in an area in Northern Canada where it’s difficult to get good quality produce b) we barely get organic fresh produce in the stores, c) the growing season is so short, I can’t plant much in my organic garden. Thoughts?
There are other indoor options where the produce grows in soil. I would go this route … hydroponic just isn’t worth it nutritionally for all the work you’d put in.
There’s gotta be a happy medium, no pun intended 🙂 There are good arguments to both sides. Here in AZ, as in a lot of places in the US, they fog the streets in the middle of the night (most people don’t realize this), with trucks, to kill off the mosquito population that increased with increased global travelers, and the mosquitos have become resistant in the last few years, causing big problems. That fog that they’re using is toxic, causes chronic migraines and other health issues, and it is so penetrative that it gets over your brick backyard wall, onto your garden, affecting its production and making it extremely difficult to grow under those conditions, not to mention keeping things ‘organic’ and poison free. The citrus trees have all been infected with a citrus disease and won’t produce (might be delivered in that same fog, by planes, who knows…), and the bee population is quickly going extinct, because, you guessed it, that fog kills mosquitos AND bees too! There’s gotta be a way to grow fresh, healthy crops indoors, or in a protected environment, maybe in soil and with redirected sun light as opposed to artificial light? I believe natural sunlight has healthful qualities that can’t be artificialized. Thanks for the great article Sarah, keep up the great work and hopefully we will all come up with a solution very soon to the greed of the large engine that wants to end our natural instinct to harvest. If the Earth were full of people who wanted to help everyone grow beautiful backyard gardens, as opposed to big corporations who wants to enslave and starve people so that they can make lots of the paper green stuff, the world would be a much happier place!
Pesticides! | Fertilizers
Julia, your comments and allegations are shocking. I agree with some of Sarah’s views, but at least we know Sarah’s credentials, but we don’t know yours? Help us to gauge how seriously we should take your comments please. What qualifications or expert experience do you have? How do you know this stuff to be true?
Thank you for this information, I was wondering about organic hydroponics!
Hydroponics is a criminal scam on the world. Monsanto and friends would love to kill the microbiology in the Earths soil, and in your stomach. They are actively pursuing this, as a corporate dependency venture. First they hoarded the seeds. Now they just poison the soil. New plant diseases are showing up in record numbers and I bet I know how they got in the soil.
The US government has sprayed fusarium oxysporum on foreign and domestic drug crops as recently as 2012. The same blite that follows Roundups overlapping use in food crops. It has spread and mutated beyond control. If this doesn’t mean anything to you, you aren’t living in reality.
If you truly believe in hydroponics, stop eating food, replace it with vitamins and an IV bag,and see what it does for you. Its the same thing.
The sad thing is, the Brix test is now being fooled. They are now dumping absorbable simple sugars into the water before harvest, the root is soaking it up directly into the produce. It is very obvious and absolutely disgusting. Essentially growing tomatoes with tomatoes flavored sugar water. They know most people don’t have brains or working 5 senses. This is fake food folks. And it will be sending more people to the pharmaceutical companies the more it increases. Exactly what they want. Heroin dealing Bayer, gmo seed patenters Monsanto, and the snake oil hydroponic industry are under the same umbrella.
Anyone who thinks hydroponically grown food has the value of microbial soil grown food is delusional. Sorry theres not a friendly way to break it. Half the meds people take are placebos. Shouldn’t negatively effect the rest of us, but now that it does, being a food issue, I choose to be vocal about it. I won’t accept fake placebo food.
Hydroponics is the McDonald’s pink slime chicken nugget of the produce world. End of story.
Yes, I wondered if hydroponic farmers would figure out a way to scam the brix test. The test they can’t fake is that their low quality organic hydroponic produce rots very fast. Quality produce grown in soil does not! Thanks for sharing this information.
Interesting article. I am not partial to either Hydroponics or Soil Grown; however… What I am opposed to is the following: Pesticides! | Fertilizers that drain off large farms and into our water systems | overworked minorities from other countries…
There are currently just over 7.3 billion people on the planet. Soon that number will become 10 billion. The population of humans is exponential, which means that number will grow at a continually faster clip. Conventional ‘soil based’ farming will soon become obsolete.
It’s real simple: Like I tell my kids… don’t bring me a complaint until you can follow it up with a solution…
So what’s the outcome or better choice hydroponics or not.
Avoid them. They don’t have much nutrition … they are water logged and rot quickly. They are giving authentic, REAL organic produce grown in soil a bad name!
I suggest you look into the work of Dr. Maynard Murray and his work with hydroponics. Ocean fertilizer allows for much better tasting, more nutritious, organic produce. I think a lot of what you said is correct, but you shouldn’t dismiss hydroponics altogether because they allow for a much more efficient use of water.