Learning About Hydroponics

There are a couple of human inventions that are much much older than you might think. We have lived in a modern high tech world for so long that you might not realize that many of the inventions and ideas we hold dear are actually from a very long time ago. Two of humanity’s oldest inventions are domesticated agriculture and domesticated animals, both of which played an incredibly important in the development of civilization. Scientists aren’t sure which was domesticated first but they think it might have been animals as it was animal power that allowed for the first surplus of arable crops. Before the domestication of animals, humans mostly lived in tribes that subsisted on foraging and hunting for food. It was not a necessarily bad way to live and there was a lot of down time and relaxation but it was highly unstable and uncertain life that could be very brutal if no food was found. These early tribes of humans had to rely entirely on the surrounding environment for food, searching for groups of migrating animals to hunt or edible plants they knew would not hurt the rest of the tribe. It wasn’t an easy life but it produced enough food usually, so long as the tribe kept moving in the direction that the animals were going. There are several theories, in fact, that state that humans first left Africa because of tribes that began to hunt the herds of migrating animals farther and farther afield. Eventually, this led people to new and different climates, deserts, mountains, forests, where they chose to settle or to move on. This, for example, is thought to be how tribes of early Native Americans came to the Americas and settled up and down the coast as well as farther inland. This period of human history lasted for a long time, much longer than the time our sedentary modern civilization has existed. After millions of years of searching and wandering, a few scattered tribes across the globe, namely in the middle east for historical purposes, realized that they could control the behavior of some of these pack animals. And thus agriculture was born.
How Agriculture Works
In the beginning of domesticated agriculture, it was a very simple process without a lot of complex maneuvers in between. The crops would be harvested in places with fertile soil and left to grow. After being water and sunned and growing to their full potential, they would be left to drain and dry in a cool place that would not flood or experience the pesky onset of other organics such as insects. The nutrients in the crops themselves would vary wildly depending on where they were grown, what kind of soil they were grown in and what types of crops they were. Today, our agriculture techniques are much more advanced, involving large machines and enormous tracts of land that grow rotating staples of specifically bred crops. None of these techniques, however, hold a candle to hydroponics which is starting to look like the true future of agriculture. Growlabs are also huge for agriculture and botanical use. In growlabs and growlabs adjacent structures, plants are bred in carefully controlled conditions where they get the exact right amount of light and air and nutrients from researchers and specialists. All of these different hydroponic growlabs specialize in different things, from crops to algae farms to cannabis farms and they utilize different techniques to help the plants grow faster. See, the genius thing behind growlabs and hydroponics in general is that the plants do not need soil or a lot of space to grow effectively. In growlabs and hydroponics laboratories, plants can be given water and nutrients through specific pipelines. They are even grown in different formations, curled around growing structures, hanging from scaffolding and rafters. Growing plants from the earth is actually fairly inefficient and the fight against gravity can take a toll on the plants later on in their growing cycle. Hydroponics are absolutely the way of the future when it comes to growing sustainable and strong crops. As we search for equitable and fair ways to grow food and alternative medicine, hydroponics will continue to be at the forefront of research and development.