Yesterday I read in "Gulf News" about the modern farming method without the use of soil, I found it amazingly interesting and would like to share with you :

Emirati farmers have started using Hydroponics to produce vegetables throughout the year

In Liwa , UAE ,you can see sheds in the middle of constantly running big exhaust fans , they seem like a big factory but they are not. They are modern vegetable farms, where one sees tomatoes growing in plastic containers attached to small black pipes for irrigation. Although the black stuff in the container looks like sand, but  it is not sand but a mixture of several other substances.

This is open hydroponics inside a greenhouse, an agriculture system without soil. It gives at least 30 per cent more productivity and saves up to 40 per cent of water [used for irrigation], compared to conventional agriculture. Such farms grow vegetables such as tomato, capsicum and cucumber throughout the year, including summer. This method  helps the growers to produce vegetables in their modified greenhouses throughout the year

Method

Hydroponics is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions in water, without soil. Although hydroponic systems do not involve soil, they may involve a wide variety of growing media, such as perlite, gravel, peat, sand, rockwool and others. Most of the plant nutrients are supplied by the nutrient solution, rather than by the media in which the plants are grown.

One grower Mr. Al Hameli used to harvest about three tonnes of cucumber from his 1,500 square metre open field farm. But from the same area of hydroponics farm he harvested four tonnes of cucumber..Al Hameli is using ground water from borewells for irrigation. He thinks that in a water-scarce region where ground water is constantly depleting, the new system can save huge amounts of water used on irrigation. He used to use 30,000 to 40,000 gallons of water a day in the open fields. But the hydroponics farm needs a few hundred gallons of water a day.

When he grew vegetables in the open field he used to irrigate it for about three hours a day. But

.The comparatively less amount of water used for irrigation in open hydroponics farm is further recycled and used in the open field farm

About the cost of setting up a hydroponics farm, he said it comes to about a hundred thousand dirhams. He said he received support from the Shaikh Khalifa Fund, a government initiative to support entrepreneurial initiatives of Emiratis.

Although hydroponics is not an organic farming method, the chemicals used in it are minimal

Advantages of the system

• Open hydroponics system saves up to 40 per cent water compared to conventional system whereas the closed system saves 60 to 80 per cent water.
• High productivity — cucumber productivity in soil — 4kg/plant, but in hydroponics it is up to 10 kg/plant
•  Less maintenance cost
•  Limited chemical usage
• Easy to manage
• Very good returns
• More sustainable approach

 This is like we should say "Getting more for less without soil"