Hydroponics “Soilless Farming”: The Future of Food and Agriculture – A Review

Abstract

It is estimated that the global population will reach approximately 10 billion people by 2050 and 66% of the world population will live in urban areas. This growth in cities creates demand for fresh products to maintain a healthy population, a product that often exposed to a long journey to reach the consumer, not only losing quality and nutritive value in the process, but also requiring a significant cost of fossil fuel for transportation and storage. However, the world’s agricultural land among being limited, is also facing major problems such as pollution, salinization and drought that do not favor crop production. The need for food security has paved the way for landless agriculture, becoming more popular in the urban area and becoming a part of urban farming. This article aims to examine hydroponic technologies to help expand the knowledge of their application in terms of science, origin, dynamics and farming systems. Among the benefits of soilless cultures; reservation of cultivated land for main crops; saving at least 90% of irrigation water; use of almost constant amount of recycled water; successfully growing almost every vegetable crops and having highest productivity compared to conventional agriculture. Therefore, it is an indispensable solution in areas where arable land is not available or in saline-prone areas, in short, wherever there is competition for land and water. The purpose of this study is an overview of soilless farming systems, explaining the most widely used hydroponic system, the importance of water quality, nutrient content, grown crops and ultimately cost benefit in terms of economics.