Why hydroponics did not scale? Can it be the future of farming for India?

Did you know? Hydroponics dates back to The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, The Floating Gardens of China and The Aztecs of Central America. Humans have used this method since thousands of years ago. Why isn't is still main-stream agriculture ? Let's explore this together.

Simply put, hydroponics is soil-less farming. Plants grow in nutrient rich water with the help of a medium like cocopeat which supports the roots and vertical farming is stacking these plants just like you'd stack layers of book shelves in a library, as opposed to laying them as a single layer on the floor. This is as efficient as high as you can go.

Basic facts: Hydroponics uses 95% less water, and is 20-40x more efficient.

Sounds too futuristic? Well, it's here.

Looks pretty, doesn't it? The facts sounds too good to be true and be commercially viable, especially for a humongous farmer centric market like India, where large scale systemic changes and adoption take a few decades, if not longer. This is due to it's high initial capital, operating energy costs and wide spread need of farmer education. From the outside it looks very niche and doesn't look like it's going to solve the big problems that we face in today's agriculture. Or does it? Let's get a little deeper.

I'd like to divide Hydroponics' viability in to 3 phases for better understanding. The thumb rule is, the closer you can get to 1 in the formula below, the more viable your concept is.

1/(Growing cost * Energy cost) = Viability

At UrbanKisaan, We're aiming at getting to 1 in these three phases!

Phase 1: Growing leafy greens & herbs

Phase 2: Growing vegetables & fruits

Phase 3: Growing staple crops & pulses

Phase 1: Growing leafy greens & herbs.

Globally, a majority of the companies are working on their tech in Phase 1 today. Using high-tech robotics and AI to grow leafy greens and raising millions of dollars in funding.

This puts the set-up cost of such high-tech farms in the range of $18mn -$30mn per acre. That's a lot of money for too little a market that is leafy greens, even with it's wide range. It makes up a small fraction, about 0.1% the world's food consumption. Viability of this becoming the primary source of production at this 'cost to scale' vs 'market size' is very low. UNLESS we grow them 90% cheaper than current global standards. Sounds impossible? Well, at UrbanKisaan, we've kind of made it possible. More on this later.

Phase 2: Growing vegetables & fruits.

Okay, this is the real deal. If you are able to grow commercially viable vegetables using hydroponics, you've hit the jackpot.

Enough research is underway to identify the right seed varieties that would be best suited to grow hydroponically but this is anywhere close to bring mainstream crops in to this method. A few crops like cucumber, tomatoes and bell peppers are being grown across Europe esp. the Netherlands, making them one of the world's largest agricultural producers. They exporting produce worth 65 billion euros. This leads us to a fundamental question:

Can we grow all vegetables hydroponically? Ans: Yes!!!

About this being commercially viable, What if I said it would cost the same to operate a 1 acre hydroponic farm and a traditional soil farm! I'll discuss the math on this in future articles.

Phase 3: Staple crops & pulses

Solving for this range will have the greatest global impact but it seems very hard to achieve. We are talking about crops like rice, wheat, barely, lentils etc. These crops have huge storage value, and stay good for a lot longer than most other crops. But with it's razor thin margins and commodity like trading, the economies of scale just does not work well with today's available early tech.

Coming back to the original question, can it be the future of farming? Yes, it can if:

1. Set-up costs to grow leafy reduce by 99% from current global standards.
2. A larger portfolio of high-volume vegetables can be grown at the operational costs of traditional farming or lower.

It's impact? We will be creating the most sustainable farming eco-system that reduces water consumption by 95% for agriculture, uses little to no arable land and be able to grow 20-40x more volumes than what we are growing today. This will not only increase income for small-land-holding farmers but also secures our future of food as the demand increases and resources decrease.

We're chasing United Nation's Sustainable Farming for all, a commitment to Sustainable Development Goals set for 2030, especially the goals of assuring healthy lifestyles and putting an end to global hunger. 

Where is UrbanKisaan today in this journey?

Let's just say we are pioneering this ;)

Let me know what you want to know next in this space.

-Vihari