Due to various diseases that were found to be related to the use or exposure to pesticides and herbicides, the demand for organic vegetables have been on the steady rise and any agricultural product that is identified to organic farming is given premium by the consuming public who are willing to pay an extra price. For this reason, some commercial agricultural firms do not use pesticides or herbicides and prefer to adopt integrated pest management approaches to solve their problem along this aspect of their operations so as to attract the consumers to patronize their produce. One vital qualification to obtain a certification that your produce is organic is that they must be soil cultured before you will be issued the certification by the US Federal government. In some states in the U.S.A., there are conflicting requirements wherein some states require the soil as a medium in planting while others do not before a certificate of organic farming is issued and for this reason, there are some states that issue certifications that hydroponics is also organic farming.
Aside from the fact that hydroponics requires no soil to implement, adopting it in your farming procedures helps in saving water as you will only consume 1/20 of the total amount of water if you are using the conventional form of farming in producing the same quantity of produce in your farm. Constant heavy watering activities in the farm can impact the water table as well as the run off of chemicals being used in the farms which is very remote if you are practicing hydroponics as it does not only minimizes the use of water but it can easily measures the quantity of water that is being used and that which is being returned to be reused. This procedure would be a definite advantage for the farmer who would be more than grateful to save a considerable amount on his water bill consumptions thus increasing his profit at the end of the crop season.
Since the watering requirement of the plant is not a problem in hydroponics farming, the other factor for plant growth is light which could be augmented with lighting systems that must be designed as to the stages of growth of your plants. For those at the growing stage you may use metal halide only, while for growing, flowering or blooming stages, you need the high pressure sodium lights in order to prolong the day or to supply additional light to the natural light of the sun if it is not sufficient.
While the lighting system might be good for your plants, you must carefully evaluate if such attachments of lighting fixtures are environmentally good both to your plants and to the farming hands working at the farm since metal halide and sodium lights while good for the plants are relatively harmful to the skin without protective gear and continuous exposure would result to cancer of the skin. Likewise, maintaining both lighting systems for the farm would be costly for the farmer as the two requires large amount of electricity in operating them so that your operating cost might cause a significant dent on your profits.
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