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The Newspaper of the Northeast Organic Farming Association

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NOP Struggles with Question of Organic Hydroponics

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Certified organic hydroponic facility in Montreal

Certified organic hydroponic facility in Montreal

For years the National Organic Program (NOP) has debated the proper role of hydroponics in organic certification. The current status, which satisfies no one, is that a hydroponic operation is allowed to be certified if a local certification program determines that it is meeting all the provisions of the foundational Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 (OFPA).

With major companies like Mexico’s Wholesum Harvest (tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, squash, peppers) and Driscoll’s (berries) entering the market, however, economic pressures have intensified. Soil based organic growers are challenging the soilless growing basis of hydroponics. It may be a fine way to produce food, they say, but it is not organic. Organic growing requires soil.
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The History of Hydroponics

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Chinampas - the floating gardens of Mexico

Chinampas – the floating gardens of Mexico

Hydroponics, the growing of plants without soil, has a long history, from growing in very ancient civilizations to modern food production in harsh environments or raising high value products in controlled situations.

Of course hydroponics preceded soil growing in the sense that plants evolved in the oceans, the first soilless growing nutrient medium. But as a farming system, many believe it started in the ancient city of Babylon with its famous hanging gardens, which are listed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Many gardening writers have suggested that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were in fact an elaborate hydroponics system, into which fresh water rich in oxygen and nutrients was regularly pumped.
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Baystate Organic, a Certifier of Organic Hydroponics

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Don Franczyk

photo by Jack Kittredge
Don Franczyk, Baystate Organic administrator, at home where he works

Many of our readers are too young to remember this, but the National Organic Program came into effect only 15 years ago, in 2002. Before that a network of dozens of public, private, and non-profit organizations served to certify organic farms. Each certified to its own rules and its own standards — although 95% of these were the same, many memorable arguments took place about the 5% or fewer that diverged.

In the Northeast most NOFA chapters and MOFGA set up their own state certification programs, with the exceptions of New Hampshire, Rhode Island and New Jersey, where the state departments of agriculture played that role. This author served on the NOFA/Mass Certification Program for over a decade in the 1980s and 1990s and well remembers the long night meetings and arcane debates about Chilean nitrate, agronomic responsibility, and how much manure free range chickens can deposit in a pasture before it stops being a pasture (200 lbs of elemental N per acre per year, we decided, thanks to Bob Parnes’ incredible reference book on fertility sources!)
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