Potential. – The excitement of aeroponics.

Written By: Samuel Branyan

At The Calming Leaf Foundation, potential is a powerful word. To us, potential describes the ability for something to significantly alter the future. It is a word that gives hope and grabs attention as soon as it is used. It is a word that foreshadows power and questions what’s possible. Most importantly, potential is a word that fits aeroponics and the role that aeroponics can have in the world.

Before we started our work, our organization tracked, researched, and empathized with several global challenges in today’s world and the people they affect. From Baltimore to Cape Town, we’ve observed food insecurity issues that harm entire communities. In the Amazon rainforest, the African Sahara, and the United State’s west coast, we’ve watched the effects of climate change, drought, desertification, and deforestation. In Black Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities throughout the United States, we’ve witnessed alarming, negative trends in mental and physical health. These challenges can seem so bleak and discouraging at times, particularly in our city of Baltimore, yet, our organization smiles at them. We smile because we see the unique opportunity for aeroponics to help solve these issues. We also smile because we have found hope and excitement in aeroponics’ potential to build sustainable communities through food.

Although it is a relatively new way of growing organic food, aeroponics – which is the process of growing plants with water, light, and nutrients – offers the world several unique solutions to its problems.

First, aeroponics can be grown anywhere and in all seasons with the right equipment. This means that more people around the world can grow their own food. In this way, aeroponics can increase food sovereignty and food ownership, regardless of where you live. This change is specifically relevant to cities like Baltimore, where systematically designed regions limit access to healthy, fresh food. These regions are known as food apartheids.

Second, aeroponic systems use between 85% and 95% less water than regular farming methods. This reduction in water usage can help the earth to sustain its clean water, and significantly improve the course of climate change as a result. At present, two billion people also lack access to clean drinking water. This scarcity is partially caused by the overconsumption of water in current farming methods around the globe, and can be mitigated by aeroponics and its lower water usage.

Third, for all individuals and communities, spending time around plants can benefit mental wellbeing. Similarly, eating self-grown plants is a powerful way to boost mental and physical health. Aeroponics can support this healing, which is especially important to our fellow black communities, where heart disease, diabetes, and mental health issues take a large toll on life expectancy and happiness.

The three benefits listed above are just a start to understanding the potential positives that aeroponics can bring. Aeroponics also offers the opportunity for communities to receive nutritious, sustainable, and locally produced food. This movement of local food production and distribution would disrupt the current global food chain, which is unsustainable to the planet. Additionally, aeroponics can integrate with cryptocurrency and the crypto blockchain, eliminate the consumption of pesticides, increase a community’s knowledge about nutrition and agriculture, and accomplish so much more. 

In our work, we hope to do more research on this potential. As we do so, we will be excited to share our findings and brainstorm the ways that they can create a better future for communities in Baltimore. Our current educational programming and community events are already using aeroponics as a vehicle to increase food sovereignty throughout Baltimore. Click here to read more about those projects and learn how you can support them!

We hope you’ll stay tuned as we dive into aeroponics, cryptocurrency, sustainability, black farms, community fridges, grocery stores, the ways we get our food, and so much more in the coming weeks and months.

With gratitude,

The Calming Leaf Foundation