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Decoding Sustainable Farming: Organic, Biodynamic, Vegan, and Beyond · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily and today I wanted to cover various terms
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  that might get confused with each other and they're to do with the more environmentally
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  friendly ways of cultivating crops.
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  Now the ones that I want to talk about are organic, biodynamic.
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  Regenerative, biorational vegan and
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  homeopathic and you have various
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  crops and systems that purport
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  to be these in both hydroponics
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  horticulture and i'll explain my opinion
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  of those and i'm sure many listening to
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  this podcast will have a different opinion and that's fine as
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  i say this is just my personal opinion and based on
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  my experience and research and so
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  feel free to have a different opinion but i'll explain what i
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  consider them to be so organic is is
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  following the principles of organic farming and they
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  are set out there are a number of regulatory bodies that
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  govern organic farming certainly in
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  the uk and the eu the usa
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  and canada in india and
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  places like that i think it's you sort of self-declare yourself organic and
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  you can do that's why a lot of organic crops come from indian places like that
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  you're if you're an indian and know differently let me know maybe there's an
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  organic regulatory body now in place certainly used to be the case that you
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  could just self-declare your crop to be organic and organic doesn't mean used without synthetic.
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  Pesticides and inputs and fertilizers it just means that those ones that are used are.
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  Are allowed under the EU sorry under the
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  organic regulations so in the EU we have annex one
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  of the EU regulations and in America you have the OMRI
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  listings and they're they're similar but they're not always the same so some
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  things can be organic in America and some things can be organic in Europe and
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  vice versa now you don't have to have your input certified to be used in organic
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  farming it's just the food that needs to be certified at the end of the day
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  it's just that the inputs need to be,
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  in line so what we we at utreema here
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  we as gold leaf or liquid gold in the uk as it's
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  known it's not organically certified but we do have organically certified products
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  and we also have products that can be used in organic farming that are not organically
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  certified for example our seaweed extract i just haven't got around to certifying
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  that organic yet but it can still be used in organic farming nonetheless and
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  the things that are on the organic list are normally.
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  Either of natural origin they've been extracted from the ground or they've been
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  processed with limited chemical reactions and synthesis so for example seaweed
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  extracts are allowed and you're even allowed to use preservatives and acids
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  and alkalis to extract them you can use synthetic,
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  preservatives as long as they're food grade and things like this you
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  can use phosphate fertilizers as long
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  as they're rock phosphate you can't use things like ammonium phosphate
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  or potassium phosphate you have
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  to be rock phosphate and things like this anything with ammonia
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  in is banned in organic so and anything
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  derived from ammonia so like calcium nitrate things
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  like this so you'd have to use a natural
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  normally an animal waste product
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  to get your macronutrients so organic
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  doesn't mean vegetarian certainly because you're
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  using a lot of bone meal a lot of blood a
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  lot of fish guts and things that come from the animal
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  process and if everyone was
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  vegetarian around the world then organic farming would struggle to get its nutrients
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  really so you can get vegan fertilizers and these have to be both organic and
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  also not from animal origin and that's where i struggle because there you're
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  going to struggle to get your NPK and your macronutrients.
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  You can use things like seaweed extracts.
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  You can use humic acids, but you start to get limited there.
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  So I'm not sure how good the vegan fertilizers are.
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  And so if anyone's used them and knows, and if I'm missing something when it
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  comes to vegan fertilizers, let me know.
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  Then there is, let's go on to, after that, let's look at biodynamic.
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  Biodynamic, you get a lot of wines that are biodynamic, and often gets confused with organic.
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  But biodynamic is even though it is part of the organic community part of the
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  organic you know it's one of the first forms of organic farming it's that biodynamic
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  includes various aspects of.
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  Occultism and pseudoscience and
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  things like planting by the moon cycles and a
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  lot of religious or cultist in
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  non-scientific practices as
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  well and so i find it to be complete
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  nonsense in my personal opinion but other people very much
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  very proponents of biodynamics and i
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  suppose an extra term i could put in here as well is oh what's the word i'm
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  trying to think of the word i'm going to pause it i'm going to pause the podcast
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  and think of it and then i'm going to come back as if i've just thought of it
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  straight away that's it permaculture permaculture is very similar to biodynamic cultivation i'd.
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  But permaculture includes things like using various
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  planting beds doing this thing where you grow maize
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  and then you grow beans up here and obviously the
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  other one pumpkins around it and they also the three sisters and
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  things like this and they're supposed to be amazing the thing about permaculture
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  is it looks great in a book and the diagrams look
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  great and it makes perfect sense like the idea of you grow maize and
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  then that provides the platform for the beans and the
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  beans provide the nitrogen and the pumpkins provide the mulch
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  to prevent water loss from the ground and stuff like this but when
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  you actually see pictures of people who've actually tried to do this it just
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  looks an absolute mess i've never seen something like the
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  three sisters technique used and actually look amazing and produce bumper yields
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  but in in the permaculture books it looks fantastic and everything you know
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  a rosy world so permaculture biodynamics i think are pretty similar they're
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  a subset of organics in my eyes then we look at.
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  From that we even worse than
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  that in my eyes is homeopathic fertilizers and these
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  will be on sale if you go to many trade shows around the world you'll see
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  homeopathic fertilizers for sale they're basically some
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  dye in a in a bottle and
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  then the guy who's made them has shown them
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  a bit of potassium nitrate or something like this and he's put
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  and he's charged the water in in
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  the fertilizers to make them homeopathic just like homeopathic medicines
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  and i you know the scientific community thinks
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  that homeopath homeopathic medicine is not only does it
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  not work it's dangerous because it people move
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  away from conventional medicine towards it and
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  homeopathic fertilizers not as dangerous as using homeopathic
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  medicine but you're probably going to get very sick plants
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  that are nutrient deficient if you use them you might find they produce really
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  good crops without with them but if you're growing in soil because the soil
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  provides the nutrition that you you would have thought and certain crops people
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  over fertilize anyway so if you added a homeopathic fertilizer and just dial
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  back your nutrition you might get a good effect.
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  I would not advise the use of homeopathic fertilisers. So we've covered homeopathic,
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  vegan, we've covered biodynamic, permaculture, organic.
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  Next up, regenerative. This is a very different beast.
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  This can include the use of synthetic inputs, but the idea is that you rebuild
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  the soil, you regenerate.
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  Another word for it is conservation agriculture. so in
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  soil-based systems and field crops it involves not
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  using a plow so direct drilling your seeds into the
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  soil using cover crops so there's never any bare earth
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  putting animals into the system and then
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  using biological inputs like our chitosan
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  biofungicide using humic acid seaweed extracts to build a resilient crop using
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  silica to produce strong cell walls this is all in regenerative farming and
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  regenerative farming is a massive boom in certainly in europe and in north america
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  as well and people have talked about regenerative.
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  Glasshouse crops and hydroponic crops and i guess that just means obviously you can't,
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  do away with a plow because there's no plow in the first place you can't
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  really put animals into the system you can't do cover crops so
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  it's really just down to using biologicals and
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  and they're terming that regenerative in the i think
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  in north america you can have organic hydroponic crops in
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  the in europe you can't have organic hydroponic crops because
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  it has to be in soil and it has to be in the ground for it
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  to be organic you might think that's ridiculous and a
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  hydroponic crop can be free of all pests and disease
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  and all pesticides even organic pesticides if you keep it clean
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  enough but the authorities that govern the organic regulations say must be in
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  soil and must not be in pots so that's what it is and the next one the last
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  term which is probably the least used and the least understood it's biorational
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  and that just means any additive that you add to a crop.
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  Doesn't harm the biology and actually works with the biology.
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  So a biorational insecticide wouldn't kill the beneficial mites that you might
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  put on to kill spider mites.
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  And this is very important now because we want to work in an integrated pest management approach.
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  We don't want to kill the good biology off, we want to promote the good biology.
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  So you might use a biostimulants that feeds the
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  the beneficial microbes or
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  beneficial organisms and and that would
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  be biorational another great example of biorationality would
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  be putting this the pollen of
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  bulrush plants in your grow room
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  for the beneficial mites to feed when there's not enough mites around one
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  of the big problems with mites and predatory mites and
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  predators in general and parasitoids
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  is once the crop once the pest has been eaten up
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  they die off as well because there's nothing
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  for them to feed on so putting pollen and
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  other ingredients you can put in things like yeast into the
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  in pots in the grow room can actually help.
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  Keep their populations high and
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  you can buy things like bulrush pollen to
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  feed beneficial mites things like swirsky mites
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  a fantastic mite you can get that eats thrips spider
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  mites aphids everything you can get you can buy bulrush
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  pollen or you could just go out when it's when it's in flower and harvest
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  it if you if you live near some wetlands you could even harvest
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  it and sell it on i don't think anyone's got a patent on
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  it i know copper sell sell the in
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  the the pollen when they sell the beneficials as
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  well but that would be a great biorational thing
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  to do in your grow room if you're using biological organisms so
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  we've covered organics biodynamics regenerative
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  biorational vegan homeopathic and
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  permaculture you got any comments let me
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  know i'm still trying to get some listeners
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  in iceland greenland finland poland
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  switzerland austria and chile so if you know anyone who's into hydroponics in
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  those countries then let me know and i'm still trying to fill up my u.s states
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  of listeners obviously north what did i say last time north dakota south dakota rhode island.
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  Delaware idaho so if you know anyone there who's into hydroponics give us a
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  shout i'm already well covered in california florida ohio places like that new
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  york so thanks for listening there and in the uk ireland iran obviously i'm
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  big in iran and then thanks very much for that that's been hydroponics daily
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  for today a whole list of crazy terms.