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Green Hope in the Aral Desert: Hydroponics Feed the Future · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello, and welcome back to Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, and this podcast has got no listeners in Uzbekistan
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  or Kazakhstan, and that's going to change after today's episode.
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  Well, maybe not, but I can only hope,
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  because today's episode is all about hydroponics in the Aral Sea region.
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  Now, the first thing you need to know about the Aral Sea, if you didn't know already,
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  is that it's not a sea as we we
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  term it it's not salt water it well
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  it was the third largest lake in
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  the world however in the 20th
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  century it was the water in the aral sea was used for mainly for cotton irrigation
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  for irrigating cotton crops on a massive scale in the former ussr and then form
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  and then after that the independent states around there and it's a bit of growing rice and,
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  also it's a site of i think it's biological weapons and rocket launchers and
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  things like this so a lot of pollution went into the rlc and a lot of the water
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  was taken out so imagine all those pesticides a third of all the world's pesticides
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  are applied to cotton one crop that's not even a food crop.
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  And so you think about all the nasty pesticides, the residual,
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  highly toxic pesticides that were put onto the land around the Aral Sea.
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  And then as the lake dried up, all those pesticides were concentrated.
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  And so the people who live there really struggle to get good,
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  fertile soil that's healthy to grow crops.
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  And the hydroponics that they're growing in this UN Ben.
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  Project they're not actually for human consumption
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  in this one particularly it's a UNDP what's
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  the UNDP is that the United Nations Development Programme
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  they are growing hydroponic wheat and so
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  it's basically microgreens again but young maybe
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  10 centimeters three inches four
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  inches wheat plants that are then used for
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  fodder for animal feed for chickens
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  and obviously the wheat won't grow
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  in the soil around the Aral Sea it didn't just go
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  from lake to marsh or to boggy.
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  Land it went from lake to desert and so
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  because it's the the summers are a lot hotter there
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  so that's a real problem so they're
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  growing cereals or wheat and they
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  contain it can obtain harvest in just five to seven days
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  and so say it's used for feedstock
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  it's thought to be rich in vitamins vitamins c e k
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  and b as well as elements such as iron and
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  calcium which obviously are animals need
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  as well as humans and the project's been going since
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  2021 and they've gradually introduced
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  hydroponics into six regions and they
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  it's sort of like a household by household because these are not
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  large companies these are just basically
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  crofters really if you know what a crofter is people who
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  live in subsistence off the land and so they've got electricity and they've
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  got the ability to grow the plants they're not stupid people and so with a bit
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  of training from the UN they're able to grow feed stocks for their plants and
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  so the good thing about it as well.
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  A lot of the people who are growing the crops are women, so it's empowering
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  women in these regions and training them for what is a highly skilled job really.
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  So normally they would be relying on feedstocks coming in from abroad,
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  expensive imports, things like this. But the feed can grow.
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  Much better with this material so the nutritional value
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  of the feed increased by 13.4 percent the
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  calcium content 34 percent and
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  so that has a positive effect on the milk and the eggs and
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  i guess if they're eating the chicken as well so one of the ladies said ulma
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  ken from the chin bay region she's she has a family of eight and she was struggling
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  with unemployment and said we have eight people in our family due to the lack
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  of work i began studying hydroponics more deeply.
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  Since our main source of income is animal farming, we had difficulty feeding our livestock.
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  After hearing about the UN project, we decided to participate and now we grow
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  alfalfa using hydroponics, which has proven to be very effective.
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  So she is growing alfalfa, which is a legume, and so that will be providing
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  a large amount of nitrogen,
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  which will then go into the plant that's harvested and increase the protein
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  content of the eggs, the milk, and the meat of the chickens if they are eating the chickens.
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  She was previously sowing the alfalfa in the ground, and it took up to three
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  weeks for the alfalfa to germinate.
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  With hydroponics, that's down to five to six days, so he's causing that by a third.
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  And in the future, she hopes to sell the green fodder to local farmers.
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  So she's also increasing it. It's got a revenue stream there,
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  so that's a really good, great idea.
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  They're using LED grow lights and looks like fans and very, very high planting
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  densities with little to no grow media.
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  I think just straight onto the trays because it's a very quick turnaround for some wheatgrass.
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  So this project was mainly focused on Uzbekistan rather than Kazakhstan,
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  and it was being funded by the Japanese government, which is interesting.
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  Japan tends to keep itself to itself when it comes to international relations.
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  I mean, you can count on the number of fingers you've got on your two hands,
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  how many asylum seekers they take in every year.
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  It's shockingly low, but they don't get involved in any peacekeeping operations
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  that I'm aware of, or very rarely.
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  But they are funding this UN project, so that's good to hear.
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  And hopefully it's a success, and the people of Uzbekistan will increase their
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  economic wealth in what is a very harsh place to live.
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  It's one of the most vulnerable places in Uzbekistan to grow,
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  to live with the challenges that come from living in what was a shrinking lake bed. So...
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  Rather than me. And the beauty of hydroponics as well is that you can just take
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  the trays and put them straight into the chicken coops and you don't need to
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  dig up or move the chickens to where the,
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  food has been germinated, you don't have to harvest it, just throw the tray
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  or the mat straight in there. So it just suits itself to chicken food.
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  And perhaps the most infamous area
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  of the RLC is Vosrodenia Island
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  which is no longer an island there's a couple of there
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  used to be the used to be a lake full of islands and
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  now they've all dried up and they're just part of the landmass so
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  it no longer exists but it was the site of
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  a biological weapons test test site called Arahlask 7 and in 2002 the United
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  States with the assistance of Uzbekistan and they had a decontamination project
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  where they decontaminated anthrax burial sites.
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  So not the nicest place to be living, really. It wasn't just anthrax that was
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  held there. There was bubonic plague was tested.
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  There are smallpox, all sorts of lovely, biological, horrible diseases that
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  the Soviets were developing into biological weapons.
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  And every now and again, as is the case with any of these sorts of weapons,
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  there was the accidental release and a fair few people died in
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  the local area so not very cool but a long
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  way from moscow so who gives a proverbial so
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  let's have a look see how close that
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  biological weapon site is to where this
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  hydroponic setup is excuse me one second while google it it's about 150 kilometers
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  so the hydroponic site is about 150 kilometers along the dried-up lake bed from
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  the biological weapon site on Vozorodene Island, as it was,
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  or Alaska 7 was the name of the biological weapon site.
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  So pretty grim. If you've been there, let me know.
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  If you'd like to know more about these sorts of Cold War sites,
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  I'll try and introduce some more of them.
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  Let's try and get some Soviet hydroponics into tomorrow's episode.
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  That'll be a good one, won't it?
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  Some old Cold War Soviet or even Chinese hydroponics.
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  Did they do anything during the Cold War to deal with hydroponics?
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  That'll be interesting.
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  If you know, let me know before tomorrow and I'll research it.
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  Thank you very much for listening to hydroponics today.
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  I'd like to feature stories from other countries and countries that wouldn't
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  normally feature in the press, the horticultural or normal press.
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  If you've got any other stories that you you think are interesting,
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  worth me researching, then let me know.
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  Until tomorrow, thank you very much for listening, and goodbye.