Diggers has been fighting the introduction of GM and hybrid seeds for 20 years, due to the corporate monopolisation of the food chain. In the meantime, a far greater change in the production of our food has gone largely unnoticed: the switch from growing food-producing plants outdoors in soil, to growing them in protected glasshouses with synthetic hydroponic nutrients.
Today, around 20% of our fruit and vegetables are grown hydroponically. All the inputs are controlled (water, heat, CO2) and the plants are fed using synthetic nutrients. Insects are also controlled, in the sense that flowers have to be pollinated in a windless glasshouse. So, in the case of self-pollinating tomatoes, the flowers are vibrated to stimulate pollination.
Hydroponic growers label their produce with pride as hydroponic, as if it were a benefit to offer such totally artificially grown food. The food looks real and is blemish free, like supermarket tomatoes, but should we be proud to label food grown artificially?
For around ten thousand years, humans have been growing food in soil where nutrients have been created as a result of natural evolutionary processes like the decomposition of minerals, plants and animals. The suggestion that hydroponic food could be equal or superior in quality to certified, organically-grown food is both arrogant and unproven.