Hydroponic Farming to Feed America | Farms Across America

Houston’s hydroponic farming efforts can help feed America amidst population growth, declining soil health, record droughts, and supply chain issues. Join us at Moonflower Farms to watch how hyperlocal vertical farming at scale is leading food innovation.
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Moonflower Farms founder, Federico Marques, first learned about hydroponics while working with NASA and Bioregenerative Life Support Systems staff at Stennis Space Center and he’s been on a quest ever since. In 2016, he launched the city of Houston's first commercial vertical hydroponic farm and by 2019, they’d moved into a 20,000 square foot greenhouse. When grocery shelves emptied and transportation ground to a halt after the 2021 Texas winter storm, Moonflower Farms managed to keep growing fresh food to feed Houston and beyond. That’s the ultimate food security.
It all comes down to a simple science, as old as the age of Babylon and as far reaching as the moon. With nutrient film technique, or NFT, plants take root in water instead of soil, surrounded by a film of nutrients that the farmer controls for optimal growth. Instead of saturating miles of depleted topsoil with what accounts for 70% of our global potable water, hydroponic farmers are able to give the plants exactly what they need, no more and no less. This means hydroponic farming uses 95% less water than traditional farming, while avoiding soil borne diseases and the need for wide expanses of land.
And since hydroponic farming can be done virtually anywhere, including outer space, that means hyperlocal access to food, something Americans desperately need in a time of supply chain interruptions, skyrocketing fuel prices, and decarbonization. Much of the food we get at the grocery store has traveled days if not weeks, over thousands of miles, to reach us. Considering a head of lettuce loses 10% of its nutrients every day it gets further away from harvest, we're looking at lower nutrition food at best, and at worst, food that ends up in the landfill. In fact, 66% of the fresh produce we import goes to waste.
As Moonflower CEO Federico Marques says, “Our current food systems are vastly inefficient, with food waste, rampant pesticide use, transport emissions, and agricultural runoff. Closed loop grow systems prevent these problems and help to create higher quality food and local jobs.”
Moonflower Farms believes that by 2030, every city will be developing their own hyperlocal sustainable hydroponic farms. They’re taking it to Kroger stores in the greater Houston area, to their climate tech incubator, Greentown Labs, and to schools across Texas. And they want to help us do it. From here to the moon.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
00:00 Houston Texas’ biggest hydroponic farm
00:18 Growing food without soil
00:47 NASA researches growing food in space
01:23 10th grader brings hydroponics to Houston schools
02:55 How hydroponics helps food security
03:53 Greentown Labs helps startups like Moonflower Farms
04:25 Different types of hydroponics
04:55 Hydroponics uses 95% less water than traditional ag
05:25 NFT, nutrient film technique
06:50 Hyperlocal means fresh food for everyone
07:08 AI farming
07:46 Failure is part of innovation
07:59 Sustainable city farming solves food insecurity
Directed by Jessie English
Created by Conor Gaughan and Kate Tucker
Written and hosted by Kate Tucker
Produced by Consensus Digital Media in partnership with Remedial Media
Executive Producer - Kate Tucker
Executive Producer - Jessie English
Executive Producer - Eric Feigenbaum
Executive Producer - Conor Gaughan
Featuring:
Federico Marques - Founder & CEO, Moonflower Farms
Luis Silva - Lead Engineer, Moonflower Farms
Jose Garcia - Operations Manager, Moonflower Farms
Rahul Vijayan - Founder, Farm to Tray
Filmed at Moonflower Farms and Greentown Labs in Houston, Texas
Supervising Producer - Geoff Rock
Editor - Nick Nazmi
Assistant Editor - Dustin Waldman
Director of Photography - Isaac Rosenthal
Camera Operator - Eddie Bernard
Gaffer / Drone Operator - Fletcher Anstis
Sound Engineer - Tom Eichler
Production Coordinator - John Ryan Gage
Production Assistant - Josiah Shaw
Makeup & Hair - Tracy Fettig
Wardrobe - Hollie Van Osenbruggen
Audio Mixer / Sound Design - Dillon Terry
Color Grading - Ind3x
Motion Graphics - Yuriy Netrebyuk
Graphic Design - Stephen Lepsch
Music by Desert Dive, Dario Benedetti, Falls, Shimmer, Joshua Spacht, and Heartland Nights, courtesy of Soundstripe
Special thanks to Greentown Labs Houston, and to NASA Stennis Space Center: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jni1dpJtrt-Soa8
More stories from Consensus:
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[@MichaelJVanecekWrites]

Have been exploring hydroponics here in central TX. Got a little Cropking NFT setup I am assembling, plus dutch-buckets going together - with hopes to not just grow larger veggies like tomatoes, but also chocolate, avocado, and coffee trees hydroponically. Also have mesh-tubes for vanilla orchids. All still in the very early stages. But indoors, under LED grow-lights, with complete environmental control. Inspiration was the Texas Freeze a couple years ago that wiped out my greenhouse.

[@traceyjohnson2857]

I love the use of hydroponics to battle food insecurity. Great video!

[@AkSonya1010]

Beautiful, I love seeing hydroponics get bigger I have a small setup for myself at home. What I don't understand about thier setup, they aren't doing vertical farming. They could grow so much more vertically.

[@kesterbelgrove818]

Fully love this video and the hydroponics movement as a whole. 5% water, 30% fertilizer, less space and less labour, no or substantially reduces pesticides as compared to a traditional farm. I'm a huge fan of hydroponics.

[@karimarques9995]

Love this video!

[@ConsensusDigitalMedia]

So glad!

[@onyemaechiobi4024]

@@ConsensusDigitalMedia please can you teach me how to learn this system of farming? Am very much interested to lean How do I do reach you?

[@jeffersfelix5454]

Thanks 👍 for glorious divine applicable ideas. I live in a mountainous island. Lots of indiscriminate farming... Lots of soil erosion. Lots of hillside farming can be curtailed... Global concepts for life... Population stabilization..

[@barrymcdonald9868]

build soil not pipes for sustainable outcomes, even the indoor pot growers have moved to soil and away from Hydro, it's about the soil life

[@quotes6687]

I would like to visit as a volunteer learner

[@sailr]

Imagine a school system with its own hydroponic farm to produce the food needed in all of its schools cafeterias, etc! Good investment? Maybe the U.S. Govt could jump onboard by providing grants to build the farms? Worth thinking about.

[@SweetUncleG]

How much to make a single infrastructure like that...? Is it affordable...?

[@Dwade689]

About 300k

[@obeserodent27]

this is pretty sick bruh

[@tincan397]

Can you grow wheat, oats or potatoes yet? I don’t want to try to live on lettuce and spinach!

[@onyemaechiobi4024]

HOW Do I BECOME AN HYDROPONICS FARMER?? AM VERY MUCH INTERESTED TO LEARN FROM YOU GUYS..

[@opheliagreer3163]

hi I would love toget involved and start my own farm for NY family and more

[@Floreypottery]

Same here we already started a small indoor vertical farm and want to go bigger eventually along with maybe growing edible flowered and a mushroom grow house maybe one day

[@giveitagowithdave1970]

How can i start hydroponic mini farm in the Northern Georgia. Thank you

[@Dwade689]

💵💵💵💵💵

[@jamesalan206]

And when they ban the fertilizers that you require to grow because they aren't sustainable your screwed

[@MrRiverGrove]

Dudes are the first people to grow hydroponically 😂

[@hydrogreen1111]

How much lettuce are we supposed to eat?

[@franzb69]

hydroponic nutrients aren't very sustainable. they're all petrol based. chemical based.

[@torh1]

Maybe they should consider using aquaponic method.

[@Floreypottery]

Aquaponic has downfalls too ones a chemical buildup from fish poo

[@Floreypottery]

Some not all theirs a big push for fertilizers from plants which is sustainable and could be abundant if people grow these plants

[@bheshman2310]

I don't want this future