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How Hydroponica was invented

We do our first model and design based on a design by Peggy Bradley. Later we will do our own design.

Peggy Bradley has been designing hydroponic homes and home greenhouses for over 50 years. She began the design of Hydroponica after a promise to her father to help end hunger.

Peggy Bradley looks at a small hydroponic greenhouse under construction at Africa University in Zimbabwe.

Peggy was given a challenge by her father just before he died.

Peggy had interviewed a professor named David Pimental, a professor of Agriculture in the USA.

David Pimental pointed out that many people on Earth now obtain their food from crops grown with Fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are the earth's reserves of oil, natural gas and coal.

At the time, most crops in the US were grown with fertilizers manufactured with fossil fuels, plowed with tractors and transported by vehicles using fossil fuels.If you bought your food in a grocery store in a city, most of the food was produced with fossil fuels.

Dr. Pimental was looking at predictions that fossil fuels would be scarce by the year 2050, and realized that many people would starve to death unless agriculture changed. He predicted that the earth could only support about 2 billion people without fosil fuel and so four out of five people would die of hunger in about 30 years.

Peggy pointed out to Pimental that we could keep those people from hunger in the future if we used hydroponics. Dr. Pimental looked at her like she was crazy.

Later when Peggy showed the film to her father he asked, "You mean you have a way to fix this?"

Peggy told her father that she thought she did have a way.

Her dad, only a few days away from his death told her, "Then fix it."

It took Peggy eight years of work before she completed Hydroponica as her solution to future hunger.

Peggy designed Hydroponica as a home that also grows enough daily food for two people. The foods she selected to grow in the home are partly based on what has already been grown in hydroponics and we have production rates to predict how much food can be grown.

We will first do a model of Hydroponica to get a feel for what is needed, and then you can design your own home. While this is built in a dome, a home can also be designed with a greenhouse attached, or the crops can be grown outdoors if you live in the tropics or places where plants can grow year round.

Revised: 1 May 2021
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