In a world where no seed touches soil to germinate, hydroponic smart farming is gaining momentum and revolutionizing South Africa’s agricultural landscape. This innovative method produces high yields while reusing water.
Tebogo Masobe from Lomanyaneng, outside Mahikeng in the North West, is passionate about innovating and using smart farming to grow vegetables without using soil. Masobe says the soilless method of planting is working for him.
“The specific crops that I grow, your leafy plants, are either your herbs or your edible flowers, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, green pepper, and all your leafy plants. There are actually more advanced systems that actually grow potatoes under water but that is on an advanced level. Right now, we are only dealing with leafy plants and herbs.” Masobe says even with limited space and other challenges, farmers can still increase their yield using this farming method.
“The unique advantage of operating hydroponics farming is that the system is solar powered, so we are not affected by load shedding, we do not solely depend on electricity. We are actually creating our own energy source; it is fully automated. With this system, we can actually make use of small spaces. With hydroponics, I can grow more produce in the smaller space as compared to your conventional farming whereby you would need a hector of land to actually produce a certain number of crops. We are taking advantage of vertical farming instead of planting these crops horizontally; we are making use of our space.”
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