aquaponics

Two months after an advisory board voted to deny organic certification to aeroponic agriculture, the USDA said aeroponic crops remain eligible for the organic seal. "USDA will consider this [advisory] recommendation; aeroponics remains allowed during this review," said the Agricultural Marketing Service in a bulletin to organic growers.

At its three-day spring meeting in Denver, the National Organic Standards Board delayed, until fall at the earliest, a decision on whether hydroponic crops should be classified as organic production, said The Packer magazine. As a result, "hydroponics will be considered organic for a while longer," as they have for 15 years.

On a 10-4 vote, the National Organic Standards Board sent back to subcommittee the contentious question whether bioponics, a term covering hydroponics, aquaponics and aeroponics, are part of organic agriculture, reports Food Safety News. "This means that food grown using hydroponic methods may continue to be certified as organic" if producers meet other criteria for the organic label, said FSN.

Farmers in the arid Southwest are turning to aquaponics, an indoor system that combines hydroponics with fish farming to conserve water and use fish excrement to nourish plants, according to The Guardian.

Small-scale urban farmers in drought-stricken California are finding creative ways to keep plants alive without wasting water, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The Department of Agriculture set a May 8 deadline for nominations to a task force that will "examine hydroponic and aquaponic practices and their alignment with the USDA organic regulations" and the underlying law.