Are hydroponic vegetables more "artificial" than the others?

Some people have asked me this question recently and initially I didn't quite understand the logic behind it. Why would a hydroponic vegetable be more "artificial" than vegetables produced in other production systems? What does the term "artificial" mean to begin with? According to the dictionary, artificial is anything "produced by the hand of man, not by nature". Now, in this definition, I believe that any agricultural product would be included, any vegetable resulting from the practice of agriculture, regardless of the production system used. Only products resulting from the gathering of what is spontaneously produced in nature would not be classified there, but since at least 12,000 years ago, when agriculture emerged in the Neolithic Revolution, most of humanity left the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Well, since any vegetable grown by man's hand would be equally artificial, the question remains as to why hydroponic vegetables would be more artificial. Is it because they are cultivated without soil? This would mean that the pioneer plant species that colonize rocks and other mineral materials are also artificial. It is worth saying that the soils themselves are formed from the action of organisms on rocks. The decomposed rock only becomes really soil after the incorporation of organic matter from dead organisms on it. That doesn't mean that the plants that grew there before weren't natural, does it? 

Epiphytic plants, such as orchids and bromeliads, grow on other plants and not on soil, their supporting substrate are branches and trunks, mainly composed of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. Vegetables grown on organic substrates such as coconut coir and peat are also considered hydroponic. These organic substrates are mainly composed of cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin - so why would they be less natural than epiphytic plants? 

There are those who attribute the artificiality of hydroponic crops to the use of nutrient solutions made using mineral fertilizers. Fertilizers are products that provide plants with mineral nutrients essential for their growth and production. Most of these fertilizers come from ores that receive some type of treatment to make the nutrients more available to plants. Fertilizers are usually salts, such as potassium sulphate, which contain two essential nutrients, sulfur and potassium. The only difference between conventional and hydroponic fertilizers is that hydroponic ones are purer and more soluble. As the fertilizers used in hydroponics and those used in conventional agriculture that feed the majority of the world's population are the same, there is no way to defend the thesis that the hydroponic vegetable is more or less artificial than the conventionally grown vegetable. 

There is, of course, a comparison with agricultural products produced in so-called organic or biological production systems, which use organic sources of plant nutrients. In 2015 I visited a hot pepper production greenhouse in South Korea that the researcher who was guiding me called organic. I was confused when I saw several bags of mineral hydroponic fertilizers and asked my host why he had told me that production was organic if they were using conventional hydroponic fertilizers and I thought his answer was ingeniously pragmatic: "the nutrient that the plant uptakes exactly the same chemical species, regardless of whether the source was mineral or organic; organic farming for us is the one that does not use pesticides." 

And the old agronomist was perfectly correct, as anyone who has studied the physiology of plant nutrition knows. In order for plants to uptake the nutrients present in organic matter, this must first be mineralized. Organic matter, of course, has other very important functions in the soil, such as sustaining the diverse microbiota and maintaining soil structure, but this still does not support the thesis that the use of organic sources of nutrients makes an organic vegetable more or less artificial than a hydroponic vegetable. 

Finally, there is the question of the nutritional quality of hydroponic vegetables. I recently read in the book Technically Food, by journalist Larissa Zimberoff, arguments in favor of the higher nutritional quality of organic vegetables because they would contain higher concentrations of nutrients such as salicylic acid, phenols and polyphenols. These compounds play an important antioxidant role in both plants and humans who consume them. I really don't think it's unlikely that organic vegetables have higher levels of these nutrients than hydroponic vegetables. 

These nutrients, as well as others with a defensive role in plants, are called secondary metabolites and are generally present in higher concentrations in plants exposed to stressful environmental factors from which the plants need to defend themselves. As hydroponic vegetables are invariably grown in greenhouses, physically protected from pests and pathogens, with an adequate supply of water and nutrients, that is, as they are naturally protected, it is not surprising that they have lower concentrations of defense compounds. 

On the other hand, hydroponic vegetables are fertilized using nutrient solutions containing all essential plant nutrients and in the concentrations required by them. Nutrients such as iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn), whose deficiency, known as hidden hunger, affects millions of people worldwide. Vegetable fertilization in the field, whether conventional or organic, will hardly be as complete as the fertilization done on hydroponic vegetables. It's a shame Zimberoff didn't comment on this in her book.

The hydroponic product versus organic product dichotomy is of no use and, as is often the case in this type of comparison, is much more ideology than science. There is really no battle to determine what the "agriculture of the future" will be. The agriculture of the future, like today's, must be diverse, focused on sustainability and nutritional quality.