Food security is facing an ever-challenging crisis. The current food production approach that worked for generations is not sufficient today as climate change worsens, resulting in soil degradation and water stress. These challenges push farmers to no longer rely on traditional agriculture to fulfill the world’s food needs. They need to upgrade traditional agriculture to modern agriculture like hydroponics, to generate more profits and get improved yields.

Fortunately, technical improvements such as integrating smart technology and innovative approaches into farming practices are helping to solve these challenges.

What is Hydroponics?

Hydroponics system enables farmers to grow their plants anywhere and in any environment. The system operates in a controlled environment where lighting, ventilation, and temperature are all controlled to provide the optimal environment for the crops. This means that you can grow your vegetables in your office, balcony, or rooftop.

Plants grown in nutrient-rich water solutions are less prone to pests and diseases, which reduces the operational costs for farmers and helps in producing a more healthy and productive yield. Hydroponic systems are often seen as a practical and feasible way of modern farming on small systems and at a large scale.

Get a closer look at Senara’s Hydroponics farm

Farmers worldwide need to improve their farming practices to adapt and build resilience. Senara, our partner from Jordan, is disrupting traditional farming in the heart of the crisis, building on the very little resources they have in refugee camps to provide sustainable income for marginalized communities through rooftop hydroponics.

Sounds cool, right? Inspired by Senara’s innovative business model and their grassroots initiatives, Flowless joined forces to grow and accelerate the positive impact.

Flowless system helps in automating Senara’s hydroponic system and optimizes daily operations based on an innovative data-driven approach.

How Flowless system supports Senara’s farm

A new solution for modern agriculture is needed to fulfill the global food demands. Using smart technology to control the hydroponic farm makes the system even more effective and easier to manage.

Flowless smart technology used in Senara hydroponics system enables the collection of important data to measure its inputs such as water, fertilizers, nutrients, pH, and electrical conductivity. Data tracking helps Senara better manage its operations. With the availability of a wide range of data, Senara can make decisions that are tailored to the specific needs of their farm.

The collected data provides better monitoring of nutrient levels and the surrounding environment. Farmers can add the required amount of nutrients based on this data to optimize hydroponics management requirements like pH and electrical conductivity. This enables smart control for the farm, making it more efficient and precise, resulting in better plant growth and yield.

Challenges of Hydroponic Farm Management

In many cases, inexperienced farmers struggle with optimizing their hydroponics farm in their early stages. Nutrient mixing and dosing concentration are sensitive; you need to get them right for the system to work properly. More experienced farmers might still have issues with agricultural produce due to mistakes in managing water and nutrient pumping.

Flowless system helps in collecting data, monitoring, and measuring these concentrations and the ambient environmental conditions. Based on this collected data, the system automatically pumps the nutrients into the water pipes. This facilitates controlling the hydroponic farm much easier and saves time and effort.

IoT: The Foremost Key to Efficient Hydroponics System

So how does it actually work? Put simply, Flowless system automates processes in the hydroponics system to keep human intervention to the minimum. The system utilizes Internet of Things (IoT) devices that are connected to sensors in the field for real-time data collection. Collected data is then analyzed to provide interpretations for farmers and ultimately improve water and nutrient efficiency and enhance the yield.

Hydroponics system can easily be used for polyculture farming: growing various crops on the farm. This provides a great value especially for small-scale farms and rooftop gardens as it helps in fulfilling the needs of various crops as opposed to monoculture farming. The challenge that arises here is the need to optimize nutrient concentration and dosing for each type of crop in the system. Done manually, this could be an overwhelming task. This is where Flowless approach comes in handy.

Utilizing Flowlss system helps farmers automate the whole process to fit the needs and requirements of each plant and crop type. This ensures better results and less operational efforts.

Senara’s Innovative Approach Accelerates Achieving Collective Impact in Jordan

Social enterprises often do not have the resources, infrastructure, or support they need to tackle the most pressing issues that face our communities. There is an essential need for businesses and social enterprises to work together to address these challenges in our society. People today expect companies to show up in their communities and support society in developing the local economy and building resilience, which would ultimately be reflected in the financial returns of these companies. Let’s make it clear: social impact and financial returns CAN be combined in today’s business, we only need to have the well and work for it!

If there is one takeaway from our collaboration with Senara, then that would be how social enterprises can maximize their impact through partnerships! Senara empowers refugees by helping them generate more sustainable income through rooftop gardens, ultimately contributing to building resilience and financial stability for marginalized communities. The twinning between impact generation and financial returns is organic in Senara’s business model, as is the case for Flowless. Thus, the integration between Senara’s hydroponics and Flowless automation system was just natural, building on the common vision and values to materialize the social impact. Flowless system helps in automating and optimizing the operations in Senara’s rooftop hydroponics and thus ensures better yield and productivity of the rooftop garden.

Flowless system collects and analyzes data to help agribusinesses and farmers find ways to optimize their farm management processes. We provide follow-up with all the implemented projects to provide you with the best solutions for your farm.

Get in touch with us to know more.