Ani acts as a speaker and hydroponic practitioner from ‘ARIRU Hydroponics’.

Gembong Primadjaja as the Head of IA ITB hoped that through this webinar, hydroponics can be better known with the other ITB alumni. While Himmel Sihombing (EL ‘96) as Minister of Agricultural Technology IAITB hopes hydroponic can be a solution for family food security because it makes farming without land is possible. Then, the event continued with a presentation from Ani.

It all started from Syahruddin’s (Ani’s husband) retirement plan to become a practical farmer who did not require a lot of energy, easy to maintain, but produced high-quality harvest crops. From there, Ani learned a lot. Syahrudin and Ani did not go straight into the complex. They started hydroponics from a very simple beginning, such as trying various planting media and reading journals.

“If people always think hydroponics can be applied on a business scale, how about ordinary people who want to try?” said Ani. That is the reason why Syahruddin-Ani held hydroponics training, hoping that it can be easily applied in the community on a large scale.

Many people think hydroponics is expensive, hard to maintain, and complicated. In reality, hydroponics is not as complicated as imagined. Hydroponics can be made simply.

The method used in hydroponics is using water as the planting media (without soil). Therefore, hydroponics can be done on land without soil as long as the place is sufficiently exposed to sunlight.

Harvest crops from the hydroponics method have better quality because its pesticide-free. Whatever the pest, the pesticides used are plant-based pesticides and non-chemical. One example of plant-based pesticides is a fine-chopped onion fermented for one day.

Not only for adults, hydroponics can also be done by children and the elderly.

Reporter: Najma Shafiya (Teknologi Pascapanen, 2020)
Translator: Aghisna Syifa R (Biologi, 2020)