User:BC1278/sandbox/General Hydroponics

General Hydroponics, founded in 1976, is a Santa Rosa, California based company that supplies liquid nutrients and hydroponic products to grow food, flowers and indoor plants. Hydroponics is a technology that enables the indoor cultivation of plants without soil.

History
General Hydroponics was founded by Lawrence Brooke,, formerly a scientist for The National Lab at Berkely. Brooke said his goal was to create technology to grow food more efficiently to serve the nutritional needs created by rapid world human population growth, while reducing the use of natural resources.

In the 1970s, General Hydroponics became the largest seller of chemical nutrients for hydroponics farming.

NASA has collaborated with General Hydroponics to grow plants at the International Space Station. Scientists studied how to best to supply nutrients and oxygen for plants in order to support future colonization missions in space.

In 1988, the Drug Enforcement Agency demanded a client list, suspecting it included growers of marijuana. The company fought the demand in court and prevailed after a decade.

General Hydroponics had $40 million in sales in 2015 and was growing at twice the rate of the lawn and garden industry. It is targeting urban residents who set up hydroponic gardens to grow organic vegetables and herbs. General Hydroponics said it is focused on the trend of consumers growing their own food, especially in small urban environments.

The press and Wall Street analysts have speculated that the acquisition could position the company for fast growth if cannabis is further deregulated in the United States because hydroponics is widely used for the indoor growth on the species. . The company describes itself as "agnostic" as to how customers use their products, but points out that the fruit market is much larger.

In 2015, the company was sold for $130 million to Hawthorne Gardening Company, a subsidiary of The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company.

Environmental Impact
The company says that a hydroponic greenhouse with its products uses one tenth the water of a crop grown in soil with conventional argriculture. It is being used to replace field crops in areas with droughts, such as California. The company is designing a hydroponics system to grow crops in China for billions of people.