February 23, 2021 • 48 mins
The human population is expected to increase by a couple billion people in the next 30 years and those who are paying attention are wondering exactly how we’ll feed all those extra mouths. Will going high tech or getting back to nature save us?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant. Jerry's with us as well,
and we all have a nice They're a hay sticking
out of our teeth. Got a hat on. It's a derby.
(00:27):
Doesn't quite fit right, but is it still a hat?
And I'm wearing overalls with nothing underneath and no shoes
and socks. Have I told you my uh Olan Mills story? No?
I can't not. When I lost my two front teeth,
(00:48):
my mom promptly took me to Olan Mills. And there
is a picture in existence. I'll try and find it
and put it on my Instagram um of me in
front of a like a lazy river scene or a
lake or something, with overall shorts and you know, cut
off overalls, I guess, nothing else on, no shirt, no shoes,
(01:12):
and like, uh, I love to see it. I feel
like I had like a cane pole and maybe a straw. Hateez?
Did they did they have the the the engraving and
stone mountain and as the background? No, thank goodness, I
just it was straight up cosplay it's very embarrassing, but
I'll see if I can find that and throw it
(01:33):
up on Chuck the Podcaster Instagram. You should, Chuck. I
think that would really garner some likes, you know, putting
a few old pictures up there every now and then.
It's fun. That's very cute. Um. So, I guess you're saying,
you're we're talking about wearing nothing but overalls because we're
talking about farming, right, Yeah, I mean that that picture
(01:55):
Basically I learned all I needed to know about farming
that day, which is I'm not cut out for it.
I'm not cut out for it. I am cut out
to be photographed for money. Whoa, Um, that was me
doing my impression of you. Yeah. I didn't get paid.
Uh yeah, I guess that's the opposite. Happened Your mom
(02:15):
paid somebody take pictures of you regardless, Um, none of
that really happens in farming. Maybe people running around with
overalls on probably has something underneath the overalls. But for
the most part, this is a gross misconception of of
what farming is. Especially now that I've done some research
on the current state of farming, We're pretty far from
(02:37):
the whole idea of people running around with hey in
their and their mouths and wearing overalls and nothing. But sure,
I mean, well, it depends on who you are. Like,
have you ever seen and I've talked about it before
the documentary The Biggest Little Farm. Yeah, I think you
have talked about that. I don't remember what episode it
was in there, And we'll get to that. That's coming
(02:59):
up on the the last part of this episode about
agro ecology, but that those are people that are adherents
of bringing it back to what farming used to be,
which was ecologically sound, harmonious with nature, that kind of thing, right,
which makes a tremendous amount of sense. But we'll see
if that's even possible in the future, because here's the thing.
(03:22):
There's a huge um boom in demand for agriculture that
we are on the presiposs of it. Actually, I guess
you could make a pretty good case that we're in
the midst of it right now. Um, by the year
there's a predicted somewhere around nine to ten billion. It's
a pretty big gap. But let's say nine to ten
(03:43):
billion people are expected to be running around on planet Earth, right,
and all those people are going to need to be fed.
But the thing is is we're not exactly sure how
we're going to reach that increased demand. And because there
is a study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of
(04:04):
the u M that said that we're basically going to
have to increase food production UM compared to two thousand
seven levels by seventy to feed all those people. And
that's that's if we hit the low and the nine
billion UM in population by Yeah, and you mentioned agriculture, Um,
we're also talking meat in protein because not only is
(04:27):
the population increasing, but income is on the rise worldwide,
especially in developing countries. And as you are developing country
that gets a little more money in your pocket as individuals,
you want to eat more meat in protein. So um,
I think they said global meat consumption is going to
arise by about sevents. Well, yeah, and when you're talking
(04:51):
about meat um consumption as far as agriculture goes, like,
you're talking about agriculture times too, because not only do
you have to use all those inputs to grow the
cattle themselves, the livestock themselves, so um you can eat them,
you have to feed them to get them ready to
be eaten, right, So you have to grow the food
(05:13):
to feed to the cattle that you're going to grow
that you're going to eventually eat. So there's a lot
of agriculture that's going to have to be going on. Um.
But here's the thing. Agriculture has handled this before. There
was a time you and I have talked about countless times, um,
the Green Revolution back in the early mid twentieth century.
(05:34):
There are a lot of people saying, UM, we're not
exactly sure that agriculture is going to be able to
keep pace with the growing population. And we think probably
about a billion people are going to starve. And that
may have happened, we will never know, but we know
that it didn't happen thanks to the green revolution that
was hastened by scientists like Norman Borlog. Yeah, we've been
(05:58):
talking about that guy for a year. And the irony
of the green revolution is is today's terminology. You might
think that has something to do with, um, environmentally sound practices.
It was kind of the opposite of that in a
lot of ways. Uh, they've meant green just like a
lot of plants. Uh, it was really harmful to the environment.
It did feed a lot of people, and there's a
(06:20):
lot of mixed um mixed reviews on Yelp about the
green revolution. I guess, uh, that's an easier way to
say controversy because what happened is a lot of the
greenhouse gas emissions that we see uh in the world
today come from food production. We've talked about methane coming
from cowpoots before, We've talked about it's real big problem.
(06:46):
We've talked about deforestation. Um obviously transportation getting this food
and transporting it, you know, because the idea we kind
of went away from the idea of local farms feeding
regions into shipping food across the globe if we need to,
and that's just a lot of pollution. I think raising
livestock and fish accounts for about of agricultures greenhouse emissions,
(07:11):
with livestock being about Yeah, so this whole So we've
we've reached this an inflection point that really resembles the
last inflection point where Okay, we're about to have a
big increase in population. We need to make sure that
agriculture can keep up with food production to feed everybody,
or else we're gonna have big problems. But this time
(07:32):
there's an added twist and that we know the last
thing we did kind of wreck to the environment. So
now we have to figure out, Okay, how are we
going to meet this challenge this time without further wrecking
the environment and then maybe even figuring out a way
to um help the environment through food production. That's kind
of where we're at right now. And agriculture has gone
(07:53):
through different iterations, and right now supposedly we're in agriculture
three doto And what every but he's trying to figure
out is what comes next? What's agriculture for dotto? Yeah?
One one point oh? You say dot? Yeah, okay, one
point oh was from Neolithic to the nineteen twenties. So
that was boy, that had a good long run, didn't it. Yeah,
(08:17):
that's a good long stretch, a very good long stretch.
But that included a lot of labor from human hands
and animal hoofs uh two point oh? Was that green
revolution we were talking about? Three point I was about
ten or eleven years ago when big data kind of
came in to help maximize yields. And it's uh, they're
(08:39):
saying like four point needs to start happening now, and
sort of is We're just not exactly sure what the
final iteration is gonna look like yeah, and a lot
of the stuff that's going on in three Datto is
going to make an appearance in four Duto. But it's
gonna be that's a way to say it. Sometimes points
so yeah, of course, although it reminds me. Have you
watched Cobra kai Uh? We watched the first like four
(09:01):
or five episodes and then we're like, I get it.
Same here. Um, But that one where Johnny's handing out
flyers for his new website, He's like, check out this
cool website. H T T P colon slash slash w
w W period Cobra guy period c O M. They
(09:25):
just spelled it out while he was handing out a flocker.
But he says period. He didn't say dot. That's really funny.
Well two period of three periodo he uh it was.
That was great. Yeah, it was a great premise that
they really pulled off for a little while there. So
now whenever you say to Dot, oh, I'll say do
you have a problem, Mr Clark, Yeah, and I'll say
(09:48):
no mercy, no mercy, Yeah, okay, Um, that's the new
response to that question. But you don't say it like that.
You don't go no, mercy. Oh you don't say it, director,
No mercy. Uh, okay, let me try keep them ready.
No mercy. Very intimidating. Thank you. Where were we? We
(10:14):
were talking about what four dotto is going to look like? Yeah,
because here's the deal. Uh, farmers themselves, the human beings
are getting older. Um, farmers over sixty five years old
out number uh those under forty five years old by
two to one, actually a little more than two dot
one to one dot one. Know those are Colin's my friend.
(10:38):
Know there's a dot to dot one. Oh man, I
feel like this is gonna happen. Um. So one of
the first kind of things that people think may happen,
and that we're already seeing some is consolidation of farms.
Instead of a lot of medium, too small sized farms,
(10:59):
how about few are really big farms. And you know
that's already kind of been happening. Yeah. And like in
a normal industry, let's say the kazoo manufacturing industry, if
like the kazoo makers were way old and there weren't
very many young kazoo makers, that wouldn't fare very well
for the kazoo industry, but no one would really care.
(11:19):
We wouldn't miss kazoos all that much, would be Okay,
farming does not really fall within that same category as kazoos,
Like we need food. So rather than farming just going away,
they're just going to figure out how to consolidate it
with fewer, younger farmers with bigger farms under their belt, right,
(11:40):
which you know, if you think there's fewer farmers, so
you consolidate the farms. That makes sense, But you're like,
you still need people because these farmers are getting older
and ostensibly, you know, farm hands are getting older as well.
But here's where uh four dot four period oh comes
in is robots. As John Hodgman would say, yeah, oh man,
(12:05):
I didn't hear it in any other way every time
I read it. Yeah, because there's a lot of inefficiencies
in traditional farming with farm hands. I mean, just one
example is when you fertilize an area. You know, you
can fertilize like a platt, but you fertilize that whole plat.
If there's a part of that plat that doesn't need fertilizing,
(12:26):
it's probably gonna get fertilized anyway, just because you know,
they just run the fertilizer over that area, right exactly.
It's just that's just what is the most efficient. And
as we'll see, like that's a that's a real problem.
That's sad that that's the current way to do it,
but that's conventional farming practices. You just fertilize the whole
field and go on and do something else, because there's
(12:49):
a million other things that need to be done as well.
But one of the things, um that's going to be
uh kind of saved in that way by by robots
is um They're going to take these different steps that
are involved in UM farm work and kind of um
break them down into uh, um, what's the word I'm
(13:12):
looking for, chuck where where you know, Oh, specialties. So
a robot specializes in a certain task or whatever. And
because you'll have a bunch of different robots they doing
the same task, they'll be able to kind of give
more personal tailored care to the to the plants. Say
like some plants need fertilizer, those plants will get fertilizer.
Plant doesn't need fertilizer, it's not going to get fertilizer.
(13:34):
And that's going to save a lot of UM inputs.
Is kind of what you talk about when you're in
talking agriculture UM, which kind of is generally a good thing,
not just financially, but when it comes to the environment
as we'll see. Yeah, and you know, you think about
a tractor that requires a human to drive that tractor. Uh,
they already have tractors that can drive themselves with GPS
(13:58):
accuracy involved. And you know that's been going on for
a little while now. And the idea I think is UM.
And you know, some of these tractors are something called
the lettuce bot, which is kind of cool, where basically
have a tractor at least that's sort of the current iteration,
and on the back of that tractor is a big
row of I mean, we call them robots. It's not
(14:20):
like you know, George Jetson type of stuff. A robotis
just means it's a mechanical, you know, automated system. Right,
it's not they're not looking for a husband like. So
the lettuce bot is pulled along behind the tractor and
it's got you know, just a big row of little
robots that can do everything from UM kind of custom
(14:41):
fertilization to picking out a weed using the same technology
that they use in facial recognition like there's a ragweed
or something, let's get rid of just that weed instead
of like let's just spray the whole field with round
up or whatever. Uh. And it's you know, it's going
to increase efficiencies. And I think that's the first iteration.
(15:01):
And what they're looking at in the future is instead
of even a big tractor that still costs a lot
of money, Yeah, like hundreds of thousands of dollars for
a new track. I think, like it doesn't really dawn
on city slickers how incredibly expensive farm equipment is. Yeah,
those big, big tractors, not like you're sort of fun tractor. No,
(15:22):
not a fun tractor, sure, that's like fifty grand, who cares,
but like a really big tractor. Yeah, it's a lot
of money. Um. So I think the idea is, or
at least what I saw, there's conceptual drawings of smaller
uh robot tractors that are I don't know, it looked
like the size of like a like a six foot
folding table or something just kind of going over like
(15:43):
a row of lettuce, Like it's that it's in charge
of that one row. Probably, Yeah, But what I wonder
is how expensive are those and do you have to
get fifty of those to equal one tractor? And how
does it suss out financially? I mean, I'm sure that
like there's a maximum number that you would possibly need,
or else you're like, I have more than I can use.
(16:03):
And then you have you have a farm that like
doesn't make quite as much money as another farm, so
they make do with half the number of robots, and
that maybe they have to supplement that with humans or whatever,
um or it takes longer for that to be done,
or they can grow less lettuce. But I'm sure that
like there's from what I read, there's a price point
(16:24):
where like having robots is going to be financially way
better than having to sink hunt several hundred grand into
a new tract or even like a hundred and fifty
grand for a use tractor. And then the other thing,
and this is really important to number one, you don't
need a human to drive these things, which frees the
human up to do other things, or you don't have
to pay the human anymore, So that's gonna save you
(16:46):
some money. And then secondly, um, if one of those
robots breaks down, you can still work all the other rows.
If the tractor breaks down, You're you're done. You have
to wait until the try just fixed, and then all
of that work has to wait. This is just one
single say row that isn't getting attended to right then
(17:07):
while that one robot's broken down. So that's a huge
advantage right there. Yeah, and you can just tell robot
number two to scoot over and cover the ground that
robot number one is missing exactly, and he's like, I
gotta pull a double Shut up. You're a machine. You
can't talk. The other thing robots can potentially do is harvest.
Harvesting is very labor intensive, and it's also kind of inefficient,
(17:31):
especially when it comes to something like um, maybe like strawberries,
which you harvest one time during the year, and you
know there there's still a little bit of leeway in there.
Like it's it's not an exact science in that some
of those plants will have ripe fruit before you go
to harvest and it'll rot and drop off. Some of
(17:51):
them may need to wait a little bit and ripen afterward,
so you're wasting a lot of fruit there on the ground.
And robot harvesters would just constantly kind of patrol these
rosa plants and harvests the berries when they're ready to
be harvested, right, which would make it a lot more
money for the farmers who are growing that stuff. It's
pretty pretty awesome. And then as we kind of evolve
(18:14):
further and further along in our technology UM and we
finally reach the capability of nanotechnology, one of the things
that they are hoping that nanobots, which are currently just
hypothetical robots on the scale of UM like a strand
of DNA or an atom or something, they'll be able
to manipulate matter about UM like on that scale. So
(18:37):
what they're hoping for is UM with agriculture, nanobots will
eventually be able to deliver nutrients directly to the roots
of a plant, like right when it needs it, not
not from some humans saying like, hey, nanoboto, go take
this nutrient, this little bit of nitrogen over to that
plant right there. It will be all of this stuff
will be guided and directed by computers that are paying
(19:00):
attention to the plants through sensors and then directing the
nanobots to go take this nutrient to this particular plant
because it needs it right now. And this kind of
this kind of attention. This tailored to individualize attention is
what's called precision farming, and that seems to be something
that's looming on the horizon that will be a big
part of for for period. Oh yeah, I think the
(19:24):
NANO is like serious future farming when we get to
that point, But a lot of this stuff is on
the imminent horizon. Um Nutrient waste is a really big
deal and a big problem. I think about six of
fertilizer that you apply to a field is lost to
run off. So there's a big cost factor there that
(19:44):
you're losing and it just rereaks havoc on water sheds
that are nearby, which we talked about a little bit
in the watershed episode. And fertilizer production and then transporting
that where you need it is a big, big part
of CEO two emissions. I think five to eleven kilograms
of CEO two are admitted through the lifestyle life cycle
(20:06):
of one keg I'm sorry, one kilogram gig tepe kega.
That fertilizer man keg stand uh one kilogram of fertilizer.
And once you fertilize the plant, Uh, it gets in
that soil and these microbes you know, have to convert
that fertilizer into something that's useful. And when it does that,
(20:26):
it emits uh n O two or I'm sorry in
two O nitrous oxide and that's number three behind CEO
two and methane is a big problem gas. Right, So
there's a lot to be saved by by cutting down
on that six of waste fertilizer. A lot of stuff
would be helped by that. And the more you can
precisely tailor agriculture, UM, the less waste you're going to have.
(20:51):
And I would say that UM for anybody who's interested
in hearing how colossally wrong deploying nanobots into crop land
could go, I would direct you to UM my tempart
series The End of the World with Josh Clark, specifically
the AI episode. It's pretty good, kind of eye opening.
I think that's my favorite one. Actually. Oh, thanks Chuck.
(21:11):
All right, so let's take a break and we'll come
back and talk about big data right after this. Okay,
(21:42):
we're back, and we're talking about Chuck big data and
three period oh, which was already or is already using
a lot of data. UM. We talked about the GPS
guided tractors that have been around for a while. Um.
They do use things like drones and satellites to get
(22:04):
like literal big pictures of farms that can be really
useful UM in determining like areas that are patchy or dry,
or hey, this looks ready for harvest. But they're gonna
bring light into the mix, which is something I know
we've talked about before. L I D A R. When
do we talk about that? I don't know. It might
(22:25):
have been. It's used most famously for m mapping dense
jungle ruins. UM. Like. I was reading about it in
this book called The Lost City of the Monkey God
by Douglas Preston, which I actually heard about in researching
our episode on Finn Treasure, because Douglas Preston was the
friend of Forest Finn, who UM vouched for having seen
(22:50):
the treasure in person before his closet, And I was like, Oh,
that book sounds pretty interesting. I went and read it,
and it's really interesting. But he talks a lot about
light are being used to map these these these ruins
that have been overgrown by jungle that you normally would
never be able to see overhead, but the light are
UM is able to basically get beams of lasers through
(23:13):
the brakes and like leaves and all that in the
canopy to hit the ground below and then bounce back up.
And so you get a picture of the understory too,
which would come and handy big time for for crops,
especially tall crops that are growing closely together, like say corn. Right,
So you bundle all that together in a handy little
(23:33):
app for Mr. Future Farmer and Mrs Future Farmer or
Miss Future Farmer or a Miss Future Farmer or dr
Future Farmer or future farmer, they or they the future farmers.
That's that's great. I think we covered all the base.
I think so. Um, So you have an app there,
and machine learning becomes more intelligent, the Internet of Things
(23:58):
kind of gets a little more robot and then you
have farmers that don't have to constantly make these tiny
little decisions, these micro decisions that they have to make
every day about keeping their farm healthy. They can kind
of rely on this AI technology to figure it out
and do it for them. Uh, and I guess they
can spend their time building future weapons to fight the
(24:21):
eventual robot uprising. That's right. But I mean, like think
about it, all of this stuff is just using things
that are popping up in other sectors right now, machine learning, UM,
sensors that are connected to the Internet of Things, and
then integration of all this stuff that UM to oversee
this so that the farmer doesn't have to make these decisions.
(24:42):
And when you combine all this stuff together, you have
like a farm that could be humming along UM just
an absolute peak performance with minimal inputs that are delivered
just at just the right time and just the right amount,
with minimal waste UM, with the farmer having to make
minimal decisions. And if you take this to its you know,
(25:04):
eventual conclusion. I mean the there won't be like young
farmers running and you know, huge farms. It'll be like
somebody who owns the farm. But really it's like an
AI that's overseeing the entire farm, communicating with everything through
the Internet of Things, directing this nanobot over there, UM
this let us bot over here. And then potentially is
(25:26):
we grow as a UM an advanced society, there may
just be one AI that we we rely on to
run all the farms everywhere around the world and then
handle distribution and all of that stuff. So I don't know,
maybe that's agriculture five auto. Who knows, maybe we'll never
get there. There's some people that certainly hope we that's
(25:47):
not the direction we go. But we'll talk about them
in a little bit. Yeah. Like if you're screaming right now,
how awful this sounds, Well, we'll get to you later,
don't worry. UM. Another part of four point oh is
um trying to grow crops where it doesn't seem like
you should be able to grow crops. The desert is
(26:07):
obviously one of those places. Uh. Saludias are already investing
a lot in trying to UM figure out the genomic
codes or genomic genomic. I think both work. One seems British.
Well it's a genome, so it's probably genomic gentemic. That's
how the British had saved the genomic codes. Uh. These
(26:31):
plants that can withstand the desert conditions and figure out
how to grow stuff there. And this is kind of
where we wander gently into GMOs, which I think we've
have been dodging this one as a full topic for
a while to do it, we should at some point
because it is very controversial. It has a bad rap,
(26:51):
some people say, rightfully, so it has a bad rap
I think about Americans say they think GMOs um are
safe to eat, which is, you know, pretty pretty decent
minority there. Science says that they are safe to eat.
But for all this sort of bluster about GMOs, they
(27:13):
haven't really done a lot with GMOs yet, except for
a couple of a few little kind of dirty, underhanded things. Well, yeah,
like um creating patented um seeds that grow plants that
don't produce more seeds, so farmers are forced to buy
the seeds every single year. Yeah, that's a big one.
(27:34):
There's another one that only responds or responds best to
a specific brand of pesticide UM, so you have to
buy that brand of pesticide, which happens to be manufactured
by the same company that owns the patent on the plant.
It's kind of shady stuff like that. The thing is,
it's not like that's all they've tried to do. They've
(27:55):
also tried to have breakthroughs in you know, um like
plants that can withstand like horrible droughts, and they haven't
been able to break through in that that sense, or
plants that you know, produce double the yield with minimal inputs.
They haven't had that breakthrough. That doesn't mean they're not
going to break through that there won't be huge advances
(28:16):
and plants science. But even if we do reach that point, like,
there's going to have to also be like a public
information campaign that basically says like this stuff will not
mutate your children, it's safe to eat, it won't make
you glow. And there's definitely an enormous amount of fear
of science from what I can tell involved in GMOs.
(28:37):
I haven't done the research yet, so my opinion might
change when we actually do the episode, but from the
minimal research I did on it, it seems like a
fear of science. And as far as science is concerned,
it's it's everything we know about it, it's it's safe
to eat. Um. I don't know that will remain to
be seen. Let me do some more research first before
you quote me on that. Yeah, and I think of
(29:00):
the bad rep too. Is just like we were talking
about the couple of three uses so far that have
allowed certain companies to really take advantage of the situation.
Let's just yeah, it's not like giant mega corporations have
you know, garnered a lot of trust from the general
public over the years and in fact have squandered it
pretty pretty efficiently. Actually. Uh So, seawater farming is another
(29:24):
thing on the horizon, um, and there are a couple
of iterations of that, one of which is actually using
seawater to farm. And when we're not talking about spraying
plants obviously, we're talking like farming shrimp things that this working.
It's like idiocracy where they were using gatorade to water
the plants. Um. Yeah, like growing shrimp, farming shrimp. Um.
(29:49):
Because that protein demand that we were talking about, as
as developing nations get more money and they're gonna they're
gonna want more shrimp. I'll eat more shrimp. Remember when
you were allergic to shrimp? Yes, And I was like,
I am not going to spend the rest of my
life allergic to shrimp. And you figure it out sort
of right, I handled it. Um. There's a Japanese snack
(30:09):
called shrimp chips, and they're like little fried kind of
like French fries, but they're crispy um chips and they're
dusted with shrimp flavoring that include shrimp. And I just
kind of immunotherapy therapy or therapized myself immunize them myself
to them to shrimp so that I could eat them
(30:32):
again and it worked. You know, we should quickly thank
our scallop buddy. Oh, I think that's a great idea, man,
So huge, huge, huge thanks to our pal tog Braun
who just hooked us up, man, I mean hooked us
up with some amazing scallops. Yes, fresh ones. They have
(30:52):
been in the in the water like the day before
we got them, I believe, right. Yes, it was very fresh.
And I think her boat is the downiest day boat
out of main that's her company for sure. Yeah yeah, yeah,
but you can you can order this stuff and like
you can get the best scallops in the world sent
right to your door very quickly. And boy were they good.
I mean they were so fresh, dude, that the first
(31:13):
two three, alright, seventeen scallops I ate or raw, Like
I just ate them. I ate them raw. They were amazing. Yeah,
it was. It's really good. So I strongly recommend them
to hats off. Thanks a lot to I'm not the
biggest raw scalop person, but um, there was a lot
of butter and garlic involved in my scene. Yeah, and
they cooked up so nicely down the perfectly. Uh so, yeah,
(31:35):
thanks for that diversion since we were talking shellfish. But yeah,
farming shrimp for seawater farming. And another is where they
actually have greenhouses built that will you see water that
evaporate uh, the salt out of it into fresh water.
They can sell that salt, which is great and then
have that great delicious fresh water to irrigate their crops. Right,
(31:57):
and then um land uses a big problem to people
are like running out of lane. We need it to
live on and do other stuff on. Some people have said,
well how about this, we'll just grow stuff indoors vertically
rather than outdoors horizontally. I actually have a friend who's
engaged in this endeavor up in Jersey. He broke his teeth,
my friend Matt Um. He broke his teeth, not literally,
(32:20):
but he gained experience working on space lettuce for NASA. UM.
Like he's right, that's that's right. I was like, it
doesn't sound right. He cut his teeth. UM, and he's
an expert in UM like the like light spectrums, like
artificial light spectrums to grow plants in space. It's pretty awesome. Yeah,
(32:42):
it's amazing. Yes, So hey, Matt, should we take another
break and then talk about the other other side of
the coin. Here, hold on, let me think, yes, we'll
be right back, all right. So if we were talking
(33:24):
about all the benefits of consolidation of farms, bigger farms,
automation of farms, future farming, there is another group of
people that have been screaming for years. We don't want
to go that way. We should go back to to
the neat not know within necessary, but we should go
(33:45):
back to one period, oh and practice agro ecology. Uh.
And that's what I was that documentary I saw about
the biggest little farm. These people that moved from l
a too very impossibly or I guess, and probably start
their own farm where everything lives in harmony. There's livestock,
and there's wild animals, and there's pests that they say
(34:06):
are beneficial that they let live. And they really have
tried to figure out this idea that you know, you
can have a small farm that feeds people locally with
giving people fresh food and not transporting it halfway across
the country or the world. And that is the way forward,
not what we're heading towards with four point Oh. Yeah.
(34:27):
People who are proponents of agrocology are looking at the
other proposals for for for auto and they're like, you're
talking about genetically modifying plants so you can grow them
in the desert. Do you really not see that? We've
like we've really lost our way here, like let's figure
out something else. And they're saying like, look, you know,
we've really tried to UM. We tried this green revolution,
(34:52):
which basically the a good definition I saw for the
green revolution is where you take UM ecosystem services, which
is like natural pest control, like predatory insects or the
natural nutrient cycle UM, and you you manipulate them. You
you you create an artificial version of it that you
(35:13):
can control a lot more easily, and you use the
heck out of it to grow the heck out of
some plants. That's the green revolution there, Like we tried this,
it worked for a little while, but now we know
for sure that it is really harmful to the environment,
so we need to dial that back, not double down
on it. And that's UM. That's kind of that. That's
(35:34):
where this there's a tension. Now there's this split, there's
a we've reached a fork in the road, and we're like,
which way do we go. Do we just really keep
hammering this traditional farming because we know that we can
coax um enough food to feed some people or ten
billion people, or do we say no, we actually need
to go the agro ecology route because we have to
(35:56):
take into account basically just as much as our ability
to feed ten billion people, UM, the idea that we're
not harming the earth with our agricultural practices. That's the
split that we're looking at right now while we're trying
to figure out what four datto is going to be. Yeah,
and it seems like and Emily is way way into
this stuff with agroecology for years now, and it seems
(36:18):
like it's really all about the soil and the devastating
effects on the actual soil that UM, I guess the
green Revolution has has caused by all that manipulation. And
she has made an effort just in our little backyard
over the past, like whatever, how long we've been here
fourteen years to reclaim that soil and to make it
(36:42):
good soil again. And we've got great soil now. And
it's uh, it takes a long time because so much
damage has done over so many years. It's not the
kind of thing where you can just be like, all right,
we're gonna stop doing that, and then the soil is
gonna be great again. Right. Um. It takes many, many
years of really caring for that soil to get it
back where it began or as close to it as possible. Yeah,
(37:04):
and in some cases too, when you're talking about what
conventional and agriculture does to the soil as far as
like crop production is concerned, it's never going to get
okay again. It's never going to come back. And so
there's a process in conventional agriculture where you use up
a plot of land and you move on to the
(37:25):
next one, and when you run out of land, you
bring more crop land online into the food production sector.
And that's what you do. You you use up land
until you have to replace it by taking over more land.
That's the current iteration. Agro ecologies like you don't have
to do that if you just treat the soil like Emily.
This is their motto, Um, you where it's going to
(37:46):
be all good like you. You you don't have to
keep replacing land with more land because you don't use
up the land. You actually leave the land better off
than it was before you started. Using it. That to
me is thing that just makes my eyes pop open
and my heart just swell for I grow a college.
He's like, you're actually improving the land. And there have
(38:08):
been studies. I ran across a study of a place
called um white Oak Pastures down in how I can't
remember where it is. It's like south central Georgia, not
too far from albany Um. And they have actually they
they've hired independent researchers to come in and look at
the environmental impact of what they do, which is regenerative grazing.
(38:31):
And the study turned up findings that literally made international news.
That's how eye opening that what they found was. Yes,
so just a little backstory, reginatry Man, I knew I
was going to do that. Regenerative grazing is a very
simple premise. Basically, don't let your livestock eat all the
(38:53):
grass down to the nub where it will probably die,
and then just move them on to another area to
do the same thing. Um, move them more often, they
won't eat down to the nubs. Those plants and those
grasses will grow back even better probably, and you'll have
you know, you, like you said, you won't be using
up the land. So this study they looked at they
(39:17):
wanted to compare like the c O two costs of
industrial beef production, which is something that we've talked about before,
but traditional grazing emits and this is just astounding and awful.
Amidst thirty three pounds of c O two to raise
a single pound of meat. Uh, it's nuts. So you
go to plant based meat, um like a like a
(39:41):
beyond situation, right, which I still haven't tried. I want
to try that. There's a good, impossible and beyond all right,
So these meat alternatives made from plants, they really reduce
that to about three to three and a half to
four pounds of c O two first a single pound.
But at the kok that's good, you're on the right track.
But white oak is actually sequestering CEO two. It's amazing. Yeah.
(40:07):
So if meat alternatives emit about three and a half
kilograms or three and a half pounds of CEO two
per pound of meat alternative, white Oak pastors is raising
beef like like actual beef. And when they do, they
are sinking sequestering three point five pounds of c O
(40:28):
two for every pound of beef that's produced. There's like
having solar power and creating more energy than you use exactly. Yeah,
it's insane. These findings where and they've been like looked
at and studied and looked at again, and everybody's like,
this can't make sense. Apparently some of the UM meat
alternative companies out there were like, you know, this is
(40:50):
all wrong, this can't be right. And they were like,
it's actually right. Regenator and regenerative grazing produces livestock that
actually capture carbon and store it. It's insane. What are
you doing. We're just moving the cows a little more. Yeah,
that's basically it. And then they move them to another
meadow and and like when it's belly high, and then
(41:11):
they do it again. And like here's the thing. The
reason that everybody is not doing this already is because
it's way more expensive to regenera regeneratively graze. UM. If
you look at white Oak Pastures, you can order their
stuff online. Um, it's very expensive. It's not ridiculously expensive.
Like there's definitely like um long established mail order beef
(41:32):
companies that are three or four times of the price.
You know what I mean. It does sound gross, but
mail order beef. But it's some of those companies are
way more expensive, but it's still more than you're going
to go pay if you just go to the grocery
store and get whatever beef they have. But in buying that,
if you can afford it, you're actually helping to save
(41:53):
the earth. Um, it's it's pretty impressive stuff. Well yeah,
and that also helps solve the issue if you need
to feed uh, however, nine billion people but in the
next you know, thirty years. One of the big issues
is like do we even have enough land to do that? Like, well, yeah, dummies,
we might if we don't just use up land and
(42:14):
move on to new land. Because that's a big critics
criticism of regenerative grazing is it requires two point five
times the land that conventional grazing does, which is why
it's so much more expensive. But yeah, if if if
you're not using up the land and having to bring
more land in his crop land, then that issue might
not actually exist. That might not be a problem, right, Yeah,
(42:35):
pretty impressive, super impressive. I think the last thing here
as far as future farming goes as we need to
hit on food waste, which is I mean, if they could,
if they could reduce food waste by thirty that would
be a game changer for feeding the world. I think
right now, it takes a land mass larger than China
(42:55):
to grow food that goes uneaten ultimately une eaten. The
size of China, it's like it's hard to even talk
about without getting like super upset. So food waste also
needs to be an episode that we have to do
because it is just so mind boggling. But from what
I saw, up to fifty of the food that America
(43:18):
produces is thrown away, or if that Americans buy maybe
I'm not quite sure, but in America about thirty in
the world overall, a ton of water is wasted. I
saw as much as um. A quarter of the world's
water is wasted through this wasted food our fresh water
intake um. And if you can just dial back a
(43:42):
significant portion of that food waste um, not only are
you gonna save a lot of money and a lot
of environmental harm, you're gonna feed a lot of people.
Because it's like you said earlier, our foods, food supply
or food chain is globally interconnected. So we make enough
food already for a lot of people, probably everybody. It's
just some people go hungry because we waste so much
(44:04):
food and we're terrible at distributing it equitably. If we
can figure that out, we may not have a problem
at all. And it's possible that agro um ecological farming
could supply food for ten billion people. That's a big one.
There's studies underway right now to figure out just what
kind of gap we're talking about between uh say, organic
(44:26):
or agro ecological crop yields and conventional crop yields. And
for a long time where he's like, yeah, you just
get way more food from conventional farming, and some people
are actually doing the studies and they're finding like, yeah,
that's true in some cases, not true in other cases.
And if we can quantify exactly what the gap is,
we can figure out how to close that gap. And
then yeah, we can just use agro ecology. Yeah, and
(44:48):
I think this, you know, the fork in the road
where we are hopefully what it will look like. It's
not a hard left turn or a hard right turn,
but maybe a gentle turn on both sides that eventually
come back together down the road where there's a mix
of both, where there is precision farming um used in
(45:09):
agroecology because they're not. I mean, I suppose there are
some really back to basics agro uh ecological farmers that,
you know, I want to have an oxen pulling a
plow the Amish. Yeah, probably just them. The point is
they're they're into it, man. I mean, they don't mind
(45:29):
the idea of a robot and in precision weeding and
stuff like that. Uh, it's it's these massive farms and
all this waste is what they're trying to combat. So
hopefully they can there can be a marriage and that
can be the best way forward. Yeah, that's what I'm
hoping to Pretty cool stuff, man, who knew? Great? I
(45:50):
love it, um and we got two episode ideas out
of it. So there you go. Uh, if you want
to know more about the future of farming, to start
reading a if. There's a lot of really interesting stuff
out there. And since I said that, it's time for
a listener mail. This is kind of fitting. Actually this
is about hydrology. Hey, guys, have a PhD in hydrology
(46:14):
and teach hydrology and water resources at a university. One
of the misconceptions I'm constantly battling and my courses is
that water is a renewable resource, which is something we
said in the episode on hydro power, because it's only
renewable if we use it as such. I often use
the money analogies to teach this point to my students.
(46:35):
Imagine your load your local hydrologic water balance is like
having a rather large inheritance, and you are unable to
ever work again or make money. As long as you
live off the interest, you and your family can live
forever without ever working. But if you spend the principle,
you'll eventually run out of money. It's the same with water.
If you only use the renewable water, you won't have
(46:55):
an issue, as Josh noted, But if you lower lake levels,
deplete ground water and melt ice caps, you will eventually
run out of renewable water. You might ask, but it'll
just rain again, right, And that's true, but not enough
to refill the pot or the interest to refill the
bank account. The money isn't gone, it's just in someone
else's pocket. Similarly, the water isn't gone, it's just in
(47:18):
someone else's watershed. Were most likely the salty oceans which
we can't drink uh. That is Dr Pete Whittington, Associate
professor at Brandon University, Dr Pete. Dr Pete. Dr Pete
sounds like one of those people who still continue to
(47:38):
insist that climate change is real even though it's cold outside.
You know, right, smart, Well, thanks a lot, Dr Pete.
We appreciate being set straight. Thank you. Um, and that
is an excellent point. Um. Yeah, I don't I didn't
mean to get across this idea that you know, just
(47:59):
there's water. If we're wearing, we don't need to worry
about water. No, I think you got it mostly right,
he said. Good. I love hearing that. So. Um, you
got anything else from Dr Pete? Nothing else? Okay? Well then, everybody,
if you want to get in touch of this, like
Dr Pete did, you can send us an email. Send
it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
(48:23):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant. Jerry's with us as well,
and we all have a nice They're a hay sticking
out of our teeth. Got a hat on. It's a derby.
(00:27):
Doesn't quite fit right, but is it still a hat?
And I'm wearing overalls with nothing underneath and no shoes
and socks. Have I told you my uh Olan Mills story? No?
I can't not. When I lost my two front teeth,
(00:48):
my mom promptly took me to Olan Mills. And there
is a picture in existence. I'll try and find it
and put it on my Instagram um of me in
front of a like a lazy river scene or a
lake or something, with overall shorts and you know, cut
off overalls, I guess, nothing else on, no shirt, no shoes,
(01:12):
and like, uh, I love to see it. I feel
like I had like a cane pole and maybe a straw. Hateez?
Did they did they have the the the engraving and
stone mountain and as the background? No, thank goodness, I
just it was straight up cosplay it's very embarrassing, but
I'll see if I can find that and throw it
(01:33):
up on Chuck the Podcaster Instagram. You should, Chuck. I
think that would really garner some likes, you know, putting
a few old pictures up there every now and then.
It's fun. That's very cute. Um. So, I guess you're saying,
you're we're talking about wearing nothing but overalls because we're
talking about farming, right, Yeah, I mean that that picture
(01:55):
Basically I learned all I needed to know about farming
that day, which is I'm not cut out for it.
I'm not cut out for it. I am cut out
to be photographed for money. Whoa, Um, that was me
doing my impression of you. Yeah. I didn't get paid.
Uh yeah, I guess that's the opposite. Happened Your mom
(02:15):
paid somebody take pictures of you regardless, Um, none of
that really happens in farming. Maybe people running around with
overalls on probably has something underneath the overalls. But for
the most part, this is a gross misconception of of
what farming is. Especially now that I've done some research
on the current state of farming, We're pretty far from
(02:37):
the whole idea of people running around with hey in
their and their mouths and wearing overalls and nothing. But sure,
I mean, well, it depends on who you are. Like,
have you ever seen and I've talked about it before
the documentary The Biggest Little Farm. Yeah, I think you
have talked about that. I don't remember what episode it
was in there, And we'll get to that. That's coming
(02:59):
up on the the last part of this episode about
agro ecology, but that those are people that are adherents
of bringing it back to what farming used to be,
which was ecologically sound, harmonious with nature, that kind of thing, right,
which makes a tremendous amount of sense. But we'll see
if that's even possible in the future, because here's the thing.
(03:22):
There's a huge um boom in demand for agriculture that
we are on the presiposs of it. Actually, I guess
you could make a pretty good case that we're in
the midst of it right now. Um, by the year
there's a predicted somewhere around nine to ten billion. It's
a pretty big gap. But let's say nine to ten
(03:43):
billion people are expected to be running around on planet Earth, right,
and all those people are going to need to be fed.
But the thing is is we're not exactly sure how
we're going to reach that increased demand. And because there
is a study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of
(04:04):
the u M that said that we're basically going to
have to increase food production UM compared to two thousand
seven levels by seventy to feed all those people. And
that's that's if we hit the low and the nine
billion UM in population by Yeah, and you mentioned agriculture, Um,
we're also talking meat in protein because not only is
(04:27):
the population increasing, but income is on the rise worldwide,
especially in developing countries. And as you are developing country
that gets a little more money in your pocket as individuals,
you want to eat more meat in protein. So um,
I think they said global meat consumption is going to
arise by about sevents. Well, yeah, and when you're talking
(04:51):
about meat um consumption as far as agriculture goes, like,
you're talking about agriculture times too, because not only do
you have to use all those inputs to grow the
cattle themselves, the livestock themselves, so um you can eat them,
you have to feed them to get them ready to
be eaten, right, So you have to grow the food
(05:13):
to feed to the cattle that you're going to grow
that you're going to eventually eat. So there's a lot
of agriculture that's going to have to be going on. Um.
But here's the thing. Agriculture has handled this before. There
was a time you and I have talked about countless times, um,
the Green Revolution back in the early mid twentieth century.
(05:34):
There are a lot of people saying, UM, we're not
exactly sure that agriculture is going to be able to
keep pace with the growing population. And we think probably
about a billion people are going to starve. And that
may have happened, we will never know, but we know
that it didn't happen thanks to the green revolution that
was hastened by scientists like Norman Borlog. Yeah, we've been
(05:58):
talking about that guy for a year. And the irony
of the green revolution is is today's terminology. You might
think that has something to do with, um, environmentally sound practices.
It was kind of the opposite of that in a
lot of ways. Uh, they've meant green just like a
lot of plants. Uh, it was really harmful to the environment.
It did feed a lot of people, and there's a
(06:20):
lot of mixed um mixed reviews on Yelp about the
green revolution. I guess, uh, that's an easier way to
say controversy because what happened is a lot of the
greenhouse gas emissions that we see uh in the world
today come from food production. We've talked about methane coming
from cowpoots before, We've talked about it's real big problem.
(06:46):
We've talked about deforestation. Um obviously transportation getting this food
and transporting it, you know, because the idea we kind
of went away from the idea of local farms feeding
regions into shipping food across the globe if we need to,
and that's just a lot of pollution. I think raising
livestock and fish accounts for about of agricultures greenhouse emissions,
(07:11):
with livestock being about Yeah, so this whole So we've
we've reached this an inflection point that really resembles the
last inflection point where Okay, we're about to have a
big increase in population. We need to make sure that
agriculture can keep up with food production to feed everybody,
or else we're gonna have big problems. But this time
(07:32):
there's an added twist and that we know the last
thing we did kind of wreck to the environment. So
now we have to figure out, Okay, how are we
going to meet this challenge this time without further wrecking
the environment and then maybe even figuring out a way
to um help the environment through food production. That's kind
of where we're at right now. And agriculture has gone
(07:53):
through different iterations, and right now supposedly we're in agriculture
three doto And what every but he's trying to figure
out is what comes next? What's agriculture for dotto? Yeah?
One one point oh? You say dot? Yeah, okay, one
point oh was from Neolithic to the nineteen twenties. So
that was boy, that had a good long run, didn't it. Yeah,
(08:17):
that's a good long stretch, a very good long stretch.
But that included a lot of labor from human hands
and animal hoofs uh two point oh? Was that green
revolution we were talking about? Three point I was about
ten or eleven years ago when big data kind of
came in to help maximize yields. And it's uh, they're
(08:39):
saying like four point needs to start happening now, and
sort of is We're just not exactly sure what the
final iteration is gonna look like yeah, and a lot
of the stuff that's going on in three Datto is
going to make an appearance in four Duto. But it's
gonna be that's a way to say it. Sometimes points
so yeah, of course, although it reminds me. Have you
watched Cobra kai Uh? We watched the first like four
(09:01):
or five episodes and then we're like, I get it.
Same here. Um, But that one where Johnny's handing out
flyers for his new website, He's like, check out this
cool website. H T T P colon slash slash w
w W period Cobra guy period c O M. They
(09:25):
just spelled it out while he was handing out a flocker.
But he says period. He didn't say dot. That's really funny.
Well two period of three periodo he uh it was.
That was great. Yeah, it was a great premise that
they really pulled off for a little while there. So
now whenever you say to Dot, oh, I'll say do
you have a problem, Mr Clark, Yeah, and I'll say
(09:48):
no mercy, no mercy, Yeah, okay, Um, that's the new
response to that question. But you don't say it like that.
You don't go no, mercy. Oh you don't say it, director,
No mercy. Uh, okay, let me try keep them ready.
No mercy. Very intimidating. Thank you. Where were we? We
(10:14):
were talking about what four dotto is going to look like? Yeah,
because here's the deal. Uh, farmers themselves, the human beings
are getting older. Um, farmers over sixty five years old
out number uh those under forty five years old by
two to one, actually a little more than two dot
one to one dot one. Know those are Colin's my friend.
(10:38):
Know there's a dot to dot one. Oh man, I
feel like this is gonna happen. Um. So one of
the first kind of things that people think may happen,
and that we're already seeing some is consolidation of farms.
Instead of a lot of medium, too small sized farms,
(10:59):
how about few are really big farms. And you know
that's already kind of been happening. Yeah. And like in
a normal industry, let's say the kazoo manufacturing industry, if
like the kazoo makers were way old and there weren't
very many young kazoo makers, that wouldn't fare very well
for the kazoo industry, but no one would really care.
(11:19):
We wouldn't miss kazoos all that much, would be Okay,
farming does not really fall within that same category as kazoos,
Like we need food. So rather than farming just going away,
they're just going to figure out how to consolidate it
with fewer, younger farmers with bigger farms under their belt, right,
(11:40):
which you know, if you think there's fewer farmers, so
you consolidate the farms. That makes sense, But you're like,
you still need people because these farmers are getting older
and ostensibly, you know, farm hands are getting older as well.
But here's where uh four dot four period oh comes
in is robots. As John Hodgman would say, yeah, oh man,
(12:05):
I didn't hear it in any other way every time
I read it. Yeah, because there's a lot of inefficiencies
in traditional farming with farm hands. I mean, just one
example is when you fertilize an area. You know, you
can fertilize like a platt, but you fertilize that whole plat.
If there's a part of that plat that doesn't need fertilizing,
(12:26):
it's probably gonna get fertilized anyway, just because you know,
they just run the fertilizer over that area, right exactly.
It's just that's just what is the most efficient. And
as we'll see, like that's a that's a real problem.
That's sad that that's the current way to do it,
but that's conventional farming practices. You just fertilize the whole
field and go on and do something else, because there's
(12:49):
a million other things that need to be done as well.
But one of the things, um that's going to be
uh kind of saved in that way by by robots
is um They're going to take these different steps that
are involved in UM farm work and kind of um
break them down into uh, um, what's the word I'm
(13:12):
looking for, chuck where where you know, Oh, specialties. So
a robot specializes in a certain task or whatever. And
because you'll have a bunch of different robots they doing
the same task, they'll be able to kind of give
more personal tailored care to the to the plants. Say
like some plants need fertilizer, those plants will get fertilizer.
Plant doesn't need fertilizer, it's not going to get fertilizer.
(13:34):
And that's going to save a lot of UM inputs.
Is kind of what you talk about when you're in
talking agriculture UM, which kind of is generally a good thing,
not just financially, but when it comes to the environment
as we'll see. Yeah, and you know, you think about
a tractor that requires a human to drive that tractor. Uh,
they already have tractors that can drive themselves with GPS
(13:58):
accuracy involved. And you know that's been going on for
a little while now. And the idea I think is UM.
And you know, some of these tractors are something called
the lettuce bot, which is kind of cool, where basically
have a tractor at least that's sort of the current iteration,
and on the back of that tractor is a big
row of I mean, we call them robots. It's not
(14:20):
like you know, George Jetson type of stuff. A robotis
just means it's a mechanical, you know, automated system. Right,
it's not they're not looking for a husband like. So
the lettuce bot is pulled along behind the tractor and
it's got you know, just a big row of little
robots that can do everything from UM kind of custom
(14:41):
fertilization to picking out a weed using the same technology
that they use in facial recognition like there's a ragweed
or something, let's get rid of just that weed instead
of like let's just spray the whole field with round
up or whatever. Uh. And it's you know, it's going
to increase efficiencies. And I think that's the first iteration.
(15:01):
And what they're looking at in the future is instead
of even a big tractor that still costs a lot
of money, Yeah, like hundreds of thousands of dollars for
a new track. I think, like it doesn't really dawn
on city slickers how incredibly expensive farm equipment is. Yeah,
those big, big tractors, not like you're sort of fun tractor. No,
(15:22):
not a fun tractor, sure, that's like fifty grand, who cares,
but like a really big tractor. Yeah, it's a lot
of money. Um. So I think the idea is, or
at least what I saw, there's conceptual drawings of smaller
uh robot tractors that are I don't know, it looked
like the size of like a like a six foot
folding table or something just kind of going over like
(15:43):
a row of lettuce, Like it's that it's in charge
of that one row. Probably, Yeah, But what I wonder
is how expensive are those and do you have to
get fifty of those to equal one tractor? And how
does it suss out financially? I mean, I'm sure that
like there's a maximum number that you would possibly need,
or else you're like, I have more than I can use.
(16:03):
And then you have you have a farm that like
doesn't make quite as much money as another farm, so
they make do with half the number of robots, and
that maybe they have to supplement that with humans or whatever,
um or it takes longer for that to be done,
or they can grow less lettuce. But I'm sure that
like there's from what I read, there's a price point
(16:24):
where like having robots is going to be financially way
better than having to sink hunt several hundred grand into
a new tract or even like a hundred and fifty
grand for a use tractor. And then the other thing,
and this is really important to number one, you don't
need a human to drive these things, which frees the
human up to do other things, or you don't have
to pay the human anymore, So that's gonna save you
(16:46):
some money. And then secondly, um, if one of those
robots breaks down, you can still work all the other rows.
If the tractor breaks down, You're you're done. You have
to wait until the try just fixed, and then all
of that work has to wait. This is just one
single say row that isn't getting attended to right then
(17:07):
while that one robot's broken down. So that's a huge
advantage right there. Yeah, and you can just tell robot
number two to scoot over and cover the ground that
robot number one is missing exactly, and he's like, I
gotta pull a double Shut up. You're a machine. You
can't talk. The other thing robots can potentially do is harvest.
Harvesting is very labor intensive, and it's also kind of inefficient,
(17:31):
especially when it comes to something like um, maybe like strawberries,
which you harvest one time during the year, and you
know there there's still a little bit of leeway in there.
Like it's it's not an exact science in that some
of those plants will have ripe fruit before you go
to harvest and it'll rot and drop off. Some of
(17:51):
them may need to wait a little bit and ripen afterward,
so you're wasting a lot of fruit there on the ground.
And robot harvesters would just constantly kind of patrol these
rosa plants and harvests the berries when they're ready to
be harvested, right, which would make it a lot more
money for the farmers who are growing that stuff. It's
pretty pretty awesome. And then as we kind of evolve
(18:14):
further and further along in our technology UM and we
finally reach the capability of nanotechnology, one of the things
that they are hoping that nanobots, which are currently just
hypothetical robots on the scale of UM like a strand
of DNA or an atom or something, they'll be able
to manipulate matter about UM like on that scale. So
(18:37):
what they're hoping for is UM with agriculture, nanobots will
eventually be able to deliver nutrients directly to the roots
of a plant, like right when it needs it, not
not from some humans saying like, hey, nanoboto, go take
this nutrient, this little bit of nitrogen over to that
plant right there. It will be all of this stuff
will be guided and directed by computers that are paying
(19:00):
attention to the plants through sensors and then directing the
nanobots to go take this nutrient to this particular plant
because it needs it right now. And this kind of
this kind of attention. This tailored to individualize attention is
what's called precision farming, and that seems to be something
that's looming on the horizon that will be a big
part of for for period. Oh yeah, I think the
(19:24):
NANO is like serious future farming when we get to
that point, But a lot of this stuff is on
the imminent horizon. Um Nutrient waste is a really big
deal and a big problem. I think about six of
fertilizer that you apply to a field is lost to
run off. So there's a big cost factor there that
(19:44):
you're losing and it just rereaks havoc on water sheds
that are nearby, which we talked about a little bit
in the watershed episode. And fertilizer production and then transporting
that where you need it is a big, big part
of CEO two emissions. I think five to eleven kilograms
of CEO two are admitted through the lifestyle life cycle
(20:06):
of one keg I'm sorry, one kilogram gig tepe kega.
That fertilizer man keg stand uh one kilogram of fertilizer.
And once you fertilize the plant, Uh, it gets in
that soil and these microbes you know, have to convert
that fertilizer into something that's useful. And when it does that,
(20:26):
it emits uh n O two or I'm sorry in
two O nitrous oxide and that's number three behind CEO
two and methane is a big problem gas. Right, So
there's a lot to be saved by by cutting down
on that six of waste fertilizer. A lot of stuff
would be helped by that. And the more you can
precisely tailor agriculture, UM, the less waste you're going to have.
(20:51):
And I would say that UM for anybody who's interested
in hearing how colossally wrong deploying nanobots into crop land
could go, I would direct you to UM my tempart
series The End of the World with Josh Clark, specifically
the AI episode. It's pretty good, kind of eye opening.
I think that's my favorite one. Actually. Oh, thanks Chuck.
(21:11):
All right, so let's take a break and we'll come
back and talk about big data right after this. Okay,
(21:42):
we're back, and we're talking about Chuck big data and
three period oh, which was already or is already using
a lot of data. UM. We talked about the GPS
guided tractors that have been around for a while. Um.
They do use things like drones and satellites to get
(22:04):
like literal big pictures of farms that can be really
useful UM in determining like areas that are patchy or dry,
or hey, this looks ready for harvest. But they're gonna
bring light into the mix, which is something I know
we've talked about before. L I D A R. When
do we talk about that? I don't know. It might
(22:25):
have been. It's used most famously for m mapping dense
jungle ruins. UM. Like. I was reading about it in
this book called The Lost City of the Monkey God
by Douglas Preston, which I actually heard about in researching
our episode on Finn Treasure, because Douglas Preston was the
friend of Forest Finn, who UM vouched for having seen
(22:50):
the treasure in person before his closet, And I was like, Oh,
that book sounds pretty interesting. I went and read it,
and it's really interesting. But he talks a lot about
light are being used to map these these these ruins
that have been overgrown by jungle that you normally would
never be able to see overhead, but the light are
UM is able to basically get beams of lasers through
(23:13):
the brakes and like leaves and all that in the
canopy to hit the ground below and then bounce back up.
And so you get a picture of the understory too,
which would come and handy big time for for crops,
especially tall crops that are growing closely together, like say corn. Right,
So you bundle all that together in a handy little
(23:33):
app for Mr. Future Farmer and Mrs Future Farmer or
Miss Future Farmer or a Miss Future Farmer or dr
Future Farmer or future farmer, they or they the future farmers.
That's that's great. I think we covered all the base.
I think so. Um, So you have an app there,
and machine learning becomes more intelligent, the Internet of Things
(23:58):
kind of gets a little more robot and then you
have farmers that don't have to constantly make these tiny
little decisions, these micro decisions that they have to make
every day about keeping their farm healthy. They can kind
of rely on this AI technology to figure it out
and do it for them. Uh, and I guess they
can spend their time building future weapons to fight the
(24:21):
eventual robot uprising. That's right. But I mean, like think
about it, all of this stuff is just using things
that are popping up in other sectors right now, machine learning, UM,
sensors that are connected to the Internet of Things, and
then integration of all this stuff that UM to oversee
this so that the farmer doesn't have to make these decisions.
(24:42):
And when you combine all this stuff together, you have
like a farm that could be humming along UM just
an absolute peak performance with minimal inputs that are delivered
just at just the right time and just the right amount,
with minimal waste UM, with the farmer having to make
minimal decisions. And if you take this to its you know,
(25:04):
eventual conclusion. I mean the there won't be like young
farmers running and you know, huge farms. It'll be like
somebody who owns the farm. But really it's like an
AI that's overseeing the entire farm, communicating with everything through
the Internet of Things, directing this nanobot over there, UM
this let us bot over here. And then potentially is
(25:26):
we grow as a UM an advanced society, there may
just be one AI that we we rely on to
run all the farms everywhere around the world and then
handle distribution and all of that stuff. So I don't know,
maybe that's agriculture five auto. Who knows, maybe we'll never
get there. There's some people that certainly hope we that's
(25:47):
not the direction we go. But we'll talk about them
in a little bit. Yeah. Like if you're screaming right now,
how awful this sounds, Well, we'll get to you later,
don't worry. UM. Another part of four point oh is
um trying to grow crops where it doesn't seem like
you should be able to grow crops. The desert is
(26:07):
obviously one of those places. Uh. Saludias are already investing
a lot in trying to UM figure out the genomic
codes or genomic genomic. I think both work. One seems British.
Well it's a genome, so it's probably genomic gentemic. That's
how the British had saved the genomic codes. Uh. These
(26:31):
plants that can withstand the desert conditions and figure out
how to grow stuff there. And this is kind of
where we wander gently into GMOs, which I think we've
have been dodging this one as a full topic for
a while to do it, we should at some point
because it is very controversial. It has a bad rap,
(26:51):
some people say, rightfully, so it has a bad rap
I think about Americans say they think GMOs um are
safe to eat, which is, you know, pretty pretty decent
minority there. Science says that they are safe to eat.
But for all this sort of bluster about GMOs, they
(27:13):
haven't really done a lot with GMOs yet, except for
a couple of a few little kind of dirty, underhanded things. Well, yeah,
like um creating patented um seeds that grow plants that
don't produce more seeds, so farmers are forced to buy
the seeds every single year. Yeah, that's a big one.
(27:34):
There's another one that only responds or responds best to
a specific brand of pesticide UM, so you have to
buy that brand of pesticide, which happens to be manufactured
by the same company that owns the patent on the plant.
It's kind of shady stuff like that. The thing is,
it's not like that's all they've tried to do. They've
(27:55):
also tried to have breakthroughs in you know, um like
plants that can withstand like horrible droughts, and they haven't
been able to break through in that that sense, or
plants that you know, produce double the yield with minimal inputs.
They haven't had that breakthrough. That doesn't mean they're not
going to break through that there won't be huge advances
(28:16):
and plants science. But even if we do reach that point, like,
there's going to have to also be like a public
information campaign that basically says like this stuff will not
mutate your children, it's safe to eat, it won't make
you glow. And there's definitely an enormous amount of fear
of science from what I can tell involved in GMOs.
(28:37):
I haven't done the research yet, so my opinion might
change when we actually do the episode, but from the
minimal research I did on it, it seems like a
fear of science. And as far as science is concerned,
it's it's everything we know about it, it's it's safe
to eat. Um. I don't know that will remain to
be seen. Let me do some more research first before
you quote me on that. Yeah, and I think of
(29:00):
the bad rep too. Is just like we were talking
about the couple of three uses so far that have
allowed certain companies to really take advantage of the situation.
Let's just yeah, it's not like giant mega corporations have
you know, garnered a lot of trust from the general
public over the years and in fact have squandered it
pretty pretty efficiently. Actually. Uh So, seawater farming is another
(29:24):
thing on the horizon, um, and there are a couple
of iterations of that, one of which is actually using
seawater to farm. And when we're not talking about spraying
plants obviously, we're talking like farming shrimp things that this working.
It's like idiocracy where they were using gatorade to water
the plants. Um. Yeah, like growing shrimp, farming shrimp. Um.
(29:49):
Because that protein demand that we were talking about, as
as developing nations get more money and they're gonna they're
gonna want more shrimp. I'll eat more shrimp. Remember when
you were allergic to shrimp? Yes, And I was like,
I am not going to spend the rest of my
life allergic to shrimp. And you figure it out sort
of right, I handled it. Um. There's a Japanese snack
(30:09):
called shrimp chips, and they're like little fried kind of
like French fries, but they're crispy um chips and they're
dusted with shrimp flavoring that include shrimp. And I just
kind of immunotherapy therapy or therapized myself immunize them myself
to them to shrimp so that I could eat them
(30:32):
again and it worked. You know, we should quickly thank
our scallop buddy. Oh, I think that's a great idea, man,
So huge, huge, huge thanks to our pal tog Braun
who just hooked us up, man, I mean hooked us
up with some amazing scallops. Yes, fresh ones. They have
(30:52):
been in the in the water like the day before
we got them, I believe, right. Yes, it was very fresh.
And I think her boat is the downiest day boat
out of main that's her company for sure. Yeah yeah, yeah,
but you can you can order this stuff and like
you can get the best scallops in the world sent
right to your door very quickly. And boy were they good.
I mean they were so fresh, dude, that the first
(31:13):
two three, alright, seventeen scallops I ate or raw, Like
I just ate them. I ate them raw. They were amazing. Yeah,
it was. It's really good. So I strongly recommend them
to hats off. Thanks a lot to I'm not the
biggest raw scalop person, but um, there was a lot
of butter and garlic involved in my scene. Yeah, and
they cooked up so nicely down the perfectly. Uh so, yeah,
(31:35):
thanks for that diversion since we were talking shellfish. But yeah,
farming shrimp for seawater farming. And another is where they
actually have greenhouses built that will you see water that
evaporate uh, the salt out of it into fresh water.
They can sell that salt, which is great and then
have that great delicious fresh water to irrigate their crops. Right,
(31:57):
and then um land uses a big problem to people
are like running out of lane. We need it to
live on and do other stuff on. Some people have said,
well how about this, we'll just grow stuff indoors vertically
rather than outdoors horizontally. I actually have a friend who's
engaged in this endeavor up in Jersey. He broke his teeth,
my friend Matt Um. He broke his teeth, not literally,
(32:20):
but he gained experience working on space lettuce for NASA. UM.
Like he's right, that's that's right. I was like, it
doesn't sound right. He cut his teeth. UM, and he's
an expert in UM like the like light spectrums, like
artificial light spectrums to grow plants in space. It's pretty awesome. Yeah,
(32:42):
it's amazing. Yes, So hey, Matt, should we take another
break and then talk about the other other side of
the coin. Here, hold on, let me think, yes, we'll
be right back, all right. So if we were talking
(33:24):
about all the benefits of consolidation of farms, bigger farms,
automation of farms, future farming, there is another group of
people that have been screaming for years. We don't want
to go that way. We should go back to to
the neat not know within necessary, but we should go
(33:45):
back to one period, oh and practice agro ecology. Uh.
And that's what I was that documentary I saw about
the biggest little farm. These people that moved from l
a too very impossibly or I guess, and probably start
their own farm where everything lives in harmony. There's livestock,
and there's wild animals, and there's pests that they say
(34:06):
are beneficial that they let live. And they really have
tried to figure out this idea that you know, you
can have a small farm that feeds people locally with
giving people fresh food and not transporting it halfway across
the country or the world. And that is the way forward,
not what we're heading towards with four point Oh. Yeah.
(34:27):
People who are proponents of agrocology are looking at the
other proposals for for for auto and they're like, you're
talking about genetically modifying plants so you can grow them
in the desert. Do you really not see that? We've
like we've really lost our way here, like let's figure
out something else. And they're saying like, look, you know,
we've really tried to UM. We tried this green revolution,
(34:52):
which basically the a good definition I saw for the
green revolution is where you take UM ecosystem services, which
is like natural pest control, like predatory insects or the
natural nutrient cycle UM, and you you manipulate them. You
you you create an artificial version of it that you
(35:13):
can control a lot more easily, and you use the
heck out of it to grow the heck out of
some plants. That's the green revolution there, Like we tried this,
it worked for a little while, but now we know
for sure that it is really harmful to the environment,
so we need to dial that back, not double down
on it. And that's UM. That's kind of that. That's
(35:34):
where this there's a tension. Now there's this split, there's
a we've reached a fork in the road, and we're like,
which way do we go. Do we just really keep
hammering this traditional farming because we know that we can
coax um enough food to feed some people or ten
billion people, or do we say no, we actually need
to go the agro ecology route because we have to
(35:56):
take into account basically just as much as our ability
to feed ten billion people, UM, the idea that we're
not harming the earth with our agricultural practices. That's the
split that we're looking at right now while we're trying
to figure out what four datto is going to be. Yeah,
and it seems like and Emily is way way into
this stuff with agroecology for years now, and it seems
(36:18):
like it's really all about the soil and the devastating
effects on the actual soil that UM, I guess the
green Revolution has has caused by all that manipulation. And
she has made an effort just in our little backyard
over the past, like whatever, how long we've been here
fourteen years to reclaim that soil and to make it
(36:42):
good soil again. And we've got great soil now. And
it's uh, it takes a long time because so much
damage has done over so many years. It's not the
kind of thing where you can just be like, all right,
we're gonna stop doing that, and then the soil is
gonna be great again. Right. Um. It takes many, many
years of really caring for that soil to get it
back where it began or as close to it as possible. Yeah,
(37:04):
and in some cases too, when you're talking about what
conventional and agriculture does to the soil as far as
like crop production is concerned, it's never going to get
okay again. It's never going to come back. And so
there's a process in conventional agriculture where you use up
a plot of land and you move on to the
(37:25):
next one, and when you run out of land, you
bring more crop land online into the food production sector.
And that's what you do. You you use up land
until you have to replace it by taking over more land.
That's the current iteration. Agro ecologies like you don't have
to do that if you just treat the soil like Emily.
This is their motto, Um, you where it's going to
(37:46):
be all good like you. You you don't have to
keep replacing land with more land because you don't use
up the land. You actually leave the land better off
than it was before you started. Using it. That to
me is thing that just makes my eyes pop open
and my heart just swell for I grow a college.
He's like, you're actually improving the land. And there have
(38:08):
been studies. I ran across a study of a place
called um white Oak Pastures down in how I can't
remember where it is. It's like south central Georgia, not
too far from albany Um. And they have actually they
they've hired independent researchers to come in and look at
the environmental impact of what they do, which is regenerative grazing.
(38:31):
And the study turned up findings that literally made international news.
That's how eye opening that what they found was. Yes,
so just a little backstory, reginatry Man, I knew I
was going to do that. Regenerative grazing is a very
simple premise. Basically, don't let your livestock eat all the
(38:53):
grass down to the nub where it will probably die,
and then just move them on to another area to
do the same thing. Um, move them more often, they
won't eat down to the nubs. Those plants and those
grasses will grow back even better probably, and you'll have
you know, you, like you said, you won't be using
up the land. So this study they looked at they
(39:17):
wanted to compare like the c O two costs of
industrial beef production, which is something that we've talked about before,
but traditional grazing emits and this is just astounding and awful.
Amidst thirty three pounds of c O two to raise
a single pound of meat. Uh, it's nuts. So you
go to plant based meat, um like a like a
(39:41):
beyond situation, right, which I still haven't tried. I want
to try that. There's a good, impossible and beyond all right,
So these meat alternatives made from plants, they really reduce
that to about three to three and a half to
four pounds of c O two first a single pound.
But at the kok that's good, you're on the right track.
But white oak is actually sequestering CEO two. It's amazing. Yeah.
(40:07):
So if meat alternatives emit about three and a half
kilograms or three and a half pounds of CEO two
per pound of meat alternative, white Oak pastors is raising
beef like like actual beef. And when they do, they
are sinking sequestering three point five pounds of c O
(40:28):
two for every pound of beef that's produced. There's like
having solar power and creating more energy than you use exactly. Yeah,
it's insane. These findings where and they've been like looked
at and studied and looked at again, and everybody's like,
this can't make sense. Apparently some of the UM meat
alternative companies out there were like, you know, this is
(40:50):
all wrong, this can't be right. And they were like,
it's actually right. Regenator and regenerative grazing produces livestock that
actually capture carbon and store it. It's insane. What are
you doing. We're just moving the cows a little more. Yeah,
that's basically it. And then they move them to another
meadow and and like when it's belly high, and then
(41:11):
they do it again. And like here's the thing. The
reason that everybody is not doing this already is because
it's way more expensive to regenera regeneratively graze. UM. If
you look at white Oak Pastures, you can order their
stuff online. Um, it's very expensive. It's not ridiculously expensive.
Like there's definitely like um long established mail order beef
(41:32):
companies that are three or four times of the price.
You know what I mean. It does sound gross, but
mail order beef. But it's some of those companies are
way more expensive, but it's still more than you're going
to go pay if you just go to the grocery
store and get whatever beef they have. But in buying that,
if you can afford it, you're actually helping to save
(41:53):
the earth. Um, it's it's pretty impressive stuff. Well yeah,
and that also helps solve the issue if you need
to feed uh, however, nine billion people but in the
next you know, thirty years. One of the big issues
is like do we even have enough land to do that? Like, well, yeah, dummies,
we might if we don't just use up land and
(42:14):
move on to new land. Because that's a big critics
criticism of regenerative grazing is it requires two point five
times the land that conventional grazing does, which is why
it's so much more expensive. But yeah, if if if
you're not using up the land and having to bring
more land in his crop land, then that issue might
not actually exist. That might not be a problem, right, Yeah,
(42:35):
pretty impressive, super impressive. I think the last thing here
as far as future farming goes as we need to
hit on food waste, which is I mean, if they could,
if they could reduce food waste by thirty that would
be a game changer for feeding the world. I think
right now, it takes a land mass larger than China
(42:55):
to grow food that goes uneaten ultimately une eaten. The
size of China, it's like it's hard to even talk
about without getting like super upset. So food waste also
needs to be an episode that we have to do
because it is just so mind boggling. But from what
I saw, up to fifty of the food that America
(43:18):
produces is thrown away, or if that Americans buy maybe
I'm not quite sure, but in America about thirty in
the world overall, a ton of water is wasted. I
saw as much as um. A quarter of the world's
water is wasted through this wasted food our fresh water
intake um. And if you can just dial back a
(43:42):
significant portion of that food waste um, not only are
you gonna save a lot of money and a lot
of environmental harm, you're gonna feed a lot of people.
Because it's like you said earlier, our foods, food supply
or food chain is globally interconnected. So we make enough
food already for a lot of people, probably everybody. It's
just some people go hungry because we waste so much
(44:04):
food and we're terrible at distributing it equitably. If we
can figure that out, we may not have a problem
at all. And it's possible that agro um ecological farming
could supply food for ten billion people. That's a big one.
There's studies underway right now to figure out just what
kind of gap we're talking about between uh say, organic
(44:26):
or agro ecological crop yields and conventional crop yields. And
for a long time where he's like, yeah, you just
get way more food from conventional farming, and some people
are actually doing the studies and they're finding like, yeah,
that's true in some cases, not true in other cases.
And if we can quantify exactly what the gap is,
we can figure out how to close that gap. And
then yeah, we can just use agro ecology. Yeah, and
(44:48):
I think this, you know, the fork in the road
where we are hopefully what it will look like. It's
not a hard left turn or a hard right turn,
but maybe a gentle turn on both sides that eventually
come back together down the road where there's a mix
of both, where there is precision farming um used in
(45:09):
agroecology because they're not. I mean, I suppose there are
some really back to basics agro uh ecological farmers that,
you know, I want to have an oxen pulling a
plow the Amish. Yeah, probably just them. The point is
they're they're into it, man. I mean, they don't mind
(45:29):
the idea of a robot and in precision weeding and
stuff like that. Uh, it's it's these massive farms and
all this waste is what they're trying to combat. So
hopefully they can there can be a marriage and that
can be the best way forward. Yeah, that's what I'm
hoping to Pretty cool stuff, man, who knew? Great? I
(45:50):
love it, um and we got two episode ideas out
of it. So there you go. Uh, if you want
to know more about the future of farming, to start
reading a if. There's a lot of really interesting stuff
out there. And since I said that, it's time for
a listener mail. This is kind of fitting. Actually this
is about hydrology. Hey, guys, have a PhD in hydrology
(46:14):
and teach hydrology and water resources at a university. One
of the misconceptions I'm constantly battling and my courses is
that water is a renewable resource, which is something we
said in the episode on hydro power, because it's only
renewable if we use it as such. I often use
the money analogies to teach this point to my students.
(46:35):
Imagine your load your local hydrologic water balance is like
having a rather large inheritance, and you are unable to
ever work again or make money. As long as you
live off the interest, you and your family can live
forever without ever working. But if you spend the principle,
you'll eventually run out of money. It's the same with water.
If you only use the renewable water, you won't have
(46:55):
an issue, as Josh noted, But if you lower lake levels,
deplete ground water and melt ice caps, you will eventually
run out of renewable water. You might ask, but it'll
just rain again, right, And that's true, but not enough
to refill the pot or the interest to refill the
bank account. The money isn't gone, it's just in someone
else's pocket. Similarly, the water isn't gone, it's just in
(47:18):
someone else's watershed. Were most likely the salty oceans which
we can't drink uh. That is Dr Pete Whittington, Associate
professor at Brandon University, Dr Pete. Dr Pete. Dr Pete
sounds like one of those people who still continue to
(47:38):
insist that climate change is real even though it's cold outside.
You know, right, smart, Well, thanks a lot, Dr Pete.
We appreciate being set straight. Thank you. Um, and that
is an excellent point. Um. Yeah, I don't I didn't
mean to get across this idea that you know, just
(47:59):
there's water. If we're wearing, we don't need to worry
about water. No, I think you got it mostly right,
he said. Good. I love hearing that. So. Um, you
got anything else from Dr Pete? Nothing else? Okay? Well then, everybody,
if you want to get in touch of this, like
Dr Pete did, you can send us an email. Send
it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
(48:23):
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Josh Clark
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