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