What Is The Best Shape For A Farm?
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 27 сен 2024
- This video was made in partnership with Gates Ventures.
The shape of a farm can tell you a surprising amount about the land it's on and the people that use it.
LEARN MORE
**************
To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
- Central pivot irrigation: an irrigation system that moves in a circular pattern around a central pivot point
- Contour farming: tilling sloped land along lines of consistent elevation in order to conserve rainwater and to reduce soil losses from erosion
- Strip cropping: partitioning a field into long, narrow strips which are alternated in a crop rotation system
- Terracing: a method of farming consisting of building platforms along a slope
At 3:10 we show a collage of Google Earth images from the video. Here are the coordinates for each (from left to right and top to bottom):
1: 1°15'60.0"S 37°24'11.5"E
2: 1°15'40.8"S 37°23'57.2"E
3: 7°51'04.2"S 61°35'47.1"W
4: 32°53'48.7"S 71°21'33.4"W
5: 38°53'11.2"N 35°36'11.4"E
6: 25°09'55.7"N 55°35'09.2"E
7: 37°11'37.0"N 26°47'45.7"E
8: 42°50'39.1"N 143°03'10.9"E
9: 53°58'24.5"N 0°44'01.8"W
10: 16°37'22.1"S 62°54'38.5"W
11: 46°58'13.1"N 70°51'28.5"W
12: 27°10'19.5"N 81°48'21.2"W
13: 25°48'55.2"N 110°09'02.3"E
14: 43°39'27.2"N 90°55'17.7"W
15: 28°58'14.4"S 23°55'12.6"E
16. 24°08'14.0"N 23°13'17.0"E
17. 25°48'20.4"N 110°08'57.6"E
18: 43°44'38.1"N 141°52'07.6"E
SUPPORT MINUTEEARTH
**************************
If you like what we do, you can help us!:
- Become our patron: / minuteearth
- Share this video with your friends and family
- Leave us a comment (we read them!)
CREDITS
*********
Kate Yoshida | Script Writer, Narrator and Director
Sarah Berman | Illustration, Video Editing and Animation
Nathaniel Schroeder | Music
MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
neptunestudios...
OUR STAFF
************
Lizah van der Aart • Sarah Berman • Cameron Duke
Arcadi Garcia i Rius • David Goldenberg • Melissa Hayes
Alex Reich • Henry Reich • Peter Reich
Ever Salazar • Leonardo Souza • Kate Yoshida
OUR LINKS
************
Merch | dftba.com/minut...
MinuteEarth Explains Book | minuteearth.co...
RUclips | / minuteearth
TikTok | / minuteearth
Twitter | / minuteearth
Instagram | / minute_earth
Facebook | / minuteearth
Website | minuteearth.com
Apple Podcasts| podcasts.apple...
REFERENCES
**************
Hazlett, R. & Peck, J. (2018) An Image Reconnaissance: Agricultural Patterns and Related Environmental Impacts Viewed From Space. Environmental Science. doi.org/10.109...
NASA Earth Observatory, 2022. earthobservato...
Oksanen, T (2013). Shape-describing indices for agricultural field plots and their relationship to operational efficiency. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 98, 252-259. doi.org/10.101...
Pulliam, A. (1948). Farm layout and farmstead planning. : Corvallis, Or. : Federal Cooperative Extension Service, Oregon State College. ir.library.ore...
The most efficient way is to have a 9x9 square with one water source in the middle, since one water source can hydrate 9 blocks in one direction.
Don't forget to add an inverted staircase over the water source so nobody trips on it.
@@albertofrederickimana8046 trap door so you can swim down to the other levels of the farm
Wouldn't you want a 19 block circle if that was the case
Also when you are in the habit of Harvesting with the Moon, 9x9 squares are generally the most efficient for hand watering.
Also, crops grow faster if they are adjacent to different types of crops (this is a real game mechanic)
In Czechia and Slovakia there are not many differences in the rural areas, but one thing you can clearly see is the change in farm shapes because in one country was in Austria and other in Hungary part of the empire, and they had different heretage laws, so on one side they have tiny stripes (all males got share) and the other stayed big (oldest son got share).
Arent the big fields because of the Soviet Farming groups? You can also see the difference in western vs eastern germany. While Western Germans could keep their farms, the structure remained a lot smaller compared to the Eastern Part
@@christianhumer3084 Both Czechia and Slovakia were part of the Eastern Bloc, so that doesn't really apply here I think.
@@luckyblockyoshihmmm actually yeah, communist wanted to make it easier for farming so they made bigger farms, which were easier to handle, because you could use bigger equipment
@@christianhumer3084 in many Warsaw pact countries (for example Poland) - collectivization didn't happened (they tried and failed basically - Poland had traditional private farming all the way through communism and the plots remained small). There were some collective farms, but they were doing worse than the private farmers.
@@tumic5179 machines were often introduced with communism.
0:52 Hexagons are indeed Bestagons🎉🎉🎉
fr fr
love the reference GJ MinuteEarth :D
@@mundanedew Gotta love it!
It made me giggle a bit.
Gotta love that CGP Grey reference. Peak RUclips banter👌
Lousiana & Farms along the Loire Valley are also shaped like Quebec as well as lots of areas in vietnaim. It's a nice French planned design to build communities & trade along a river bank.
When I was in vietnam, in many areas there was only a narrow path between the houses and the river, which shows how theese areas were originally designed.
I'm from rural Ireland and most houses are a good couple minutes walk from eachoter in the countryside with tiny clusters built on plots of family land of the same farm, so you see how the french got that right.
Something else that has a big impact on the "ribbon farms", in Quebec at least, is inheritance. When a farmer dies and all the children stand to inherit is the land, the only fair way to split it is so that each child gets land with river access, leading to ever narrower and narrower ribbons.
Shoutout to the Seigneurial System.
@@MultifariousEntity Came here to say this but you beat me to it. French laws require inheritance to be distributed equally among children, unlike English custom to distribute inheritance to the eldest son. This goes for land inheritance, but squares of land would not be equal if they did not have equal access to the water, so over several generations, land was divided in strips among the inheriting children.
It's also worth noting that all of those places were owned by France at one point in the past few centuries, which may also contribute to why they are so French
@@zakmaniscool he mentioned that they were “French planned”.
The bestagon era will never end!
Love the "bestagon" reference!!! The puns are also shaped by a tight-knit community, even on RUclips :D
As someone who just got off a 5hr flight during which I was in the aisle and the person in the window seat didn't open the window at all until landing... I appreciate this video
Looks like another prominent educational creator is spreading the bestagon word 💟💟
BTW why did CPG gray stop uploading I miss him
Oh, you renamend the video. Well, I liked the old title better: "Why Some Farms Are Hexagons (The Bestagons)"
Wow, that's on top of 3 other titles/thumbnails I've seen for this video!
Gotta serve the algorithm, man
@@jaspershepherdsmith9047 Do they just have people sitting there changing titles cus this is ridiculous
@@jaspershepherdsmith9047 Another sacrifice for our great algorithm overlords!
@@xenosfur They're trying to find the most engaging title. Veritasium used the example of which video would you be more likely to click? Strange applications of the [whatever] effect *or* Throwing a basketball down a cliff
I was on a plane when I was far too young to remember, but I remember having remembered that I remembered (if that makes sense), and thinking at some point that I must have dreamed looking down from a plane, because there was no way that the world from above looked like a bunch of squares with weird patterns in them.
Your enthusiasm for this infected me and now I can't unsee how awesome farms look from above
Last time I flew across the USA the endless scrolling squares freaked me out. 640mph and squares for hours. By the time we reached the Rockies I had concluded we have turned the entire planet into squares.
Minecraft brother, Minecraft.
That'll be the Homestead Act.
People gotta eat.
@@richardgratton7557 I completely agree with you. The problem isn't the farms; the problem is that there are too many people. Since it isn't in human nature to conserve, 1 billion people sounds about right for sustained high quality of life. This way we can have some squares, without everything being squares.
You're not far off. Roughly 40% of all the land on Earth now is currently pasture or cropland and 9% is villages and cities, meaning that close to half the land on Earth is currently used by humans in a very direct way. It's also the same story if you look at this from a biomass perspective (biomass is the total quantity or weight of organisms in a given area). If you add up all the mammalian biomass on the planet, 36% of that is human. Roughly 60% of the planets mammalian biomass is livestock, like pigs, cows, goats and sheep. That means that by weight, 60% of all the mammals on the planet are livestock. Chickens also make up more than 60% of the biomass of all birds. The other animals on the planet (giraffes, zebras, elephants, rhinos, hippos, coyotes, buffalos, bison, wildebeests, kudus, monkeys, chimps, gorillas, orangutans, leopards, cheetahs, bobcats, foxes, lions, tigers, wolves, whales, tapirs, wombats, otters, seals, dolphins, deer, antelope, moose, kangaroos, koalas, rabbits, mice, racoons, pandas, armadillos, possums, shrews, squirrels, beavers, platypuses, hedgehogs, pangolins, boars, bears, baboons and bats, etc) make up less than 4% of mammalian biomass. I think David Attenborough talked about something similar in his documentary A Life On Our Planet, around the 45 minute mark. It's really incredible when you think about it, we've turned the planet into a giant food manufactory. It's essentially terraforming a place to suit our needs, but the extent is impressive.
Thank you Mr. Gates for bringing us this video extolling the virtue of late 20th-century land enclosure.
And thanks to Mr. John D. Rockefeller for crushing thousands of small family businesses to build his magnificent Standard Oil empire (and the beautiful Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts). It's great that Gates is putting his wealth to good use, but don't forget that his massive wealth is directly because of a huge monopoly that overall harmed the economy.
Late 20th? Farming isn't a new invention, you know.
Hexagons are bestagons
0:51
I see a "bestagons" in a corner. That's a CGP Grey reference.
In a hundred years people will ask, "What's a hexagon?" Oh, you mean a bestagon, why didn't you just say so.
Flying over agricultural areas in early spring / late fall is very interesting because you see the bare ground. The watershed paints the dirt light and dark like an oil painting.
This is actually so awesome, this is so great for worldbuilding, I'm amazed
West Texas uses a lot of the circle farms since we had the brilliant idea of planting cotton in the middle of the desert
Hehehe.... whoever added in the "bestagons?!" quote I salute thee
In lots of areas in the western US, you will see the circles because they use the central pivot that is fed by a well, because they are in arid/desert areas.
What gets me is just how much of the land is farm land this is insane
i was going to make a CGP Grey joke, but i think literally everybody beat me to it
i love being around a video early enough to see the team workshopping the titles and thumbnails, may the algorithm bless one of your combinations
Great thanks! Answered questions I had every time I fly...
@Anonymous_User I'm a supporter so get early access... Highly recommend it!
Wow. Another great topic I had never thought about.
The first time I traveled abroad(to Spain) I was surprised that the fields and mountains were yellow-brownish, which almost look apocalyptic to me since where I come from almost everywhere you see there are lush green forests. Also, it was curious that there was practically no farmland in the mountains, despite being less steep than those from where I live.
Colder and/or dryer climates tend to do that. It's honestly pretty cool how different places look thanks to temperature and precipitation!
I love entering a new country after a long boring flight, breathing the fresh air, such a good feeling.
That’s bestagons reference was incredible.
The reference to hexagon is bestagon. And seeing interesting things outside of air plane really reminded of CGP Grey. However, the dichotomy between imperfect airport runway numbering system and beautiful farm land shapes is strong and wide.
Hexagons are the Bestagons. CGP Grey approved. (probably)
hexagons are the bestagons!
This video actually made my day so wholesome
yes. a hexagon is a bestagon.
Thank goodness you exist, and that I've flown enough to understand that the aisle is best.
Im happy that minute earth changed the thumbnail because I have been seeing this video in my feed but didn't click on it until now because before it didnt seem interesting. I would have missed out on a very cool topic!
I agree - looking out the window is the best entertainment. But I prefer aisle for other reasons.
Thanks Minute Earth! Always wondered this, especially driving through the back roads of New Mexico!
Plot twist: those UK farms that are irregular shapes are often for crops too. I'm not a farmer so I can't say for sure but I have always felt the shapes match the contours of the land. While the UK is not particularly mountainous, it is also not very flat so I think lots of small hills shape those farms.
I love your high sense of observation. Thanks for sharing.
in the netherlands there are tulip fields making big patches of color
lots of long thin strips where there used to be 'veenkolonien'
in Quebec, the plots are long and thin as a result of how Feudal lords plotted land out to the plebian population they rented to. Quebec was held in a settle of Europe style Feudalism by France during its initial settlement. In Bolivia there was a resettlement program for victims of landslides in the Andes, they deforested a huge area and used those interesting pie shape designs with community amenities built in the center. They used foreign loans and IMF money so they had to design them to produce crop for export on shallow forest soil that is prone to wind erosion, so that effected the design. The circles and hexagons are venture capital farms fronting equipment and resources to irrigate rivers systems in extremely dry climates, with no thought to water conservation. The terraced on-contour fields are ancient systems founded in older times after the introduction of rice to the regions. The Midwesterners planting on-contour are doing the best they can to conserve water while they have to remain subsidy industrial in manner. The patchwork farms in Europe may actually descend from the ancient bronze age, when cattle focused pastoralism overtook most of Europe as warrior groups on horses overpowered local Neolithic peoples in a persistent expansion.
You've been to Hokkaidō?? I know those farms! That was my home for 6 years! Some of my friends work those farms!❤
The answer is simple: the hexagon is the bestagon.
I saw that bestigon reference! I loved that video
Never thought I would be intrested about farming.
This is a bestagon moment.
Worthy of a like, comment, sub and a ringing of the bell.
i only saw the thumbnail out of the corner of my eye and opened in a new tab to watch it later... and i legitimately thought this was a cgp grey video
I have new appreciation for farms now ❤ thanks minute earth!
So nice to see south africa in the video ❤️
Growing up in the American west, the most common shape I am used to seeing is the circles haha. Plenty of non-circular farms, but those tend to stick out WILDLY
I'm so happy at the Easter egg of bestagons!
0:51 Yes, hexagons ARE INDEED the bestagons! Thank you, Grey. :)
My favorite thing about being on an airplane is having the clouds right next to me. It’s just so cool!
Bestagons!! ❤️ CGP Grey be pleased 🙏
a large circle with a pole in the middle. hook up anything powered with a rope around the pole and it will go in circles by itself while doing the whole field.
Perfectly summed up
Love the CGP Grey reference
This did NOT go in a direction I expected. This was sooooo cool! 😃🤯👍
Also, an area can have multiple farm shapes. I’m in wisconsin, and my area has mostly clean rectangles and squares
hexagon is the bestagon!
In quebec, a lot of the origins are due to the old seigneurie system, and to make a long story short, a lot of the land was separated into long rectangles near bodies of water
I wonder why they omitted feudalism as an explanation for the long-strips of farmland.
@@CalebMorrell It's not classical feudalism, though. Those farmers aren't serfs, though there is a lot of similarities with serfdom.
love the CGP Grey easter egg!
I get that you want to change the name a time or two for the algorithm, but I really am bummed when I get excited for a new minute video and I click on it only to find I already watched the video, but when it was displayed with a wildly different topic (Why there are giant hexagons in the desert).
Happens almost every single video
The most efficent shape is a triangle of 3 hexagonal tiles all adjacent to each other. That way they all benefit from the adjaceny bonus and produce +1 food per each other adjacent farms.
MinuteEarth definitely a CGPGrey subscriber
Love the cpg grey reference
Wait a min did they just change the title
This video is so cool!
I am watching this video the day before I get on a flight to the UK. What luck!
I'd like a 3x3 grid where the central tile is a pond or planted with trees. Crop rotation is applied to the tiles around it.
Someone has been watching CGP Grey.
Another informational video that doesn't answer it's own question.
I love the bestagons reference ❤
Houses close together?!? That’s one of the greatest benefits of farm life- elbow room and privacy! If I want to see my neighbors I’ll choose to do so, not be forced to.
I mean, they aren't THAT close, either. And they used to be less close than they are now, many of these lots got subdivided. 175m was common, and for later settlements, up to double that width also got common. Just plant a tree or two between the houses and you won't see them unless you go looking for them. Besides, you live in the modern age with easy access to internet, phones, and a car. You can choose to see people whenever you want to, allowing you to be more picky about seeing others. Seeing your neighbor toiling was probably great to keep motivation during hard labour and to fight off cabin fever.
I would totally read a book about this
You got the stripes wrong. It’s called strip farming. It’s when one strip is farmed one year, left fallow while the other strips grow. Google it. We used to do it a lot in Saskatchewan.
Never expected to click onto a video about planes only to talk about farms in the end lol.
Mind Opening Content, Congratulations :)
The Best Thing About Airplane Travel... is the good wifi nowadays so I can use Google Earth to see all the wonderful farm shapes in all the countries that my single plane journey (above a full cloud deck) won't get anywhere near to... wishing I'd stayed at home and saved $ and C-footprint and really had the time to drill-down into Google Earth uninterrupted.
Intresting
Hope one day we won't be looking down from planes as much but will instead be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with the landscape on a train. Or if we do find sustainable ways to fly, I would like to think that we won't see only endless farm fields, but that maybe we find ways to provide nature with the space it needs for us to survive
Yes, absolutely. I gave up air travel almost 4 years ago when I flew from New Mexico to Wisconsin in April. I was in the window seat and I couldn't see A DAMN THING EXCEPT CLOUDS. That brought it home to me that the climate is in crisis. Fortunately the US still has Amtrak (altho we need to pay its employees better), and so many trips I would ever want to make are still possible by train.
Nice.
Fascinating.
Outside Denver, it's circles. The airport is nowhere near the city, but in land that used to be farms only 30 years ago, so you see the farmland as soon as you take off (or right before landing).
Sponsorship should be put at the start of the video
I love that cgp grey reference you made!
Yes, they are certainly the bestagons.
this told me very little and I wish to know more. full video when?
The bestagon reference 👏👏👏👏👏👏
This video should be titled "The Many Faces of Farming," because there is no discussion of plane travel in it.
aaaah but Kate, you depicted a MUSHROOM which is a different kingdom, from plants. as a mushroom fan I must protest! that said as a fan of sustainable farming, I love this video.
Great info thanks for sharing. F that Gates stuff though…, billionaires are NOT philanthropists.
Exactly! How did any billionaire become a billionaire? By being hateful parasites.
Take Gates. I’ve been in IT for over 30 years. Bill’s sole contribution to advancing computing is buying QDOS (quick and dirty operating system), and writing a few additional utilities for it. From that moment onward it was market manipulation, buying competitors and appropriating their ideas, and outright stealing ideas like Windows from Xerox PARC.
Microsoft was once, in the mid-1980s, a promise-land of computing. It was the place to aspire to work at, much like Google in the 2000s. By the mid-late-1990s Microsoft became a meat-grinder. Programmers went there to lose their will to live. Douglas Coupland wrote Microserfs, a fairly accurate description of the culture in Redmond, Wa.
gotta respect the cgp grey refrence
Definitely bestagons!
I love the plethora of puns in this video.
0:51, is that a cgp grey reference I detect?
I don't think desire of community is the reason to put houses together, but the desire for cheap power and sewer and water.
463th
1d slate!
thank you for this history.However, What Is The Best Shape For A Farm?
Hexagons are the Bestagons.