Hi Adam, I was studying mycology at university and I wrote a paper on endoglucanase, an enzyme that breaks down cellulose found in crop residue (all the bits if the plant we don't eat and then burn) into simple molecules that can be used to make alcohol, plastics (cellulose is surprisingly similar to the polymers we use to make plastic), textiles and even fuel. Biofuel had a bad rap for a long time because it was too difficult to convert cellulose into usable fuels, but with lignocellulolytic enzymes found in mushrooms, that break down has become much easier. There's still a lot of contention as to whether we should even invest in burning fuels at all, but I see it as a way of reusing what we would burn with no purpose anyways. There are also studies on mushrooms being able to eat plastic and transform poor soil with heavy metals, into nutrient rich soil. They are the decomposers of our world and not utilizing them would be silly lol
The entire kingdom of Fungi are horrendously under-researched. There is probably a species for every illness, one for every material need, and yet research isn't funded. Some people just need some more *morels.* (I feel offended nobody got the joke yet, oh well more delicious morels for me!)
Of course genetic editing and genomic technology will be the main enabler here. Hypothetically you don't even need mushrooms but if you can transfer the endoglucanase gene to bacteria or yeast you could optimize high yield production of the enzyme. I look forward to how many industrial processes will be completely transformed by gene technology.
Mushrooms and fungi are just something else, even for their health properties. Turkey tail mushrooms have very potent cancer killing properties and there's even a case where a woman had breast cancer, her and 20+ other women had the same breast cancer and they were all taking the same medicine except this 1 woman was taking turkey tail mushrooms also, all the other patients unfortunately died but she was the only patient that survived and thrived. Also you should look into the agericon mushroom, very very strong against influenza viruses, in studies they were over 10x more powerful and even more powerful when compared to using modern day medicines against these influenza strains
My mom every once in a while tells me stories about how a lot of her relatives from the "ejidos" (common lands) of Sinaloa used to seed and harvest their plots, but when it was posible to actually aquire and sell those lands (some years before 00's), most of our family sold to richer people because of a mix of poverty, ignorance and a need of financing their alcoholism, sadly.
My dad's family used to own a huge plot of land. It was farmed by my grandfather. Unfortunately, none of his children followed in his footsteps, even worse, most of his offsprings are alcoholics and sold the land piece by piece when my grandfather died because they need to support their alcoholism. Now, they don't even own the land where their house stands on.
There was an active political campaign to favor concentration of lands in Mexico (an other Latin American countries) by neoliberal governments. For example, raising the interest rates of loans to small producers, eliminating subsidies and eliminating some price controls, besides the aforementioned permission to buy and sell the ejidos. It's not that you relatives are lazy fools, they were just part of the millions that needed to be removed from their land for the rich to be richer.
As a person who works on a farm ran by one guy, that harvests on over 15k acres of land (including double cropped acres), and is a huge part of the “green revolution”, this was a great video. All of the crops we harvest are in irrigated circles, except for five hundred acres of dry land wheat we do every other year. During the harvest seasons we use thousands and thousands of gallons of fuel and run 10-20 machines in a 24hr period. Combines & tractors running during the day, while swathers & some tractors run at night. Unless your family owns land or you have access to a lot of capital, the ability to get loans to rent land, and years of personal experience and knowledge on how to farm, your chances are slim to none.
The average person can garden, someone with free time and land cam have a hobbyfarm of a few acres thats realistically more of a ranch. To have a commercial farm is very hard and the average person can't do it. Having a modern "mega farm" that owns thousands of acres requires so many resources and so much knowledge it deserves the same level of respect as doctor or engineer gets. (Said as an engineer who knows he can't farm) As far as sustainability goes Natural gas is basically just methane, and you cam get if from anaerobic digesters and feed them food scraps, manure, or basically amy organic compounds with the right nutrient ratios and you get methane, called bio gas. Eventually i expect a lot of farm equipment to become electric and electricity doesn't have to be unsustainable. (One option is biogas made on the farm itself, many farms in NY do this and sell the gas or power, and it prevents methane from escaping to the atmosphere) we will definitely find am alternative before we run out of fuel because the alternative is unacceptable (and unprofitable).
+ Kyle Ranger: the way land is used depends on who owns it (how many persons) not what crops and way of production yields the most food calories. The same 15k acres could be split up into a LOT of small properties. Which would be run by families as homesteads, produce much more food, while using less water, fossil fuel and they would make do with fewer machines (that are not as heavy - talking about another form of soil degradation by compaction). Small farmers can devote more attentio, time, effort per acre (square foot even), they can use methods that imitate nature (and the efficiencies and synergies of nature). But those methods cannot work for large scale operations, and they are detrimental to monocultures. Mulching (which is very important for soil organisms and cuts the use of water cannot be used by big ag. But small farms, market gardeners can use mulching to have good yields - leveraging the support of soil organisms. Everything that is common in big ag - is bad for soil organisms. Fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, ploughing, irrigation (if the water contains salts), compaction by heavy machinery, monocultures. Degraded soil cannot infiltrate or hold rain water well. Big ag got rid of trees and hedges. Small units replant them, to reap the benefits (see Alley cropping, there are studies and tests with farmers, it has been rediscovered in the 1990s - but conventional farmers will be very reluctant to use it). And huge operations would never, ever use it.
@@franziskani In Western Canada nearly all farms practice no till farming which increases organic matter that in turn improves water retention and microorganism growth. We would likely have a more resilient and sustainable agriculture system if we had smaller farms but the problem is that not many people want to live out on some isolated homestead; other wise it would be more popular. It is also really hard to market products from small farms because it requires a lot of coordination. The centralized economic system favors big farms that specialize in a few products. There is certainly a place for small farms but it would require a huge shift in our economics and politics make it the norm.
Electric farm equipment will be a leap forward in agriculture, but I suspect it will be met with resistance unless Right to Repair makes significant headway. With electric equipment, farmers will be able to make their own "fuel", and even charging from the grid will be significantly cheaper than agricultural diesel.
Why bother with electric equipment when the existing diesel equipment can be fueled with renewable biodiesel? The guy who invented the diesel engine used peanut oil as fuel when he demonstrated his invention at the 1900 World's Fair.
It is indeed quite a big if. The negative connotation associated with Right to Repair is absolutely wild. While I am an optimist for in certain terms, asking monopolies for leeway without the dangers of human or planet health to burn a fire onto their butts is somewhat of a lost cause it seems. Either way I imagine some kind of revolution is coming soon enough because of the extremely high average age of the profession. In 20 years almost every somewhat traditional current farmer will have left the field (no pun intended).
Coming from a farming background, I think battery electric tractor could never reasonably become a thing, for similar reasons why electric passenger airplanes are hard. Tractors need a LOT of fuel/power to run and current batteries aren't energy dense enough, plus the recharge time needed is a major hitch for a farmer. Biofuels or things like that seem much more achievable to me.
When I learned that throughout most of Japan’s agricultural history, urine collectors would pay people for their urine to use as fertilizer; so I started making my own fertilizer from my own urine. I have a very successful no-till garden. Any food scraps and shredded paper go in the worm bin and they provide castings for the garden. I don’t feed my plants, I feed my soil. Mycorrhizae is the fungus that feeds your plants. It’s a symbiotic relationship between the roots of plants and fungus that keeps plants healthy. As long as the soil is healthy your plants are healthy. Farmers of the green revolution neglected soil health this and killed all soil microbes.
@@hlynnkeith9334 Linfamy, another RUclipsr, has a video about the collection of urine and faeces in Japan. Their channel has some really neat videos about other parts of Japanese history and mythology as well.
Dude. You absolutely nailed it with the whole farming as a romanticized practice. It ain't that easy and if you really want to make a buck you've gotta be able to she'll out a lot of dinero.
Did you see the "farm" they set up in CHAZ in Seattle last year? A few sheets of cardboard laid on the pavement with a couple of bags of potting soil spread on top and some plants shoved in.
@@dirtyblueshirt there’s a reason I didn’t stay in my largely agricultural hometown. Farming is insanely hard work if you actually want to succeed, and I’m not that ambitious about being constantly on the clock
@@WaterZer0 You believe that relating a topical anecdote in response to another person's comment means I "literally can't stop thinking about..." a group of people? Well, we can certainly conclude that you're not terribly familiar with thought. BTW, who doesn't hate fascists?
@@dirtyblueshirt Ask the numerous americans who are against abortion. Seems like they love the idea of directly controlling people's lives. Or the bloodthirsty maniacs who insist we kill millions of innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan and want more.
GAGAGAGAGAGA! I will now count to 3 and then I am still the unprettiest RUclipsr of all time. 1...2...3. GAGAGAGAGAGA!!! Thank you for your attention, dear andres
It's the nature of life. There will almost always be a tradeoff. You can't preserve everything. Trying to do so often leads to unintended consequences. You have to place it on a value spectrum.
I would love to see a video about food distribution and supply chains. As a sidebar to this video's topic, we do produce basically enough food for everyone on Earth, but so much food is wasted or spoiled and distribution is not equal across the board. Could be an interesting topic to cover. Though no doubt it would be a very broad one.
I second this statement. As with all resources the apparent scarcity I'd only due to ownership of said resources in the hands of the few super rich who restrict access to them to ensure their power
@@Hotrob_J Capitalism. Capable of producing so much food that people get confused that supply lines are the issue, not the method of production... No economic system solves the reality that food is grown in a certain area and must be transported.
And hence research institutes are handed to control the agricultural output in every part of the world. So it isn't as bad as chemical factories or factories in general where one mediocre technician can bring down a city.
We use nightmare practices in farming, when you find out about the link between autism and fossil-fuel fertilizers. God knows what else those toxic fertilizers are doing to us.
I was born in Nebraska corn country - at the time the population density was most likely around 10 - 18 people per square mile, there was a small town every ten miles, and a significant portion of each farm contained a home, barn, vegetable garden, and some livestock. They were as self-sufficient as they could make them, and if someone worked a full section of land, it was LOT of work that required a significant amount of laborers. Headed back 40 years later to visit family: half the land had been returned to prairie, the small towns were deserted, and nobody lived on the property they farmed. My cousin and his wife own two combines and take on yearly contracts to farm about 3 to 5 full sections.
Sometimes I don't appreciate the time and effort and detail put into these video essays. Pulling in the historical sources and current professionals and traveling for footage is such a large undertaking.
Our overreliance on modern technology to feed us might end up making us unable to feed the myriad of mouths we birthed into the world when that technology fails.
@@camerongunn7906 If nothing else, it could be an effective way of reducing the population to the point where the vital resources in question are more easily and equitably distributed... assuming the war doesn't devastate said resources. Imagine starting a war for clean water and end up making the water totally undrinkable. Talk about a pyrrhic victory.
After i finished watching my thought was "man, this felt like a Tom Scott video with all the walking - let me check the comments to see if anyone else felt the same". Glad it was only a few comments deep.
I was hoping you’d mention modern “organic” farming practice in this video. There’s such a deep-rooted misconception in the US that organic food is more sustainable and it’s SUCH a dangerous lie.
Organic farming is an ideology divorced from reality that requires strict adherence to the mantra of organic farming. Oddly supported by people who both want to end meat consumption while simultaneously making agriculture reliant on manure 🤷
A problem I have with whenever the issue of "overpopulation" comes up is the debate over that can only end up with yikesy "solutions". Like who is an authority in our society to decide which parts of are population are unsustainable and how can overpopulation be "dealt with". A hopeful answer would be something along the lines of proper sex education and getting rid of a societal pressure to bear offspring as a requirement for a good life, but ultimately I don't think that will change the fact that a thriving humanity is destined for growth. Unfortunately once you have exhausted that argument all you are left with is arguing with eco-fascists... Which is... not great... So yeah, I am very cautious of whenever "overpopulation" is brought up as a topic, because unfortunately it drags you into the mud of a lot of questionable people eager to give their answer.
Decreasing TFRs in the Global South is still bound to happen as access sex education, medical infrastructure, and economic growth all increase. “Population control” is happening as we speak.
In smaller countries land is very limited so it's encouraged that u don't have any children. Bangladesh is the best example I can think of for that. Another problem is a larger population = higher energy demands = increased carbon footprint.
I always tell people, it were more accessible, I'd love to farm for a living. As a small scale hobby farmer, I try to stay away from synthetic fertilizers, opting instead to compost my excess of manure for nitrogen. Instead of insecticides, I tend to plant marigolds and lavender.
The key there is "small scale". I think large scale farmers would like to stay away from commercial fertilizers and pesticides too, if they could. That is a big part of their annual budget. Unfortunately, compost heaps aren't all that scaleable. Even manure isn't all that scaleable, though a lot is used in commercial farming.
And your practices are completely dependent on diesel fuel for the tractor? Would you be able to manage if your diesel fuel use was cut to 1/4? A big part of the "green revolution" was about eliminating manual labor, replacing it with ever larger machinery
@@jumboegg5845 all my stuff is done by manual labour. Tilling, watering, harvesting, etc. My practices are almost completely reliant on my own physical abilities. Not to mention, diesel is getting way to expensive.
@@e.mitchell9388 Good to hear, sounds like you've got a nice setup. People often don't understand how almost all aspects of our lives are dependent on fossil fuels. The idea of eliminating fossil fuels and net zero emissions has major implications to our lifestyles that people just dont understand.
Adam Ragusea 2016: “Here’s how to make a nice roast dinner” Adam Ragusea 2021: “Industrial society and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race”
Adam Ragusea 2021 *Brought to you by amazon*: “Industrial society and its consequences have been ( Hey, check out the sponsor of this video...) a disaster for the human race” **Endorsed by amazon**.
The airplanes Adam shows (6:54, 12:49) are KC-135s, aka Tankers. They refuel other planes in flight. My guess is that those planes belong to the 134th Air Refueling Wing of the Tennessee Air National Guard, stationed at McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base, Knoxville, Tennessee.
A point you missed with phosphorous, which lends more context, is that it runs on a geologic timescale, and is an element, required for DNA production, so is not possible to synthetically produce. This means our only options are to recycle it, find ways to draw a scarce resource from low concentration sources, or find new places to mine it. All these options have their own issues, it takes millions of years for new deposits to form, many methods for recycling and extracting it are inefficient, and many of the places with deposits left are in poor parts of the world that are seeing little to no benefit from mega corporations coming in and screwing up their land to get at it. So it is a nuanced issue that needs a novel solution, because most of the current options aren't great. Edit: Also, we will definitely run out of phosphorus way before we run out of oil, and as of right now, there is no way for us, as a species, to keep feeding everyone when that happens.
It's not an ingenuity problem, it's a distribution and infrastructure problem. You can recycle organic materials in anaerobic digestors to reclaim it, and you can collect it from things like dairy farms and use organic fertilizers to reintroduce it, but at the end of the day it's a problem of politics and political will, because a lot of it comes down who is willing to foot the bill for these inherently unprofitable solutions.
@@deusexmachinareznov4975 nuclear engines, even fusion ones, are not a great idea to run in our atmosphere, due to the neutron radiation produced. At best you could use multiple layers of heat exchangers to prevent your propellant from being neutron-damaged (and thus also radioactive) but that massively increases the weight of your rocket. Thus they’re far more useful for moving from place to place within space and we’d still need something else to actually bring the phosphorus down from orbit a) intact; b) cheaply; and c) safely. A fusion rocket would lower the fuel cost from Mars to Earth (and maybe the return trip if the cargo vehicle isn’t sacrificed getting the cargo planetside) but that’s about it. Apologies if you knew this already, if so perhaps someone else reading this might still find it interesting.
He will. it takes time to make video and he probably didnt reckon that the vitamin video would turn to shit. But let history show that neglecting a problem is far more lucrative for brand image that apologizing.
I read a book called the Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith, Something we are not properly addressing is every time you put the plow to the field and you harvest the product and remove the product from the field the nutritional value of the food drops. Fertilizer is a temporary fix for nutrient deficient soil. In the past farming technique was crop rotation and field resting. I believe as our food quality decreases I think we are going to and currently seeing a rise in food allergies and chronic health issues.
This really comes down to allocation of resources and well-being through time. Are we willing to trade prosperity in the present for future devastation? For most of humanity's history the answer has been "yes".
Man your videos are increasing in excellence. They look, sound, and even feel better with each new one (pacing, tone, continuity) and the content (substance) is really really good. So glad I am subscribed. May your trajectory of influence and reward continue to rise!
I have to say Adam, I appreciate your journalistic integrity, you keep the tone neutral as best as you can and don’t try to shove anything down our throats. Much applause! 👏🏻
Hey Adam! Would you consider making a video on the subject of your journalism and research methods? Your videos are incredibly instructive, quickly walk you through the science behind things, and answer many simple questions. It would be great to know how you tackle research to get to the specific information you need. And how you get to the bottom of a question efficiently, without getting pulled off on every direction.
So there's the broad Green Revolution, and then there's also this obscure cold war era policy... Sometimes I have to wonder how much Adam Ragusea just wants to be complete vs him just trying to preempt internet pedants
Personally, I think that's fine. It helps to curb misinformation. Plus, have you seen some of the comments on his videos? Frankly, that desire makes complete sense to me.
It is what makes him so uniquely intellectual in an otherwise forgettable side of RUclips. Internet pedants, while technically being people just voicing their (mindless) opinions (that can easily be disproven in seconds), function more as a sort of plague. They show up unannounced and create slowness in the system (that being RUclips comments) and causing general discomfort.
My favorite idea in agriculture is homestead economy. Instead of giving subsidies to big farms we should subsidies small sustainable farms that are part of a union style farmers co-op. More employment, better farming, better food, less infrastructure and farming machines. A win for everyone except from big food and seed corporations.
@@sotch2271 Don't forget car manufacturing, literally reshaped cities for cars. I don't know about all of health sector but insurance for sure, and also tax calculating programs as well
Thanks for the pointer to "The Wizard and The Prophet". I look forward to reading it, but have some preconceived notions. Personally, I think there needs to be a balance between the two, but the more important thing for any approach is understanding the underlying mechanisms involved. You can't focus on the right things to conserve if you have no idea what's more important or what the side effects will be. Ditto for finding ways to make "more" of whatever. This feeds back into why farming for a living is hard... you can't just do stuff that kinda works, you have to make a profit to enable purchase of all those other things you might want above subsistence, and you can't degrade your environment or you'll lose your ability to achieve subsistence (to say nothing of dealing with variability of weather/pests/etc).
AISURU.TOKYO/piit?[Beautiful-Mountain]💗 *(◍•ᴗ•◍)✧* 18 years and over RUclips: This is fine Someone: Says "heck" RUclips: Be gone #однако #я #люблю #таких #рыбаков #Интересно #забавно #девушка #смешная #垃圾
I recently (recently meaning like 2 years back) took a college class all about agricultural history as seen from an economics standpoint. Main point is that I am from Europe. And it was presented as that since it's inception the EU had that unified stance against people starving. Giving away money based on the volume of food you produced and all that good stuff So I genuinely got the impression that this was a European initiative that the rest of the world just copied cause it worked so well. Hearing that America had an entirely different "green revolution" is mind blowing
@@WaterZer0 how is this a twisted version? The eu was made in the 90s. The american gov wanted to make people not be communists, so they gave out food and farming techniques to certain areas so they would not turn red. That went away when the ussr fell, in the early 90s
Oh look. Your education was complete garbage mixed in with propaganda in favor of rootless nation-less people paying huge taxes "for the greater good." Imagine my utter surprise!
@@barrackobamar "the american gov gave out food and farming techniques to certain areas [they had abused] so they would not turn red" Ah yes the benevolent US fighting off the evils of communism. Do you stop to think for even 2 seconds about a comment when you make it?
@@hawhafunnyraffs5568 Oh look. Your education was complete garbage mixed in with propaganda in favor of massive inequality with ignorant people paying taxes "for the greater good" (to bomb brown people on the other side of the world). Imagine my utter surprise!
6:56 Wouldn't it be more efficient to arrange those circles in a hexagonal lattice rather than a square lattice? There would be less unirrigated space between them.
In theory yes but then theres the issue of even water distribution between each section. An idea is to have the rotation water pipes extend and contract but then theres the issue of the constant change in water pressure required every time the pipes change length.
@@ultimatehamsandwich734 "In theory yes but then theres the issue of even water distribution between each section." Isn't it the same (except worse) for the square lattice seen here?
Technically famines have historically been an issue with resource allocation and prejudices, the most common Irish potato famine was because the British took over large amounts of Irish agriculture and only grew cash crops, rather than nutritional foods the Irish needed, so when the blight hit, their already low amount of food dropped and the British didn't care.
That is very different to the history I've learned. The Irish grew a specific breed of potato that had a very good yield and worked very well in Irish soil. The reason they grew potatoes wasn't because they were just selling them. Poor people everywhere grow potatoes. They are incredibly dense in nutrition. They also keep for a long time, unlike most vegetables, without any preservation. It certainly wasn't political, it was just bound to happen. Everyone wanted to grow the same optimum potato. It was easy to grow that one breed because everyone had easy access to its seeds (their neighbors' potatoes).
@@enderoctanus they were exporting grains like British imposition on Bengal India. The diversity in potatoes would have included access to more calories or vitamins or stretching seasons
IIRC he scripts it all out and does the Closed Captioning as well which is why it’s so accurate. I think his wife helps with that part. He mentions that in one of his videos from a while back.
@@RedRider2001 Thanks! I love the closed captions! Not only accessible to those hard of hearing or deaf etc, but also I can watch his videos without headphones on mute and still know what he's saying ^-^
Hundreds of millions of lives were saved as a result of the Green Revolution... but some people still aren't happy. We used to be afraid of DDT... but everything was OK. We used to be afraid of nuclear bombs... but everything was OK. We used to be afraid of of communists... but everything was OK. We used to be afraid of immigration... but everything was OK. We used to be afraid of nuclear power... but everything was OK. We used to be afraid of overpopulation... but everything was OK. We used to be afraid of global cooling... but everything was OK. We used to be afraid of the hole in the ozone layer... but everything was OK. We used to be afraid of GMOs... but everything was OK. Trust me... everything will be fine.
Vertical farming using closed water systems could help solve a lot of those problems, although there is still the issue of fertilizers (even though they require far fewer additions overall, since they are re-cycled through the system instead of eroded away).
Great video! I'd love to see one where you look into "Regenerative Agriculture" - the pros, the cons, whether you think it's scalable or politically feasible on a large scale.
Thanks for putting this together, Adam. While this stuff is well known in certain circles already, it's important to bridge it with the cooking community. Cheers!
Why are you so good at advertising your sponsors? I always get hypnotized and listen to the entire thing where I would normally skip any kind of ad... u good bruh (no i don't use adblocker, though I have a passionate hate for ads)
I have to imagine that high consumption rates are due to the choices we have rather than what we actually eat day to day. There are a million versions of peanut butter, potato chips and soda, but most of it is probably thrown out when no one buys them all. Companies are incentivized to keep supplies high even if it results in waste because profit is the main motivator. Resources are being used as safety nets even if it doesn't fulfil their goal of feeding people. So we could lower consumption if we lower our choices in food rather than allow large amounts of garbage to rot in warehouses and shelves hoping someone wants to pick up "Cheezy Ballz - Variety Pack!" for a birthday party.
I'd definitely recommend looking further into fertiliser efficiency gradients. I'm currently studying my masters on this exact topic, we may be running out of fertiliser chemicals, but this all is due to the efficiency that is wasted. If we could (slowly we are) return to the 8linitial stages of fertiliser that started in the green revolution and then improve on this, we could actively combat climate change, improve soil health and it has been theorised grow better, healthier, cheaper plants . Excellent introductory video into the cool world of modern ag science!
This video reminds me of a book that I read at the end of my college years. I've already forgotten its name, but it describes US's strategy of affecting the world through lending its excessive agriculture products, including the aids to Mexico, India, and Philippines as mentioned in your video. Eventually almost none of them worked, though. Watching this video made me remember more things than I could remember from that book.
@ImNotMoose He’s referring to the Bengal Famine that happened in India during World War 2. It’s widely believed that the colonial British government caused the famine with terrible policies and they most certainly attempted to cover it up until press outlets in India leaked the story.
It seems to me one of the finer points here is the idea of population (specifically overpopulation). But that’s also debatable. There’s an overwhelmingly common perception that we are overpopulated, but there’s also a compelling heterodox argument that we are not only _not_ overpopulated, but declining birth rates are actually a real problem and that we actually need to _increase_ population. I’m not an expert on any of this and I don’t really know what I believe, but I think that could be a good video project for you to explore deeper. Population as related to food production, economy, climate change, natural resources, longevity of the human species, etc. I think overall that you are a fair minded, unbiased, science oriented journalist/presenter and I’d love to see you explore this topic in a deeper and more nuanced way and hear what you discover. Thanks for the great content as always. You have a real talent and your success is well deserved.
I've been trying to get used to a diet that is less environmentally damaging and feasible in the case of a SHTF scenario. This involves reducing my meat consumption and eating baked potatoes instead of grains. Unfortunately, I've been mostly unsuccessful at that change so far.
What gives me a lot of hope is permaculture. While the techniques are generally far more labor intensive than the green revolution, the calories per acre is comparable and the nutrition per acre is through the roof all while being far more ecologically sound. In many cases it improves ecosystems, arguably even beyond their natural state. If instead of creating endless expensive sprawl around our new megacities we kept them tight - think Barcelona development pattern - and surrounded them with permaculture farms and gardens, we'd be in a much better spot. Obviously people would be slightly materially poorer as the hours of work (whether that's themselves or how much they have to work to pay for food) will be higher, but the low burn on our resources to produce this food means people can be slightly poorer for much longer rather than be rich for 50 years and then destitute for a few generations until populations slowly lower.
Permaculture is so cool!! It's how agriculture was done in the Americas before it was colonized--food forests were described by European colonialists who didn't realize they were seeing cultivated spaces. Even in urban and suburban areas, community gardens focused on creating interdependent, food-producing systems could lessen the need for large-scale agriculture. You'd get lots of other benefits too, like building stronger communities, 0 mile fresh produce, green spaces within populated areas, and getting people to connect with where their food comes from, and how a healthy ecosystem could function.
I thought for a moment that the thumbnail was about the channel, given yesterday's resounding success. If you stick to this kind of video, rather than that kind of infomercials, then, yeah, this could last.
really interesting video, but I remember through all of georgraphy at school my teachers telling me that in this century we could well be fighting wars for clean drinking water. Would love to see a video discussing that But I enjoy anything you do. Have a great day Adam!
yeah, not sure why he said there's no freshwater shortages when there have literally been major cities that have run out of water or were very close to running out of water (e.g. Cape Town, Mexico City)
@@mattholtz Because he's right, we literally can't run out of fresh water as it keeps cycling. The problem is the cycle isn't static. What transpires here collects miles away, and places that have devastated their collecting capabilities by polluting aquifers and cutting down forests, like Mexico City, are now facing longer and harsher droughts because the water now collects elsewhere.
In the 1950s, the US government made it unprofitable for small farmers/dairymen to stay in business. Corporate structure became necessary for farms to prosper/grow. I grew up on a dairy that milked from 6 - ten cows and my dad became a freelance carpenter. It is insidious but unstoppable the closing of avenues for self-employment.
Adam Ragusea is many things, a semi-pro home cook, a RUclipsr, a Journalist, a science communicator... but that airplane joke at the end shows that he i first and foremost: a dad. With a dad's sense of humour.
Thing is, modern agriculture hasn't even ended hunger. It's given the world the *ability* to end hunger, but that ability has never actually been manifested. People starve to death all over the world because there's way more than enough food but it isn't distributed equitably. :/ The unsustainability of the current system is definitely a problem, but what good is said system if it's not feeding everyone even while it *does* have enough resources to do it?
@@CondemnedGuy And that totally offsets the lack of streets, waterways, energy gris and storage places. Just because you can flash freeze peas. yeah, nice one. Got another joke as well?
@@CondemnedGuy If you are that demented, that you don´t realize, that it never mattered how you preserve food if you can´t fucking transport it. Cans dont roll across oceans and mountains, ya numbskull
I think it's hilarious how wrong all these super smart guys were about population growth. They were probably like, "Let me see, I'm an expert in this whole agricultural thing so now that must make me a genius of everything especially human psychology, family sociology, women reproductive health, etc to say beware of an incoming population bomb."
It's called the Malthusian Fallacy. Malthus wrote in 1798. There was a tremendously influential Book (The Population Bomb) published in 1968 based on Mathus's theories that really kicked off the 1970 population panic though.
Adam, thank you for reminding us that we are living history, and that we need to remember what the question is. I hope people understand that, wherever you stand. You know? Great video, we needed it.
Where there are macro populations, there is plenty of land to farm and space to farm. Not everyone eats cows #India. Governments and big businesses are often the problem in which the governors act more like slave masters to the governed despite massive farming land #China, #Africa. Population control is a concern of the governors and big businesses who and that do not want their state in life uprooted by would-be self-governing farmers and their husbandry. God forbid people have their own farms. How will power-hungry people control their slaves and armies to protect power-hungry interests?
Seeing as this video is almost 50% longer than the vitamin video i think we now know what parts were missing from it. Where was the doc to give solidity to the vitamin claims? Where was the counterarguments and historical insight? Where was the journalistic integrity and open mindedness?
At first i was really confused where all the hate towards that video was coming from but after looking into it more i see why. It's his first fully sponsored video that just seems like a stretched out ad read rather than a well researched video.
This video is an usual scheduled Monday video, the vitamin one was a promotional "bonus" video, understandably the latter one would have less work behind it for...well...*time reasons*
He did specifically notify people that he will be doing what is basically an ad video before that vitamin video came out. I don't know why people are so upset that it was an ad when he very clearly stated that it was going to be an ad.
@@trawrtster6097 Well its because those videos goes against the brand that he so carefully have built up. We expect these types of videos and when he sells out his entire audience, some of whom takes his words at face value, we feel cheated. This is after all a relationship, and relationship have to be maintained. PS: The vitamin video was posted to youtube. You cant assume people have seen stuff he posted elsewhere. ( personally i dont even use the app, so i dont see anything except videos)
Loved the video Adam. Would love to see a video on your take on regenerative ag, that kinda feels like the next step in a lot of ways to clean our farming up, at least some
I think that would be too much for Adam to take in because he doesn't seem like a big picture guy. Adam is buzzing around with words more than actually looking for truth. Even his guests seem rather dull when it comes to serious issues. Adam perpetuates what most people already thinks rather than pointing out real issues and finding solutions. But I guess that is why he gets so many views, because of peoples laziness and confirmation bias. He should stick to his kitchen and his cookie doughs.
A large issue in wealthier countries is food waste. Every link in the chain from farm to table is full of waste. Farmers waste get forced to waste food because of government regulation, stores and restaurants waste food because of expiration dates and limited shelf lives. And how many times have you purchased a banana just to watch it spoil on the counter top. I believe garbage dumps will be the gold mines of the future as all the biodegradable and nonbiodegradable products get compacted together. You will have metals needed for manufacture compacted between layers of rich soil from all the discarded food waste.
Gosh! Thank you for covering this crucial topic. Additionally the world already grows enough food to feed everyone. Loss of food from wastage and distribution failures are both big problems. One of the really big issues is the amount of land put over to raising animals for meat. If we ate less meat the amount of land needed to feed the world would be a fraction of what we now use. Currently 25% of the whole planets land surface is used for agriculture and most of that is to produce meat. It's breaking ecosystems down worldwide. You might like to read George Monbiot 'Regenesis'. He goes into the issues and some likely solutions in a hard headed factual manner. Thank you, as always, for raising important issues. 👍
Animals produce natural fertilizer though. If we made urea out of cow piss we wouldn’t be wrecking the ozone layer by producing all this nitrogen fertilizer out of natural gas.
Adam. You’ve given me anxiety about things I didn’t know I should have anxiety about. Fossil aquifers 😳👀😳. The fertilizers😳. The diesel fuel 😳. The run off 😳.
Or fortunate. Imagine the utter hell that would be life if there was no adversity. No challenge. Nothing to look forward to. Nothing to look back on. And endless existence unchallenged by anything. You have everything you need. And most of your practical wants are easily met. Play a 4x game on the easiest difficulty setting. But without the Next Turn button - having to actually live out those years which flash by with just a few instructions on the computer. Or... look at the internet, and the modern first world countries. There were no great atrocities (before 2019) being committed on the populace. There were no threatening wars to worry about. Crime rates were the lowest they've ever been. Standard of living has been continually increasing. Sure, there are evils happening elsewhere in the world. China, for example. Africa's constant warring, and economy that's simultaneously crippled and held aloft by charities. Middle Eastern countries which... well, let's just say, companies don't roll out their pride flags there. They were not, however, in the first world countries. They are distant news stories from an interconnected world that you'd never see. But good times are boring times. There must be an enemy to fight. A battle line to draw. A cause to champion. A god to herald. An end times to proclaim. Even if it has to be completely fabricated.
greetings from a environmental technologist from Denmark. Great video adressing some of the agricultural problems we currently have. Some comments from a Danish perspective. The NPK Shortage and overuse. There is two paths we work on here that are meant to compliment eachother: Hydroponics and NPK Reclamation. Hydroponics im a bit limited in knowledge on the State its in so il refrain from that one. NPK Reclamation: This is also a twofold thing. Reclamation from waste water and reclamation from Biogas prodution. Water reclamation: Currently the way we get rid of most particles in our waste water is with bacteria consuming and reducing particles followed be sedimentation with Calcium or Iron compounds. The idea is to find a way to easily and economically regain the rather large amounts of NPK that is now bound to either iron or calcium. Assuming people smarter then me manage to find a way there its a great step towards sustainable Fertilizer. Biogas: While still a bit small a frougth with NIMBY problems there is a lot of potential. After the whole Biogas step you're left with a slush of highly concentrated liquid fertilizer. Further studies into extracting the NPK so as to have a more controlled fertilizer is in progress.
Yep, fertiliser from anaerobic digesters, plus a bit of free energy in the form of methane (which should always be burned instead of released, given how much worse of a greenhouse gas it is), is something I’m hopeful can help with this. Especially efforts to integrate it with sewage systems and not just food and farm waste as we do currently.
"They keep us alive, but they give us a whole host with other health problems too" I agree Adam. Being alive is a problematic health condition in my opinion as well.
What is interesting about people concerned about population growth is that they never seem to view their own existence as a problem and one that they could remedy all on their own if they really wanted.
A note on 3:18 - while this understanding of “Big History” is a popular one, it’s one that isn’t supported by much archaeological evidence. Humans have lived in highly stratified, rigidly hierarchical societies absent of any farming (see the Calusa of today’s Western Florida), highly egalitarian cities, and societies where they self-consciously chose not to pursue agriculture. Consider many of the indigenous societies of the California coast who _did_ know how to cultivate tobacco and chose to grow it, but otherwise rejected growing crops. The “human societies have been determined by our method of producing food” outlook largely stems from the French economist A.R.J Turgot, whose idea of evolutionary stages of human society was largely a response to indigenous critiques of European society. If any of this stuff is interesting to you, this is from the book The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Highly recommend it.
Hi Adam, I was studying mycology at university and I wrote a paper on endoglucanase, an enzyme that breaks down cellulose found in crop residue (all the bits if the plant we don't eat and then burn) into simple molecules that can be used to make alcohol, plastics (cellulose is surprisingly similar to the polymers we use to make plastic), textiles and even fuel. Biofuel had a bad rap for a long time because it was too difficult to convert cellulose into usable fuels, but with lignocellulolytic enzymes found in mushrooms, that break down has become much easier. There's still a lot of contention as to whether we should even invest in burning fuels at all, but I see it as a way of reusing what we would burn with no purpose anyways. There are also studies on mushrooms being able to eat plastic and transform poor soil with heavy metals, into nutrient rich soil. They are the decomposers of our world and not utilizing them would be silly lol
Leaving a like so more people can see this
The entire kingdom of Fungi are horrendously under-researched. There is probably a species for every illness, one for every material need, and yet research isn't funded. Some people just need some more *morels.* (I feel offended nobody got the joke yet, oh well more delicious morels for me!)
Of course genetic editing and genomic technology will be the main enabler here. Hypothetically you don't even need mushrooms but if you can transfer the endoglucanase gene to bacteria or yeast you could optimize high yield production of the enzyme. I look forward to how many industrial processes will be completely transformed by gene technology.
This will never get spread because of murican lobbyists
Mushrooms and fungi are just something else, even for their health properties. Turkey tail mushrooms have very potent cancer killing properties and there's even a case where a woman had breast cancer, her and 20+ other women had the same breast cancer and they were all taking the same medicine except this 1 woman was taking turkey tail mushrooms also, all the other patients unfortunately died but she was the only patient that survived and thrived. Also you should look into the agericon mushroom, very very strong against influenza viruses, in studies they were over 10x more powerful and even more powerful when compared to using modern day medicines against these influenza strains
My mom every once in a while tells me stories about how a lot of her relatives from the "ejidos" (common lands) of Sinaloa used to seed and harvest their plots, but when it was posible to actually aquire and sell those lands (some years before 00's), most of our family sold to richer people because of a mix of poverty, ignorance and a need of financing their alcoholism, sadly.
My dad's family used to own a huge plot of land. It was farmed by my grandfather. Unfortunately, none of his children followed in his footsteps, even worse, most of his offsprings are alcoholics and sold the land piece by piece when my grandfather died because they need to support their alcoholism. Now, they don't even own the land where their house stands on.
@@ikazuchioni jesus thats awful
There was an active political campaign to favor concentration of lands in Mexico (an other Latin American countries) by neoliberal governments. For example, raising the interest rates of loans to small producers, eliminating subsidies and eliminating some price controls, besides the aforementioned permission to buy and sell the ejidos. It's not that you relatives are lazy fools, they were just part of the millions that needed to be removed from their land for the rich to be richer.
@@ikazuchioni history of the world. Smart people take money from dumb people.
@@dariog3053 Agricultural protectionism is dumb, and so are you.
Adam is confirmed anti-famine. Add this to the overly meticulous fan wiki.
There's a fan wiki 👁👄👁????
We should make an acronym, I think anti-fa sounds cool
@@ryancole6981 ayo hold up
Based and Homogenized
the professor... not so much.
As a person who works on a farm ran by one guy, that harvests on over 15k acres of land (including double cropped acres), and is a huge part of the “green revolution”, this was a great video. All of the crops we harvest are in irrigated circles, except for five hundred acres of dry land wheat we do every other year. During the harvest seasons we use thousands and thousands of gallons of fuel and run 10-20 machines in a 24hr period. Combines & tractors running during the day, while swathers & some tractors run at night. Unless your family owns land or you have access to a lot of capital, the ability to get loans to rent land, and years of personal experience and knowledge on how to farm, your chances are slim to none.
The average person can garden, someone with free time and land cam have a hobbyfarm of a few acres thats realistically more of a ranch.
To have a commercial farm is very hard and the average person can't do it. Having a modern "mega farm" that owns thousands of acres requires so many resources and so much knowledge it deserves the same level of respect as doctor or engineer gets. (Said as an engineer who knows he can't farm)
As far as sustainability goes Natural gas is basically just methane, and you cam get if from anaerobic digesters and feed them food scraps, manure, or basically amy organic compounds with the right nutrient ratios and you get methane, called bio gas. Eventually i expect a lot of farm equipment to become electric and electricity doesn't have to be unsustainable. (One option is biogas made on the farm itself, many farms in NY do this and sell the gas or power, and it prevents methane from escaping to the atmosphere) we will definitely find am alternative before we run out of fuel because the alternative is unacceptable (and unprofitable).
+ Kyle Ranger: the way land is used depends on who owns it (how many persons) not what crops and way of production yields the most food calories. The same 15k acres could be split up into a LOT of small properties. Which would be run by families as homesteads, produce much more food, while using less water, fossil fuel and they would make do with fewer machines (that are not as heavy - talking about another form of soil degradation by compaction).
Small farmers can devote more attentio, time, effort per acre (square foot even), they can use methods that imitate nature (and the efficiencies and synergies of nature). But those methods cannot work for large scale operations, and they are detrimental to monocultures.
Mulching (which is very important for soil organisms and cuts the use of water cannot be used by big ag. But small farms, market gardeners can use mulching to have good yields - leveraging the support of soil organisms. Everything that is common in big ag - is bad for soil organisms. Fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, ploughing, irrigation (if the water contains salts), compaction by heavy machinery, monocultures. Degraded soil cannot infiltrate or hold rain water well.
Big ag got rid of trees and hedges. Small units replant them, to reap the benefits (see Alley cropping, there are studies and tests with farmers, it has been rediscovered in the 1990s - but conventional farmers will be very reluctant to use it). And huge operations would never, ever use it.
@@franziskani In Western Canada nearly all farms practice no till farming which increases organic matter that in turn improves water retention and microorganism growth. We would likely have a more resilient and sustainable agriculture system if we had smaller farms but the problem is that not many people want to live out on some isolated homestead; other wise it would be more popular. It is also really hard to market products from small farms because it requires a lot of coordination. The centralized economic system favors big farms that specialize in a few products. There is certainly a place for small farms but it would require a huge shift in our economics and politics make it the norm.
This video feels a bit like a Tom Scott one, with Adam walking as he talks, and I really enjoy it!
His choice of t-shirt color for the day certainly helped in that regard.
@@scienceguy8 lol
Here I thought it was an homage to Millenial Farmer 😀
Yup, except Adam doesn't hang on every word he says like it's some sort of brilliant revelation only he could come up with.
“Ragusea is anti-famine”
Damn Adam, going controversial today!
I’ve weighed the pros and cons and imma have to go with food for people
@@nozomimizi8083 shut
Stalin apologists are SEEEEEEETHING
Mao, Churchill, Stalin, and Lysenko confirmed Ragusea haters
YTP is so going to make it “ragusea is anti-feminine”
he's turning into tom scott
i need to see tom scott cooking next time and drowning his tomato sauce in wine
I'm Tom Scott and THIS is a delicious marinara dipping sauce, not very traditional mind you, but still an excellent way to eat some mozzarella sticks.
@@bowserlevx Brought to you by Ritual
THiS!!!
Lol, he made some tea once ;)
White wine?
Electric farm equipment will be a leap forward in agriculture, but I suspect it will be met with resistance unless Right to Repair makes significant headway. With electric equipment, farmers will be able to make their own "fuel", and even charging from the grid will be significantly cheaper than agricultural diesel.
Especially when combined with agri-voltaics which will generate power, lower water usage and increase yields.
+
Why bother with electric equipment when the existing diesel equipment can be fueled with renewable biodiesel? The guy who invented the diesel engine used peanut oil as fuel when he demonstrated his invention at the 1900 World's Fair.
It is indeed quite a big if. The negative connotation associated with Right to Repair is absolutely wild.
While I am an optimist for in certain terms, asking monopolies for leeway without the dangers of human or planet health to burn a fire onto their butts is somewhat of a lost cause it seems.
Either way I imagine some kind of revolution is coming soon enough because of the extremely high average age of the profession. In 20 years almost every somewhat traditional current farmer will have left the field (no pun intended).
Coming from a farming background, I think battery electric tractor could never reasonably become a thing, for similar reasons why electric passenger airplanes are hard.
Tractors need a LOT of fuel/power to run and current batteries aren't energy dense enough, plus the recharge time needed is a major hitch for a farmer.
Biofuels or things like that seem much more achievable to me.
When I learned that throughout most of Japan’s agricultural history, urine collectors would pay people for their urine to use as fertilizer; so I started making my own fertilizer from my own urine. I have a very successful no-till garden. Any food scraps and shredded paper go in the worm bin and they provide castings for the garden. I don’t feed my plants, I feed my soil. Mycorrhizae is the fungus that feeds your plants. It’s a symbiotic relationship between the roots of plants and fungus that keeps plants healthy. As long as the soil is healthy your plants are healthy. Farmers of the green revolution neglected soil health this and killed all soil microbes.
You go, George! I agree with you 100%. Like the song from Grease, "Tell me more. Tell me more."
Why i season my soil not my plants
not just urine but brown gold too
@@hlynnkeith9334 Linfamy, another RUclipsr, has a video about the collection of urine and faeces in Japan. Their channel has some really neat videos about other parts of Japanese history and mythology as well.
It'd be interesting if we started adopting new sewage infrastructure to harvest urine en masse.
Dude. You absolutely nailed it with the whole farming as a romanticized practice. It ain't that easy and if you really want to make a buck you've gotta be able to she'll out a lot of dinero.
Did you see the "farm" they set up in CHAZ in Seattle last year? A few sheets of cardboard laid on the pavement with a couple of bags of potting soil spread on top and some plants shoved in.
@@dirtyblueshirt there’s a reason I didn’t stay in my largely agricultural hometown. Farming is insanely hard work if you actually want to succeed, and I’m not that ambitious about being constantly on the clock
@@dirtyblueshirt Literally can't stop thinking about people he hates in Seattle.
RENT FREE
@@WaterZer0 You believe that relating a topical anecdote in response to another person's comment means I "literally can't stop thinking about..." a group of people? Well, we can certainly conclude that you're not terribly familiar with thought.
BTW, who doesn't hate fascists?
@@dirtyblueshirt Ask the numerous americans who are against abortion. Seems like they love the idea of directly controlling people's lives.
Or the bloodthirsty maniacs who insist we kill millions of innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan and want more.
"We solved this problem and created a bunch of other problems" seems like the history of humanity
GAGAGAGAGAGA! I will now count to 3 and then I am still the unprettiest RUclipsr of all time. 1...2...3. GAGAGAGAGAGA!!! Thank you for your attention, dear andres
It's the nature of life. There will almost always be a tradeoff. You can't preserve everything. Trying to do so often leads to unintended consequences. You have to place it on a value spectrum.
The solution to most problems is to create complex solutions that create even more complex problems.
There are no solutions, only tradeoffs. Is a phrase I often repeat to myself when I get stuck trying to find the best one.
"The man who has bread has many problems, the man without bread has only one."
I would love to see a video about food distribution and supply chains. As a sidebar to this video's topic, we do produce basically enough food for everyone on Earth, but so much food is wasted or spoiled and distribution is not equal across the board. Could be an interesting topic to cover. Though no doubt it would be a very broad one.
I second this statement. As with all resources the apparent scarcity I'd only due to ownership of said resources in the hands of the few super rich who restrict access to them to ensure their power
Also the government subsidiaries that pay monies to farm owners to NOT farm, interesting way to control supply chains.
Gonna have to tackle capitalism to tackle that issue - when it's cheaper to let food rot and cull livestock than to give it away....
@@Hotrob_J Capitalism. Capable of producing so much food that people get confused that supply lines are the issue, not the method of production... No economic system solves the reality that food is grown in a certain area and must be transported.
Yeah, but that would require more effort than skyping with someone who says "I don't know, things could be bad" and then walking next to a field.
"Farming" is a fucking nightmare profession when you are doing it wrong, or only kinda right.
and when your livelihood relies on keeping a million lil plants alive, it's pretty easy to only do kinda right
@@weloo_2736 there’s a reason I’m so bad at Stardew
@@kaimcdragonfist4803 dagdamn birds eating my dagdamn turnips
And hence research institutes are handed to control the agricultural output in every part of the world.
So it isn't as bad as chemical factories or factories in general where one mediocre technician can bring down a city.
We use nightmare practices in farming, when you find out about the link between autism and fossil-fuel fertilizers.
God knows what else those toxic fertilizers are doing to us.
Huh, my daily dose of existential dread has come from a cooking channel of all places. That's new.
It'll be fine.
I was born in Nebraska corn country - at the time the population density was most likely around 10 - 18 people per square mile, there was a small town every ten miles, and a significant portion of each farm contained a home, barn, vegetable garden, and some livestock. They were as self-sufficient as they could make them, and if someone worked a full section of land, it was LOT of work that required a significant amount of laborers.
Headed back 40 years later to visit family: half the land had been returned to prairie, the small towns were deserted, and nobody lived on the property they farmed. My cousin and his wife own two combines and take on yearly contracts to farm about 3 to 5 full sections.
Sometimes I don't appreciate the time and effort and detail put into these video essays. Pulling in the historical sources and current professionals and traveling for footage is such a large undertaking.
I love them but there's no way Adam is doing this without at least a few 4 hour sleep nights
*Interstellar intensifies*
"We didn't run out of planes and television sets. We ran out of food."
Our overreliance on modern technology to feed us might end up making us unable to feed the myriad of mouths we birthed into the world when that technology fails.
@@Craxin01
You're assuming that there's not going to be World War 3 soon.
@@camerongunn7906 Way things are going, WWIII is going to be over water and vital resources.
@@Craxin01
When is that not a compelling force for war?
@@camerongunn7906 If nothing else, it could be an effective way of reducing the population to the point where the vital resources in question are more easily and equitably distributed... assuming the war doesn't devastate said resources. Imagine starting a war for clean water and end up making the water totally undrinkable. Talk about a pyrrhic victory.
The beginning of this video gives me Tom Scott vibes, and I think that's a neat mental connection.
Well yeah, he's wearing a red shirt (plus the way he did his intro).
i was just thinking that haha
And walking and talking in front of green fields!
After i finished watching my thought was "man, this felt like a Tom Scott video with all the walking - let me check the comments to see if anyone else felt the same". Glad it was only a few comments deep.
I was hoping you’d mention modern “organic” farming practice in this video. There’s such a deep-rooted misconception in the US that organic food is more sustainable and it’s SUCH a dangerous lie.
Organic farming is an ideology divorced from reality that requires strict adherence to the mantra of organic farming.
Oddly supported by people who both want to end meat consumption while simultaneously making agriculture reliant on manure 🤷
It is addressed a little bit in his recent video about deer hunting
Absolutely!
@@xenoneuronics6765 Not just manure but animal processing waste.
Vegan "Waiter, waiter... is this carrot vegan?"
Waiter "errr.... dunno"
@@xenoneuronics6765 and let's not forget the only other alternative fertilizers are dead rotting animals or those nasty chemicals! (/s)
Am I supposed to think Airplane when I hear "good luck, we're all counting on you"?
A problem I have with whenever the issue of "overpopulation" comes up is the debate over that can only end up with yikesy "solutions". Like who is an authority in our society to decide which parts of are population are unsustainable and how can overpopulation be "dealt with". A hopeful answer would be something along the lines of proper sex education and getting rid of a societal pressure to bear offspring as a requirement for a good life, but ultimately I don't think that will change the fact that a thriving humanity is destined for growth. Unfortunately once you have exhausted that argument all you are left with is arguing with eco-fascists... Which is... not great... So yeah, I am very cautious of whenever "overpopulation" is brought up as a topic, because unfortunately it drags you into the mud of a lot of questionable people eager to give their answer.
We'll never reach over 10 billion people, so it's all irrelevant. Malthus was wrong. End of story.
Decreasing TFRs in the Global South is still bound to happen as access sex education, medical infrastructure, and economic growth all increase. “Population control” is happening as we speak.
In smaller countries land is very limited so it's encouraged that u don't have any children. Bangladesh is the best example I can think of for that. Another problem is a larger population = higher energy demands = increased carbon footprint.
remove the word “yikesy” from your vocabulary. trust me, there are about 1000 other ways to communicate that emotion without looking so foolish
Overpopulation is a myth, don't worry look it up
The quality of every video is going up and up!!! I love this documentary style vlog videos.
indeed!
long live the empire
@@hakanwz I was reffering to these specific ones, that come on Mondays, I agree that vitamin pills are basically useless.
@The Slav Chef what do they taste like?
@@strider552 nothing, most of them smell quite disgusting though.
I love how you showcase all those agricultural research departments at southern and mid-western universities.
True! It's so refreshing not to hear some Californian pseudo-expert for once.
I always tell people, it were more accessible, I'd love to farm for a living. As a small scale hobby farmer, I try to stay away from synthetic fertilizers, opting instead to compost my excess of manure for nitrogen. Instead of insecticides, I tend to plant marigolds and lavender.
The key there is "small scale". I think large scale farmers would like to stay away from commercial fertilizers and pesticides too, if they could. That is a big part of their annual budget. Unfortunately, compost heaps aren't all that scaleable. Even manure isn't all that scaleable, though a lot is used in commercial farming.
And your practices are completely dependent on diesel fuel for the tractor? Would you be able to manage if your diesel fuel use was cut to 1/4? A big part of the "green revolution" was about eliminating manual labor, replacing it with ever larger machinery
@@jumboegg5845 all my stuff is done by manual labour. Tilling, watering, harvesting, etc. My practices are almost completely reliant on my own physical abilities. Not to mention, diesel is getting way to expensive.
@@e.mitchell9388 Good to hear, sounds like you've got a nice setup. People often don't understand how almost all aspects of our lives are dependent on fossil fuels. The idea of eliminating fossil fuels and net zero emissions has major implications to our lifestyles that people just dont understand.
"I just want to tell you both good luck. We're all counting on you." Just acknowledging the reference so that Adam doesn't feel old.
I just wanted to tell you both: Good luck. We're all counting on you.
Surely you don’t think the reference would go unnoticed?
@@vinnygi I once did, but no longer. And stop calling me Shirley
Adam Ragusea 2016: “Here’s how to make a nice roast dinner”
Adam Ragusea 2021: “Industrial society and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race”
Teddy Ragusea the Unicooker
Adam Ragusea 2021 *Brought to you by amazon*: “Industrial society and its consequences have been ( Hey, check out the sponsor of this video...) a disaster for the human race” **Endorsed by amazon**.
Based Ragusea?
Looking at it as exclusively a disaster is really stupid, there are many good things to come from industrialization, we just need to find balance
Adam kaczynski
This video is gonna be great YTP material!
"Let the record show that Ragusea is staunchly anti-*insert some progressive ideal*"
Time for Adam to become a communist.
omg yes
DEAD DINOSAUR JUICE
Why?
Wasn't expecting the Airplane! reference. Well done.
The airplanes Adam shows (6:54, 12:49) are KC-135s, aka Tankers. They refuel other planes in flight. My guess is that those planes belong to the 134th Air Refueling Wing of the Tennessee Air National Guard, stationed at McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base, Knoxville, Tennessee.
@@hlynnkeith9334Cool! Also:
ruclips.net/video/SmHeP9Sve48/видео.html
Yes! Finally! An Adam Ragusea video that is relevant to a subject I'm studying (and have an exam on!!!)
"I just want to tell you both good luck, we're all counting on you. " Cut to airplane going on to land. That was perfect!
thank you , i though t i was the only one to notice? Is he an AZA fan?
A point you missed with phosphorous, which lends more context, is that it runs on a geologic timescale, and is an element, required for DNA production, so is not possible to synthetically produce. This means our only options are to recycle it, find ways to draw a scarce resource from low concentration sources, or find new places to mine it. All these options have their own issues, it takes millions of years for new deposits to form, many methods for recycling and extracting it are inefficient, and many of the places with deposits left are in poor parts of the world that are seeing little to no benefit from mega corporations coming in and screwing up their land to get at it. So it is a nuanced issue that needs a novel solution, because most of the current options aren't great.
Edit: Also, we will definitely run out of phosphorus way before we run out of oil, and as of right now, there is no way for us, as a species, to keep feeding everyone when that happens.
What is the min max time estimate? What is your outlook on the capability of human ingenuity to reduce potential suffering of phosphate shortage?
well martian soil is absolutely stuffed with phosphorous so uh i geuss we better get on that fusion engine stuff as quickly as we can
It's not an ingenuity problem, it's a distribution and infrastructure problem. You can recycle organic materials in anaerobic digestors to reclaim it, and you can collect it from things like dairy farms and use organic fertilizers to reintroduce it, but at the end of the day it's a problem of politics and political will, because a lot of it comes down who is willing to foot the bill for these inherently unprofitable solutions.
asteroids, thank me later
@@deusexmachinareznov4975 nuclear engines, even fusion ones, are not a great idea to run in our atmosphere, due to the neutron radiation produced. At best you could use multiple layers of heat exchangers to prevent your propellant from being neutron-damaged (and thus also radioactive) but that massively increases the weight of your rocket. Thus they’re far more useful for moving from place to place within space and we’d still need something else to actually bring the phosphorus down from orbit a) intact; b) cheaply; and c) safely. A fusion rocket would lower the fuel cost from Mars to Earth (and maybe the return trip if the cargo vehicle isn’t sacrificed getting the cargo planetside) but that’s about it. Apologies if you knew this already, if so perhaps someone else reading this might still find it interesting.
The airplane at the end was perfect.
timmy, do you like movies about gladiators?
@@kazeshi2 I’m just curious, you, Turkish prisons, ever been
@@ledelste it's where I developed a drinking problem.
Honestly, made my day
Now make a video about the problems with vitamin supplements.
Lol its such a shame that vid seemed like directly shilling, he's got such great content
shots fired damn
He will. it takes time to make video and he probably didnt reckon that the vitamin video would turn to shit.
But let history show that neglecting a problem is far more lucrative for brand image that apologizing.
The amount of people that think they are Adam’s boss is white humorous.
@@kevinpenfold1116 We are. Who else is?
I read a book called the Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith, Something we are not properly addressing is every time you put the plow to the field and you harvest the product and remove the product from the field the nutritional value of the food drops. Fertilizer is a temporary fix for nutrient deficient soil. In the past farming technique was crop rotation and field resting. I believe as our food quality decreases I think we are going to and currently seeing a rise in food allergies and chronic health issues.
Simple solution, look into permaculture and rewilding. Also vertical farms if you want to go the technological route.
This really comes down to allocation of resources and well-being through time. Are we willing to trade prosperity in the present for future devastation? For most of humanity's history the answer has been "yes".
Man your videos are increasing in excellence. They look, sound, and even feel better with each new one (pacing, tone, continuity) and the content (substance) is really really good. So glad I am subscribed. May your trajectory of influence and reward continue to rise!
I have to say Adam, I appreciate your journalistic integrity, you keep the tone neutral as best as you can and don’t try to shove anything down our throats. Much applause! 👏🏻
Hey Adam! Would you consider making a video on the subject of your journalism and research methods?
Your videos are incredibly instructive, quickly walk you through the science behind things, and answer many simple questions. It would be great to know how you tackle research to get to the specific information you need. And how you get to the bottom of a question efficiently, without getting pulled off on every direction.
I’m loving the increase in video quantity, not ruining the quality. Don’t know if it’s cos they’re shorter but it’s cool.
Thanks, "contemporary world history" class, now I know what Adam is talking about.
I read Dr Zabinski's book after her first appearance on your channel and it is a GREAT read--easily understood but full of science, too.
So there's the broad Green Revolution, and then there's also this obscure cold war era policy...
Sometimes I have to wonder how much Adam Ragusea just wants to be complete vs him just trying to preempt internet pedants
Personally, I think that's fine. It helps to curb misinformation. Plus, have you seen some of the comments on his videos? Frankly, that desire makes complete sense to me.
"well actually..."
@@Thuazabi I'm all for it, it's one of the things I love about these vids, just curious you know
It is what makes him so uniquely intellectual in an otherwise forgettable side of RUclips. Internet pedants, while technically being people just voicing their (mindless) opinions (that can easily be disproven in seconds), function more as a sort of plague. They show up unannounced and create slowness in the system (that being RUclips comments) and causing general discomfort.
Even though he addresses this upfront , many of the commentators still confuse the issue.
Never underestimate the human ability to find some way to temporarily delay catastrophe, or procrastinate catastrophe perhaps.
My favorite idea in agriculture is homestead economy. Instead of giving subsidies to big farms we should subsidies small sustainable farms that are part of a union style farmers co-op. More employment, better farming, better food, less infrastructure and farming machines. A win for everyone except from big food and seed corporations.
If only those weren't some of the strongest lobbyist groups
@@crazydragy4233 with guns, oil, and all the health sector
@@sotch2271 Don't forget car manufacturing, literally reshaped cities for cars. I don't know about all of health sector but insurance for sure, and also tax calculating programs as well
Thanks for the pointer to "The Wizard and The Prophet". I look forward to reading it, but have some preconceived notions. Personally, I think there needs to be a balance between the two, but the more important thing for any approach is understanding the underlying mechanisms involved. You can't focus on the right things to conserve if you have no idea what's more important or what the side effects will be. Ditto for finding ways to make "more" of whatever. This feeds back into why farming for a living is hard... you can't just do stuff that kinda works, you have to make a profit to enable purchase of all those other things you might want above subsistence, and you can't degrade your environment or you'll lose your ability to achieve subsistence (to say nothing of dealing with variability of weather/pests/etc).
You don't need a notification if your always on RUclips.
AISURU.TOKYO/piit?[Beautiful-Mountain]💗
*(◍•ᴗ•◍)✧* 18 years and over
RUclips: This is fine
Someone: Says "heck"
RUclips: Be gone
#однако #я #люблю #таких #рыбаков #Интересно #забавно #девушка #смешная #垃圾
I recently (recently meaning like 2 years back) took a college class all about agricultural history as seen from an economics standpoint.
Main point is that I am from Europe. And it was presented as that since it's inception the EU had that unified stance against people starving. Giving away money based on the volume of food you produced and all that good stuff
So I genuinely got the impression that this was a European initiative that the rest of the world just copied cause it worked so well.
Hearing that America had an entirely different "green revolution" is mind blowing
The US always has their own, twisted version of everything.
@@WaterZer0 how is this a twisted version? The eu was made in the 90s. The american gov wanted to make people not be communists, so they gave out food and farming techniques to certain areas so they would not turn red. That went away when the ussr fell, in the early 90s
Oh look. Your education was complete garbage mixed in with propaganda in favor of rootless nation-less people paying huge taxes "for the greater good." Imagine my utter surprise!
@@barrackobamar "the american gov gave out food and farming techniques to certain areas [they had abused] so they would not turn red"
Ah yes the benevolent US fighting off the evils of communism.
Do you stop to think for even 2 seconds about a comment when you make it?
@@hawhafunnyraffs5568 Oh look. Your education was complete garbage mixed in with propaganda in favor of massive inequality with ignorant people paying taxes "for the greater good" (to bomb brown people on the other side of the world). Imagine my utter surprise!
The estimates of the lives Borlaug saved from starvation range up to a billion... what a criminally underrated story!
6:56 Wouldn't it be more efficient to arrange those circles in a hexagonal lattice rather than a square lattice? There would be less unirrigated space between them.
In theory yes but then theres the issue of even water distribution between each section. An idea is to have the rotation water pipes extend and contract but then theres the issue of the constant change in water pressure required every time the pipes change length.
@@ultimatehamsandwich734 "In theory yes but then theres the issue of even water distribution between each section."
Isn't it the same (except worse) for the square lattice seen here?
The reception to this video compared to your Ritual sponsored video is astounding. This is the Adam Ragusea that we have come to love.
I love such style of videos, Adam!
Scratches my curiosity bug.
Check out Tom Scott if you haven't. This video is feels very Tom Scott-ish. I saw a few other comments saying this as well.
Technically famines have historically been an issue with resource allocation and prejudices, the most common Irish potato famine was because the British took over large amounts of Irish agriculture and only grew cash crops, rather than nutritional foods the Irish needed, so when the blight hit, their already low amount of food dropped and the British didn't care.
That is very different to the history I've learned. The Irish grew a specific breed of potato that had a very good yield and worked very well in Irish soil. The reason they grew potatoes wasn't because they were just selling them. Poor people everywhere grow potatoes. They are incredibly dense in nutrition. They also keep for a long time, unlike most vegetables, without any preservation. It certainly wasn't political, it was just bound to happen. Everyone wanted to grow the same optimum potato. It was easy to grow that one breed because everyone had easy access to its seeds (their neighbors' potatoes).
@@enderoctanus they were exporting grains like British imposition on Bengal India.
The diversity in potatoes would have included access to more calories or vitamins or stretching seasons
Hey Adam !
Do you memorize your scripts or do you have broad lines next to you and you improvise you speech ?
Great question! I think a "how I film my documentary/educational videos" video would be an excellent companion to "how I film my cooking videos"
IIRC he scripts it all out and does the Closed Captioning as well which is why it’s so accurate. I think his wife helps with that part. He mentions that in one of his videos from a while back.
@@RedRider2001 Thanks! I love the closed captions! Not only accessible to those hard of hearing or deaf etc, but also I can watch his videos without headphones on mute and still know what he's saying ^-^
Hundreds of millions of lives were saved as a result of the Green Revolution... but some people still aren't happy.
We used to be afraid of DDT... but everything was OK.
We used to be afraid of nuclear bombs... but everything was OK.
We used to be afraid of of communists... but everything was OK.
We used to be afraid of immigration... but everything was OK.
We used to be afraid of nuclear power... but everything was OK.
We used to be afraid of overpopulation... but everything was OK.
We used to be afraid of global cooling... but everything was OK.
We used to be afraid of the hole in the ozone layer... but everything was OK.
We used to be afraid of GMOs... but everything was OK.
Trust me... everything will be fine.
Vertical farming using closed water systems could help solve a lot of those problems, although there is still the issue of fertilizers (even though they require far fewer additions overall, since they are re-cycled through the system instead of eroded away).
Great video! I'd love to see one where you look into "Regenerative Agriculture" - the pros, the cons, whether you think it's scalable or politically feasible on a large scale.
Regenerative farming has been used literally since farming has existed, so of course it works. And it's entirely necessary. Where's the debate in that
@@borneoorangutan it hasn't been used on the scale of modern farming at all
Thanks for putting this together, Adam. While this stuff is well known in certain circles already, it's important to bridge it with the cooking community. Cheers!
The guys who seasons his cutting board instead of his steak is now asking how his steak changes the seasons
Why are you so good at advertising your sponsors? I always get hypnotized and listen to the entire thing where I would normally skip any kind of ad... u good bruh
(no i don't use adblocker, though I have a passionate hate for ads)
I have to imagine that high consumption rates are due to the choices we have rather than what we actually eat day to day. There are a million versions of peanut butter, potato chips and soda, but most of it is probably thrown out when no one buys them all. Companies are incentivized to keep supplies high even if it results in waste because profit is the main motivator. Resources are being used as safety nets even if it doesn't fulfil their goal of feeding people. So we could lower consumption if we lower our choices in food rather than allow large amounts of garbage to rot in warehouses and shelves hoping someone wants to pick up "Cheezy Ballz - Variety Pack!" for a birthday party.
I'd definitely recommend looking further into fertiliser efficiency gradients. I'm currently studying my masters on this exact topic, we may be running out of fertiliser chemicals, but this all is due to the efficiency that is wasted. If we could (slowly we are) return to the 8linitial stages of fertiliser that started in the green revolution and then improve on this, we could actively combat climate change, improve soil health and it has been theorised grow better, healthier, cheaper plants . Excellent introductory video into the cool world of modern ag science!
Lookup Elaine ingam/ soil food web
This video reminds me of a book that I read at the end of my college years. I've already forgotten its name, but it describes US's strategy of affecting the world through lending its excessive agriculture products, including the aids to Mexico, India, and Philippines as mentioned in your video. Eventually almost none of them worked, though. Watching this video made me remember more things than I could remember from that book.
"Adam Ragusea is anti-famine"
Mao, Stalin, Churchill: And I took that personally
Churchill?
@@sheppycider123 Dude literally killed about 3 million people in India.
@ImNotMoose
He’s referring to the Bengal Famine that happened in India during World War 2. It’s widely believed that the colonial British government caused the famine with terrible policies and they most certainly attempted to cover it up until press outlets in India leaked the story.
@@danielg3857 Ahhh, thank you, I didn't know about that :)
Audible rocks. I was a holdout for so long, but finally gave in. Wish I could sign up again!
It seems to me one of the finer points here is the idea of population (specifically overpopulation). But that’s also debatable. There’s an overwhelmingly common perception that we are overpopulated, but there’s also a compelling heterodox argument that we are not only _not_ overpopulated, but declining birth rates are actually a real problem and that we actually need to _increase_ population. I’m not an expert on any of this and I don’t really know what I believe, but I think that could be a good video project for you to explore deeper. Population as related to food production, economy, climate change, natural resources, longevity of the human species, etc. I think overall that you are a fair minded, unbiased, science oriented journalist/presenter and I’d love to see you explore this topic in a deeper and more nuanced way and hear what you discover.
Thanks for the great content as always. You have a real talent and your success is well deserved.
if you knew how much food we grow, then throw away because it can't be sold for Maximum Profit, you would NOT be asking "if" we can feed everyone.
"Why feeding everyone will hurt quarterly earnings."
"i think the internet has been a net-good, but have you seen it? yikes."
amazing XD
I know, so many people trying to sell over-priced snake oil while pretending to be an authority.
@@tbolland1991 Like... Adam? Makes you wonder!
Shocked that this isn't a 13 minute video all about how audiobooks can improve my life with well documented research paid for by Amazon
I've been trying to get used to a diet that is less environmentally damaging and feasible in the case of a SHTF scenario. This involves reducing my meat consumption and eating baked potatoes instead of grains. Unfortunately, I've been mostly unsuccessful at that change so far.
Why is this video not about regenerative agriculture which solves all of the problems caused by corporate agriculture?
What gives me a lot of hope is permaculture. While the techniques are generally far more labor intensive than the green revolution, the calories per acre is comparable and the nutrition per acre is through the roof all while being far more ecologically sound. In many cases it improves ecosystems, arguably even beyond their natural state. If instead of creating endless expensive sprawl around our new megacities we kept them tight - think Barcelona development pattern - and surrounded them with permaculture farms and gardens, we'd be in a much better spot. Obviously people would be slightly materially poorer as the hours of work (whether that's themselves or how much they have to work to pay for food) will be higher, but the low burn on our resources to produce this food means people can be slightly poorer for much longer rather than be rich for 50 years and then destitute for a few generations until populations slowly lower.
Permaculture is so cool!! It's how agriculture was done in the Americas before it was colonized--food forests were described by European colonialists who didn't realize they were seeing cultivated spaces. Even in urban and suburban areas, community gardens focused on creating interdependent, food-producing systems could lessen the need for large-scale agriculture. You'd get lots of other benefits too, like building stronger communities, 0 mile fresh produce, green spaces within populated areas, and getting people to connect with where their food comes from, and how a healthy ecosystem could function.
I thought for a moment that the thumbnail was about the channel, given yesterday's resounding success. If you stick to this kind of video, rather than that kind of infomercials, then, yeah, this could last.
You watch his channel?
really interesting video, but I remember through all of georgraphy at school my teachers telling me that in this century we could well be fighting wars for clean drinking water. Would love to see a video discussing that
But I enjoy anything you do. Have a great day Adam!
yeah, not sure why he said there's no freshwater shortages when there have literally been major cities that have run out of water or were very close to running out of water (e.g. Cape Town, Mexico City)
Humans can purify and desalinate water. We will be fine, it's like most of the planet.
@@williammoore5081 well, at least west will be fine, the process isn't cheap after all
@@mattholtz Because he's right, we literally can't run out of fresh water as it keeps cycling.
The problem is the cycle isn't static. What transpires here collects miles away, and places that have devastated their collecting capabilities by polluting aquifers and cutting down forests, like Mexico City, are now facing longer and harsher droughts because the water now collects elsewhere.
In the 1950s, the US government made it unprofitable for small farmers/dairymen to stay in business. Corporate structure became necessary for farms to prosper/grow. I grew up on a dairy that milked from 6 - ten cows and my dad became a freelance carpenter. It is insidious but unstoppable the closing of avenues for self-employment.
Adam Ragusea is many things, a semi-pro home cook, a RUclipsr, a Journalist, a science communicator... but that airplane joke at the end shows that he i first and foremost: a dad. With a dad's sense of humour.
Thing is, modern agriculture hasn't even ended hunger. It's given the world the *ability* to end hunger, but that ability has never actually been manifested. People starve to death all over the world because there's way more than enough food but it isn't distributed equitably. :/
The unsustainability of the current system is definitely a problem, but what good is said system if it's not feeding everyone even while it *does* have enough resources to do it?
The distribution problem isn´t the problem of the agricultural system, but geography and logistics.
@@Dinitroflurbenzol We have the means to bypass the problems posed by both location and logistics, it's called preserving food.
@@CondemnedGuy And that totally offsets the lack of streets, waterways, energy gris and storage places. Just because you can flash freeze peas.
yeah, nice one. Got another joke as well?
@@Dinitroflurbenzol If you're so blind that you don't understand canned food, I'm not going to waste a single minute on your tarded butt.
@@CondemnedGuy If you are that demented, that you don´t realize, that it never mattered how you preserve food if you can´t fucking transport it. Cans dont roll across oceans and mountains, ya numbskull
I was shook when I heard doc sigh and go speechless after talking about starving farmers. It's that fucked up, huh?
Just hit that spot as I read this Co.
Wow, that hits a nerve
In India especially farmer suicides are a big problem.
I think it's hilarious how wrong all these super smart guys were about population growth. They were probably like, "Let me see, I'm an expert in this whole agricultural thing so now that must make me a genius of everything especially human psychology, family sociology, women reproductive health, etc to say beware of an incoming population bomb."
It's called the Malthusian Fallacy. Malthus wrote in 1798. There was a tremendously influential Book (The Population Bomb) published in 1968 based on Mathus's theories that really kicked off the 1970 population panic though.
Adam, thank you for reminding us that we are living history, and that we need to remember what the question is.
I hope people understand that, wherever you stand. You know?
Great video, we needed it.
Wow, I never expected a video like this from your channel.
Came for the recipes
Stayed for the Discussions.
As a plant ecologist, I can't wait to watch this. Except I have to wait until tomorrow to watch this.
why tho ;-; ?
@@sorcerer1439 maybe its late at his time
That shot with the KC-135 at the end is neat, love it.
Where there are macro populations, there is plenty of land to farm and space to farm. Not everyone eats cows #India. Governments and big businesses are often the problem in which the governors act more like slave masters to the governed despite massive farming land #China, #Africa.
Population control is a concern of the governors and big businesses who and that do not want their state in life uprooted by would-be self-governing farmers and their husbandry.
God forbid people have their own farms. How will power-hungry people control their slaves and armies to protect power-hungry interests?
What amazed me the most was the difference between Dr. Zabinsky and her picture.
Adam, you ROCK! I've followed you from the kitchen to the fields of the world and it's been a quality journey! Thank you!
Seeing as this video is almost 50% longer than the vitamin video i think we now know what parts were missing from it.
Where was the doc to give solidity to the vitamin claims? Where was the counterarguments and historical insight? Where was the journalistic integrity and open mindedness?
At first i was really confused where all the hate towards that video was coming from but after looking into it more i see why. It's his first fully sponsored video that just seems like a stretched out ad read rather than a well researched video.
Those probably were all against the rules of the sponsorship deal.
This video is an usual scheduled Monday video, the vitamin one was a promotional "bonus" video, understandably the latter one would have less work behind it for...well...*time reasons*
He did specifically notify people that he will be doing what is basically an ad video before that vitamin video came out. I don't know why people are so upset that it was an ad when he very clearly stated that it was going to be an ad.
@@trawrtster6097 Well its because those videos goes against the brand that he so carefully have built up. We expect these types of videos and when he sells out his entire audience, some of whom takes his words at face value, we feel cheated.
This is after all a relationship, and relationship have to be maintained.
PS: The vitamin video was posted to youtube. You cant assume people have seen stuff he posted elsewhere. ( personally i dont even use the app, so i dont see anything except videos)
Loved the video Adam. Would love to see a video on your take on regenerative ag, that kinda feels like the next step in a lot of ways to clean our farming up, at least some
I think that would be too much for Adam to take in because he doesn't seem like a big picture guy. Adam is buzzing around with words more than actually looking for truth. Even his guests seem rather dull when it comes to serious issues.
Adam perpetuates what most people already thinks rather than pointing out real issues and finding solutions. But I guess that is why he gets so many views, because of peoples laziness and confirmation bias. He should stick to his kitchen and his cookie doughs.
This is what truly sets this channel apart! Not just food but fascinating well researched journalism about food!
A large issue in wealthier countries is food waste. Every link in the chain from farm to table is full of waste. Farmers waste get forced to waste food because of government regulation, stores and restaurants waste food because of expiration dates and limited shelf lives. And how many times have you purchased a banana just to watch it spoil on the counter top. I believe garbage dumps will be the gold mines of the future as all the biodegradable and nonbiodegradable products get compacted together. You will have metals needed for manufacture compacted between layers of rich soil from all the discarded food waste.
Gosh! Thank you for covering this crucial topic.
Additionally the world already grows enough food to feed everyone. Loss of food from wastage and distribution failures are both big problems.
One of the really big issues is the amount of land put over to raising animals for meat. If we ate less meat the amount of land needed to feed the world would be a fraction of what we now use. Currently 25% of the whole planets land surface is used for agriculture and most of that is to produce meat. It's breaking ecosystems down worldwide.
You might like to read George Monbiot 'Regenesis'. He goes into the issues and some likely solutions in a hard headed factual manner.
Thank you, as always, for raising important issues. 👍
Animals produce natural fertilizer though. If we made urea out of cow piss we wouldn’t be wrecking the ozone layer by producing all this nitrogen fertilizer out of natural gas.
@@nuclearcatbaby1131 Good point. I don't know where the balance of this one falls. Keeping cows makes methane.
Adam. You’ve given me anxiety about things I didn’t know I should have anxiety about. Fossil aquifers 😳👀😳. The fertilizers😳. The diesel fuel 😳. The run off 😳.
today i learned that green revolution was not about environmentalism
I’m always happy to hear the great Leslie Nielsen cited.
what a legend for still using wired earbuds
I like that your videos often present differing viewpoints.
Mankind thrives on adversity. It's just unfortunate that we're so very good at creating our own.
Or fortunate.
Imagine the utter hell that would be life if there was no adversity. No challenge. Nothing to look forward to. Nothing to look back on. And endless existence unchallenged by anything. You have everything you need. And most of your practical wants are easily met.
Play a 4x game on the easiest difficulty setting. But without the Next Turn button - having to actually live out those years which flash by with just a few instructions on the computer.
Or... look at the internet, and the modern first world countries. There were no great atrocities (before 2019) being committed on the populace. There were no threatening wars to worry about. Crime rates were the lowest they've ever been. Standard of living has been continually increasing.
Sure, there are evils happening elsewhere in the world. China, for example. Africa's constant warring, and economy that's simultaneously crippled and held aloft by charities. Middle Eastern countries which... well, let's just say, companies don't roll out their pride flags there. They were not, however, in the first world countries. They are distant news stories from an interconnected world that you'd never see.
But good times are boring times. There must be an enemy to fight. A battle line to draw. A cause to champion. A god to herald. An end times to proclaim. Even if it has to be completely fabricated.
greetings from a environmental technologist from Denmark. Great video adressing some of the agricultural problems we currently have. Some comments from a Danish perspective.
The NPK Shortage and overuse.
There is two paths we work on here that are meant to compliment eachother: Hydroponics and NPK Reclamation.
Hydroponics im a bit limited in knowledge on the State its in so il refrain from that one.
NPK Reclamation: This is also a twofold thing. Reclamation from waste water and reclamation from Biogas prodution.
Water reclamation: Currently the way we get rid of most particles in our waste water is with bacteria consuming and reducing particles followed be sedimentation with Calcium or Iron compounds. The idea is to find a way to easily and economically regain the rather large amounts of NPK that is now bound to either iron or calcium. Assuming people smarter then me manage to find a way there its a great step towards sustainable Fertilizer.
Biogas: While still a bit small a frougth with NIMBY problems there is a lot of potential. After the whole Biogas step you're left with a slush of highly concentrated liquid fertilizer. Further studies into extracting the NPK so as to have a more controlled fertilizer is in progress.
Yep, fertiliser from anaerobic digesters, plus a bit of free energy in the form of methane (which should always be burned instead of released, given how much worse of a greenhouse gas it is), is something I’m hopeful can help with this. Especially efforts to integrate it with sewage systems and not just food and farm waste as we do currently.
"They keep us alive, but they give us a whole host with other health problems too"
I agree Adam. Being alive is a problematic health condition in my opinion as well.
Being alive and mall nourished isn't particularly pleasant
What is interesting about people concerned about population growth is that they never seem to view their own existence as a problem and one that they could remedy all on their own if they really wanted.
A note on 3:18 - while this understanding of “Big History” is a popular one, it’s one that isn’t supported by much archaeological evidence. Humans have lived in highly stratified, rigidly hierarchical societies absent of any farming (see the Calusa of today’s Western Florida), highly egalitarian cities, and societies where they self-consciously chose not to pursue agriculture. Consider many of the indigenous societies of the California coast who _did_ know how to cultivate tobacco and chose to grow it, but otherwise rejected growing crops.
The “human societies have been determined by our method of producing food” outlook largely stems from the French economist A.R.J Turgot, whose idea of evolutionary stages of human society was largely a response to indigenous critiques of European society.
If any of this stuff is interesting to you, this is from the book The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Highly recommend it.