Can Small-Scale Farming Feed the World?
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- čas přidán 27. 06. 2024
- Can small-scale farming feed the world and stop climate change? Support OCC and get 20+ bonus, ad-free videos by signing up for Nebula: go.nebula.tv/occ/
In this Our Changing Climate climate change video essay, I answer the question, can small-scale farming feed the world? Specifically, I look at how industrial farming and the green revolution have led to increased farming emissions and severely depleted soil health. Small-scale farming, which I define as regenerative farms employing traditional knowledge, crop diversity, and low carbon tools, can not only feed the world but do so in a manner that mitigates and possibly reverses the effects of climate chaos and industrial agriculture. Small-scale farms also offer a place to build movement power. A refuge to build people power and transform our current untenable capitalist system. Small-scale farming can mean big change.
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Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
1:13 - The Problem With Industrial Agriculture
4:16 - Small-Scale Farming Can (and Does) Feed the World
5:53 - Why Small-Scale Farming Matters
9:00 - Towards a Small-Scale Future
11:20 - CuriosityStream and Nebula Sponsored Content
13:29 - Outro
I use Epidemic Sound for some of my music: epidemicsound.com/creator
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Further Reading and Resources: ourchangingclimate.notion.sit...
#SmallScaleFarming #Farming #SustainableFarming
💡 Where do you get your food from?
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Hey man (: here's a tiny nitpick to an overall great video:
Shouldn't it rather be 'more harm than good' instead of 'then'? ^^'
Edit: at about 1:42
Grow my own and farmers market
That extra labour requirement can also be provided by solar-powered robots - build hackerspaces too, please. That revolution can't be brought about by divorcing from STEM. Check out Open Source Ecology please.
Great video! I support small scale farming so much but the most common doubt is how do we handle the populations where growing food is harder like deserts or cold northern regions, and what to do in the winter. I was wondering if you could make a video on this and maybe include things like indoor vertical farming?
Grocery store.
The time has come for another “agricultural revolution.” Food autonomy is *essential* to our liberation.🙌🏽🌱
So happy to see you here! Good content creators watching good content creators, feelsgoodman.
I agree its essential, but its a tough reality also. If you look at this from an energy perspective, you quickly see that this is very hard to achieve. One gallon of gas is equivalent of 100 people working 24/7. I work on my eco farm (zone 7) by myself and I can tell you: its hard to produce enough food for yourself. There are some surpluses but in the sense of producing enough calories for yourself its really hard. Spatially if you consider climate change. Every year is harder. There is either too much sun, to much rain, too little rain, then some giant hail storm in-between. If anything at all is left, fungus takes it all. Millions will die soon. And the time to re-educate people is over. Whatever will happen will happen without us heaving much control over it. Maybe if this movement would have started 20 years ago, then maybe. On the other hand its not much different from Frescos vision in the Venus project. And nothing much happened with that. Even though I like the idea, I think its much too late in the game to try that approach. I think we have to think in more Machiavellian ways.
UPUPUP you deserve more view
@@drekpaprika yeah i agree and its only applies to who already own land or property or just some random rich people thats it.
Starting permaculture thanks to you in Germany
As a small scale farmer myself, I find this video extremely accurate in all the challenges faced by our industry. Global warming, deforestation and chemicals are all reasons why the little guys don’t really stand a fighting chance. A buddy of mine (also a small scale farmer) recently introduced me to Dimitra which helps support small farmers by recording farming activities, creating detailed dashboards, and even providing recommendations that help increase profitability. The reason why I like this solution is because I feel like our space has really not adopted new tech in a while and this is why we are losing to the big companies. It’s nice to see that there are cutting edge companies that are focused on the small guys like us!
Seen Hbomberguy cover Climate-Change?
Small scale farmers, who live on the land they work, are far better stewards of the environment. Staying small means farmers are less likely to be burdened by the debt required to farm large plots of land (machinery, chemical pesticides, petroleum-derived fertilizers). We should support small farmers and ensure they make a living wage for their very important work. We all eat, so we should all care deeply about farmers.
We need to!!
@@scapegoatmiller9110 I once saw some politicians trying to make animal agriculture pick up the bill on cleaning the waste they produce. I don’t think it happened. That would help destroy big ag too
Yes!
@@scapegoatmiller9110 ...but don't subsidize the small scale farmers who do it the right way ?
@@shaunaburton7136 ...but don't subsidize the small scale farmers who do it the right way ?
I have a small garden in my yard that gives me enough food for half the year. Eventually will have indoor gardening in winter
Me too! It’s a lot of work but it’s amazing how abundant it is
That’s amazing I know that takes work and care I remember going to my grandads house as a kid and walking through his garden and seeing all his different vegetables and then eating some later that evening for dinner really cool experience I was blessed with wish it was more common
how big is this?
i'm trying to start one too and i'm interested in how much yield you get for a certain amount of space.
And where do you live? (climate)
@@sethdemers1530 it should be.
We have a movement here in Brasil called MST (Landless Workers' Movement), were ordinary people occupy a small portion of giant monoculture industrial farms, turning it in a multi-family owned sustainable polyculture. For me, it's one of the most pragmatic socialist movements in the world
The MST literally invades land and takes it from the owner. Sometimes they carry weapons and threaten the owners.
Don't spread false news about our country, please
I think I love this idea so much I may steal it!!!
@@reidosgamescandido6050 False. There were few episodes of armed struggle, but generally the onslaught comes from the owners. MST promotes social actions, founded schools and occupied land belonging to criminal companies
@@reidosgamescandido6050 what, so you want then to give flowers to the owners? Wake up bro, our country is owned by the agro industry. Like the fella said, armed struggles are rare. The agro's violence is routine, using our land to sell soy for the world, while family owned farms, like the ones from MST, don't let us starve to death
Except the families don't own anything. Those lands are ruled by a bureaucracy that will stop providing protection(they are technically on occupied land and have no legal rights to it) if they don't follow every order.
Bolsonaro made a surprisingly pragmatic decision by giving property rights to the families working on some occupied farms (the ones that have been occupied for so long that the original owners gave up on it), giving them true independence.
I farmed in a senior’s hobby farm for a few years, about 2 acres, no fertilizer, a day of labour from May to September to maintain it. Enough was harvested for several families through the fall. We could have done more to incorporate indigenous and Earth friendly farming and crops, but even at that it was an easy success.
School must replace some non-sense subjects and starting to teach urban farming and sustainable agriculture. It doesn't mean everyone must pick farming as a career but knowing how to plant food effectively really helps you in real life and even in most type of crisis. Learning how to make the plants effectively grow is better than just learning the plant's mitochondria.
Love this idea
Also needs to reintroduce home economics, wood and metal work, mechanics, and other craft based skills. People would not throw away clothes if they knew how to repair them
@@TheQueerTailor much agreed
@@TheQueerTailor There’s no reason why schools couldn’t have their own small scale allotment to provide food for their kitchens and use these facilities as a learning experience.
Biology is important.
I totally agree with small scale farming but be careful maligning all machines as bad. Eating bread and pasta requires wheat which require combine harvesters. Just ones that are smaller and affordable, benefitting farmers and not the money driven industrial complex.
Agreed - there's a fair bit of romanticism about the back-breaking labour involved in traditional agriculture. Maybe it's something we should all understand, but freeing up the time that would otherwise be spent pulling weeds is important for other societal pursuits
Machines no matter what are cheaper to take in a huge harvest. A world of small farms with handworkers will increase food prices. Especially in Western countries. While small farms are way better for long-term soil quality. So this idea sound great but has difficulties that aint that easy to ignore.
This video is kinda backward a bit. I myself who worked on the fields for some time I can tell you that I don't know many ppl who would like such a work for long. As it is somewhat acknowledged in this video, working the field is backbreaking hard work and as it was pointed out in comments before a society wasting time on pulling weeds lose on better things to do. I know it sounds romantic to those siting in their AC offices in front of their screens, to just go out and experience the raw nature, but it is just that, a romantic idea. The real circumtenses when you are out there are discomforting enought that Im willing to bet many who longs for this "connection with the earth" and "honest sweat inducing hard work" would give up on it in just one day (one day is fine, its an adventure but when you have to do it for years...). So this isn't as simple, mechanisation is not at all the enemy (matter in fact the higher level of automatisation is the better as long as you have green energy to run it), but there are of course much better ways to go about it than how it is currently arranged to appease the requirement of ever growing profits.
idk where machines are being maligned but totally agree that human hands alone cannot do this work. ag has always pushed the boundaries human ingenuity and with our current scientific and technological knowledge we can easily grow food on a much smaller scale and still feed the communities which we live in.
As a farmer I do love this idea, however as a farmer I can say that this is not something that an individual can do, on our farm we do a lot of agroforestry with apple alleys which has seen a great rise in bug and bird life in the area since it started however these "old" practices are not as efficient, they produce around 30% less per acre and apple alleys are extremely susceptible to frost in the spring which seams to be destroying the crop. We are doing our best but the reality of this plan is it has to be done by communities. You need a grower, processer and market that is the people's preference to phase out the current system. We farm 500ish acres and it would only take two or three bad harvests to bankruptcy. So that's me input, I do hope to see more of these small farms in Scotland however as someone else already said, don't label all machines as bad just because they are machines. We need them. Nobody wants to get their hands dirty, everyone wants to work at a desk. 😅 And em we don't work just two weeks in the spring and two weeks in the autumn... So insensitive 🥺👍😂
@Evan Hodge So are you with your right wing ish climate change denialism. Climate Discussion Network for example is nothing more than conservative climate change denialism dressed up.
I overall like your videos, but I think this video would have been more convincing to non leftists if you had more cold hard numbers. Useful numbers to include would have been like: calories/hectacre of a small scale farm vs industrial farm, Number of additional workers needed to compete with fossil fuel farms, how much would farmers need to be compensated to pull workers from standard western jobs back to farming. Having a backyard farm is nice and all, and should definitely be implemented. But the whole purpose of cities and towns was to induce specialization of work. A non farmer would have a hard time making enough food for themselves in their backyard.
Agriculture could be taught in schools, 'cos it's arguably more useful, than other subjects
non-leftists? How leftist are the Amish? The people of Ladakh? The various non-state peoples (historically) of Zomia? Specialization is the very reason we have empire, and therefore why we have industrial scale war, anomie, pollution, inequality, widespread crime, and so forth. We would all be much better off paying taxes to no government, and instead placing our loyalty in our local community, composed of a manageable number of people whom we have known our entire lives.
I agee, but i would have left out lefties. People in general should judge an idea on the idea not on a political side, while many are hugely influenced by political sides. But your point is just this. Inform and no just assume people will agree because of a romanticized view.
I like to hear positives and negative views of an perspective its never all good or all bad.
I also believe home farming is very ineffective and uses way more water per kcal than industrial if you dont want to lose harvest especially during warm summers.
Don't worry for leftists, those with political culture also base their options on figures, and don't miss the manipulative line of this (conservative/imaginary past idealization) video.
I'm a non-farmer who planted a few fruit trees, started growing vegetables in the yard and ended up giving more than half of the yield to neighbors because it's more than enough. Dried, frozen included. There's a learning curve, but it's totally doable...regardless of one's political bent. Zero pesticides, btw and it's the best tasting, most nutritious food I've ever eaten. So far, the cost of gardening over the course of a year is less than what I'd normally buy in a store and soon I'll be able to grow specialty things that are hard to find. When you factor in the sunshine, exercise and fresh air you get for good health...the saving are exponential. No gym membership, less trips to the Dr, lowering risk of automobile accidents from less driving to the store...these are a few examples. Now multiply that by a billion people or so, and you can see why corporate agriculture is fighting to keep us dependent on it. True freedom is relying on yourself first and community second...corporations want to rob you of your freedom and monetarily enslave you to its fiat money system. Break free!!!
Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, cherries, apples, sunflowers, kale, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumber, celery, tomatoes, squash, lettuce, bell peppers, carrots, all the herbs and there's still plenty of room for more. I work in the yard less than 2 days a week and I'm the only one tending to the garden, just let it grow and eat seasonally. I plan on getting nut trees and grape vines next. I'm also disabled...so literally most people can do this.
Just finished watching Second Thought and now watching this one
Same here!
Same
Same!
Same
Same
The key is 'sustainable intensification'. We need to grow enough food to nourish our very large population (while also reducing food loss and waste) while staying within planetary boundaries. That means regenerative practices, agroecology and the principles of sustainable production.
Within this, we also need resilience, land rights, gender rights and indigenous rights, as well as equity, to be properly recognised.
So, smallholders or industrial, in my view it's about the how, not the who.
Exactly, even industrial and scalable processes can be sustainable. THe problem is not a scientific/engineering one, but a deeply social one. If 40% of US food is wasted and rest 50% of the food necessary is farmed via machines, then what you need to do is cut the food wastage and the capitalists won't have any incentive to exploit these hard working 50% farmers; and finally we can rest and lead a life of leisure, which the Left always predicted automation will bring (given you dismantle the capitalist structures).
You can make ammonia using green hydrogen, and power farm equipment with renewables+batteries. It's possible to make regenerative farms that are MORE productive than conventional industrial farms.
@@fehzorz why not do the whole process you described in a large factory? The yields will anyhow be higher
Thanks,@@fehzorz. You might enjoy the feature on hydrogen in this week's copy of The Economist. I think that this is theoretically possible but would require huge amounts of investment and innovation, which I feel could possibly be better spent elsewhere. Carbon capture and storage are so nascent that I'm hesitant about using them as our silver bullet solution. Then again, I agree that we need to pull every lever we have - including the use of clean hydrogen for appropriate applications.
@@oliverc1293 not talking about CCS - make hydrogen from water using renewable electricity and from there many other things.
Small scale farming / gardening can help, a LOT. Just having a small "kitchen garden" can keep you in greens, saving a lot of money and being very convenient too. It's amazing the difference having nut and fruit trees instead of "decorative" types, keeping a few chickens, having a few plants like collards, can make. But, it requires a mindset that's very different from what I see in people at least here in the US.
Definitely! I wish I could find more like minded people in my town.
We bought a home last fall, and I've been planning & working on the yard ever since.
i really wish people had more incentive to grow plants for food in their backyard. my mom was so happy when we finally moved to a house with a backyard and she started planting tomatoes and potatoes from day one. we also have a peach tree but its struggling bc of the weather :(
♥️
I enjoyed the video but as a Nebraska farmer I’m kind of curious how recent some of your data is. Land management practices of ensuring microbial activity and biodiversity has been pretty much common practice for at least the last 10 years among industrial agriculture.
I do agree however that small farm operations across the Midwest and the great plains particularly where there will still be steady water needs to have massive green houses built in small towns to ensure yearly produce functioning as a co-op the town can center itself on.
I also think that industrial agriculture practices could be somewhat modified to be used to sequester carbon on an industrial level
I was wondering this as well. I’ve been off the farm for a while but my dad was using no-till planting methods 25 years ago. When we drive in rural areas we rarely see the dust ball, soil erosion, over tilling issues as presented in the video clips.
@@sheila3936 There’s actually a lot of ordinances across the state of Nebraska, I can’t speak for any other states, where you’re not actually allowed to tillage unless there is a certain amount of moisture in order to prevent erosion or dust from blowing.
These kind of videos are made by people who never grown anything so keep that in mind
@Evan Hodge Judging by his other videos I don’t think that’s it, not everyone can be an expert in everything however his work broadly on climate change are quite good and we do need to be more environmentally consciences.
It is after all this kind of critique of current systems that got us from the dustbowl to the USDA mandating certain agricultural practices to prevent topsoil erosion.
I mean, our cities *are* choked with traffic, so those predictions weren't completely wrong...
So why is it bad to use technology to free people from *literally* back breaking work? Like, if the machines are powered by renewable energy and don't harm harm the environment (idk, by being too heavy and compressing the soil or something), then where's the issue? You can avoid the high initial cost of having to buy farming equipment by making it shared between several farms. Sure, getting better pay and appreciation as well as sharing the work is good. But not having to do it at all would be even better. Cause yanno, health.
I think that a middle ground should be reached. He really emphasized how tilling the land over and over again destroys the soil's quality so finding a way around that would be a good start
I don't think the Tesla Combine Harvester is anywhere close on Musk's agenda. Pretty sure he's too busy colonizing Mars (with indentured slaves ofc)
Overtilling sounds like a fairly easy thing to just... not do? (Idk, I know next to nothing about farming.) Ofc I'm not saying that the very same machines that are used today should also be used in the future. Certainly they shouldn't be fossil fuel powered, and if tilling is bad, then no tills required. And to accomodate smaller fields or mixed orchards instead of monoculture they could be a lot smaller.
Also, on a quick google, electric tractors exist, and apparently also at least one electric combine. None Tesla, but if you watched more videos on this channel, we shouldn't be hoping for rich people/companies to save us anyway lol.
The cities are choked with traffic because America is addicted to cars. Building sprawling car-dependent cities and suburbs with wide multi-lane arterial roads, eight to ten-lane highways and interstates, low-density single-family zoning in suburbs massive big box stores with car parks 4x the size of the store. All of this drives (no pun intended) people to car use because it's not safe or efficient or often just plain impossible to use alternative transport. It has very little to do with the number of people, in fact, denser-built areas with more people would likely have fewer cars.
Cities across the world are choked with cars, America ain't that special lol. Although yes, population growth isn't the cause. Still, correct prediction of the future, even though they erred in the cause.
Typo at 1:43: 'More harm *then* good.' Clear from the context it's not a play on words.
Please please someone fix this!
Great to see this topic! This has been my singular focus for the past 6 years. You say small scale, but I'm focusing on true small scale, or micro agriculture. I'm creating farming appliances for the home that will facilitate the weekly vegetable needs for a family, including root vegetables. I'm too early-stage to show my solutions, but watching channels like yours is always a grateful boost of inspiration to keep moving forward. To me the most pragmatic solution to our food challenges is by leveraging smart tech at small scale. When food is grown at the point of consumption, and I mean literally within the kitchen with a new fridge-sized unit so we're talking 10' farm to plate, nearly all the detriments of conventional agriculture are circumnavigated entirely. There need be no pesticides/herbicides, no land use, no transportation/distribution, no processing, no refrigeration, no combustion engines turned, no packaging, no waste. I will connect every unit together, so that families can grow food for each other, and so not only increasing the food security of the home but for the broader communities as well. We should all be farmers. Food production needs to be part of the planning of a home; decentralized and distributed farming that allows each family to be self-responsible for their natural food production. Soon I'll be able to show you how we will get there.
Fantastic work being done by your channel and those in your periphery, keep up the great work!
As someone younger who wants to farm but can't afford land, I'm very interested.
Is the product intended to be used indoors, porch/patio (outside in summer, indoors in winter), completely outdoors or all 3? Is this vertical, horizontal? Is it planned to recycle water? How do the units connect?
I'd also like to know when I can expect to hear more.
Maybe look at the victorian pineapple pits for design inspiration? They use no heat
So far I've only had luck with tropical plants (heriloom bananas, purple yams, etc) despite being in zone 6. I plan to rent an urban lot as my plants grow. May also get sugarcane, plantains, and taro. People say I'm crazy for bothering but the fact is I'm making it work with no heating, powered machinery, or pesticides! So I'd like to know what things can be supported. Because my herb garden and strawberries died quickly... Whereas the rarer beauties lived....
Which country
@@hlengiwemasondo2858 Currently based in Canada, will first sell to North America then extend into Europe, Asia
I put in raised bedding that flanks one side of my 1,600 sq ft house in the suburbs. In 2 years, I don't have to buy any herbs, onions, or tomatoes, and sometimes berries. Trade with my neighbors. Give a way small dug up herbs that are vigorous growers to help newly starting gardeners. Planning on taking up more grass and installing rain barrels next year. Compost food waste and rotate some of the beds. It's a huge hobby I love, but it's some food security. 💚🌱
As a gardener I really appreciate these videos and the word about regenerative ag.
Right now my food budget is a small part of my overall expenditures. I think people who are very excited about growing food really overemphasize the creation of food for the community, when that is really not a large portion of where our money goes.
It helps though, and there are plenty of people who are broke and going hungry in the US. It’s sad that we subsidize food like corn and then turn it into ethanol or feed for cattle, when we could grow healthy food for children instead.
I envision a world where we have both efficiency and meet everyone’s basic needs at the same time. Doing farm work by hand and growing a ton of vegetables that are only available between august and October might not get the public on board. I feel like we would have to eat just potatoes onions and turnips in late winter through spring. It’s a cool idea, but we’d have to get the public on board with canned greens again.
1:40 than*
2:12 atmosphere*
calling the midwest "the imperial core" makes it sound SO much cooler than it is
I have an opposition to this claim. The Indian farmers, you are talking about, are only being able to choke the country to dismantle these evil neoliberal laws because they have a secure farm income which they have achieved through extensive agriculture (via the green revolution). I have seen how subsistence agriculture have kept swaths of Indian rural communities dirt poor with extremely fragmented landholdings and suicides due to terrible yield (despite crop rotation via 2 seasonal crops). We need extensive agriculture. At least India needs it! The only change we need is using renewable run machines, organic fertilisers and polyculture/crop-rotation/permaculture as required.
Mao Zedong once tried this approach (self-sufficient villages) and it failed in China. Capitalists use this as an excuse against such socialist traditions. The left can't afford to make similar mistakes that our ideological predecessors made. We need a capitalism free farming structure, but we need scalable farming methods too!
I dunno, seems like self-sufficient villages worked in Ladakh, as well as for thousands of years of human history...
@@JustDinosaurBones but are their material conditions the same as a village in Punjab?
@@swagatochatterjee7104 well if we brushed off those living in the slums, then their material conditions are higher
the self sufficient villagers can work, if china at that time didnt implement a policy that kills sparrows and many other policies that hinder it maybe it could.
Yea I agree with you rather than what was presented in the video. Working the field with hand was thoroughly romanticised but whoever really worked as a farmer (I did), knows that there is nothing romantic about it, but only for those who sit bored in their air-conditioned offices, and imagine this "connection to raw nature".
You should do a similar video on small-scale flower growers. The carbon footprint of commercial flowers is giant, and awareness of the local flower movement could make an impact on climate change.
I can't see the labour being available in the developed world to go back to this kind of farming. Regenerative farming is a family of practices that can be applied in any combination to farms. Why can't we just apply Regenerative practices to existing larger farms?
It's not an issue of labor but land. In the US land is clearly plentiful -- it's one of the least densely populated countries on earth. Getting people land access is the hard part, because it's controlled by so many corporations and mega farms, and because zoning gets in the way of building more creatively/low-tech, thus raising start up costs. I think our top-down control based social structure, more so than lack of labor, is what keeps people from running back to the country, away from the worthlessness of the cities.
@@JustDinosaurBones yeah ok. I understand there are multiple issues at play here, many of which I don't fully understand. However, im just not convinced that completely uprooting the system and going all in on small scale farms is the only way and is also not going to happen. Many larger farms already employ at least some regen practices. Using compost, much of which is produced from residential and commercial organic waste is one example. There are issues around topsoil depletion and peak phosphorus that regen practices are also helping to mitigate. It isn't all just about the climate. I compost my garden, fruit and veg scraps at home for use in my own garden. Since doing it I notice how much healthier my soil is and Im using less water, fertiliser and other products.
@Evan Hodge That is correct. In my jurisdiction we have a household FOGO waste bin that is collected weekly for all organic waste. This is turned into compost, much of which is sent to farms in the region. Just one of many regen practices.
Honestly, there's some glaring problems in this video. First, the history is massively oversimplified. Fossil-fuel powered machines were industrializing farms before the 1970s. Diesel-powered tractors were available by the 1940s, the Soviet Union was mass-producing crop duster aircraft by World War 2, and steam (coal)-powered combines were in the US before the end of the 1800s. The time saved by these devices allowed farmers to cover more ground in less time, which contributed to the consolidation of farms into larger units, scaled to industrial machines rather than plows. The Green Revolution was a watershed in agricultural technology, but treating it as the advent of industrialized farming is simply, patently false.
Furthermore, the analysis of food for population also has a noticeable gap. It's good (and well-known) that we currently produce enough food to feed the world's current population. However, demographers project that our global population will cap at around 11 billion people, 3+ billion more than we currently have. Can we feed them with the space we have, particularly using traditional methods? I frankly don't know. It's especially disconcerting to see that more environmentally demanding foods (meat, dairy, sugar, etc), see an increase in demand from developing countries as their middle classes grow stronger. This could exacerbate potential food shortages, especially as we try to alleviate poverty worldwide. I was hoping this video would get into feeding our projected world population with small-scale farms, particularly as Our Changing Climate incorporates literature reviews into their videos. But the more they veer into politics and theoretical systems, the less they cover empirical data. Unfortunately, I think I have seen more the former than the latter of late.
Feeding more and more people is the desire of empire. Let people feed themselves, and see what the land can support.
@@JustDinosaurBones there's a lot of history and anthropology going through my head that makes me question the validity of your first premise and the viability of your second. Yet one thing I want to ask is this: what if we see that the land can't support 11 billion people? Assuming you don't want to see a large portion of that number die off, every single solution to the problem will require us to find ways to increase food production.
@@JustDinosaurBones
That is unrealistic. For one, a lot of land is not suited for farming and some areas will have harder access to local food.
Then there is the fact that no everyone can be a farmer. There are other jobs that have to be done as well.
Population has peaked. Depopulation coming.
@@maplenook UN projections show a positive population growth through 2100 at the least, which would lead to about 3 billion more people. And even if population has peaked and depopulation is coming, there's still the fact that more and more people in the developing world are demanding environmentally taxing foods such as meat and dairy as they get wealthy enough to afford it over their old fare.
Good stuff. This looks like the way forward.
I think that a pinnacle of small scale farming will be insect (especially mealworm)/earthworm/woodlice farming. These animals are very easy to farm on a small scale and sustainably plus are incredibly nutritious. Realistically speaking just about anyone could farm mealworms or woodlice in their house
Love this! Planning to study 🌿agroecology🌿 at university in about 2 years🤠
Where ?
That’s awesome! Our food system needs to change
@@vikrantkulkarni1241 NMBU in Norway
That's so cool! Proud of you, you'll make the world a better place ❤
@@midnightradioforlostmortal9071 i will try my best🥰
Great video! We need more attention on small scale farming for sure. I can't speak for the other video you mentioned, but another thing I think people need to realize is the sheer amount of change that would be needed to make small scale, TRULY regenerative farming the norm. Small farms require a higher concentration of inputs to make good yield. The current method most small scale regenerative/no till farmers follow is to continually lay compost on top of permanent beds, and avoid soil disturbance as much as possible. That compost is usually sourced from operations that use large scale fossil fuel equipment to move/sift the material. Plastics are also used liberally on small farms to plant starts, irrigate and harvest crops, pack produce, warm soil, and prepare ground (via tarping). In fact, the only way to avoid fossil fuels and TRULY build top soil in a regenerative/no-till farm is to leave a diverse range of plants in the ground and use animals to lightly disturb/fertilize the soil. But those solutions put huge limitations on what a farmer can produce (soil stays cooler, harder to plant, more competition for plants). Large scale regenerative farms are actually the ones that are mostly building soil because they have the space and equipment to do it (look up Gabe Brown). The reality is, if people want a TRULY regenerative/sustainable society that relies on smaller farms in it's own community, they need to be prepared to give up a TON of the modern luxuries we've become accustomed to, and I think most people are not even close to being ready for that.
I worry about all farmers because of climate change.
I think small scale farming has a big impact but I think anyone who can should grow as much of there own food on what property they have. Everyone needs to have the right to plant a garden in there yards instead of grass.
But that would hurt corporation profits.
Great pre and post production work.
Well done.
Unequivocally "yes, but".
We can downsize grain operations (with agroforestry etc.) by a certain factor, but they'll need to stay motorized, so we can only have them be that small.
Fruit and veg though, the really important stuff, we can downsize all the way to 0.5% of the population being farmers.
We have the people, lots of people out of work and way more in BS jobs they know are useless.
I live on the 100 acre farm I grew up on. It's in hay, with a very small section for garden veg and fruit. I'd like to replace one of my tractors with a Solectrac e70N electric tractor, but the price is four times what I could pay for a more capable used diesel so it's a hard sell. I do think about opening up a section of land for an allotment type structure for people from local towns and the city to come and have a garden. It's tough watching the neighbours with thousands of acres owned/rented tearing out fence rows of trees just to put in another acre or two of corn. Also where I live a lot of what's being turned into suburbs/subdivisions was the best local farm land.
I from tamil nadu India our culture is changing towards indigenous farming by our youth
That is terrific. I have heard some great things are happening in India in that regard. Feel free to post a link at one of my shows.
I wasn't ready for you to mention Soul Fire Farm. I've been following them for the past few years trying to learn from them to build my own community farm one day.
I love your videos. Got Nebula because of you. I wish you success in growing this channel to reach even more people. ❤️
I think you should dive deeper into the differences between Permaculture and agriculture. I have no way to prove it but I have a feeling that if you take in the consideration the median of different types of energy inputs and outputs of an food production system I have a weird feeling that a Permaculture poly culture orchard or simply put an orchard but that has the function of a food forest would be the most efficient method of producing food in the future. If you take in the consideration all variables yeah sure it may not be the most efficient for each individual variable but all of them put together though it is probably going to be the most efficient.From biodiversity to an orchard being easier to harvest than an actual forest Tess still having the function of a forest that it freely produces both gives and receives in equilibrium.
10:42 Oh, farming under communism? We had that in Poland for couple decades, collective farms called kołchoz (kolkhoz in English). It didn't work too well, people were mostly just steeling cow feed, fertilizer and grain to sustain their own farms, or to sell/trade on grey market. It was quite common that cows in those collective farms were starving and the land was poorly maintained. It was situation similar to tragedy of the commons, kołchoz belonged to everyone so it belonged to no one and nobody cared about it.
I like the idea of small-scale farming but it needs to a grounds up movement, with strong feeling of ownership. Otherwise you end with disasters and famines like all the communist experiments across the history did.
EDIT: I love that you put the part about building this new glorious communist farm behind a pay wall :D
How did the transition happen? As far as i'm aware it's better to transition more slowly to a better, more humane system rather than go cold turkey on it.
@@loganwolv3393 it's now how revolutions work my friend. Resolution from the definition is abrupt and disruptive.
To answer your question, after WW2 allies gave Poland to Soviets. Everyone opposing communists was shot.
Then how do you call this building up of unions and co ops, protests, etc to slowly dismantle capitalism? you just call all of that progress not a slowly emerging revolution?
And well yeah that's not a healthy way of transitioning to a classless, moneyless society so i'm not suprised that it didin't work well.
@@loganwolv3393 slow progress is slow progress. Revolution is a disruptively fast change. Say smartphones were a revolutionary product. They disrupted mobile phone market (collapsed industry leaders like Nokia and Blackberry). In matter of few years it was game over for old mobile phones.
Adding a second back camera on the other hand was progress, slowly adapted first by flagships and then more budget phones, not much disruption came from it.
Slow revolution is an oxymoron, like hot ice cream or silent sound.
It wasn’t just under Poland. Also other than the Ukrainian famine during 1932 in the transitioning from privately owned plots of land to collective farms there were no famines caused by the kolkhozes in themselves. It also wasn’t just kolkhozes, although they were in the majority, there were also sovkhozes which were state owned.
Is there a full version of this video on Curiosity Stream?
I really appreciate the amount of work you put into these videos. Thank you for what you do!
I hate to be this person but since your videos are so polished I feel the urge to point out that it should be spelled "more harm *than* good"
This hurt me as well.
Very important video! Related to this I've also been thinking a lot about how we can feed more people with the production we already have AND how we can help our big scale farmers mitigate the negative impacts of their practices
How do you get paid with patron? Does curiosity stream take something or the money is shared with other creators.
i will be subscribe when i get paid in a couple of weeks , so happy to finally find your channel !!!
Great video as always, but at 2:28 do you mean 2 orders of magnitude instead of just 2 times? Pretty big difference
Since I found your channel earlier today, it's been a pleasant experience. From the looks of things you do quite a bit of research before your videos and I appreciate that. I'll be fact checking some of it, but of the ones I've personally had experience with there's no fact checking needed, aka fast fashion as a issue XD. I've been listening as I game, looking to learn things and understand others I don't know much about.
Starting my spring garden. From both seeds and leftover produce,
I am hoping to grow two kinds of fingerling potatoes, garlic, avocado, and lady finger bananas. I am not a pro, and I literally just went out to get pots big enough at home depot, but I will see.
I already made natural slug repellant using my parents' breakfast leftovers of coffee grounds (since they do french press on weekends) and eggshells.
I dug over some wild land next to my cottage on the coastal region of the isle of Arran which is off the coast of Scotland . I live right next door to another couple. I asked the woman if she would like to join up with me and work it together growing vegetables . Two years since have had some success growing vegetables without the use of pesticides etc. Its been my habit to compost kitchen scraps for years. We have more work to do and more to learn .I have also planted wildflowers and moved self seeded shrubs about all over the previously barren garden . The bees and butterfly population as well as birdlife has grown massively.The birds pick off most slugs and snails --I am amazed how little damage there is !
Amazing video. More people need to find your channel!!
I am about 70% in the video rn and i would just rly like to make the connection between the small scale farm video and the video about how work it killing us, we could bring back small scale farms and provide real jobs whilst drifting away from capitalistic work/Hustle culture.
Drop your book reco's on this topic, here's two:
"Organic Revolutionary" by Grace Gershuny
"Freedom Farmers" by Monica M White
"One Straw Revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoka
Braiding Sweetgrass
Gathering Moss
Democracy of Species
-all by Robin Wall Kimmerer
The Left-Behind by Robert Wuthnow (about the decline of small rural farming towns in the US)
Altruism by Matthieu Ricard (one of the many books I want to shove in every persons hands)
@@BunsBooks reading Braiding Sweetgrass now and loving it, got Gathering Moss on my list too. I thought Democracy of Species isn't out yet but I'd be glad to be wrong cause I can't wait for to read it
@@seanandernacht800 Democracy of Species is out now, I preordered it on book depository as it was the first place it was listed. Read it last month, it’s such a good little collection of three essays. I’d read her foraging lists tbh
Just started getting food from the local farmers market, so this is timely. I always learn lots from your videos, thanks!
Definitely informative. The Reconciliation Bill also contains supports to regenerative agriculture czcams.com/video/2RVYnrBB8fM/video.html
Love the idea that sustainable food needs to be tackled at every level. Small scale farming that embraces green technology alongside permaculture, distributed fairly across the world, and then is not wasted at the end by changing consumption habits, promoting reusing 'waste' and donating edible leftovers. We need to work with farmers, who've felt the bite of industrial agriculture as much as anyone.
Best video yet. wherezat Patreon
Wow, this what my book is about! Thank you for helping me with research Charlie :-)
this is what we were waiting for
2:30 laughs in scientific. Loss of soil 2 orders of magnitude higher than soil regeneration means 100x more destruction than regeneration, not 2x
Good find. Lots of lack of science in here, and just not really proofread at all. He uses "then" instead of "than" at 1:40, and spells "atmosphere" wrong at 2:14.
I was just going to post this until I saw you already had :p
You misunderstand:
It's described as _'...twice the rate...'_ , _not 2 orders of magnitude as you said._ There's a difference between the two.
1) Twice the rate: 10 miles per hour _versus 20 miles per hour._ --> 10 X 2 = 20
2) TWO orders of magnitude:
10 miles and hour versus 100 miles per hour. --> 10^2 = 100
Get the difference?
it's not me saying, it's written on the paper : "soil loss [...] exceeds the rate of soil formation by >2 orders of magnitude." So if the rate of soil formation is 5g/cm2/year, the loss is at least 0.5kg of soil lost per cm2 of land per year. And this can be seen in sediments deposited at the mouth of major rivers, they are in a much greater quantity.
@@HSFY2012 I think the quality of Our Changing Climate's videos have gone downhill. I study history professionally instead of science, but that section of the video was really flawed as well. Agriculture started utilizing fossil fuels long before the Green Revolution. I unsubscribed to the channel after this video.
I don’t think most people will want to work under the Sun.
Thank you! Im writing a paper on this exact topic!
I have been screaming this from the rooftops, so glad it’s starting to catch speed
Seems to me that industrial farming needs to be more efficient rather than needing small scale farms
Industrial farming isn't natural. Causes all kinds of run off pollution into rivers and the oceans. Concentrating synthetic chemicals isn't the right way to turn things around.
@@davidr9589 Every farming does. And the smaller the farm is the higher mechanization and usage per area/person/product. Just look at Europe which have huge as well as thousand upon thousands of tiny ones and all in between.
thing is we can also adapt the big equipment of industrial agriculture to regen ag. just look at regenerative farmers in Australia where they still use all those big machines but spray things that help the soil and they copy the old herd movements on grassland with holistic planned grazing which has made their farms more drought resilient in australias dry landscape. you can also look at peter andrews natural sequence farming or charlie massy's and allan savory's work in Australia and Zimbabwe respectively
Great video. I wish you brought up productivity as small scale farm productivity is much higher
This needs more views
I’m doing a paper on this soon! Might cite info from this vid. Love you OCC
This is why I'm learning organic farming. Someday I hope to buy my own plot. I hope to bring in others to help, teach and learn. I hope to also include local native tribes if possible.
2:26 That paper says that the soil is being deleted at >2 orders of magnitude greater than it is being replenished, meaning over 100 times faster, not 2 times faster.
Very well-made video!
this video is beautiful, thank you for all the work and clear information you shared.
I am all for it. The cause is noble and is hard to argue. But there is 1 HUGE point in the video that you did not include. All the small scale farming will mean that the food cost will rise and is highly likely the price would double or triple. More people will have to work in agriculture and in order for it wo work everyone will have to go vegan or at least vegano-vegatarian. I think that we could not do a small scale local farming and maintain livestock of cows for meat consumption nor milk production because the sheer amount of feed that these animals need. For sure cows can feed on the pastures there is plenty of room however the demand for meant would be high and prices will incrise to a level that meat would be a luxury commodity that probably we would eat only occasionally in restaurants or during big family events. I know everyone like the idea but how many people would be ready for it to happen? WHO will work in the local community farms. Nowadays in US or Europe there is no enough of people to work in a highly mechanized work on the farms during harvests and I cant imagine all of sudden we will find few times as many people who would be willing to do a small scale farming. We can I think only think about it when there will be a technology that could do it for us.
I always like to point out to people that the current economic structure is already subsidized .czcams.com/video/kIxUEYaKVm4/video.html
Thanks. Really informative
Answer at 4:37... watch the rest of video tho.
I am working on a video about Indian Farmers and how much they would benefit from regenerative and sustainable farming.
This is the first video I watch in this channel, and I already love it
If everyone watching this video joined a CSA, we would flood resources into small-scale farms in our respective communities.
9:43 Maybe if we taxed labor less and carbon more, this wouldn't be an issue.
This is why I want a space in my community garden
Outstanding documentary as usual.
Small scale farms would mean a return to the fields of 2/3 of the population. Today it will remain a niche, but regenerative agriculture doesn't necessarily need to be tiny scaled or unmechanized. Returning to farm sizes of the 70s/80s with notill, replanting of hedges etc. could feed more people and allow a slower degrowth of cities et al. over the next few decades.
Thank you sir you have opened my eyes a alot!
Gréât vidéo bro!!!
I think someone's missing the point of the labor theory of value...
People living in small, self-sufficient communities are just happier than hyper specialized (and concomitantly unequal) societies. For examples, see the Blue Zone communities or Ladakh.
@@JustDinosaurBones That doesn't contradict my point though.
Awesome thanks!
the protests of the farmers are common when the produce of their agricultural land is involuted ; first, when each plot of arable land is no longer able to accommodate "labor" to be employed there. second, when the cost of agricultural production facilities can no longer be divided to pay the laborers. the social reality of agriculture like that initially only occurred on the island of Java, which was very thick with the pattern of sharing agricultural products between land owners and agricultural land cultivators ( ie.maro, mertelu, mrapat, mroliman).
the phenomenon of destroying crops is the criticism of farmers against the cheap price of their agricultural products which is supported by the involution factors.
It is said to be common because it has been discovered by Clifford Geertz and James C. Scott since the old order regime in indonesian history. i quote their theory because there are snippets of peasant protests in indonesia.
@OCC which one helps you more, CuriosityStream or Patreon? Debating on which one to do.
I can't believe we live in a time where "Thanos-esque" is in the same sentence as "Malthusian."
My class and I took a field trip to a backyard urban farm and it was amazing. Upon the many challenges, some that sparked my attention were their wages and the "organic" aspect of it. The farmer mentioned that their wages are close to the nation's minimum wage and their biggest cost is labor. Another thing to note is that they could not call their food "organic" even though they do not use intense machines, pesticides, or herbicides. This is due to the fact that it costs a lot of money to get verified to call your food organic. Interesting huh?
Thanks to Earl Butz, we have seen the rise of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO), or farm factories. Not to mention, the production of corn has increased and we can find it literally EVERYWHERE from ethanol, crayons, toothpaste, sauces, chips, cereal, etc.
As mentioned in the last video, I really appreciate your content. As a matter of fact, I am in my senior year of college and am learning about small-scale vs factory farming. Keep it up!
Really important topic!
Hey Charlie I was wondering for your next video can you Review or look in if lab grown meat is beneficial or not because I think it's a very interesting topic
The bonus chapter on nebula starts at 11:30 !
i think even less extreme actions such as people having a garden to grow food at home would still make a big difference. would save people money, builds resilience, and reduces carbon footprints. even though i might not fully support the whole solarpunk stuff, i do appreciate the videos the community makes as it helps me better understand other points of view, and alternatives to ways of life. keep up the good work everyone!
The mistake that many people make is the assumption that the goal of the current system is to satisfy the needs of humankind (including nutritional ones). Not at all. The goal is to extract maximum profit for private owners of the means of production (of material necessities).
Thank you I needed this! I do small scale growing!
How does the efficiency in terms of food produced per acre of farm land compare? If small scale farming uses significantly more land than industrial farming, that would also need to be addressed to avoid deforestation, etc. If not, of course, that's great. I'm just curious.
We need more people producing more of their own food. Urban gardening can be the most nutritionally productive approach and obviously has way less demand on the modern supply chains.
When done well, a well designed permaculture system requires far less work than most people do in their 9-5 jobs.
Food budget for the average American is 5-15% off their income. 9-5 is for the rest, housing, transportation, education, and medical.
You can’t just live on food, you need medicine and all that other stuff. People aren’t broke because they buy too much unnecessary goods on Amazon, it’s all the other expenses
There are people who live in off grid homesteads without any excessive amount of wealth.
Studies show that gardening improves health and 9-5 jobs worsen health. Medical bills come from poor health. Also, not all of the world has the same medical costs as the states.Most of the western world has govt funded healthcare.
Transportation costs are the result of 9-5 work.
Education for what? I don't know anyone spending money on education if they aren't already spending money on unnecessary goods. Unless you consider netflix and amazon prime as education? If you say most people don't have disposable income - how do 350 million people have amazon prime? 150 million mobile users of amazon in the US alone. 70 million people in the US are children, meaning that the majority of adults are amazon users. 209 million "paying" people have netflix, we all know it gets shared. There are many other subscriptions and streams of disposable income usage.
In fact, some of the poorest areas are the most successful at growing their own food. Check out "permaculture in the projects"
Growing food at home can also provide a source of income. Check out Angelo Eliades. People are trading for their needs in many places with very holistic and more sustainable lifestyles taking more responsiibility for their own food. To deny this is to deny their existence.
If the education costs you're talking about are to pay off higher level education, such as a degree. Degree holders earn, on average, $7,300 more per year than non degree holders. That's more than the yearly cost of their education. They have net benefit compared to people who don't have higher education.
Now I understand this isn't the best example, as they need to actually be earning from a 9-5 for this benefit. But this is just another issue and problem with the system. After some years of climbing the ladder after obtaining their degree, they will have some savings (and an amazon prime), at this point they can start to think about taking more responsibility for their own food.
The reason for it, isn't because it's financially better for them, it's because it's the right thing to do.
I do my gardening in evenings and weekends.
Some of the poorest people on the planet grow their own food
All my food came from my garden this summer and I was juicing almost daily. I live in the high desert of Arizona.
Tom Nicholas mentioned this place, in reference to Bill Gates influence on the discourse around Climate Change. So thought I'd pay a visit and stop by. Liked it so much I've decided to stay and subscribed! 💚🏠
This is what I was fighting for since last century. I also was looking at the manufacture of renewable energy products and ran smack dab into the fossil fuel industry. Today we have climate breakdown. The best monetary policy will be food. So I'm looking for a community that has done this logical step and offer my services as a health care provider.
Amazing piece of work! Regenerative, plant-based and small-scale agriculture will not only offer us better and more food to grow and distribute, but also a better way to thrive alongside Mother Earth.