0:00:03.460,0:00:05.672
I’ve kind of accepted my fate,

0:00:05.672,0:00:08.091
in a way, of being, sort of,

0:00:08.633,0:00:12.137
the guy that’s alarmed about this before [br]everybody else is.

0:00:27.569,0:00:30.947
“One slice of New York cheesecake.”

0:00:31.990,0:00:34.743
Why is it, in so many of the [br]sci-fi movies,

0:00:35.076,0:00:36.703
“Breakfast of champions.”

0:00:37.912,0:00:40.457
food of the future comes out of a gadget?

0:00:40.457,0:00:42.417
“Hydrate level four, please.”

0:00:44.210,0:00:47.088
But if you really want to understand [br]the future of food,

0:00:47.088,0:00:50.341
it’s probably not gadgets you should [br]be paying attention to.

0:00:51.217,0:00:53.511
People who make raising food [br]their business say

0:00:53.511,0:00:56.973
the biggest challenges coming involve [br]how food is grown.

0:00:57.223,0:00:59.851
We’re kind of a throwback to a [br]different era.

0:01:00.602,0:01:03.480
This South Dakota farm looks old-school,

0:01:03.855,0:01:05.648
but the Ortman family has designed it

0:01:05.648,0:01:07.692
around their vision for the future.

0:01:07.901,0:01:10.111
Better to embrace change on your own terms

0:01:10.111,0:01:13.198
than wait until it embraces you by force.

0:01:14.616,0:01:16.367
Several years ago, the Ortmans

0:01:16.367,0:01:19.079
began rebuilding their operation[br]from the dirt up,

0:01:19.079,0:01:21.748
after realizing that they were barely [br]breaking even,

0:01:21.748,0:01:25.210
focusing on a conventional [br]crop of, mainly, corn.

0:01:27.215,0:01:29.589
My conclusion, after pushing the [br]numbers on this,

0:01:29.589,0:01:33.134
was that going organic was going to [br]work better, economically,

0:01:33.134,0:01:35.178
because of the organic price premiums.

0:01:37.055,0:01:38.723
This wasn’t rooted in some kind of

0:01:38.723,0:01:42.102
dream, or wish, or some philosophy.

0:01:42.102,0:01:44.437
It really did start with economics.

0:01:45.086,0:01:46.766
Switching from conventional farming

0:01:46.766,0:01:48.233
to organic was a huge change.

0:01:50.360,0:01:53.071
Instead of plowing and spraying [br]to kill weeds,

0:01:53.071,0:01:55.281
the Ortmans make multiple trips [br]through fields

0:01:55.281,0:01:57.492
to carefully scrape them out.

0:01:58.266,0:02:00.098
Instead of fertilizing with chemicals,

0:02:00.098,0:02:01.538
they spend months preparing

0:02:01.538,0:02:03.456
one of the oldest tools in agriculture.

0:02:03.998,0:02:08.169
Our operation is really built [br]around compost.

0:02:08.961,0:02:10.671
We’re talking about manure here.

0:02:12.423,0:02:14.717
For these farmers, all that effort [br]is worth it.

0:02:15.273,0:02:16.291
Because, for them,

0:02:16.291,0:02:17.428
the future of food

0:02:17.428,0:02:18.763
has a lot to do

0:02:18.763,0:02:20.265
with the future of dirt.

0:02:20.557,0:02:22.433
If you boil down food production

0:02:22.433,0:02:24.060
into its most basic form,

0:02:24.394,0:02:25.443
everything that we eat

0:02:25.443,0:02:28.314
comes off of the soil, originally.

0:02:29.107,0:02:31.025
And the soil is a living organism.

0:02:33.027,0:02:34.863
We tend to take the soil for granted.

0:02:35.655,0:02:37.949
That’s the ultimate source of [br]most of our food.

0:02:38.908,0:02:42.871
History holds lessons for societies that [br]fail to keep soil in mind.

0:02:43.381,0:02:46.307
You look at the history of the spread [br]of western civilization

0:02:46.307,0:02:47.458
it’s, in many regards,

0:02:47.458,0:02:51.212
a story of people moving on [br]after degrading the land.

0:02:52.046,0:02:53.451
Individual droughts,

0:02:53.451,0:02:54.831
or political events,

0:02:54.831,0:02:56.351
or war with the neighbors;

0:02:56.351,0:02:57.612
those kind of events are

0:02:57.612,0:02:59.568
the kind of things that [br]will actually,

0:02:59.568,0:03:01.139
take down civilizations.

0:03:01.264,0:03:03.117
But the table is set, if you will,

0:03:03.117,0:03:04.349
by the state of the land.

0:03:05.602,0:03:07.687
One of the reasons this is so important?

0:03:08.730,0:03:09.856
Climate change.

0:03:09.856,0:03:12.692
Farmers will feel the impacts in [br]their fields

0:03:12.692,0:03:15.612
long before we feel the impacts [br]in the grocery stores.

0:03:17.363,0:03:20.850
The trends are all towards extremes.

0:03:20.850,0:03:23.536
Rain doesn’t come gradually throughout [br]the year anymore.

0:03:23.536,0:03:26.581
It comes in fewer, but larger doses,

0:03:26.581,0:03:29.751
that the land is just not able to soak up.

0:03:30.805,0:03:33.129
Will says he’s found that [br]minimally-tilled land,

0:03:33.129,0:03:35.882
enriched with organic material [br]like compost,

0:03:35.882,0:03:37.550
tends to soak up more rain

0:03:37.550,0:03:39.219
and stay moist through dry spells.

0:03:40.970,0:03:44.349
Other growers have found still more [br]dramatic solutions.

0:03:44.819,0:03:46.733
This indoor vegetable farm in New Jersey

0:03:46.733,0:03:48.394
has eliminated dirt entirely,

0:03:48.394,0:03:50.855
and recreated climate from scratch.

0:03:51.773,0:03:54.300
We grow in warehouses, [br]without sun or soil.

0:03:54.300,0:03:56.879
Independent of the seasons,[br]independent of the weather.

0:03:56.879,0:03:58.816
And this is how we can take back[br]what's becoming

0:03:58.816,0:04:01.045
more and more challenging [br]with climate change.

0:04:03.034,0:04:04.619
Another vulnerability could be

0:04:04.619,0:04:06.120
the conventional farming model

0:04:06.120,0:04:08.122
practiced across the United States.

0:04:08.915,0:04:11.000
It tends to favor large operations

0:04:11.000,0:04:13.795
that specialize in just a few [br]crops or animals.

0:04:14.462,0:04:16.297
This monoculture agriculture,

0:04:16.297,0:04:17.544
which we tend to have had,

0:04:17.544,0:04:22.470
is so vulnerable to weather changes,

0:04:22.470,0:04:25.056
and climate, and pests.

0:04:25.640,0:04:28.810
If a disease were to wipe out the [br]wheat crop worldwide,

0:04:28.810,0:04:30.919
it would have potentially devastating,

0:04:30.919,0:04:34.190
catastrophic impacts, globally. [br]Everywhere.

0:04:34.796,0:04:36.541
I’m not saying it’s gonna[br]happen tomorrow.

0:04:36.541,0:04:38.528
I’m just saying that a good farmer

0:04:38.631,0:04:40.670
has got to be a good risk manager.

0:04:42.156,0:04:45.076
The Ortmans manage their risk by [br]spreading it out.

0:04:45.201,0:04:47.120
They grow a variety of crops, like

0:04:47.120,0:04:50.915
corn, rye, black beans, soy[br]and strawberries.

0:04:51.541,0:04:52.834
And they also raise cattle,

0:04:52.834,0:04:54.711
and chickens that lay eggs.

0:04:56.004,0:04:57.755
It’s exactly like a stock portfolio.

0:04:58.006,0:04:59.213
Not very many people have

0:04:59.213,0:05:01.467
all of their holdings in one stock.

0:05:02.302,0:05:05.430
Small organic farms may be [br]one part of the solution

0:05:05.430,0:05:07.307
to the challenges the future holds.

0:05:07.498,0:05:08.973
But in a world whose population

0:05:08.973,0:05:11.144
is heading north of 9 billion people,

0:05:11.144,0:05:13.438
it’s probably not the only solution.

0:05:13.930,0:05:15.309
That’s because the human race

0:05:15.309,0:05:17.400
will consume more food[br]in the next 50 years

0:05:17.400,0:05:20.486
than it has in the past 10,000 years [br]combined.

0:05:20.778,0:05:22.488
It’s a complicated problem.

0:05:22.488,0:05:25.867
But it is a problem that the human race [br]can deal with.

0:05:26.543,0:05:28.089
We’re gonna need everything from

0:05:28.089,0:05:29.932
traditional agriculture to

0:05:29.932,0:05:31.372
exotic agriculture.

0:05:31.372,0:05:33.496
Everything from industrial agriculture

0:05:33.496,0:05:35.376
to locally scaled agriculture.

0:05:35.376,0:05:38.150
And we’ve got to remember that [br]overlying it all

0:05:38.150,0:05:39.630
is the consumer.

0:05:39.630,0:05:41.924
And the consumer is king and queen.

0:05:41.924,0:05:44.052
And they, ultimately, will decide

0:05:44.052,0:05:45.261
what they’re going to eat

0:05:45.261,0:05:48.598
and, therefore, what the future of [br]agriculture is going to look like.

0:05:48.598,0:05:52.268
Feeding the future will require us to [br]grow a lot more food.

0:05:53.269,0:05:57.607
But it’ll probably also require us to [br]waste a lot less.

0:05:57.607,0:06:02.236
We throw away about 35% of all food [br]that we produce.

0:06:02.236,0:06:05.531
That’s both here, in the United States, [br]and elsewhere.

0:06:05.531,0:06:07.742
That is low-hanging fruit.

0:06:08.351,0:06:10.286
That is almost enough,

0:06:10.286,0:06:13.164
if we could figure out a way to deal with [br]that problem,

0:06:13.331,0:06:16.334
to feed people over the next [br]couple of decades.

0:06:17.502,0:06:19.379
So, in our little corner of the world,

0:06:19.379,0:06:22.355
we’re doing what we can to [br]enrich our soil,

0:06:22.365,0:06:23.485
to diversify.

0:06:24.175,0:06:25.885
I hope people can see that

0:06:25.885,0:06:28.679
that the land is responding to[br]what we’re doing.

0:06:28.679,0:06:31.182
I hope people can see that[br]we’re not starving,

0:06:31.724,0:06:34.769
that we’re doing okay, financially.

0:06:34.769,0:06:36.187
Knock on wood.

0:06:38.606,0:06:41.067
And the Ortmans believe their [br]operation could hold

0:06:41.067,0:06:43.711
affordable lessons for [br]improving resiliency

0:06:43.711,0:06:45.279
in the developing-world countries

0:06:45.279,0:06:46.823
where farms are small,

0:06:48.074,0:06:49.826
and populations are large.

0:06:50.576,0:06:52.835
It’s not gonna be a gadget

0:06:52.835,0:06:54.205
that will do it.

0:06:54.205,0:06:57.145
There’s a constant exchange of ideas

0:06:57.145,0:06:58.479
and of experiences.

0:07:00.044,0:07:01.671
I don’t want my kids to say,

0:07:01.671,0:07:04.465
there were all these warning signs,[br]when I was a kid,

0:07:04.465,0:07:06.968
and my dad just looked the other way,

0:07:07.802,0:07:09.887
and now look at what we have to deal with.

0:07:10.471,0:07:12.765
This is the ark we’re building [br]before the rain.