WEBVTT

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

00:00:05.672 --> 00:00:08.091
in a way, of being, sort of,

00:00:08.633 --> 00:00:12.137
the guy that’s alarmed about this before 
everybody else is.

00:00:27.569 --> 00:00:30.947
“One slice of New York cheesecake.”

00:00:31.990 --> 00:00:34.743
Why is it, in so many of the 
sci-fi movies,

00:00:35.076 --> 00:00:36.703
“Breakfast of champions.”

00:00:37.912 --> 00:00:40.457
food of the future comes out of a gadget?

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

00:00:44.210 --> 00:00:47.088
But if you really want to understand 
the future of food,

00:00:47.088 --> 00:00:50.341
it’s probably not gadgets you should 
be paying attention to.

00:00:51.217 --> 00:00:53.511
People who make raising food 
their business say

00:00:53.511 --> 00:00:56.973
the biggest challenges coming involve 
how food is grown.

00:00:57.223 --> 00:00:59.851
We’re kind of a throwback to a 
different era.

00:01:00.602 --> 00:01:03.480
This South Dakota farm looks old-school,

00:01:03.855 --> 00:01:05.648
but the Ortman family has designed it

00:01:05.648 --> 00:01:07.692
around their vision for the future.

00:01:07.901 --> 00:01:10.111
Better to embrace change on your own terms

00:01:10.111 --> 00:01:13.198
than wait until it embraces you by force.

00:01:14.616 --> 00:01:16.367
Several years ago, the Ortmans

00:01:16.367 --> 00:01:19.079
began rebuilding their operation
from the dirt up,

00:01:19.079 --> 00:01:21.748
after realizing that they were barely 
breaking even,

00:01:21.748 --> 00:01:25.210
focusing on a conventional 
crop of, mainly, corn.

00:01:27.215 --> 00:01:29.589
My conclusion, after pushing the 
numbers on this,

00:01:29.589 --> 00:01:33.134
was that going organic was going to 
work better, economically,

00:01:33.134 --> 00:01:35.178
because of the organic price premiums.

00:01:37.055 --> 00:01:38.723
This wasn’t rooted in some kind of

00:01:38.723 --> 00:01:42.102
dream, or wish, or some philosophy.

00:01:42.102 --> 00:01:44.437
It really did start with economics.

00:01:45.086 --> 00:01:46.766
Switching from conventional farming

00:01:46.766 --> 00:01:48.233
to organic was a huge change.

00:01:50.360 --> 00:01:53.071
Instead of plowing and spraying 
to kill weeds,

00:01:53.071 --> 00:01:55.281
the Ortmans make multiple trips 
through fields

00:01:55.281 --> 00:01:57.492
to carefully scrape them out.

00:01:58.266 --> 00:02:00.098
Instead of fertilizing with chemicals,

00:02:00.098 --> 00:02:01.538
they spend months preparing

00:02:01.538 --> 00:02:03.456
one of the oldest tools in agriculture.

00:02:03.998 --> 00:02:08.169
Our operation is really built 
around compost.

00:02:08.961 --> 00:02:10.671
We’re talking about manure here.

00:02:12.423 --> 00:02:14.717
For these farmers, all that effort 
is worth it.

00:02:15.273 --> 00:02:16.291
Because, for them,

00:02:16.291 --> 00:02:17.428
the future of food

00:02:17.428 --> 00:02:18.763
has a lot to do

00:02:18.763 --> 00:02:20.265
with the future of dirt.

00:02:20.557 --> 00:02:22.433
If you boil down food production

00:02:22.433 --> 00:02:24.060
into its most basic form,

00:02:24.394 --> 00:02:25.443
everything that we eat

00:02:25.443 --> 00:02:28.314
comes off of the soil, originally.

00:02:29.107 --> 00:02:31.025
And the soil is a living organism.

00:02:33.027 --> 00:02:34.863
We tend to take the soil for granted.

00:02:35.655 --> 00:02:37.949
That’s the ultimate source of 
most of our food.

00:02:38.908 --> 00:02:42.871
History holds lessons for societies that 
fail to keep soil in mind.

00:02:43.381 --> 00:02:46.307
You look at the history of the spread 
of western civilization

00:02:46.307 --> 00:02:47.458
it’s, in many regards,

00:02:47.458 --> 00:02:51.212
a story of people moving on 
after degrading the land.

00:02:52.046 --> 00:02:53.451
Individual droughts,

00:02:53.451 --> 00:02:54.831
or political events,

00:02:54.831 --> 00:02:56.351
or war with the neighbors;

00:02:56.351 --> 00:02:57.612
those kind of events are

00:02:57.612 --> 00:02:59.568
the kind of things that 
will actually,

00:02:59.568 --> 00:03:01.139
take down civilizations.

00:03:01.264 --> 00:03:03.117
But the table is set, if you will,

00:03:03.117 --> 00:03:04.349
by the state of the land.

00:03:05.602 --> 00:03:07.687
One of the reasons this is so important?

00:03:08.730 --> 00:03:09.856
Climate change.

00:03:09.856 --> 00:03:12.692
Farmers will feel the impacts in 
their fields

00:03:12.692 --> 00:03:15.612
long before we feel the impacts 
in the grocery stores.

00:03:17.363 --> 00:03:20.850
The trends are all towards extremes.

00:03:20.850 --> 00:03:23.536
Rain doesn’t come gradually throughout 
the year anymore.

00:03:23.536 --> 00:03:26.581
It comes in fewer, but larger doses,

00:03:26.581 --> 00:03:29.751
that the land is just not able to soak up.

00:03:30.805 --> 00:03:33.129
Will says he’s found that 
minimally-tilled land,

00:03:33.129 --> 00:03:35.882
enriched with organic material 
like compost,

00:03:35.882 --> 00:03:37.550
tends to soak up more rain

00:03:37.550 --> 00:03:39.219
and stay moist through dry spells.

00:03:40.970 --> 00:03:44.349
Other growers have found still more 
dramatic solutions.

00:03:44.819 --> 00:03:46.733
This indoor vegetable farm in New Jersey

00:03:46.733 --> 00:03:48.394
has eliminated dirt entirely,

00:03:48.394 --> 00:03:50.855
and recreated climate from scratch.

00:03:51.773 --> 00:03:54.300
We grow in warehouses, 
without sun or soil.

00:03:54.300 --> 00:03:56.879
Independent of the seasons,
independent of the weather.

00:03:56.879 --> 00:03:58.816
And this is how we can take back
what's becoming

00:03:58.816 --> 00:04:01.045
more and more challenging 
with climate change.

00:04:03.034 --> 00:04:04.619
Another vulnerability could be

00:04:04.619 --> 00:04:06.120
the conventional farming model

00:04:06.120 --> 00:04:08.122
practiced across the United States.

00:04:08.915 --> 00:04:11.000
It tends to favor large operations

00:04:11.000 --> 00:04:13.795
that specialize in just a few 
crops or animals.

00:04:14.462 --> 00:04:16.297
This monoculture agriculture,

00:04:16.297 --> 00:04:17.544
which we tend to have had,

00:04:17.544 --> 00:04:22.470
is so vulnerable to weather changes,

00:04:22.470 --> 00:04:25.056
and climate, and pests.

00:04:25.640 --> 00:04:28.810
If a disease were to wipe out the 
wheat crop worldwide,

00:04:28.810 --> 00:04:30.919
it would have potentially devastating,

00:04:30.919 --> 00:04:34.190
catastrophic impacts, globally. 
Everywhere.

00:04:34.796 --> 00:04:36.541
I’m not saying it’s gonna
happen tomorrow.

00:04:36.541 --> 00:04:38.528
I’m just saying that a good farmer

00:04:38.631 --> 00:04:40.670
has got to be a good risk manager.

00:04:42.156 --> 00:04:45.076
The Ortmans manage their risk by 
spreading it out.

00:04:45.201 --> 00:04:47.120
They grow a variety of crops, like

00:04:47.120 --> 00:04:50.915
corn, rye, black beans, soy
and strawberries.

00:04:51.541 --> 00:04:52.834
And they also raise cattle,

00:04:52.834 --> 00:04:54.711
and chickens that lay eggs.

00:04:56.004 --> 00:04:57.755
It’s exactly like a stock portfolio.

00:04:58.006 --> 00:04:59.213
Not very many people have

00:04:59.213 --> 00:05:01.467
all of their holdings in one stock.

00:05:02.302 --> 00:05:05.430
Small organic farms may be 
one part of the solution

00:05:05.430 --> 00:05:07.307
to the challenges the future holds.

00:05:07.498 --> 00:05:08.973
But in a world whose population

00:05:08.973 --> 00:05:11.144
is heading north of 9 billion people,

00:05:11.144 --> 00:05:13.438
it’s probably not the only solution.

00:05:13.930 --> 00:05:15.309
That’s because the human race

00:05:15.309 --> 00:05:17.400
will consume more food
in the next 50 years

00:05:17.400 --> 00:05:20.486
than it has in the past 10,000 years 
combined.

00:05:20.778 --> 00:05:22.488
It’s a complicated problem.

00:05:22.488 --> 00:05:25.867
But it is a problem that the human race 
can deal with.

00:05:26.543 --> 00:05:28.089
We’re gonna need everything from

00:05:28.089 --> 00:05:29.932
traditional agriculture to

00:05:29.932 --> 00:05:31.372
exotic agriculture.

00:05:31.372 --> 00:05:33.496
Everything from industrial agriculture

00:05:33.496 --> 00:05:35.376
to locally scaled agriculture.

00:05:35.376 --> 00:05:38.150
And we’ve got to remember that 
overlying it all

00:05:38.150 --> 00:05:39.630
is the consumer.

00:05:39.630 --> 00:05:41.924
And the consumer is king and queen.

00:05:41.924 --> 00:05:44.052
And they, ultimately, will decide

00:05:44.052 --> 00:05:45.261
what they’re going to eat

00:05:45.261 --> 00:05:48.598
and, therefore, what the future of 
agriculture is going to look like.

00:05:48.598 --> 00:05:52.268
Feeding the future will require us to 
grow a lot more food.

00:05:53.269 --> 00:05:57.607
But it’ll probably also require us to 
waste a lot less.

00:05:57.607 --> 00:06:02.236
We throw away about 35% of all food 
that we produce.

00:06:02.236 --> 00:06:05.531
That’s both here, in the United States, 
and elsewhere.

00:06:05.531 --> 00:06:07.742
That is low-hanging fruit.

00:06:08.351 --> 00:06:10.286
That is almost enough,

00:06:10.286 --> 00:06:13.164
if we could figure out a way to deal with 
that problem,

00:06:13.331 --> 00:06:16.334
to feed people over the next 
couple of decades.

00:06:17.502 --> 00:06:19.379
So, in our little corner of the world,

00:06:19.379 --> 00:06:22.355
we’re doing what we can to 
enrich our soil,

00:06:22.365 --> 00:06:23.485
to diversify.

00:06:24.175 --> 00:06:25.885
I hope people can see that

00:06:25.885 --> 00:06:28.679
that the land is responding to
what we’re doing.

00:06:28.679 --> 00:06:31.182
I hope people can see that
we’re not starving,

00:06:31.724 --> 00:06:34.769
that we’re doing okay, financially.

00:06:34.769 --> 00:06:36.187
Knock on wood.

00:06:38.606 --> 00:06:41.067
And the Ortmans believe their 
operation could hold

00:06:41.067 --> 00:06:43.711
affordable lessons for 
improving resiliency

00:06:43.711 --> 00:06:45.279
in the developing-world countries

00:06:45.279 --> 00:06:46.823
where farms are small,

00:06:48.074 --> 00:06:49.826
and populations are large.

00:06:50.576 --> 00:06:52.835
It’s not gonna be a gadget

00:06:52.835 --> 00:06:54.205
that will do it.

00:06:54.205 --> 00:06:57.145
There’s a constant exchange of ideas

00:06:57.145 --> 00:06:58.479
and of experiences.

00:07:00.044 --> 00:07:01.671
I don’t want my kids to say,

00:07:01.671 --> 00:07:04.465
there were all these warning signs,
when I was a kid,

00:07:04.465 --> 00:07:06.968
and my dad just looked the other way,

00:07:07.802 --> 00:07:09.887
and now look at what we have to deal with.

00:07:10.471 --> 00:07:12.765
This is the ark we’re building 
before the rain.