Can we create the perfect farm Brent Loken
Transcriber: TED Translators Admin
Reviewer: Mirjana Čutura
About 10,000 years ago,
humans began to farm.
This agricultural revolution
was a turning point in our history
that enabled people to settle,
build and create.
In short, agriculture
enabled the existence of civilization.
Today, approximately 40 percent
of our planet is farmland.
Spread all over the world,
these agricultural lands
are the pieces to a global puzzle
we are all facing:
in the future, how can we feed
every member of a growing population
a healthy diet?
Meeting this goal will require
nothing short of a second
agricultural revolution.
The first agricultural revolution
was characterized
by expansion and exploitation,
feeding people at the expense
of forests, wildlife and water
and destabilizing the climate
in the process.
That’s not an option the next time around.
Agriculture depends on a stable climate
with predictable seasons
and weather patterns.
This means we can’t keep
expanding our agricultural lands,
because doing so will undermine
the environmental conditions
that make agriculture possible
in the first place.
Instead, the next agricultural revolution
will have to increase the output
of our existing farmland for the long term
while protecting biodiversity,
conserving water
and reducing pollution
and greenhouse gas emissions.
So what will the future farms look like?
This drone is part of a fleet
that monitors the crops below.
The farm may look haphazard
but is a delicately engineered
use of the land
that intertwines crops and livestock
with wild habitats.
Conventional farming methods
cleared large swathes of land
and planted them with a single crop,
eradicating wildlife
and emitting huge amounts
of greenhouse gases in the process.
This approach aims to correct that damage.
Meanwhile, moving among the crops,
teams of field robots
apply fertilizer in targeted doses.
Inside the soil,
hundreds of sensors gather data
on nutrients and water levels.
This information reduces
unnecessary water use
and tells farmers where they should apply
more and less fertilizer
instead of causing pollution
by showering it across the whole farm.
But the farms of the future
won’t be all sensors and robots.
These technologies are designed
to help us produce food
in a way that works with the environment
rather than against it,
taking into account
the nuances of local ecosystems.
Lower-cost agricultural practices
can also serve those same goals
and are much more accessible
to many farmers.
In fact, many such practices
are already in use today
and stand to have
an increasingly large impact
as more farmers adopt them.
In Costa Rica,
farmers have intertwined farmland
with tropical habitat so successfully
that they have significantly contributed
to doubling the country’s forest cover.
This provides food
and habitat for wildlife
as well as natural pollination
and pest control
from the birds and insects
these farms attract,
producing food while restoring the planet.
In the United States,
ranchers are raising cattle
on grasslands composed of native species,
generating a valuable protein source
using production methods that store carbon
and protect biodiversity.
In Bangladesh, Cambodia and Nepal,
new approaches to rice production
may dramatically decrease
greenhouse gas emissions in the future.
Rice is a staple food
for three billion people
and the main source of livelihood
for millions of households.
More than 90 percent of rice
is grown in flooded paddies,
which use a lot of water
and release 11 percent
of annual methane emissions,
which accounts for one to two percent
of total annual greenhouse gas
emissions globally.
By experimenting with new strains of rice,
irrigating less
and adopting less labor-intensive
ways of planting seeds,
farmers in these countries
have already increased
their incomes and crop yields
while cutting down
on greenhouse gas emissions.
In Zambia,
numerous organizations
are investing in locally specific methods
to improve crop production,
reduce forest loss
and improve livelihoods for local farmers.
These efforts are projected
to increase crop yield
by almost a quarter
over the next few decades.
If combined with methods
to combat deforestation in the region,
they could move the country
toward a resilient, climate-focused
agricultural sector.
And in India,
where up to 40 percent
of post-harvest food is lost or wasted
due to poor infrastructure,
farmers have already started to implement
solar-powered cold storage capsules
that help thousands of rural farmers
preserve their produce
and become a viable part
of the supply chain.
It will take all of these methods,
from the most high-tech
to the lowest-cost,
to revolutionize farming.
High-tech interventions stand to amplify
climate- and conservation-oriented
approaches to farming,
and large producers will need to invest
in implementing these technologies.
Meanwhile, we’ll have to expand access
to the lower-cost methods
for smaller-scale farmers.
This vision of future farming
will also require a global shift
toward more plant-based diets
and huge reductions
in food loss and waste,
both of which will reduce
pressure on the land
and allow farmers to do more
with what they have available.
If we optimize food production,
both on land and sea,
we can feed humanity
within the environmental
limits of the earth,
but there’s a very small margin of error,
and it will take unprecedented
global cooperation
and coordination of the agricultural
lands we have today.