Why Farming Is Broken (And Always Has Been)

Captions provided by CCTubes – Captioning the Internet! Thanks to the Land Institute for sponsoring this video! To learn more about their work, visit https://landinstitute.org/
To feed everyone in the future, we may need to disrupt 10,000 years of farming practices and turn agriculture into a closed system.

Thanks also to our supporters on https://www.patreon.com/MinuteEarth
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To learn more, start your googling with these keywords:
Annual plant: living for a year or less, perpetuating itself by seed
Perennial plant: living for several years
Polyculture: the simultaneous cultivation or exploitation of several crops or kinds of animals
Natural systems agriculture: cropping systems based on processes found in nature
Agroforestry: land use management that combines the cultivation of trees/shrubs with crops/pasture to create more productive and sustainable land-use systems
Alley cropping: planting agricultural crops between rows of trees or shrubs
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If you liked this week’s video, you might also like:
Alley cropping: https://nac.unl.edu/documents/agroforestrynotes/an12ac01.pdf
Agroforestry: http://www.fao.org/forestry/agroforestry/89997/en/
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Credits (and Twitter handles):
Script Writer: Alex Reich (@alexhreich)
Script Editor: Emily Elert (@eelert)
Video Illustrator: Jesse Agar
Video Director: Kate Yoshida (@KateYoshida)
Video Narrator: Kate Yoshida (@KateYoshida)
With Contributions From: Henry Reich, Ever Salazar, Peter Reich, David Goldenberg
Music by: Nathaniel Schroeder: http://www.soundcloud.com/drschroeder

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References:

Baker, B. 2017. Can Modern Agriculture Be Sustainable? Perennial polyculture holds promise. BioScience, 67(4), 325-331. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/bix018

Crews, T. E. 2016. Closing the Gap between Grasslands and Grain Agriculture. Kan. JL & Pub. Pol’y, 26, 274. https://goo.gl/d7BGsb

Dawson, C. J., & Hilton, J. 2011. Fertiliser availability in a resource-limited world: Production and recycling of nitrogen and phosphorus. Food Policy, 36, S14-S22. https://goo.gl/8dMuP1

Famiglietti, J. S. 2014. The global groundwater crisis. Nature Climate Change, 4(11), 945-948. http://aquadoc.typepad.com/files/jfam_global_gw_crisis.pdf

Kantar, M. B. et al. 2016. Perennial grain and oilseed crops. Annual review of plant biology, 67, 703-729. http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-arplant-043015-112311

Montgomery, D. R. (2007). Soil erosion and agricultural sustainability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(33), 13268-13272. http://goo.gl/Si9E6g