- [Narrator] Let's talk about this thing
that we call industrial agriculture,
or industrial farming is another way of saying it.
And let's look at what that really means.
... Culture, there we go.
This is the most prevalent kind of farming
that we see today in developed countries
like the United States of America.
So most of our food comes from this kind of farming.
It's basically a way of producing lots of food cheaply.
So most of the meat, milk, eggs,
and even most of the fruits and vegetables
that we would buy in a typical supermarket,
most of them would have been produced in this way.
Industrial agriculture is kind of like ...
We can see it as the child of three parents.
Or, maybe we could think of it as
the product of innovations
in three separate fields.
The first is science and technology,
and innovations in this field include things like
improved farming methods, let's say,
or better agricultural technology,
and those sorts of things.
Also in this circle,
I would put things like genetic modification.
So I'll just write here "gene modification."
And we'll look at what the upside and the downside
of each of these innovations has been
with regard to this kind of farming.
The second parent or contributing field
is the field of economics, and this includes, for example,
techniques for achieving something called
economies of scale,
and that basically means
if you produce a lot of something,
you can usually sell it more cheaply.
So I might put in here, in brackets, "mass production",
so that you remember what that means.
Mass production.
Also in this field is the creation of new markets.
That's identifying new consumers for your products,
and then actively selling or advertising to them
to get them to buy the products.
The third parent or responsible party
for industrial agriculture is the field of politics.
The government regulates, or has the duty to regulate,
things like global trade,
food labeling,
and especially food safety regulations.
These are regulated by the FDA.
Now, while the government is supposed to
make regulatory decisions to benefit
the people of our nation,
or any other country which has a government regulatory body,
in reality, it's not quite as simple as that.
The decisions made by the government
are actually influenced quite significantly
by food lobbyists.
And the food lobbyists represent
the companies that are mass-producing all of these goods
for consumption by the general population.
And because these companies are wealthy, very wealthy,
they can actually
influence many of the decisions
that the government makes
via these food lobbyists.
So I'll just draw on our red tape here.
That's the red tape of the lobbyists.
Things like, you can't say "limit red meat consumption,"
because the beef lobbyists would fight against that.
And so you would have to say,
"Limit your intake of saturated fat"
in a health warning issued by the government.
Those sorts of things are controlled by food lobbyists.
So let's go back now and define some of these innovations.
In the 1800s,
elements like nitrogen,
phosphorus, and potassium were identified as
stimulating growth in plants.
And so these elements were then the beginning of
what we know as fertilizer.
Secondly, in the 1900s, vitamins were discovered,
or isolated, and they were then found to be responsible
for growth and maintenance of health in animals.
At the same time, in the mid-1900s,
antibiotics were being discovered, and this led to
the ability to take animals from the outdoors,
where they're used to living,
and bring them in to the indoors,
or to what they call CAFOs,
or confined animal feeding operations.
These animals, like, for example, cows,
chickens,
even fish, are raised in farms
because they can be raised more efficiently in that way, in
very overcrowded and dark settings,
in order to maximize the production of meat.
So where a cow might actually in nature
be grass-fed, and roaming around in a pasture, in a CAFO,
the grass is replaced with something that we have a lot of:
you guessed it ...
Corn.
And the cows are then kept
in very close quarters, actually quite still,
so that they can't graze and walk around,
and instead they're fed at these feeding troughs,
and it makes them get fatter quicker.
And that of course means more money for
the companies that are
selling this product.
Because cows aren't meant to be fed on diets of corn,
they are kept healthy with vitamin supplements,
and also with the use of antibiotics,
because the conditions in which they're being kept
are often unsanitary.
They're often standing in their own waste
while they are almost force-fed these large amounts of corn
in order for them to get fat and ready
for slaughter at a younger age.
Genetic modification involves taking the genome,
or the genetic material, of a plant,
like, for example, corn, and then changing it
so that the plant is no longer susceptible to
a pathogen or a bug that once used to attack that plant.
And that increases the yield.
Other kinds of genetic modification are things like
altering the genes so that the quality
or the quantity of the product improves.
I'm sure you've seen those massive strawberries
in supermarkets, and many of those have been
genetically modified to yield bigger fruits on the plants.
Cows, even, can be genetically modified
to produce more protein in their milk to make cheese.
And even things like potatoes ...
I'll just draw these in purple,
'cause I don't have more colors than that ...
There's something called an amflora potato
that is genetically modified because
the starch that comes out of that potato
is more useful for industrial uses, for processed foods.
Now, the downside of this kind of genetic technology
is that it decreases something called biodiversity.
And biodiversity is the natural variation
that exists among species.
And biodiversity is a measure of the health of an ecosystem,
and you can see why that would be reduced
if the genes are modified to make a plant more uniform
and more uniformly resistant.
The other thing that genetic technology does
is that it harms beneficial organisms.
So, for example, organisms
that are responsible for things like pollination,
or pest control,
can also be harmed by genetic modification.
The downside to these farming improvements or innovations
is that pesticides and fertilizers
can filter into the ground and pollute the groundwater.
And then that polluted groundwater
can damage fisheries downstream.
So I'm just gonna write here "fisheries."
The other downside is
the fact that the methane byproducts from these CAFOs,
or confined animal feeding operations,
can damage the ozone as well.
So that's another potential side effect
of this kind of industrial agriculture.
If we look at the economics,
we see here that, yes, it has been successful to
produce large amounts of food.
We have achieved more available goods,
and if you measure quality of life
in terms of available goods,
then yes, our quality of life has improved in that regard.
But then, if we also look at the aggressive marketing
that's going on to consumers,
and the kind of increase in portion sizes that we've seen,
one of the biggest consequences is the obesity epidemic
that is plaguing not just the United States,
although we are probably
world leaders in the obesity epidemic,
but around the world,
in developed countries where
industrial agriculture is being employed,
obesity is one of the side effects that follows quickly.
So while this has generated
a lot of income for someone,
probably someone living in these buildings
or working in these buildings over there,
the problem is that this obesity epidemic
is going to cost society a lot in terms of medical care,
and that is going to in some ways undo
what we've seen here in terms of the profits,
if we look on a societal level.
So the take-home message is that,
while industrial agriculture has been successful
in producing more food for a growing number of people,
at the same time,
the side effects of this kind of mass amount of cheap food
has been environmental effects,
societal effects,
health effects such as obesity, and all of these problems
are problems that we are going to be paying for later on.
And this is why we need to start thinking now
about potential solutions to these kinds of issues.