With all of that corporate funding, I‘m a bit worried that research like this will end up as a patent for, say, Monsanto or something. Know-how like this should be broadly available, and not only for big industrial farmers who can pay for it. On the other hand, if governments don‘t care to fund expensive science-equipped greenhouses like the ones we‘ve seen here, maybe this is the only viable solution. I don‘t quite know what to make of it.
to be fair, even "open source" medicine, end up getting licensed anyway because of the multitude of manufacturing method just like insulin having it exist at all is better
Better a lot of it is there than not, but some technology should not exist (e.g. face ID being as strong as it is) and other technology could better have its resources used on other things (e.g. train infrastructure rather than making self driving cars) if not for the profit motive
I think this is my favourite of the PhD stories so far!! Not just because of the super sexy science but also because of the vlog feel and the production quality
Really fun to see you at my university! I'm currently enrolled in the PhD proposal writing course and one of my peers is working on a proposal about this exact subject :)
I really love these videos/episodes, Simon. I remember when I was a Bachelor student, I used to watch all your vlog videos! Now, I am about to start my PhD in experimental particle physics.
Must-Watch for Worker-Class and those that are not gullablee: 'The Past and Future of WORK' by 'Some More News' and the follow-up video about Unions. And 'Second Thought', the whole channel really, but lets start with 'America Compared' and such. AND what about 'Co-Ops', the new revolutionary thing that makes being Workerclass sooo much easier?
Amazing to see how the project is growing and how it is going now. I was an intern at wageningen university under supervision of Francesco when this project was starting. Loved working there at the uni and with Francesco.
As an Agriculture graduate, it makes me happy that Plant Biotechnology is gaining more and more attention these days. Producing food for 10 billion people using less inputs and less land is the real challenge facing our world today. But I think, aside from producing more food, we should also look for ways to minimize food loss and increase food distribution efficiency, Looking forward to see more content from you!
"By going vegan, America could feed an additional 390 million people, study suggests. More than 41 million Americans find themselves at risk of going hungry at some point during the year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says." -LA Times Mar 26, 2018 We would also reduce the land needed for food production by 75%, according to Our World in Data. We would also save a huge amount of fresh water. Each vegan saves 219,000 gallons of water every year!
@@michi9955 It would be a solution to so many important problems! For example, it wouldn't solve the climate crisis, but it would have an immediate impact which would give us some time to find a real solution. Why should each of us go vegan? Here is a partial list. 1-Your own health (vegans are less likely to get several deadly chronic diseases) 2-Helping to end animal agriculture would reduce the chance of another pandemic & other zoonotic diseases 3-Helping to end animal ag would reduce the chance of the development of an antibiotic resistant pathogen. 4-Animal ag wastes a huge amount of fresh water. Each vegan saves 219,000 gallons of water every year! 5-Animal ag is a major cause of water pollution 6-Animal ag is a major cause of deforestation 7-Animal ag increases PTSD and spousal abuse in the people who work in slaughterhouses. Workers in meat packing facilities often endure terrible, dangerous working conditions. 8-Animal ag is a major cause of the loss of habitat and biodiversity 9-Animal welfare, obviously 10- It is the single most effective way for each of us to fight climate change and environmental degradation. 11- Longer lifespan. 12- Healthier weight (vegans were the only dietary group in the Adventist Studies that had an average BMI in the recommended range.) 13- A vegan world would save 8 million human lives a year, and $1.5 trillion in health care costs (Oxford Study) Links for some of these are at my channel under "About." If you doubt any of them, I would be glad to cite evidence from credible sources to back them up. UA-cam only allows a certain number of links at my channel.
One thing that is often overlooked is trying to convince people to change their diets to better suit the changes that our planet is going through. I think chefs and other culinary experts should join in on projects like these since making food palatable and acceptable is one of the biggest hurtles for trying to alter our diets worldwide.
Having just finished reading George Monbiot's Regenesis this was really really encouraging to watch, such talent and charisma! I'd love to see a video on the precision fermentation Regenesis touches on too as it sounds like a silver bullet to remove our dependence on animal protein whose production is basically an ecological disaster.
"By going vegan, America could feed an additional 390 million people, study suggests. More than 41 million Americans find themselves at risk of going hungry at some point during the year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says." -LA Times Mar 26, 2018 We would also reduce the land needed for food production by 75%, according to Our World in Data.
Wow this is so funny to me, I did a masters at Wageningen University! It's a great place, but the public transport sucks by Dutch standards (the nearest train station is 7 km from campus)
Very interesting, we don't rely on animals for food though (3:15). Reducing our meat consumption is another very effective way of getting more out of our crops. I would love to see some content or thesis on alternative protein.
Actually it's more complicated than that. If you look at how you produce food today (big monoculture farms), as a whole, eating less meat will "get more from our crops", because in modern agriculture there are few links between animal & plant farms, or at the very least, not as much as there should be. But why do we do that ? Because we rely on chemical fertilizers and pesticides to grow our food, (and that also has the side effect of killing life in the ground, which causes erosion problems and starve a few animal species in the food chain (if you're a western european around my age (25) or a bit older, and noticed how few insects gets on windshields nowadays compared to 15-20 years ago, you can first hand relate to this), among many other fun effects). Ok... so if we don't use chemical intrants, what can we use ? Animals, they help you get the fertilizer they need, and they also consume stuff humans would never eat. What you gotta understand, is that plants and animals have symbiosis relationship if we use that relationship correctly, if you get the animals out of the loop, then the only path we have (and which is the one we mostly use right now), is intrants, which are not sustainable. So basically we're going from a non-sustainable system, to another non-sustainable system which might consume the rarefying resources and kill the soils in a slower way, but also has its own drawbacks as well (let's say everyone goes Vegan, right now there many nutrients that we don't get in any other food (protein is the easy one to get from other foods (altough you might get too many carbs in the process), but there are many other nutrients we simply don't get from any other food), so you have to rely on supplements, and that means a bigger industry to produce said supplements, and everything that goes into that). There is so far no agricultural model that is sustainable without intrants if you remove animals from the loop, and many people tried though. But we know agricultural models which are indeed sustainable, and they all rely on animals. That's actually agricultural systems which are mostly used in 3rd worlds country, where intrants may not be an option at all, and how we used to do agriculture for the longest time before the chemical intrants appeared. The only reason we moved away from that model, is because people don't care about long term and just want profit. The biogas hype we're seeing in europe recently is a great symptom of that. We already are moving away from only using agricultural waste to turn them into gas. Some people just grow huge monoculture farms just to feed the biogas machine for easy profit, which also take the place other crops that would feed both people and animals could take, how lovely is that ?! (There are laws getting passed trying to solve this by requiring a maximum percentage of edible to be fed to the machine, but it's probably not going away anytime soon. I'm kinda pessimistic on that issue, the energy lobbies are quite big, especially now with the Russian embargo setting Europe in a rough position energy-wize) For the animal part, I recommend you watching "Eating less Meat won't save the Planet. Here's Why" from the channel "What I've Learned", it's a great introduction on understanding the links between ruminants and plants, and the Co2 signatures and water statistics we usually asign to food productions related to them.
Indeed (at least in most of the developed world). And just to source that claim; this 2018 study estimated that a population of 10 billion could be supported with a transition towards plant-based diets, in addition to food waste reduction, and technology/management improvement: Springmann et al 2018, "Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits"
@@PierreMiniggio Reducing meat doesn't mean getting rid of it though. Already moving to many fewer slaughter cows and pigs would help substantially. It's all part of a system that needs improving with this being an incredibly easy first step, few would need supplements if meat consumption was halved.
@@EngineeringNibbles Yes, I get what you mean. It would help solving the obesity crisis as well doing that. But it goes hand in hand, if meat becomes a more expensive food again because it's local and produced in a sustainable way, and every process that is really harmful to the ecosystems get banned or heavily restricted to the point of being inpractical, the consuption is probably gonna go down as well in the process. To quote my own example, I only buy local meat (the farm in less than 30km away from the city I live in, I wish I could find closer, but that's the life I get living in a big city for the last 5 years), it's 2 to 5 times more expensive (depending on the item) than the mass produced bad stuff I could also get. If the latter isn't an option anymore, things would fall in place fairly quickly.
@@EngineeringNibbles Needing supplements is no big deal. The environmental damage and wasted resources from animal agriculture, on the other hand, is huge!
As a colleague of Fransesco at Wageningen Plant Research I find the title a bit misleading as feeding 10 billion people is much more a product of logistics, markets, distribution and crop choice than increasing food production itself. However, knowing the UA-cam algorithm a bit, you are forgiven. Great video and very cool to see our facilities on this science communicators channel. Next time you can come visit the Open Field Crops department of Wageningen Plant Research were we often test advances in plant research by growing crops in the field with all the agricultural challenges of the real world (outside a lab) that come along with it ;). I didn't know you were coming to the WUR though, a bit disappointed I missed your presentations.
I freaking loved this video. I come from a developing country with great potential for agriculture, but there are really no resources to do anything remotely similar as the work Francesco is doing :/
Must-Watch for Worker-Class and those that are not gullablee: 'The Past and Future of WORK' by 'Some More News' and the follow-up video about Unions. And 'Second Thought', the whole channel really, but lets start with 'America Compared' and such. AND what about 'Co-Ops', the new revolutionary thing that makes being Workerclass sooo much easier?
Wageningen rejected my application for Plant Biotechnology last year🥺💔. It was kind of expected though, since I did my Bachelor's in Horticulture. However, I'm now doing my M.Sc. in (molecular) Plant Sciences in Munich, so I'm on my way!😌
When in the plant room the only thing that i could think that one dutch weedgrower had on fun project most of the parts ar all out of the weed growing industry because it is almost always indoors
I remember your video talking about the nutrition crisis we are potentially heading, and which effects we are beginning see now. I wonder how this type of research and the implemented solutions that will be implemented from it will factor that? I don't know if my question makes sense
Great work! Hopefully we use the plants to feed humanity, not use plants to feed and forcibly bread animals to then feed to humans humans at a loss of energy/efficiency. 🌱🙌
I'm sensing one very crucial part completely missing from the agricultural research: the farmers. It seems there's a no way researchers get any direct feedback from the farmers while choosing the topic or while in the middle of the research. Farmers only get the end result. I guess, an integration needs to be made between agricultural researchers and farmers.
Title is kind of a non issue. Even with zero innovation in agriculture we can already feed 10bil easily if we modernize the second and third world farming operations that often still use pre industrial farming methods with rather poor yields compared to state of the art farms. Now 100bil would be a little more challenging but still doable if we do large scale ecoscaping and make smart use of greenhouses and geodesic domes as well as underground farming.
Was hoping for a bit more actual science, but not a bad high level glimpse into a PHD agri-science project. On a related note, are you aware of the C4 rice project?
15:00 I wouldn't call this an American way of doing this. My technical university in Germany has the same thing. Many big companies have their own research facilities on campus. Other German technical universities have similar facilities.
"By going vegan, America could feed an additional 390 million people, study suggests. More than 41 million Americans find themselves at risk of going hungry at some point during the year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says." -LA Times Mar 26, 2018 We would also reduce the land needed for food production by 75%, according to Our World in Data.
@@MrAnonymousRandom Here in the USA, corn (as well as animal agriculture) is heavily subsidized. Government policy can change. I haven't oversimplified the problem. You are disputing a very credible source. "Our World in Data has been cited in academic scientific journals, medicine and global health journals, and social science journals. The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Economist have used Our World in Data as a source."-Wikipedia
Show idea, now that you graduated with your PhD how about seeing how daddy gets applied in the real world at a real job? I mean assuming you can show us your work, that it's not something confidential.
@@lexington476 He might not have another full time job actually, he finished his PHD not so long ago. And seeing how much stuff he's done on his channel, that's actually a lot of work.
Actually we can feed the global populace 10 times over currently, so why is there malnutrition crisis around the world??? ..... Well an Indonesian farmer will earn more if he sells his produce to a european country than sell to its own populace simple, the true problem is resouce distribution and reducing the power of corporations .....
I am always extremely conflicted about corporation-sponsored research, especially at universities, basically because I don't trust corporations. AT ALL. Besides, I am convinced that any sensible state should put a lot of money into research and that should very well include "pure" research, the one that corporations usually don't fund.
@@henriconfucius5559 Corporations generally only do things to make a profit. At least with the government they have the responsibility to do things for the public benefit. Obviously this isn't true for countries like America that have a government run by corporations.
@@henriconfucius5559 of course they have bias, everyone does. It is unrealistic to expect otherwise, but we have to use systems of accountability to mitigate the effects of an individual's particular biases. With fair elections, government can be that accountability system. Unfortunately, fair elections don't happen in the United States, largely due to the influence of money (wealthy capitalists and corporations) over our politicians.
(edit: because the last part of the video answered my question) Pretty cool video! I studied food science, so wageningen was always at the back of my mind as the hogwarts of agriculture and food production.
so far i enjoyed this video series of different phd journey. However I feel that there is another side of a phd journey that yet to be explore, those who do not finish the journey ... be it due to personal or external reasons.
There is no proof the Earth is not infinitely big Nobody has ventured beyond the ICE WALL that surrounds the earth, yes antarctica stretches all around the Known world and no the earth is not a globe
Theres this argument that money would more efficiently increase food production if it's invested in developing countries than in researching marginal improvements in rich countries.
I know this is supposed to be mostly about the science? but honestly seeing someone i know cycles be mystified by that type of braking mechanism honestly mystifies me. That's just, how i learned to bike? All the bikes i had growing up did it that way, and when i got my first hand-brake bike i never used the hand brake because it just, braked differently and i didn't like how it worked, right?
Does anybody know if there is any interest around plants that can have good yelds in low light environments. This could allow more vertical farming with lower energy consumptions!
For a long time most new bicycles have been selling with front and rear brake handles at the handlebar, I'm not saying these aren't available anymore but that's not much of what is being sold new or used from what I've observed. The main disadvantages with that style of brake in my experience is that you might have to brake when your pedals are pointed straight up and down and you'll have to turn it a bit more first before being able to apply backwards. And a very rare scenario that once happened to me: chain got loose unexpectedly (yes I didn't always maintain my bicycle properly as a student) and lost the ability to brake. Fortunately we're a pretty flat country but that could still be awkward when descending a bridge and there's no way to stop safely before having to cross a road at the bottom. But I do still see this brake system being used a lot on new rental bicycles for the general public, especially from utilities like the typical OV fiets (cheap to rent bicycles near train stations and such). It probably has its merits with being a sturdy internal system that doesn't have a cable or handle that will easily get ruined, I always dread having to use those as they often don't have any kind of gears too. But they do beat walking a long distance if there's no decent workable bus connection for my destination.
there is nothing wrong with conventional farming methods combined with organic farms sopping up the desire for better grade food. EDIT: we do not have problems with yields, these are academics who think they're better than farmers at growing food.
@@VestigeFinder crop rotation fixes the soil, biodiversity is killed if everyone is a vegan, climate change and pollution are mainly caused by transport and industry
Yourself and Francesco break the 'scientist who can't communicate' stereotypes, always fascinating to watch these videos
New Simon Clark videos always made my day
With all of that corporate funding, I‘m a bit worried that research like this will end up as a patent for, say, Monsanto or something. Know-how like this should be broadly available, and not only for big industrial farmers who can pay for it.
On the other hand, if governments don‘t care to fund expensive science-equipped greenhouses like the ones we‘ve seen here, maybe this is the only viable solution. I don‘t quite know what to make of it.
to be fair, even "open source" medicine, end up getting licensed anyway because of the multitude of manufacturing method
just like insulin
having it exist at all is better
Better a lot of it is there than not, but some technology should not exist (e.g. face ID being as strong as it is) and other technology could better have its resources used on other things (e.g. train infrastructure rather than making self driving cars) if not for the profit motive
Monsanto doesn't exist anymore.
@@aronseptianto8142 it gets licensed because of billion dollar lobbying that goes on
@@AnymMusic yeah, it sucks, but it'd sucked more if it doesn't exist at all
I think this is my favourite of the PhD stories so far!! Not just because of the super sexy science but also because of the vlog feel and the production quality
Really fun to see you at my university!
I'm currently enrolled in the PhD proposal writing course and one of my peers is working on a proposal about this exact subject :)
I really love these videos/episodes, Simon. I remember when I was a Bachelor student, I used to watch all your vlog videos!
Now, I am about to start my PhD in experimental particle physics.
Must-Watch for Worker-Class and those that are not gullablee: 'The Past and Future of WORK' by 'Some More News' and the follow-up video about Unions. And 'Second Thought', the whole channel really, but lets start with 'America Compared' and such.
AND what about 'Co-Ops', the new revolutionary thing that makes
being Workerclass sooo much easier?
Amazing to see how the project is growing and how it is going now. I was an intern at wageningen university under supervision of Francesco when this project was starting. Loved working there at the uni and with Francesco.
As an Agriculture graduate, it makes me happy that Plant Biotechnology is gaining more and more attention these days.
Producing food for 10 billion people using less inputs and less land is the real challenge facing our world today.
But I think, aside from producing more food, we should also look for ways to minimize food loss and increase food distribution efficiency,
Looking forward to see more content from you!
"By going vegan, America could feed an additional 390 million people, study suggests. More than 41 million Americans find themselves at risk of going hungry at some point during the year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says." -LA Times Mar 26, 2018
We would also reduce the land needed for food production by 75%, according to Our World in Data. We would also save a huge amount of fresh water. Each vegan saves 219,000 gallons of water every year!
@@someguy2135 thats the easy solution that most people choose to ignore
@@michi9955 It would be a solution to so many important problems! For example, it wouldn't solve the climate crisis, but it would have an immediate impact which would give us some time to find a real solution.
Why should each of us go vegan? Here is a partial list.
1-Your own health (vegans are less likely to get several deadly chronic diseases)
2-Helping to end animal agriculture would reduce the chance of another pandemic & other zoonotic diseases
3-Helping to end animal ag would reduce the chance of the development of an antibiotic resistant pathogen.
4-Animal ag wastes a huge amount of fresh water. Each vegan saves 219,000 gallons of water every year!
5-Animal ag is a major cause of water pollution
6-Animal ag is a major cause of deforestation
7-Animal ag increases PTSD and spousal abuse in the people who work in slaughterhouses. Workers in meat packing facilities often endure terrible, dangerous working conditions.
8-Animal ag is a major cause of the loss of habitat and biodiversity
9-Animal welfare, obviously
10- It is the single most effective way for each of us to fight climate change and environmental degradation.
11- Longer lifespan.
12- Healthier weight (vegans were the only dietary group in the Adventist Studies that had an average BMI in the recommended range.)
13- A vegan world would save 8 million human lives a year, and $1.5 trillion in health care costs (Oxford Study)
Links for some of these are at my channel under "About."
If you doubt any of them, I would be glad to cite evidence from credible sources to back them up. UA-cam only allows a certain number of links at my channel.
@@someguy2135 veganism is a cult
EDIT: achingly idiotic how so many arm chair pratts think they know how to feed tomorrow's world
One thing that is often overlooked is trying to convince people to change their diets to better suit the changes that our planet is going through. I think chefs and other culinary experts should join in on projects like these since making food palatable and acceptable is one of the biggest hurtles for trying to alter our diets worldwide.
This is a really beautiful video, Simon. Thanks to Francesco for sharing his incredible research with us.
Can we just appreciate how good this guy's English is.
his accent sounds more Dutch than Italian^^
@@embreis2257 was also thinking this haha.
This should be a series.
Having just finished reading George Monbiot's Regenesis this was really really encouraging to watch, such talent and charisma! I'd love to see a video on the precision fermentation Regenesis touches on too as it sounds like a silver bullet to remove our dependence on animal protein whose production is basically an ecological disaster.
"By going vegan, America could feed an additional 390 million people, study suggests. More than 41 million Americans find themselves at risk of going hungry at some point during the year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says." -LA Times Mar 26, 2018
We would also reduce the land needed for food production by 75%, according to Our World in Data.
Precision fermentation, cultured meat production, and vertical farming are all exciting technologies. No till veganic farming techniques too.
@@someguy2135 totally agree, no till sounds incredible
@@olninyo Incredibly good, or hard to believe?
@@someguy2135 the former
For what it's worth I think Francesco could make a great UA-camr, he's such a charismatic speaker :D
Fascinating research. Love this series as a whole. Keep it coking Simon.
Finally getting some representation from the biologists!!
Wow this is so funny to me, I did a masters at Wageningen University! It's a great place, but the public transport sucks by Dutch standards (the nearest train station is 7 km from campus)
Very interesting, we don't rely on animals for food though (3:15). Reducing our meat consumption is another very effective way of getting more out of our crops. I would love to see some content or thesis on alternative protein.
Actually it's more complicated than that. If you look at how you produce food today (big monoculture farms), as a whole, eating less meat will "get more from our crops", because in modern agriculture there are few links between animal & plant farms, or at the very least, not as much as there should be.
But why do we do that ? Because we rely on chemical fertilizers and pesticides to grow our food, (and that also has the side effect of killing life in the ground, which causes erosion problems and starve a few animal species in the food chain (if you're a western european around my age (25) or a bit older, and noticed how few insects gets on windshields nowadays compared to 15-20 years ago, you can first hand relate to this), among many other fun effects).
Ok... so if we don't use chemical intrants, what can we use ? Animals, they help you get the fertilizer they need, and they also consume stuff humans would never eat.
What you gotta understand, is that plants and animals have symbiosis relationship if we use that relationship correctly, if you get the animals out of the loop, then the only path we have (and which is the one we mostly use right now), is intrants, which are not sustainable.
So basically we're going from a non-sustainable system, to another non-sustainable system which might consume the rarefying resources and kill the soils in a slower way, but also has its own drawbacks as well (let's say everyone goes Vegan, right now there many nutrients that we don't get in any other food (protein is the easy one to get from other foods (altough you might get too many carbs in the process), but there are many other nutrients we simply don't get from any other food), so you have to rely on supplements, and that means a bigger industry to produce said supplements, and everything that goes into that).
There is so far no agricultural model that is sustainable without intrants if you remove animals from the loop, and many people tried though.
But we know agricultural models which are indeed sustainable, and they all rely on animals. That's actually agricultural systems which are mostly used in 3rd worlds country, where intrants may not be an option at all, and how we used to do agriculture for the longest time before the chemical intrants appeared.
The only reason we moved away from that model, is because people don't care about long term and just want profit. The biogas hype we're seeing in europe recently is a great symptom of that. We already are moving away from only using agricultural waste to turn them into gas. Some people just grow huge monoculture farms just to feed the biogas machine for easy profit, which also take the place other crops that would feed both people and animals could take, how lovely is that ?! (There are laws getting passed trying to solve this by requiring a maximum percentage of edible to be fed to the machine, but it's probably not going away anytime soon. I'm kinda pessimistic on that issue, the energy lobbies are quite big, especially now with the Russian embargo setting Europe in a rough position energy-wize)
For the animal part, I recommend you watching "Eating less Meat won't save the Planet. Here's Why" from the channel "What I've Learned", it's a great introduction on understanding the links between ruminants and plants, and the Co2 signatures and water statistics we usually asign to food productions related to them.
Indeed (at least in most of the developed world). And just to source that claim; this 2018 study estimated that a population of 10 billion could be supported with a transition towards plant-based diets, in addition to food waste reduction, and technology/management improvement:
Springmann et al 2018, "Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits"
@@PierreMiniggio Reducing meat doesn't mean getting rid of it though.
Already moving to many fewer slaughter cows and pigs would help substantially. It's all part of a system that needs improving with this being an incredibly easy first step, few would need supplements if meat consumption was halved.
@@EngineeringNibbles Yes, I get what you mean. It would help solving the obesity crisis as well doing that.
But it goes hand in hand, if meat becomes a more expensive food again because it's local and produced in a sustainable way, and every process that is really harmful to the ecosystems get banned or heavily restricted to the point of being inpractical, the consuption is probably gonna go down as well in the process.
To quote my own example, I only buy local meat (the farm in less than 30km away from the city I live in, I wish I could find closer, but that's the life I get living in a big city for the last 5 years), it's 2 to 5 times more expensive (depending on the item) than the mass produced bad stuff I could also get. If the latter isn't an option anymore, things would fall in place fairly quickly.
@@EngineeringNibbles Needing supplements is no big deal. The environmental damage and wasted resources from animal agriculture, on the other hand, is huge!
Thank you for pronouncing Wageningen correctly ❤
As a colleague of Fransesco at Wageningen Plant Research I find the title a bit misleading as feeding 10 billion people is much more a product of logistics, markets, distribution and crop choice than increasing food production itself.
However, knowing the UA-cam algorithm a bit, you are forgiven. Great video and very cool to see our facilities on this science communicators channel. Next time you can come visit the Open Field Crops department of Wageningen Plant Research were we often test advances in plant research by growing crops in the field with all the agricultural challenges of the real world (outside a lab) that come along with it ;). I didn't know you were coming to the WUR though, a bit disappointed I missed your presentations.
Francesco is a great communicator!
It's nice to see how science is building a future worth living in. Thank you for being an excellent science communicator!
Can hear a bit of Giulio Tononi in his voice - fascinating accent, fascinating video. Looking at going biological so very interesting view.
Yet another good article/video. Any news on yeast & proteins to make food with far less in the way of inputs or need for land?
I freaking loved this video. I come from a developing country with great potential for agriculture, but there are really no resources to do anything remotely similar as the work Francesco is doing :/
You are part of the change :) good luck
Francesco sounds amazing Simon. Thanks for highlighting him.
Is that LaFrowda at top left in the aerial at 0:20? Trying to orient myself, it's been awhile (1981 graduate).
Raise the saddle to your hips level and when you coast coast with the paddles at 3 and 9 o'clock so you can brake easier.
I really hope you interviewed George Monbiot on this topic. Will watch later.
Really enjoyed this and was very helpful for me! I’m currently trying to decide what Master’s programs to apply to
meanwhile planet temp increases 3C and agriculture becomes impossible.
Must-Watch for Worker-Class and those that are not gullablee: 'The Past and Future of WORK' by 'Some More News' and the follow-up video about Unions. And 'Second Thought', the whole channel really, but lets start with 'America Compared' and such.
AND what about 'Co-Ops', the new revolutionary thing that makes
being Workerclass sooo much easier?
I’d just woken up when the notification hit and I deadass read, “how to feed a plant with 10 billion people” lol
Anyway, loved the video :)
so you mean this is similar to min-maxing crops growth, yield, and harvest in minecraft using redstone? lol
Wageningen rejected my application for Plant Biotechnology last year🥺💔. It was kind of expected though, since I did my Bachelor's in Horticulture. However, I'm now doing my M.Sc. in (molecular) Plant Sciences in Munich, so I'm on my way!😌
Funny how the guy is Italian but basically speaks English with a Dutch accent.
When in the plant room the only thing that i could think that one dutch weedgrower had on fun project most of the parts ar all out of the weed growing industry because it is almost always indoors
Damn good looking and smart need both in my life
Disappointed that this isn't an instructional guide on how to feel 10 billion people to a carnivorous planet.
Can you talk about the phytoplankton news that's been going around
I remember your video talking about the nutrition crisis we are potentially heading, and which effects we are beginning see now. I wonder how this type of research and the implemented solutions that will be implemented from it will factor that?
I don't know if my question makes sense
Even as the planet melts corporations are going to try and make money..
I need to move to the netherlands..
Ahhh the trusty ol' PowerPoint slideshow.
Hard to escape.
Love it!
Great work! Hopefully we use the plants to feed humanity, not use plants to feed and forcibly bread animals to then feed to humans humans at a loss of energy/efficiency. 🌱🙌
No one seems to mention that we already produce enough food for about 12-13B people, so we are already doing it. Just not sharing it along the way....
PHOTOSYNTHESIS
Wageningen University, fantastic university sadly built on a few buried scandals
I'm sensing one very crucial part completely missing from the agricultural research: the farmers. It seems there's a no way researchers get any direct feedback from the farmers while choosing the topic or while in the middle of the research. Farmers only get the end result. I guess, an integration needs to be made between agricultural researchers and farmers.
What do you want to do with us to feed the planet?
i've never heard of someone talk in terms of "micromoles of photons" wow
Hmm. Not wild about private food companies sponsoring this student’s research.
Title is kind of a non issue. Even with zero innovation in agriculture we can already feed 10bil easily if we modernize the second and third world farming operations that often still use pre industrial farming methods with rather poor yields compared to state of the art farms. Now 100bil would be a little more challenging but still doable if we do large scale ecoscaping and make smart use of greenhouses and geodesic domes as well as underground farming.
A 10 billion person human centipede
We need economic planning
5:41 Thanks, candela is useless and should not be a SI-unit.
Cool
Supernatural irradiance sounds like a good band name
Was hoping for a bit more actual science, but not a bad high level glimpse into a PHD agri-science project. On a related note, are you aware of the C4 rice project?
15:00 I wouldn't call this an American way of doing this. My technical university in Germany has the same thing. Many big companies have their own research facilities on campus. Other German technical universities have similar facilities.
"By going vegan, America could feed an additional 390 million people, study suggests. More than 41 million Americans find themselves at risk of going hungry at some point during the year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says." -LA Times Mar 26, 2018
We would also reduce the land needed for food production by 75%, according to Our World in Data.
You are oversimplifying the problem. Farmers have a vested interest in choosing crops like GMO corn which ends up as feed and ethanol anyways.
@@MrAnonymousRandom Here in the USA, corn (as well as animal agriculture) is heavily subsidized. Government policy can change. I haven't oversimplified the problem. You are disputing a very credible source. "Our World in Data has been cited in academic scientific journals, medicine and global health journals, and social science journals. The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Economist have used Our World in Data as a source."-Wikipedia
@@MrAnonymousRandom this wouldn’t be him simplifying the problem, your problem is against the U.S department of Agriculture’s ignorance
Sounds like a miserable existence to me tbh. Works for lots of people, but there's no way I could stomach it.
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10 billion people or 10 nikocado avocados
10 billion people
10 billion people, or 2 billion nikocados and 8 billion starving people
Who else read it as feeding a plant with ten billion people
Easy. Stop eating animal products
Show idea, now that you graduated with your PhD how about seeing how daddy gets applied in the real world at a real job? I mean assuming you can show us your work, that it's not something confidential.
Being a science communicator that produces videos and books isn't a real job ?
@@PierreMiniggio true, but I'm sure he has a real job. This UA-cam stuff that I'm sure it's just a side hobby.
@@lexington476 He might not have another full time job actually, he finished his PHD not so long ago. And seeing how much stuff he's done on his channel, that's actually a lot of work.
Actually we can feed the global populace 10 times over currently, so why is there malnutrition crisis around the world??? ..... Well an Indonesian farmer will earn more if he sells his produce to a european country than sell to its own populace simple, the true problem is resouce distribution and reducing the power of corporations .....
The solution is simple: conditional cash transfer programs. Give free money to the poor so long as they vaccinate and put their children in schools.
The colab I never knew I needed. :) Wageningen is where I plan to study, so this is pretty exciting.
It's an AMAZING campus! I was quite jealous of the students there, I must admit
@@SimonClark I've been there once for a special occasion and I was immidiately sold.
Plant science and cycling infrastructure. Perfect video :D
I'm a avid cyclist my self and like how clean and green the video was, cycling and science go hand in hand with eachother.
Wow Simon, that is awesome!!!
I've had the same high school science teacher as Francesco, she is very awesome indeed :)
I am always extremely conflicted about corporation-sponsored research, especially at universities, basically because I don't trust corporations. AT ALL.
Besides, I am convinced that any sensible state should put a lot of money into research and that should very well include "pure" research, the one that corporations usually don't fund.
And do you think governments don't have bias? That the public employees responsible for distributing the funding don't have their bias?
@@henriconfucius5559 in a working democracy, politicians are accountable for their choices.
@@idraote not in a Million years bro
@@henriconfucius5559 Corporations generally only do things to make a profit. At least with the government they have the responsibility to do things for the public benefit. Obviously this isn't true for countries like America that have a government run by corporations.
@@henriconfucius5559 of course they have bias, everyone does. It is unrealistic to expect otherwise, but we have to use systems of accountability to mitigate the effects of an individual's particular biases. With fair elections, government can be that accountability system. Unfortunately, fair elections don't happen in the United States, largely due to the influence of money (wealthy capitalists and corporations) over our politicians.
(edit: because the last part of the video answered my question)
Pretty cool video!
I studied food science, so wageningen was always at the back of my mind as the hogwarts of agriculture and food production.
That backwards brake thing was on all the bikes I rode as a kid, and I find it more intuitive, but has less control than a front and back brake lever.
so far i enjoyed this video series of different phd journey. However I feel that there is another side of a phd journey that yet to be explore, those who do not finish the journey ... be it due to personal or external reasons.
I would also like to see an episode on this.
It's very fun to see the campus I study at here. I'm looking forward to the next one of these!
Babe wake up Simon Clark just posted
Francesco, da espatriato da due anni devo dirtelo, hai un accento e modo di esprimerti fantastici!
I still think we need to slow down with the population growth for everyone's comfort
There is no proof the Earth is not infinitely big
Nobody has ventured beyond the ICE WALL that surrounds the earth, yes antarctica stretches all around the Known world and no the earth is not a globe
I think we will solve the food issue, but the economic world issue or issues that we face from now until late 21st century will be rough.
I love these PhD stories! Really interesting to see and hear what other young academics are doing.
Theres this argument that money would more efficiently increase food production if it's invested in developing countries than in researching marginal improvements in rich countries.
Station Ede-Wageningen is in the video yay
I know this is supposed to be mostly about the science? but honestly seeing someone i know cycles be mystified by that type of braking mechanism honestly mystifies me. That's just, how i learned to bike? All the bikes i had growing up did it that way, and when i got my first hand-brake bike i never used the hand brake because it just, braked differently and i didn't like how it worked, right?
Does anybody know if there is any interest around plants that can have good yelds in low light environments. This could allow more vertical farming with lower energy consumptions!
Hi Dr. Clark!
I would love it if Francesco started his own UA-cam channel. I'd subscribe to it in a heartbeat!
Can we just take a moment and appreciate Francesco's flawless English?
shout out to the pronunciation of Wageningen
9:12 who's that beauty?
In the US, children's bicycles often have that style of break where you pedal backwards.
For a long time most new bicycles have been selling with front and rear brake handles at the handlebar, I'm not saying these aren't available anymore but that's not much of what is being sold new or used from what I've observed.
The main disadvantages with that style of brake in my experience is that you might have to brake when your pedals are pointed straight up and down and you'll have to turn it a bit more first before being able to apply backwards. And a very rare scenario that once happened to me: chain got loose unexpectedly (yes I didn't always maintain my bicycle properly as a student) and lost the ability to brake. Fortunately we're a pretty flat country but that could still be awkward when descending a bridge and there's no way to stop safely before having to cross a road at the bottom.
But I do still see this brake system being used a lot on new rental bicycles for the general public, especially from utilities like the typical OV fiets (cheap to rent bicycles near train stations and such). It probably has its merits with being a sturdy internal system that doesn't have a cable or handle that will easily get ruined, I always dread having to use those as they often don't have any kind of gears too. But they do beat walking a long distance if there's no decent workable bus connection for my destination.
It would be neat if you could post your lectures. Is there reason you don't?
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I love the way they had to switch out the dope plants for those rubbish looking whatever plants in the bright zone for simons visit .
George monbiot's new book focuses on this topic and is super interesting, I’d highly recommend it
Was not expecting this !!! Also doing a PhD in plant sciences at Wageningen.
Very interesting video! It was lovely to meet you at your talks here in Wageningen
there is nothing wrong with conventional farming methods combined with organic farms sopping up the desire for better grade food.
EDIT: we do not have problems with yields, these are academics who think they're better than farmers at growing food.
nothing wrong with conventional farming? except for degrading soil, destroying biodiversity, increasing climate change, and pollution
@@VestigeFinder crop rotation fixes the soil, biodiversity is killed if everyone is a vegan, climate change and pollution are mainly caused by transport and industry
of course he's in the netherlands
He is ready to grow food for Martians
Love this series!
That is a very cool format 🤩