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00:03

Okay, time for a whirlwind tour of the history of agriculture tech. [Tornado picks up a tractor]

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It’ll be like a sharknado.

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Only with farming implements instead of sharks. [A shark in the tornado]

00:13

A farmnado….

00:14

….Kinda glad that was never made into a TV movie.

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We begin, as always, with the hunter-gatherers. [Hunter-gatherers appear out of the bushes]

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Even though life was simple, humans were already starting to get technical.

00:24

No, it wasn’t exactly Silicon Valley, but we had to start somewhere. [Man sat using a laptop]

00:28

That "somewhere" was fishing.

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Some of earliest peoples relied on fish for their food. [Man chucking a net into a lake]

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So they developed nets and hooks to live the Long John Silver’s dream.

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Later, in the Paleolithic period, folks got serious about chasing down big animals and [Man in a boxing ring with an mammoth]

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eating them.

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Wrestling a mammoth to the ground barehanded wasn’t such a great idea though. [Mammoth jumps on top of the man]

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So early humans developed spears and arrows, which really did the trick.

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Next, we move on to the Agricultural-Craftsman Era. [Man picking berries]

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This is when humans decided it was time do some farming.

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Going out into the woods and gathering every plant they wanted to eat was getting to be [Man planting bushes in a big hole]

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a major drag.

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One of the first key tools that humans developed to help in farming was the hoe.

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Digging up a field barehanded was a guaranteed way to break a nail. [Man digging with his hands]

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Along with hoe also came a primitive plow called an ard.

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Plows steadily became more and more advanced.

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And they became the key technology in agriculture for thousands of years. [Different plows talking to each other]

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They changed over time, but all of them were crucial to food production in their day. [Plough goes along a field and crops appear behind it]

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As soon as there were food surpluses, there had to be good ways of storing that extra

01:38

food.

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Pottery, ceramics, and granaries were some of the early strategies of preserving food. [Mother looks angry as kid has eaten all the sugar]

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What was the point is growing a bunch of food to just let it go bad?

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Irrigation also became a big deal.

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Places like India and China depended on complicated irrigation technologies to flood their rice [Man jumping in a wet field]

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fields.

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The rest of the world also needed to control and direct water.

02:00

Because sometimes Mother Nature just doesn’t want to cooperate. [Big wave]

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She’s stubborn like that.

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The Industrial Revolution changed everything, including agriculture. [Factories with big chimneys]

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Reapers were some of the first machines to come onto the farm, and they reduced the amount [Modern harvesters driving on a field]

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of human work a lot.

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Soon, even more machines invaded the farm. [Machines appearing on a farm]

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Threshers, combines, tractors, Transformers, robots in disguise…

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These are the primary machines that switched farms from human and animal power to fossil [Man in a hammock]

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fuel power.

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Refrigeration was also huge, and changed the meat industry forever. [Truck with a lot of meat on the back]

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Suddenly meat could be shipped over long distances, and livestock farms could be way bigger.

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And how about good old-fashioned barbwire? [Cows crowded behind a fence]

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At one time, it was actually new-fashioned, and it changed the meat industry.

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Especially in the American West, barbed wire let the beef-ranching business boom. [Man with beef ranching industry flop shirt looks disappointed]

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Once the Post-Industrial Era hit we still kept figuring out new stuff.

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The Haber-Bosch process gave us the ability to make artificial fertilizer. [Scientist dancing on stage with people playing the guitar]

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This was the single biggest event in the 20th century agricultural explosion called the

03:08

Green Revolution.

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Pesticides and herbicides also came along. [Man chucking pesticide onto plants]

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The ability to kill unwanted bugs and plants was a pretty big deal.

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Fields could be bigger, and human labor could be reduced.

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Recombinant DNA is the current big thing in agriculture.

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This is the ability to mess with the DNA of plants and animals. [Scientist pouring liquid onto a plant which makes it grow sausages]

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All to make those animals and plants more suited to being eaten human’s tastes. [Kid eating a hamburger]

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Except for humans who shop at organic grocery stores, who do their best to reject every

03:38

development of the Post-Industrial Era. [Woman chooses organic produce over post-industrial produce]

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The Post-Industrial Era must feel so rejected.

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