Agricultural Engineering: Innovative Technologies | Masters of Engineering | Free Documentary

agriculture an active part of our landscapes for close to 10 000 years one of the most powerful engines driving the growth of humanity and farmers have come up with ingenious techniques to feed the world they have shaped their environment to make deserts fertile steep mountains arable and crops abundant to the point of affluence [Music] batiste is an ecologist researcher at inra he will travel the world to discover incredible structures plant treasures and futuristic projects what's unique about this system is that we have absolute control of every environmental variable [Music] in a great many regions of the world farmers are the gardeners of nature a scientific journey to meet these men and women who strive to make our lands nourishing lands [Music] batiste grad's journey begins on the american continent at the heart of the guiana amazonian [Music] park this territory of nearly four million hectares along with its neighbor the brazilian tumukumaki park forms the largest protected space in the tropical [Music] world difficult to access it is home to one of the richest biodiversities on the planet and a pioneering agrarian practice that dates back to neolithic times is an agronomist she works with the park's farmers on a daily basis when you arrive here you see charred stumps and logs there are cinders on the ground it looks like there's been a forest fire that's more or less it there was a fire but it was deliberate because this is a slash-and-burn plot so first you have to imagine that this was forest the farmers cut back all the undergrowth with machetes and then set fire to it so that leaves only the big logs and big stumps like this so we're just after that stage that's right and they'll wait till the rains come back before planting and what's the point of burning the trees on this plot the point is to clear a space that becomes easy to farm first and foremost so that the light can penetrate for plants that need lots of light then it's to turn all this organic matter from the trees into mineral matter through their ashes so these elements can be directly assimilated by the plants this shows the impact of burning on fertility all the nutrients in the vegetation that was on the plant will be burned and that will bring in these nutrients feed future plants directly from what's on the plot and not from outside from the plot [Music] for the inhabitants of the amazonian park cassava cultivation is a key livelihood in this very isolated area [Music] a crop propagated simply by planting cassava plant cuttings [Music] ethnic group farms as a family keen to pass on their agricultural know-how [Music] i close it off like this so it's properly covered so we have to cover it all yes does the cassava dry out yes the trunk dries out then it stops growing i'd hate to be responsible for the death of cassava plants you don't put ashes on or anything no no we leave it now and it grows it stays then it grows it just grows on its own on its own in america speaking yes when should we come back to see if it's grown in two weeks two weeks is that all yes not bad it's not all finished but it's not bad no but you've worked hard it worked i don't know about hard oh we can say you've worked [Music] practiced in neolithic times in almost all the woodland areas of the planet slash and burn cultivation has continued through the millennia today in the equatorial forests of southern asia africa and latin america 50 million farmers still live from it this ancestral technique was the consequence of a slow transformation where man abandoned his hunter-gatherer costume for that of farmer the late paleolithic hunter-gatherer is partly fed by hunting wild animals and partly by collecting vegetables and wild cereals you harvest the grain each year and then you observe that falling grains sprouts spontaneously so the following year there will be more grain to harvest at this location from that observation you might be tempted to sow the grain rather than just harvest wild cereals and then you've invented agriculture one thousand years is the time it took to transition to agriculture time to domesticate the seeds and to create the tools needed for arable fields to gain ground on woodland areas to become master and owner of nature a necessity that first involves adapting to a geological history [Music] because soil formation is a complex phenomenon that takes several thousand years at the origin of soil there is a bedrock a mineral element hard and compact by the action of the wind and successive periods of freezing and thawing the bedrock undergoes degradation both mechanical and chemical as rainwater also contributes to its dissolution this alteration of the rock generates a new layer of mineral elements such as clay allowing the incursion of pioneer plants whose roots in turn accentuate the weathering process of the rock when this vegetation dies it decomposes into organic matter forming a fine litter then a layer of humus this mixed with clay offers a layer rich in water and nutrients favorable to establishing more vegetation [Music] at the same time earthworms insects mushrooms and bacteria grow and participate in the cycle of organic matter the weathering of the bedrock intensifies and the soil gains in depth there is not one soil but many soils in neolithic times the development of agriculture over just 5 000 years boosted the global population from 5 to fifty million individuals a demographic leap whose ecosystems still bear the scars [Music] an increase in population requires an increase in cultivated surfaces so the simplest solution is for a few families to move further into the primary forest and found a new village open new fields to cultivation by rotation in slash and burn uh however this expansion is soon limited by a c or by a mountain range the other solution is to reduce the fallow period but the process of accelerating the rotation results in progressive degradation of the secondary forest which is less renewable which accumulates less biomass and at the end of the day the forest disappears while slash and burn agricultural production collapses so they need to invent new modes of agricultural production they need a farming revolution we yes there is a real ecological crisis and farmers who lived during the slash and burn era in these regions have migrated one of the migratory movements was to get closer to the major rivers so you think of the tigris and the euphrates in mesopotamia then you think of the nile in egypt and the people there got around to wanting to develop all these floodplains especially when the flood water drops it leaves a soil freshly fertilized by the river's alluvium the soil is wet and the idea why not to sow just after the water level drops and so there's a new invention in agrarian systems this flood recession agriculture but when the flood's favors are refused to farmers [Music] when riverbeds in the desert seem eternally dry [Music] sensitive management of resources becomes the key to the wonders that are oases in the high atlas mountains of morocco the berbers of the amazigh tribe residents of this hostile land since neolithic times ensure the preservation of precious biodiversity a plant treasure trove [Music] the food and agriculture organization of the united nations has listed the site of imichil amilago and its inhabitants as a globally important agricultural heritage system [Music] looking around us we see very stony soils the riverbed is almost dry and you sense that agriculture here is an everyday challenge water is indeed very important a crucial element in this area in an almost arid zone era to semi-arid which doesn't get much rainfall around 100 millimeters per year and it's periodic so there's irregularity in both time and space but the people of the region have adapted to the scarcity the first thing you think of when you come here isn't growing plants but luckily right next door we have this stream of water that in this environment seems miraculous it's not a miracle it's down to people's ingenuity it's an underground canal that brings water from elsewhere from several kilometers away to the surface of the natural plot we're going to irrigate this system is known locally as katara [Music] the technique of katara consists in digging a well out in the desert to reach a water table located dozens of metres deep [Music] from this point a canal is dug at a certain angle to drain the water table by simple gravity every 10 to 20 meters new access wells are drilled to facilitate the progress of the work and allow maintenance of the canal after several kilometers the pipe emerges from the ground at the level of the cultivation perimeters of the oasis a network of small dams and multiple channels then allow water to be distributed to the various plots to be controlled the origins of katara go back to ancient persia more than 3 000 years ago used from china to yemen not forgetting afghanistan it was brought to morocco by arab muslim colonization in the seventh century of the common era with only two percent of arable lands the vast expanses of the immature amilago region expose their inhabitants to the perpetual challenge of survival a challenge whose solution lies in the diversification of food resources and the maintenance of the subtle balance of the oasis a blend of plants animals and insects the amalagu oasis is the testimony that all forms of agriculture are related to a complex ecological technical and societal object what's extremely interesting is that part of the innovations in agroecology are now to be found among the poorest farmers on the planet who are agroecologists without knowing it or wanting it they are agroecologists because they've had no access to investment and so there's a tremendous source of innovations equally as important as the agro ecology that comes from agricultural research labs to the north of the philippines on the steep slopes of the cordillera central on luzon the rice terraces are home to a traditional expression of agricultural engineering which time has not managed to alter [Music] a monumental work of the ifugao people listed a world heritage site by unesco the hongduan rice terraces expressed the refinement of an ancient technique for growing rice in water [Music] what i find fantastic is to see all over the world how far agriculture can change landscapes like this one and i find that while walking through these rice fields you realize how much this is a real feat of engineering everywhere i go uh it reminds me the accomplishments of our uh forefathers the engineering knowledge of our ancestors even uh they did not go to school but they know how to work on it maybe by trial and error even uh the irrigation uh how do they know what is elevation that water are passing until there and uh one also very surprising is if you notice uh stones here on the upper part you can see that some stones came from the river so you will you'll see how hard it is [Music] this type of terrace appeared in the asian valleys to protect slash and burn plots from runoff after torrential rain quickly these developments proved useful in increasing the cultivable areas on the slopes and changing the crops to the recessional technique [Music] when we look around and see that the water is not absorbed naturally we could say that it passes directly through the terrace what is the composition of this terrace that holds water this kind of stone wall is what we call the tuclip the earth inside is well compact inside are some small stones or even some gravel and then at the top is made out of mud and one of the reason why the water stays on top it is because the mud is thick okay it cannot the water cannot go inside all this water running between terraces where does it come from uh the water from the irrigation is uh from the river the longest is uh more than six kilometers and uh they distribute the water from uh letting the water pass from one field to another until the water reaches the river again in hongduan the village communities have managed to preserve the forests overlooking each set of terraces to diversify irrigation sources [Music] these forest covers rich in hundreds of plant and animal species play a vital role they absorb the abundant waters of the rainy season slowly returning them to rice fields in the form of streams like a cascade of fertility [Music] global population growth is closely linked to the expansion of wet rice cultivation a thousand years before the common era the global population was around 100 million reaching 250 million 2 000 years later a leap for which the rice systems of china india and southeast asia have been the main drivers a major role never denied in the history of agriculture today rice growing accounts for 170 million hectares per year that makes it the second or third cereal behind corn almost equal with wheat and the harvest of some 2.5 to 3 billion tons per year is enough to feed almost half the global population it's the energy base for half of the people in the world [Music] supporting much higher population densities than slash and burn agriculture the advent of hydraulic farming systems has enabled wealth creation on an unprecedented scale the higher added value produced by each asset may enable them to increase their income but it will also enable them to boost trade within communities and between communities and very soon you'll see states even empires founded on the collection of a very high tax made possible by the labor productivity of these rice growing assets a financial windfall essential to the forming of powerful armies thus were established the formidable empires of china at the beginning of our era then the prestigious dynasties of angkor and siam historically all the state structures that have formed and that have had a certain power all depended on agrarian societies that had previously and jointly been able to increase the productivity of labor to feed the ruling classes that were freed from productive tasks cusco the naval of the world in the quechua language now peruvian the city was the epicenter of the inca civilization in the 15th century and if at country level the diversity of our lands is a challenge for agricultural science this is magnified when we're talking empires [Music] at its height in the early 16th century the inca state ran for more than 4 000 kilometers an interminable corridor embracing the pacific and escaping beyond the andes to amazonia [Music] it's clear that agriculture was the pillar of the power of the inca empire the extra something offered by the inca empire and the key to its power was managing on the scale of an extremely vast region to play on the complementarities between extraordinarily contrasted ecosystems and it is very often by playing on this diversity that the farmers are able to produce a large number of crops and protect themselves from climatic uncertainties by banking on diversity and not putting all their eggs in the same basket everything comes from peru yes it's all from peru such diversity on the same territory is impressive the american continent has provided humanity with a considerable heritage in cultivated plants let's not forget that corn was domesticated in mexico that the tomato the bean cotton cassava sweet potato a large number of crops were domesticated in america before conquering all the other continents the andes mountain range in particular is exemplary in what it has provided to the world in particular the potato which from the 17th and more from the 18th century played a major role in the agriculture and consumption of europeans the province of cusco considered as one of the cradles of the potato is home to a biological reserve of its plant heritage created in 1997 the parque de la papa or potato park brings together six quechua communities who have preserved the integrity of their ecosystem their biocultural traditions and the native varieties of andean potatoes the inhabitants of potato park live in harmony with their environment on the world of spirits [Music] mother earth the pachamama is seen as a benefactor her gifts call for offerings of cocoa leaves in return [Music] when you chew coco it's always good because when you chew coca you're not thirsty you're not hungry and it gives you the strength to work the taste is [Music] tackler with the slopes we have here we couldn't use a tractor that's why for working in the mountains we use the chekitakla is that all best suited to the ecosystem we're in yes everything here is done with the cheki tackler and with effort you use strengths at all look i'll show you how we actually do it you dig up one clod that's an impressive technique two clods i won't get involved in this and here's a third and you plant the potato with the sprouts upwards yeah like this let's see mila see you do it we aerate so the earth is loose around the potato to give it room to grow a potato tuber has between two and ten buds arranged spirally beneath the epidermis these buds generate sprouts which turn into stems thanks to the reserves of nutrients contained in the tuber as the tuber wilts a plant grows then branches called stolons grow just under the surface of the soil their lengthwise growth is then halted for it to become thicker the stolons then synthesize starch from the substances produced by the plant's leaves as a result of photosynthesis to allow these nascent potatoes to grow without becoming green they must be properly protected from the light a mound is made by adding soil to the foot of the plant at the end of the growth cycle the plant's leaves and stems die and the mature potatoes detach from their stolons then it's harvest time [Music] because [Music] after corn rice and wheat potato is the fourth largest crop feeding more than a billion individuals less greedy in water and producing per hectare two to four times more food than cereals the potato will soon be even more essential to ensuring food security especially in china the world's leading food consumer [Music] to reduce the risk of falling yields due to pests occasional disease climatic uncertainties it is common to see a dozen different varieties of tubers planted in the same fields the crops thus associated compensate for their respective weaknesses protect each other and participate in the biological dynamism of the plot the principle of its survival is not to rely on just one species a key precept of traditional agriculture that the potato park communities heirs to 8 000 years of andean agronomic history have been able to rationalize by founding a seed bank with 3700 varieties and by incubating in greenhouses the tubers which will soon be replanted a catalog of the living which saves precious potatoes lost in other regions when modern farming methods were introduced [Music] but another rarer treasure more fragile still lives on in the bowels of the pachamama in several spots of the twelve thousand hectares covered by the park the wild potato a thousand-year-old ancestor with multiple descendants so these are wild potatoes i admit they don't look anything like i was expecting it looks nothing like a conventional potato in fact here we can observe the leaves and as you can see they're fairly characteristic they remain flush with the ground so it's a potato that resists the various climatic factors well and this is the tuber is that the normal size or should they be bigger it's very rare that you'll find wild potatoes much bigger than these so can these be eaten the tuber is mainly used for therapeutic ends against infections or as an unguent but it's also used as an offering at the holy mountains so it was from these tubers that the domesticated potatoes we have today were formed these are the origin of all native varieties of potato that we have in the park thanks to this wild species we have a wealth of potato diversity i find it really impressive to have in front of me an example of a domesticated species and it's hard to imagine all the different stages it required in agronomic and agricultural terms to arrive at the potatoes we have on our plates today this process was done by gradually selecting the largest tubers and also the tastiest the easiest to cook and the case of potatoes those that were the least bitter so it's a process of adaptation and selection by the farmers very progressive which today has enabled the potato to be grown in virtually every part of the world [Music] we don't use these wild species anymore why is it important for you at potato park in elsewhere to preserve them for us it's like a library a genetic reserve it's raw material for agronomists researchers in order to improve existing potatoes and design new varieties that stand up better to climate change 151 species of wild potato have been listed throughout the world mostly in peru and bolivia an invaluable natural treasure trove for facing the upheavals linked to climate change to avoid chemicals that could disrupt their ecosystem the potato park communities are making long fallow plots after a single growing season they let them rest for seven years control of land fertility has been one of the most powerful drivers of population growth over the centuries in the middle ages european agricultural science would allow the old continent to distinguish itself [Music] the medieval agricultural revolution is essentially based on an association between agriculture and more advanced breeding in order to be able to feed more animals in the winter we build stalls and lock the animals in during the bat season we bring them food and they leave their droppings in these stalls we could possibly put down litter that is straw or leaves or ferns to act as a sponge and enable us to keep the nitrogen in the cattle's urine rather than let it run into the river or elsewhere and it's this litter mixed with animal dung that enables the production of what is called manure but to deliver all its benefits the manure must be carefully buried under the land to be sown to achieve this you need to be able to carry out a large-scale task very quickly burying dozens of tons each year a task made possible by the appearance of a revolutionary tool the plow in addition to burying manure plowing also has the function of controlling weeds loosening the soil to facilitate water circulation and root penetration and aerating it to promote mineralization of the organic matter from the 16th to the 19th century a new agricultural revolution takes place thanks to the continuous improvement of soil fertility with a consequent increase in yields and a surface of farm work [Music] a surplus for which the 19th century industrial revolution provides a technological response at the end of the 19th century the industry begins producing machines without engines that is that allow us to diversify and complicate the mechanics that we harness behind the oxen behind the horses these mechanics are more and more sophisticated they save time they allow you not only to harvest but also to bind to thresh and therefore to save on workforce and be able to cultivate an ever increasing surface per worker and therefore boost productivity [Music] new world farmers from the us australia canada argentina widely adopt these new materials constrained by the unprecedented dimensions of these agricultural el [Music] from dorados in the usa any farmer who wants to settle on the border can have 65 hectares for a symbolic dollar so we have these very large farms of which people are initially only capable of farming a small plot because they don't have the physical wherewithal and they still harvest by hand from the moment the railroad arrives in the american countryside the farmers will be able to sell their surplus much more easily get rich and begin to buy the means of production that the industry is producing so we see from 1860 in the usa a kind of race developing with the industrialists who are constantly designing ever more efficient machines to allow farmers to cultivate a larger and larger surface they developed a combined harvester harnessed to 25 horses which pull this very complex machine that not only cuts cereals but also threshes there's even one person on the machine because there are six in all one who does nothing but sew sacks and the grain comes out of the machine and sacks in the era of gigantism agroproduction gradually abandons animal traction for motorization a result of the second industrial revolution the beginning of the end for western smallholders ever more silent against the din of pistons valves and cylinders the contemporary agricultural revolution the one that develops in western europe during the second half of the 20th century and of course in the united states is essentially based on the following elements first the use of an engine a combustion engine in other words fossil fuels then the massive use of chemical fertilizer this use had started before but became more widespread during this agricultural revolution third the widespread increasingly massive use of chemicals to fight the fungi the bacteria the weeds the insects and finally genetic selection to adapt these cultivated plants to these new inputs and to the machines we'll use to take an example if you want to harvest a plot of wheat with a harvester it's imperative that all the ears of wheat be at the same height and all be ripe at the same time so we create varieties that are of course more productive that's one of the aims of varietal selection but which are also extremely homogenous and adapted to extremely large doses of input adapted to the motor mechanization of crops the agricultural revolutions of modern times have contributed greatly to the phenomenal increase in the global population from 500 million in the early 16th century to 7.5 billion nowadays now a real industry contemporary agriculture has neglected men as it is welcomed machines a single worker is enough to oversee a hundred hectares of cereals in western europe and the united states the proportion of farmers in the economically active population has gone from forty percent in the mid twentieth century to only 4 today at the same time farms were specializing for the sake of profit abandoning diversified production the very essence of agriculture [Music] as soon as we specialized farms like this we separated cultivation activities from stock breeding many farms are exclusively arable others are specialized in animals and animal productions we got caught up in a system that went much too far in specialization in chemisation in simplification and in homogenization with the perverse effects that we know today especially in the environment [Music] depletion of soils groundwater pollution loss of biodiversity erosion phenomena the excesses of high productivity have led agriculture to an ecological impasse how can it reinvent itself in scotland some researchers are making a futuristic gamble on total artificialization in vertical farms this experimental system pushes the concept to its extreme by controlling even the most random parameter of agriculture sunshine in agriculture we're used to greenhouses where we have artificialized a certain number of things we control the temperature we control the aeration what is disturbing here is that you went even further i think what's unique about this system is that we have absolute control of every environmental variable and that includes the lighting and under normal growing systems you would have to your lighting comes from the sun now it's a very variable light source it varies day to day very season to season it varies different hours of the day with this sort of light source here we can control not only the light intensity the light duration but the light spectrum and that's a really important aspect of controlling plant growth and crop quality what is the point of controlling the light spectrum like that so the reason we want to control the light spectrum is very important because if you look at how plants photosynthesize they use blue light and red light but they also use many other different colors within that spectrum to understand their environment so for example far red light indicates that a plant is being shaded by another plant that will encourage it to grow vertically and grow more rapidly and quickly to try to out-compete that plant and so by controlling all these different elements of the spectrum and by controlling all those different colors we can then influence not only how the morphology of the crop how the crop looks we can influence things like flowering time fruiting time and then quality of the crop the chemistry of the crop can be altered by manipulating different regions of that spectrum so even with the same crop genotype the same variety we can produce a very different product [Music] ultra rationalized fully robotic this farm of the future allows for tailor-made crops to be grown we have systems here where you control the light the nutrients the water we saw it offered advantages in terms of production levels and water consumption there are also systems which are very greedy in terms of materials plastics and others what is the environmental impact of these systems so i think in this system again what we're doing is we're working towards high efficiency so yes there could be for example a greater co2 output from from from the lights but it depends on what you're using to power your lights if you're using renewable resources clearly that co2 output's not going to be there because you assume we've come through an airlock we're able to eliminate the entry of insects and other pests and diseases so allows us to eliminate the use of pesticides and fungicides if these systems are managed carefully and properly and thoughtfully i think there can be actual actually environmental benefits compared to more conventional agriculture these systems can't be implemented everywhere so in what environment and type of system could it be relevant so i think certainly there are opportunities to to grow in a system like this in in very dense urban environments where there's a need um there's a there's a there's a large population who who would want the product but also in environments where perhaps you can't currently can't grow crops because for example you might have too short a season there might be too much wind there might be too little water that you know there are many uh environments where you currently can't grow crops even in southern europe where you have desert environments where perhaps you you might use a system like this because of its water efficiency but again i think thinking very carefully about where these systems are sited would be always always an important part of the design what's troubling compared to conventional farming systems is that we've no more farmers just robots we don't use sunlight just leds there's no soil so we use substrates can we still talk in terms of agriculture or is this something else it's your truth i mean if you look at how agriculture's developed since we started it started with people collecting and retaining seeds and actually planting those seeds perhaps moved on to things like irrigation channels we've moved on through glass houses and and now we're moving into sort of internet of things and and satellite driven tractors so there has always been innovation in agriculture that doesn't mean it's not agriculture anymore it's still agriculture it's still about creating a crop developing that crop and using the tools that you have available to you to produce that crop now this is perhaps the next phase [Music] this new form of expensive cultivation producing mainly leafy vegetables cannot meet all the challenges of a truly nourishing agriculture for the 10 billion people who will populate the planet in 2050. [Music] a technological option that is in no way adapted to peasantry worldwide composed in its vast majority by modest farmers what path must we take to feed humanity we must look back a little bit to when farmers had no access to chemical inputs how did they manage to replicate the fertility of their fields without chemical fertilizers certainly evolution will produce an agriculture based on scientific agroecology one that makes intensive use of resources that cost us nothing the sun's rays carbon dioxide the nitrogen in the air the minerals in the subsoil from now on the agriculture of tomorrow will take into consideration the fact that the object of agriculture is not a plant nor a herd it's an agro-ecosystem of incredible complexity which takes into account the interactions between all the living beings in the same terroir in the same catchment in the same rice field in the same field and that's the modern scholarly architecture of tomorrow hyper diversified and the agriculture of tomorrow there's no question of going back to the agriculture of the past but the future of farming may involve revisiting the basics of the relationship between man animal and the natural world to try to do something that is more harmonious and that allows us to feed 10 billion humans in favorable conditions [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

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Id: -jS496h3vcw

Length: 51min 16sec (3076 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 05 2021