vertical farming

Utah State plant scientist Bruce Bugbee presents his analysis of the energy and environmental costs of vertical and indoor farming. He argues artificial lighting cannot compete with sunlight in fields or greenhouses.

Dr. Bruce Bugbee walks through the calculations for crop yield potential when light is the limiting factor, from photosynthetic quantum yield through respiration efficiency and harvest index, using the Energy Cascade Model.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day explores how grain bins work and the engineering and know-how involved in farming. His point is that farmers are exceptionally capable.

Josef Holzer walks through his family's Krameterhof, one of Europe's oldest permaculture farms in the Austrian mountains, with fish ponds, terraces, fruit trees and grazing animals. It showcases water management and microclimates.

A hobbyist compares vertical bifacial solar panels against south-facing angled panels using winter production results. It tests whether the usual mounting approach is actually best.

Curious Droid surveys vertical take-off and landing rockets that predate SpaceX and Blue Origin, including the McDonnell Douglas DC-X of the 1990s. It shows that propulsive landing has about 60 years of history.

Soil microbiologist Elaine Ingham speaks at the Oxford Real Farming Conference on how soil organisms cycle nutrients, unlock minerals from rock and air, and why pesticides and fertilizers harm soil life. Slides are linked in the description.

Kirsten Dirksen visits retired mailman Russ Finch in Alliance, Nebraska, who grows oranges, figs and pomegranates in a backyard greenhouse without paying for heat. The greenhouse uses the stable temperature of the earth, with underground earth tubes, to heat and cool itself.

An Odd Lots podcast episode with Arizona hay farmer Trevor Bales on why growing alfalfa in the desert makes sense despite drought. He covers his family's history and the sun, pest and water arguments for farming there.

An Isaac Arthur episode on civilizations in the dark, post-stellar universe, including black hole farming, accretion disks and the Penrose process as energy sources.

Dominion is a two-hour documentary using drones and hidden cameras to expose conditions in animal agriculture, including food, clothing, entertainment and research. It questions humanity's dominion over animals.

Farmer Gabe Brown talks about how he rebuilt the soil on his ranch using no-till farming, cover crops, and grazing animals. The talk was recorded at a sustainable agriculture symposium in Idaho in 2014.

A short documentary about Eric Maundu's Arduino-controlled aquaponics setup in West Oakland, where contaminated soil rules out ordinary farming. Fish and circulating water grow plants without soil.

Farmer Joel Salatin gives a TEDx talk on how well-managed grass and rotational grazing support sustainable farming and affect the climate. He draws on his work at Polyface Farm in Virginia.

Marcin Jakubowski of Open Source Ecology presents his plan to open-source blueprints for 50 cheap, buildable farming tools, a "civilization starter kit". He argues that opening the means of production can enable self-sustaining lives.

Coffeezilla reacts to Sam Bankman-Fried's explanation of yield farming on the Odd Lots podcast, arguing he effectively described a Ponzi scheme. The video was made well before FTX collapsed.

A long talk by rancher Gabe Brown on turning his North Dakota farm into a regenerative ecosystem using no-till, cover crops and integrated livestock. It covers the five principles of soil health and how they pay off financially.

Thai farmer Jon Jandai talks about leaving Bangkok to farm and build his own house, arguing that food, shelter, clothing and medicine are easy to provide and that modern life is made needlessly complicated. He founded the Pun Pun Center for Self-reliance.

A Kurzgesagt video on the conditions in which most farm animals are raised. It argues that cruelty is for cheaper rather than better meat, and that a small price increase per meal could avoid most of the suffering.

A Motherboard documentary episode from Nebraska about farmers and mechanics fighting manufacturers like John Deere over access to the diagnostic software needed to repair modern tractors. It shows how software locks have taken away farmers' traditional self-reliance.

A Kurzgesagt animated explainer on meat: why people love it and what it costs animals, the environment and health. It lays out the complicated trade-offs of meat production and consumption.

A short film about the Dervaes family, who grow over 6,000 pounds of food a year on a tenth of an acre near downtown Los Angeles. They grow more than 400 plant species, keep chickens and ducks, and get most of their food from the plot.

Tesla's 2020 Battery Day event, with a company update and a keynote on new cell design, manufacturing, vertical integration and cheaper lithium and materials. It ends with the Plaid Model S and a Q&A.

A four-pane view of Armadillo Aerospace's Mod vehicle on a June 2010 boosted hop. The flight includes engine shutdown, drogue chute deployment, an engine restart and a safe landing.

Boeing rehearses its 2015 Paris Air Show flying display of the Vietnam Airlines 787-9 Dreamliner, including a very steep takeoff and tight turns.

A short excerpt from the 2007 iPhone launch where Steve Jobs quotes Alan Kay: people serious about software should make their own hardware. It explains part of why Apple built the phone itself.

SpaceX footage of the Grasshopper reusable rocket prototype flying 325 m before landing on its pad. It was the first test to use the full navigation sensor suite and closed-loop control for a precision landing.

Footage of DC-X Flight 8 from July 1995 at White Sands, in which the Delta Clipper Experimental reusable rocket turned over into a re-entry profile and re-oriented itself for landing.

Part 1 of a lecture by physicist Albert Bartlett on the exponential function and its consequences for population growth, resource use and energy. It argues that steady growth rates quickly lead to enormous quantities.

Allan Savory's TED talk arguing that desertification of grasslands can be reversed with holistic managed grazing, which he says would also help reverse climate change. TED notes that other scientists have challenged his claims.

A short film from Agenda Gotsch introducing syntropic agriculture and Ernst Gotsch's agroforestry methods, made for COP21. It shows degraded land regenerated into productive forest farms.

Joseph Everett, with Dr. Frank Mitloehner, argues that eating less meat will not do much for the climate. He covers beef's water footprint, land and feed use, and methane.

A four-minute Not Just Bikes comparison of grocery shopping in Amsterdam versus car-centric North America, arguing that frequent small fresh-food trips beat bulk shopping. It ties this to land use and reduced food waste.

Everyday Astronaut's Tim Dodd runs an hour-long, data-driven analysis of what rockets actually emit and how that compares with airliners and other industries. It breaks down exhaust by propellant type, per-passenger and total emissions, and ways launches could be cleaner.

Veritasium tells the story of Thomas Midgley Jr., who introduced leaded gasoline and CFCs, and covers the science behind lead exposure and ozone damage. It also touches on isotope geochemistry used to uncover the history.

A long Technology Connections video arguing that public understanding of renewable energy is distorted. It covers solar economics, land use compared with ethanol corn, and battery myths such as cobalt.

Physicist Al Bartlett's well-known lecture on the arithmetic of exponential growth, applied to population, energy consumption and resource depletion. He argues that steady percentage growth cannot be sustained on a finite planet and that most public discussion ignores this.

The first episode of Crash Course World History, in which John Green covers the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture and how it shaped civilization. It is delivered fast and with jokes.

Mark Rober makes a plant-based burger for Bill Gates and explains why meat production strains the environment. Gates also appears and discusses his worry about steel and cement.

Wendover Productions examines why carbon offsets so often fail to reduce emissions, covering specific examples and the perverse incentives in offset schemes.