Food for a Modern World

which follows strawberries you get off the farm you know pick out me in the country in the woods they taste a lot better I think than the ones you buy in the store here everybody had a dark you know in those days everybody had a garden and our stores had those fresh vegetables better my father was a farmer we have things we have you are a chicken I raised lighter turkeys and all those things that was my life it was to be created by Lucy and they can part of their schedule did that you you couldn't go down by I think there as I say you can go into any store now firstly a freedom that she live out of it the salsa and tortilla Brewster fresh milk every day most everybody had cows in those days is the happiest life people can tell when you born in a wrench and bracing your eggs everything was first nice the United States of America 1960 percent of the people lived in rural areas the food they ate came mostly from their own farms for the farms of their neighbors most cities were small and were surrounded by farmland the fresh food brought in to market had to be bought and consumed within a few days before it spoiled I didn't have the supermarket like we have now you know what the stores of course they had no refrigeration because I can remember the open bin you know and you get the prunes out of the bin and a rice flour anything out you had to go a long way to the nearest town I guess was about 10 miles away they don't go to the store every week if a food wasn't grown locally or if it wasn't in season probably wasn't available no now it was a treat you know orange as I thought oranges only good for Christmas the United States of America today more than 85% of the people live in cities and suburbs great urban complexes stretch for hundreds of miles and the millions of people who live in a megalopolis the giant city are far removed from the sources of their food where does food come from a shopping center where does the shopping center get it I don't know does it come from farms yeah I guess so you ever been on a farm no you ever seen a cow sure I'm television in megalopolis it's possible to live a lifetime without seeing a food producing animal or a field of growing crops megalopolis has exchanged the farms of the surrounding countryside for the farms of a continent and the farms of the world and never before has there been such great variety in the selection of foods available seasons are shipped in by fast Freight and time itself has been packaged since 1900 the population of the united states has more than doubled but the amount of land being farmed has decreased in 1900 more than 16 acres of land were being farmed for each family in the United States today it's less than six acres obviously we've found ways to produce more food on less land what are the raw materials that a plant must have in order to grow atoms of carbon and oxygen from carbon dioxide gas in the air atoms of hydrogen from water atoms of nitrogen from the soil along with small quantities of several different minerals which of these raw materials can be limiting factors that determine how much growth there will be on a given amount of land carbon and oxygen are never limiting factors there's always plenty in the air but each crop leaves the soil poorer in Majan and minerals if nitrogen and minerals are not put back into the soil the land will be able to support less and less growth more than 30 million tons of fertilizer are spread each year on fields in the United States the purpose of fertilizers is to put nitrogen and minerals into the soil so that the land can produce up to its full potential the supply of hydrogen may also be a limiting factor to growth if there isn't enough water nearly 40% of the Earth's land surface receives too little rainfall to support most agriculture but when water can be supplied by supplying water and fertilizer raw materials for building plants barren land has been made to produce and fertile land has been made to produce more and I'll tell you another thing when Henry Ford opened his Ford plant and took all the boys off the farm that started havoc in the country you couldn't get a farmer for a lover money we seed our rice by airplane does a better job in cuts man-hours by 90% this planner seed six rows are shovel beats at a time fertilizes them and spreads a weed killer to stop growth between the rows I can remember when it took 12 men a week to harvest this field the three men driving these combines started this morning they'll be finished by sundown one man can milk 60 cows an hour in this milking parlor it used to take a good man an hour and a lot of hard work to milk 10 these new feet harvest trust me $2,000 apiece he cut my man-hours on the job by some 95 percent I really can't afford to do without him got her big gang men to harvest this cornfield now I can do it faster by myself we've had a beef cattle in this yard and I don't do it everything is mechanized but the cows with this shakers and Quecha conveyors four of us can harvest more than 300 trees a day it would take 40 men to do it without the machine modern farming results in bigger crops produced on less land by fewer farmers but we have to fight for what we grow we have competition for our food at least 1/7 of all the food planted in the world is destroyed by insect pests we fight back with pesticides these aphids have been dusted with DDT these orange trees are being sprayed against citrus red scale we have caught a problem with different chemicals with the insect becoming resistant to the chemicals the citrus red spider mite in particular builds resistant very readily to different modifies and so we have to continually search for new materials and try to new pesticides are constantly being developed and tested radioactive tracers can be used to determine how each species of plant absorbs the new pesticide does the pesticide go where it does any good how much remains in the plant and for how long only when a pesticide has been proven safe for use on a particular crop can it be used on that problem and then it must be used following explicit instructions food on which pesticides have been used is spot tested on analytical equipment sensitive enough to detect 1/10 of a part of pesticide residue in 1 million parts of food matter our battle in the competition for food is a difficult and expensive one but as populations expand and there are more and more people to feed we can less and less afford to grow food to be destroyed as soon as food is harvested another competition begins will the food spoil before it can be eaten this orange is spoiling because it's being consumed by microorganisms this Apple is spoiling because enzymes within it are still active and are causing destructive changes to take place processing food is largely an effort to stop the activity of enzymes and to keep microorganisms from growing in the food and consuming it if I have $1 there are kids that I that I put in care fruit ever be a millionaire boy but hundreds kids when food is sealed into a canned the microorganisms outside are kept out when the sealed cans are heated the microorganisms inside are killed and the enzymes in the food are inactivated canned foods can keep for years when fresh milk is heated in pasteurization coils microorganisms in the milk are destroyed refrigerated pasteurized milk will keep without spoiling for two weeks or more a fast treatment with superheated steam deactivates enzymes in freshly harvested food and freezing slows the activities of the microorganisms that are in the food frozen foods keep for many months so long as they remain frozen the practice of processing food for preservation is as old as agriculture when people depend for their lives on the food they raise they must find ways to store it and keep it from spoiling between harvests today only the best of crops are selected for processing every stage of the processing is controlled and inspected to guard against damage contamination and nutrient and flavour loss as a result of processing foods can be safely stored and shipped for use whenever and wherever they are needed but how many people in the world shop at supermarkets and how many people in the world have refrigerators so he departed vents and found elisha the son of shaphat who was ploughing with oxen before him when he had made plain the face of the ground Duffey not cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and rye in their place so she gleaned in the field under even and winner doubt that she had gleaned and it was about an ephah of barley the words are from the Old Testament but the farming is happening today two-thirds of a modern world still has to depend on primitive farming techniques the result is a constant shortage of food which means malnutrition for many and hunger with the ever-present threat of starvation for some modern medicine has reached areas where agriculture has remained primitive techniques for saving life are being introduced and put into practice worldwide death rates go down and populations grow there are now just over three billion people alive in the world at the present rate of growth in the year 2000 there will be six billion how will six billion people be fed by a world that is not producing enough food now to feed half as many I wouldn't say that everything tasted better it tasted it I don't believe and it tasted any different than it would if we were right in the fields now with it I think it's because of the story and the freezing of food that I think takes the flavor out of food well different he's different they have a lot of things that we never even loosen on the food now is the a new style boy is a new world that if I tell you the truth for me is in the world and some transcripts of the new things they have I don't know I think we had better times in our early days and they do analogy there are still many parts of the world where most people are close to the source of their food where few fertilizers are used where the balance of nature is never tampered with where there is little processing of food and these are the parts of the world where there is hunger hunger and more than half the world today and world population to be doubled by the end of the century there is no going back the only choice is to go forward to greatly extend the worldwide application of modern agricultural techniques in a life-or-death struggle to produce enough food to feed those who are hungry today and those billions more who must not be hungry tomorrow you