Why This Robot Kills Weeds With Lasers

Growing food doesn’t look like I thought…
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Right now, we’re living through one of the most pivotal moments in food history… and most people have no idea it’s happening.

Experts are calling the “Fourth Agricultural Revolution” and it’s here because we’re facing a big problem: The world’s population is rising, so experts say we’ll need to increase food output to catch up with our current population and feed those new people. But we’ve got to do it in ways that actually protect the Earth long term.

Right now, farmers are in a fight to feed the world. So let me show you some of the coolest machines they’re using to do it…

Chapters:
0:00 What’s the fourth agricultural revolution?
01:15 Why do we need more food?
1:54 Where does farming tech get tested?
3:00 What were the first 3 agricultural revolutions?
3:58 How do we feed billions more people… better?
4:31 How do farmers grow more food?
5:48 Can a tractor drive itself?
7:49 What is precision agriculture?
8:50 How do these machines plant seeds?
10:25 How can new tech help reduce herbicides?
12:43 Why new farm tech is huge if true
14:34 :)

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Bio:
Cleo Abram is a video journalist who produces Huge If True, an optimistic show about science and technology. Huge If True is an antidote to the doom and gloom, helping a wide audience see better futures they can help build. In each episode, Cleo dives deep into one innovation that could shape the future. She has explored humanoid robots at Boston Dynamics, supersonic planes at NASA, quantum computers at IBM, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and more. Every episode mixes high quality animations and detailed scripts with relatable vlog-style journeys, taking the audience along for an adventure to answer the question: If this works, what could go right? Previously, Cleo was a video producer at Vox and directed for Explained on Netflix. She was the host of Vox’s first ever daily show, Answered, as well as co-host of Vox’s YouTube Originals show, Glad You Asked.

Additional reading and watching:
A Five Step Plan to Feed The World, Jonathan Foley, National Geographic: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/fo...
A meta-analysis of projected global food demand and population at risk of hunger for the period 2010–2050, Dijk et al: https://www.nature.com/articles/s4301...
How to Sustainably Feed 10 Billion People by 2050, in 21 Charts, World Resources Institute: https://www.wri.org/insights/how-sust...
Patterns of Global Food Consumption, USDA: https://ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2024...
The Development of Agriculture, National Geographic: https://education.nationalgeographic....
Famines, Our World In Data: https://ourworldindata.org/famines
Human Health Issues Related to Pesticides, EPA: https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-science...
Water, Energy, and the Future of Farming, US Department of Energy: https://www.energy.gov/eere/iedo/arti...
US farmers win right to repair John Deere equipment, BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-642...
AI meets agriculture with new farm machines to kill weeds and harvest crops, NBC:    • AI meets agriculture with new farm machine...  
Sniper robot treats 500k plants per hour with 95% less chemicals, Freethink:    • Sniper robot treats 500k plants per hour w...  
How Big Tech Ruined Farming, Wendover Productions:    • How Big Tech Ruined Farming  
What’s This Robot Doing In A Grain Bin?    • What's This Robot Doing In Grain Bins?  
How has world population growth changed over time? Our World In Data: https://ourworldindata.org/population...

Vox: https://www.vox.com/authors/cleo-abram
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10108242/

Gear I use:
Camera: Sony A7SIII
Lens: Sony 16–35 mm F2.8 GM
Audio: Sennheiser SK AVX and Zoom H4N Pro

Music: Musicbed, Tom Fox

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—
Welcome to the joke down low:

Why shouldn’t you tell a secret on a farm? Because the corn has ears.

Find a way to use “secret” in a comment to let me know you’re a real one who made it to the end of the description :)