The video opens with the title "Agriculture" displayed in vibrant red on a white background. The text vibrates, creating a dynamic effect. The scene changes to a colorful sketch of a vast green farm, featuring trees and a farmhouse against a backdrop of a setting sun.
When you hear the word “agriculture”, you probably think back to your early childhood and reading picture books about a farm.
Cartoonish drawings show up on the farm picture. There's a red barn with three windows, a pig, a cow in the distance, and some hay bales with a pitchfork.
Barns, cows, pigs, and harvesting crops come to mind.
The scene transitions and a sketch of an elderly man in a red shirt, denim-blue overalls, a straw hat, and gumboots, holding a bucket. A piece of grass goes up towards his mouth. A picture of a hen, a rooster, and three chickens appears next to bundles of dried grass (hay) in the sketch.
You might even picture an older man, dressed in coveralls, wearing a straw hat, and perhaps chewing on a piece of grass. These are all images of agriculture from the 1920s and 30s, almost 100 years ago.
The sketch fades, and the screen turns white. A man in a white t-shirt and blue jacket is shown holding and displaying a tablet to a young guy in a blue shirt who is taking notes. A red tractor is visible behind them.
While all of those images were based on something true, there is much more to agriculture today!
A conveyor machine with many blue pots and soil appears. The machine claws place the plants into the pot and the conveyor belt moves forward. The claws go back on and pick another set of plants to place into pots.
The definition of agriculture is “the science or practice of farming including cultivation of the soil, raising crops and rearing livestock.”
A yellow and green tractor moves through a drained land and cultivates it with its extensions as it advances.
Today’s farmer likely drives a tractor (or allows it to self-drive in the field) with a global positioning system and multiple computers on board.
Inside the tractor, the driver accelerates without keeping hands on the steering wheel.
The tractor likely costs almost a half million dollars.
In a dairy, a modern-day farmer in a check shirt and a veterinary doctor with a stethoscope around her neck and a notepad in hand are observing the cows.
Today’s farmer is more likely dressed like a businessperson, and certainly knows a lot about the business of producing food.
A farmer in a green field wearing a hat touches a crop while holding a tablet. Another farmer sitting in a field examines leaves, holding a laptop.
For instance, precision agriculture is an approach to farm management that uses the latest computers, drones, GPS systems, and other high-tech equipment to analyze trends and data on a farm to make farming easier and more efficient.
In a greenhouse farm, a farmer wearing a straw hat, check shirt, and brown overalls holds a laptop and looks directly at the camera. A machine with many nozzles moves mechanically, spraying fertilizer on crops in a large farm.
Agricultural technology includes using sensors in greenhouses to let a computer know precisely when it is time to water the plants and apply fertilizer. This eliminates guesswork by the grower.
A drone in the air sprays liquid on crops. A girl in a check shirt and ponytail, holding a controller, looks at a drone in a brown field.
Technology can also include using drones with cameras and sensors to fly over crops to identify any problems, like insects or diseases. Data is transmitted to computers to adjust pesticide or fertilizer applications to the farmer almost instantaneously.
A girl in a red shirt uses a tablet in a field. The sun shines opposite to her, creating a flash in front of her.
There is even computer software that can collect and gather input from weather systems, monitor soil fertility, and influence pesticide/fertilizer effects to predict how certain crops will produce each year.
A few corn kernels become visible in a maize field.
Some crop scientists are working on nanosensors to be integrated into corn plants to monitor drought and pests 24/7. Information is very important to farmers so they can make good decisions about what to plant, when to fertilize, and when to harvest.
Golden hour light falls on the buildings of New York City. There are buildings all over. A farm on terrace with many plant pots and pits appears. The tall buildings are in the background.
Another point to consider: what if you live in a city or suburban neighborhood? No agriculture can happen there, right? Not so! Urban agriculture is happening in cities across the country. Urban agriculture can happen on rooftops, balconies, vacant lots, or parks. Some are community plots where neighbors can plant their own food.
A photo of a beekeeper in a jacket and safety net and bees coming out of a bee farm on the rooftop of a building in a city appears.
Bees and chickens are kept in many urban areas to provide pollinators and food.
An image of some plants cultivated in a park in the middle of a city appears. A photo of two hens, a black and a brown, outside a coop appears.
Did you know that New York City has tens of thousands of chickens in the city?
A young man and two young women smile at the camera as they work on an urban farm. A guy in the middle is holding a tablet, the girl on his left has a basket of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Others are city farms that have people working with animals and plants to produce food. Some urban agricultural areas have very few, if any, paid employees.
The city farm with green leafy vegetation on top of a terrace appears. There are buildings in the background.
They mostly rely on volunteer and community labor to produce the food. This kind of community supported agriculture is becoming more popular each year.
A crowd of people walking on a street in a city with some organic food carts on the side appears. A middle-aged couple stops in-front of a fruit and vegetable cart in a street. A woman stands in front of a row of wooden boxes filled with apples, selecting fruit.
Ultimately, in order to provide food security for people in urban areas, access to nutritious food--both making it affordable and close enough to make it easy to get--is another important reason to locate farms in urban areas.
A circular dairy parlor full of cows being milked rotates in a dairy facility.
As you can see, agriculture comes in many shapes and sizes and is delivered everywhere today. Farmers are large-scale business owners as well as local producers of food, fiber, and fuel.
A girl wearing a red check shirt uses a tablet in her hand as she explains something to a young boy wearing a hoodie. They are standing in a farm with grown crops, and the Sun is directly behind the two, creating a flash effect.
Today’s farmer is a businessperson with lots of technology in use to provide you with the safest, most abundant, most affordable, and most nutritious food supply in the world.