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00:00:00.000 You know a lot of people are talking about AI. It's a concern. We got climate change. Oh my god,

00:00:03.720 this is the end of the world. Nuclear war. But very few people are talking about actual shortage

00:00:08.940 of food. According to The Economist, in the next 40 years, we will need to produce more food in

00:00:15.660 the next 40 years than we have in the previous 10,000 years combined. And one of the industries

00:00:20.860 that a lot of people are talking about is called vertical farming. Matter of fact, a guy named Elon

00:00:25.980 Musk. His brother, Kimball, is now a farmer investing into vertical farming. Let's get right

00:00:31.780 into it. By the way, if you get value from this video at the end, give it a thumbs up and subscribe

00:00:43.480 to the channel. Let's get right into it. You know what's crazy? I'm at Fort Lauderdale right now.

00:00:46.560 We had a big flood. 22 inches of rain in Fort Lauderdale. Record breaking. Everybody's talking

00:00:50.400 about it. For a couple days, there is no gas in Miami. Everybody is calling saying, I can't fill

00:00:55.160 up the tank. How am I going to come up to Fort Lauderdale? I got to drive up. People are panicking

00:00:58.700 just because there was no gas for one day in Miami. Gas stations were all sold out, right?

00:01:03.060 So you remember saying, Pat, what's your point there? What would you do if you didn't have food

00:01:06.000 for one day? How about two days? Three days? Think about that shortage. What happens when you're at a

00:01:10.080 hotel or your place? The bathroom doesn't work. You can't use the bathroom. There's flooding.

00:01:14.040 What do you think about? That stress goes from something you never think about all of a sudden to

00:01:18.720 something massive, right? That's exactly what the concern is with food shortage. I'll give you a stat here.

00:01:23.100 Food production needs to increase by roughly 70% by 2050 to support the expected 10 billion

00:01:30.880 world population. And that's only 27 years from now. So now let's look at a bunch of different

00:01:35.900 data here and see if this is something we ought to be thinking about. The things we'll look at today

00:01:40.260 is arable land. We'll look at topsoil, freshwater supply. We'll look at benefits of vertical farming

00:01:45.280 solutions, different types, how they do it, cost of it, what different companies are doing today.

00:01:49.760 And then at the end, I want to get your thoughts. If this is something we ought to be concerned about

00:01:53.020 and potentially how big of an industry this is going to be by 2030. Wait till you see the number.

00:01:57.500 So let's get right into it. Arable land is land capable of being used to grow crops. So now arable

00:02:02.880 land is down 30% since the 1970s. It is expected to drop another 60% from the current number by 2050.

00:02:11.420 So it's already down 30% since the 70s. And it's expected to drop another 60% between now and 2050,

00:02:17.520 27 years from now. Now let's look at different regions worldwide, Australia, Canada, US. Look

00:02:23.060 at this number here, this chart. Far left is Australia. Dark blue is 1975. Light blue is 85.

00:02:30.040 That orange color is 95. And then the yellow one is 2005. Australia is down 20% of arable land

00:02:36.500 because we're building more buildings. Canada is down 25%. Russia is down 17%. US is down 32%. The benefit

00:02:43.780 of capitalism, we're building a lot of different places. But at the same time, the arable land is

00:02:48.180 going to be cut as well, right? So you got Brazil down 16%. India is down 45% because India just is 0.97

00:02:54.320 getting into capitalism. Their economy is growing. They got a lot of different things. So why is this

00:02:58.080 a concern if we have our arable lands that's decreasing at the pace that it is just in 40 years

00:03:04.300 of this chart? Well, the next one is about topsoil. Topsoil is the primary resource for plants

00:03:09.940 to grow and crops to thrive. Each year, an estimated 24 billion tons of fertile soil are

00:03:16.440 lost due to erosion, which is 25% of the total land area has been degraded. So when you look

00:03:21.100 at this map here, you see what it's looking like. Very degraded soil, degraded soil, stable soil,

00:03:26.600 and without vegetation. These are some things that people are sitting there thinking, saying,

00:03:30.480 we may not be worried about it today, but this could be a big issue for us within the next 27 years.

00:03:35.520 And this leads to water because we also need water. Freshwater supply. Agriculture currently

00:03:40.300 uses roughly 70% of the global freshwater supply. Irrigation, in other words. Only 1 to 3% of water

00:03:47.680 on earth is freshwater. Pesticides and fertilizers and other toxic from chemicals can poison fresh

00:03:53.560 water. So if you look at this here, where is the water on earth? You'll see 97.2% is oceans. You got a

00:03:59.440 small percentage there. 2.15% is glaciers. And a 0.65% that is groundwater, lakes, and rivers,

00:04:06.580 soil moisture, and atmosphere. So we also need this. So so far, we got what? Arable land. We got topsoil.

00:04:12.240 We got freshwater supply. All of these things are leading to a concern of what we're going to do if

00:04:17.180 we have a shortage of food over the next 27 years. So now, farming problems. Let's look at these.

00:04:22.280 So for those of us that are not farmers, and maybe you didn't grow up on a farm, you're like, okay,

00:04:25.480 why is it such a concern? I don't know any of this stuff. These are the traditional farming problems

00:04:29.600 and why a lot of people are starting to consider vertical farmers. So let's look at the problems

00:04:33.460 traditional farmers have. Number one, tillage negatively impacts soil quality. It fractures

00:04:38.200 the soil, disrupts soil structure, accelerates service runoffs, and soil erosion. That's number

00:04:43.800 one. If you're a farmer, you know exactly what we're talking about, where you have to move them.

00:04:46.780 This leads to the next one. The government pays farmers to limit crop growth to put a price floor

00:04:51.900 in place so farmers can stay in business. Number three, irrigation is highly inefficient.

00:04:57.020 Number four, unpredictable weather. Number five, insects. It's limited to only portions of the

00:05:01.820 year. Fertilizer dependent on last but not least, chemicals and pesticides. There is a timeline for

00:05:06.860 this. This is why it's not sustainable for us to go this way long term. Now, vertical farming,

00:05:11.480 if you look at it, came about in 1999 when this professor from Columbia University, Dixon Despomier,

00:05:17.240 he's a professor of environmental health sciences, and 105 graduate students were exploring methods

00:05:23.980 to address this problem and came up with the concept of vertical farming. A multi-story building

00:05:29.660 growing layers of crops on each floor. Pretty common sense for us to be, like, if you and I

00:05:33.860 were thinking about this, you're like, we probably should have known this 100 years ago. 1999 is when

00:05:38.000 we thought about, what if we go this way? Right? Kind of cool when you think about it. In fact, if you look at

00:05:41.800 some of these videos that we're showing you, this is called vertical farming. This is what Elon Musk's

00:05:46.620 brother, Kimball, got involved. And so now the benefits of vertical farming. Here's what it is.

00:05:51.440 No soil required, which alleviates the top soil problem. Requires 99% less water and fertilizer.

00:05:57.100 Can grow year-round. No pesticides. Occupies 99% less space because you're simply going up. Can be

00:06:03.700 placed in cities, cutting the burden of long transportation. So you may say, Pat, who cares

00:06:08.220 about transportation? Here's why. Currently, average distance of farm food transportation is 1,500 miles.

00:06:14.280 68% of people live in cities far from farms. Fruit and vegetables lose up to 50% of nutrients from

00:06:20.920 farm to store and less carbon emissions from transportation. There you go. That's the benefit

00:06:25.480 because you can put it anywhere. You can literally put it in New York City if you wanted to. You can

00:06:29.800 put it in Miami, in LA, in Beverly Hills, right there, and then boom, deliver it to the people in

00:06:35.580 Beverly Hills. So now, different types of vertical farming. There's three types. Hydroponics, this is where

00:06:40.240 plants grow in water or growing medium with nutrients delivered directly to their roots.

00:06:44.760 Hydroponics is the largest segment and accounted for more than 45% share of vertical farming in 2021.

00:06:50.640 Aeroponics uses a mist to deliver nutrients to plant roots. And then you have aquaponics,

00:06:55.480 which fish are raised and their waste is used as nutrients for crops, creates a loop system where

00:07:01.220 the fish feed the plants and the plants feed the fish. So now you may say, Pat, why are more people

00:07:05.780 doing this? But because it's a great idea, it's exciting, but it's expensive. This is what they

00:07:09.920 haven't yet figured out. So high capital requirement to start. Facilities require a lot of energy.

00:07:15.340 Growing grains like corn and wheat have been a challenge. So now, when you think about this and

00:07:20.140 you're thinking the current method, they're not yet nuclear. They're currently doing it the

00:07:23.540 traditional way. The simulated yields revealed that vertical farming could produce 600 times the

00:07:28.780 current world average wheat yield. In their study, the authors describe how compared with traditional

00:07:34.020 farming methods in outdoor fields, indoor vertical farming also requires less land area, water,

00:07:39.960 herbicides, and pesticides, and result in less nutrient loss to the environment. But there's

00:07:45.060 got to be incentive. So if the capitalist and a job creator sitting there and there's notice and the

00:07:50.400 margins are like this, you can't really get the big capital into it. But the moment somebody figures

00:07:55.740 out how to do it and not have to use up all the energy, whether they choose to do through nuclear or

00:08:00.760 another form of affordable energy, this could be an industry a lot of people may get involved in

00:08:05.980 in no time. Okay. Because again, the upside is essentially unlimited because the upside is

00:08:12.260 unlimited, right? So now some creative ways they can do to maybe cut costs, right? This is the one

00:08:17.120 thing we talked about earlier, what people fear AI being one of them. This is where AI can actually

00:08:21.260 help solve this problem that they're facing. So number one, using AI, they can cut labor costs.

00:08:26.080 They can operate 24 seven. AI can operate on a cloud connected network, monitor soil health. AI can

00:08:31.100 conduct chemical analysis, machine learning algorithms, use data to optimize the automated

00:08:35.120 system. Drones make it more feasible to monitor high up sections, able to be programmed to move

00:08:40.380 in preset paths around the farms. If they're able to do those types of things, they save a little bit

00:08:44.960 of money. If they can use affordable energy, the rest is history. So let's look at what Elon Musk's

00:08:49.800 brother Kimball is up to with this company called Square Roots. If you look at these containers, you see how

00:08:53.960 they're on top of each other. It's a very interesting model because one of these 320 square

00:08:58.920 foot containers can produce as much as a one to two acre traditional outdoor farm, barely using any

00:09:06.500 water. And by the way, there's so much applications. People want one of these containers. There's people

00:09:11.020 right now making $30,000 part-time doing this. They're flooded with applications, but this is one

00:09:15.580 of the companies out there that's doing this. There's a couple out there right now, the top vertical

00:09:18.840 farming companies. One of them is Agricool revenue of 103 million. That's very small. The other one is

00:09:23.840 Bowery farming, $83 million. Freight farms, $72 million. Aero farms, $22 million. And it's estimated

00:09:30.240 if you look at this industry by 2030, this could be a 25 to $26 billion industry. People are just

00:09:39.260 realizing this. So watch this. What I just presented to you, how are you receiving this content? So use

00:09:44.400 your reason, logic, and the level of skepticism. What area are you skeptical about? Think about it.

00:09:49.500 You're like, no, this kind of makes sense. This is logical. So this is where entrepreneurs come in

00:09:55.540 and solve the world's problems through innovation. That's vertical farming. This is why I trust in

00:10:03.020 capitalism because there's incentive to solve many of the problems we're dealing with today.

00:10:08.460 So thoughts, concerns, comment below. If you got value from this video, give it a thumbs up and

00:10:12.360 subscribe to the channel. I did a video four years ago titled how to disrupt any industry. If you've

00:10:17.400 never seen it before, click here to watch it. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye, bye-bye.

How Vertical Farming Could Fix The Food Crisis Using 95% Less Water

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