Engineering Plants That Fertilize Themselves to Save the World

[@SciShow]

This video was created in partnership with Bill Gates, inspired by his new book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.” Find out more here: gatesnot.es/3qLlFgq

[@FIRE_STORMFOX-3692]

Hi frank

[@LillyP-xs5qe]

easy, ban capitalism would be a good start. give away your stolen wealth Bill...

[@bearcat444]

Y'all are really embracing this Bill Gates bootlicking. Must be good money. Congrats!

[@bearcat444]

@@theinnerwaffle5887 lol he gives it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the tax write off. Don't be obtuse.

[@blueeyedbeekeepers8709]

Bill gates shouldn't be praised for anything.

[@lenacuevas8273]

I'm a biochemistry researcher applying to PhD programs- and now I feel incredibly inspired to search for a project working to solve this problem. I would be interested in hearing about possible solutions for phosphorus and potassium fixing

[@theluckyaceco]

Best of luck in finding a PhD placement, it's heartening to know that there are people out there inspired to make a difference!

[@BaloosCluesOriginal]

I want to make a difference too! This is why I feel so strongly about giving worms a good environment.

[@DanielSMatthews]

LOL you go them there.

[@mumbairay]

Banana peels

[@BaloosCluesOriginal]

@@mumbairay my worms process your banana peels into a potassium the plants can absorb. 🙌 team work

[@danielnaberhaus5337]

Permaculture has been doing this for a while now. Companion plant nitrogen and phosphorus fixers with your crop to increase yield while adding carbon to the soil.

[@BloodAsp]

He needs to see this. Bump

[@sairuhtonin]

Can't monetize that like you can monetize a patent organism tho

[@theluckyaceco]

@@sairuhtonin Well said!

[@theluckyaceco]

Yep, companion planting and crop rotation were known to be beneficial long before we had the science to explain why. Of course that's hard to industrialize for maximum profits.

[@victorgomes103]

Isn't permaculture rather too expensive as it can't be automated as easily?

[@nicoleonfeels]

Who run the world? Plants 🌱

[@IAmCreatureMedia]

:) So corny and lovable! 🤝🧡

[@farawayfrom]

😌😌 this goes out to all my plants out there in the world

[@technocracynow9339]

Sanctify the Algea!

[@fariesz6786]

_sad underappreciated fungi noises_

[@granta3044]

Id actually say fungi. Fungi feed plants, fungi were here 1st, fungus' is bigger than you think.

[@ivanfavalezza]

To waste less food in the meantime seems clever as well.

[@alisoncircus]

I work in a grocery store. If people could be trained somehow not to leave perishables on the shelf or moisture-containing non-frozen food in the freezer, that'd be great. A start, at any rate. We work really hard to minimize waste, since our profitability depends on it and therefor our jobs. Some waste occurs because we haven't got enough clairvoyance to be sure of how much people actually want of a perishable product before we order it, but probably half the waste any given day from our department (meat) is due to shoppers being too embarrassed to admit they've changed their mind and "hiding" food in inappropriate places - or, foolishly, believing that an item will be found in the freezer before it actually freezes. Given that immediately after a defrost cycle (and it defrosts every two hours) the freezers drop to -32, that's not actually likely. But they believe what they want to believe. All we need is for them to hand over the item to ANY member of staff to ensure it's properly taken care of. That's it. They don't have to walk all the way back to where they got it from (all of ten feet, in some cases), just carry it to the next staff member, whether it's a cashier or the customer service person on their way out of the store. That's it. I blame teachers who use humiliation as a classroom control technique, because it's obvious these people have been trained to never admit to anything.

[@jimcappa6815]

32 years in the meat dept. I feel your pain!

[@AaronShenghao]

@@alisoncircus I always put stuff I don’t want back, even if it was near the entrance... I can’t understand why some people does that... In my mind they are in the same group with “flat-earthier”, “straight-piper”, and “ coal rollers”.

[@MrLegit-mq9ki]

Woah

[@dariapavlova8118]

Yeah, as if individuals who are "trained to put perishables back" could make a difference with corporations still wasting TONNES of food every single second.

[@bobridge5271]

I worked on the Rhizobium/legume symbiosis for 30 years. The basic problem of transferring the symbiotic capability is that most crop plants are monotoyledonous, but legumes are dicoyledonous. This is the first division of flowering plants, and one major difference is the component structure of the cell wall. As most R/leg symbioses rely on infection based on interaction with the cell wall, as well as plant-secreted flavonoids and lipooligosaccarhide signals (from the rhizobia), it wold require major engineering of both plant and bacteria. Mixed in with that is the high specificity of the relationship, where there are specific rhizobial species for specific plant species. Though have been a large number of researchers working on the problem, but there are not enough resources to consider a major project on engineering the plants, for example. Additionally, the world's supply of the qualified people who can such work is dwindling due to poor employment prospects and low pay. My 30 year old son-in-law working in commerce receives three times the salary I did as a senior full-time professor and researcher. There are few incentives to do agricultural research work as a career. As a footnote, there is one non-legume genus that interacts with rhizobia to form nitrogen fixing nodules. It is a tree from Papua New Guinea called Parasponia (several species). But again, there have never been enough resources to properly study this plant. Interestingly, the rhizobia with which it forms a symbiotic relationship has a very wide capabilty to infect many species of legumes.

[@AnnoyingNewslettersPage6]

I'm not sure if you're going to touch on it I'm only at the 6 minute mark, but the relationship with legumes is part of the three sisters corn, squash, and beans method of planting.

[@sandybarnes887]

I was about to tell them that too. The native Americans knew how well they work together

[@aniksamiurrahman6365]

No he's not. It's basically an ad for Mr. Gates' new book and all his plans to capitalize on what's still left.

[@nicholaslewis8594]

Anik, the reason was covered🤦‍♂️

[@beth8775]

Hard to do on a commercial farm, but a similar effect could be had by cover cropping with clover and using no-till planting. We already have all that.

[@cassieoz1702]

So. Legumes fix atmospheric nitrogen but don't help with either the need for P or K. Legumes help but don't fix the problem

[@twocvbloke]

Weirdly, I had a dream last night that a plant I was growing started to water it's neighbouring plant which was a bit dry before I got to it, dreams are weird... :P

[@thunderusnight]

The weirder thing is that some plants can and do do that with roots connecting. When one has extra water or energy and can't store it, they'll give it to the root connected neighbor.

[@avariceseven9443]

How did you even have that dream? It does not just come out of nowhere. Do you work with plants or recently watched a docu?

[@desmonddesjarlais2697]

This both why we should and shouldn't figure out how to record our dreams.

[@coagulatedsalts4711]

@@thunderusnight albinism in plants is rare because white reflects all light and renders photosynthesis useless, but if an albino seedling attaches itself to the roots of a bigger tree, it can get its nutrients that way!

[@tippib2222]

Sure but when I fertilize myself it’s creepy and wrong.

[@AO00720]

No it isn't.

[@hasanmuhammad6651]

@@AO00720 it's a joke

[@suserano7566]

Creepy? Yes wrong? Debatable

[@Solace6428]

I am mildly concerned

[@SorenPenrose]

it's only wrong if you don't monetize it

[@ProfessorSyndicateFranklai]

My dad loves to quote Bill Gates as 'the right kind of lazy'. Ie, the kind of man who would bio-engineer a plant to fertilize themselves instead of just doing it. Laziness is one of the greatest driving forces of invention, along with necessity and greed.

[@pauljackson3491]

Necessity is the mother of invention while laziness is the father.

[@azmanabdula]

What if it over fertilizes the soil with nitrates?

[@azmanabdula]

@@ArawnOfAnnwn I suppose But in this sense Lazy means using less effort to get the same results Like splitting wood with a rock vs a chainsaw In one sense the rock is lazier, as it requires no other industry Just a rock On the other hand ever tried chopping down a tree with a rock?

[@MaxBrix]

Lazy is pumping your tire everyday instead of fixing it. Lazy is avoiding work and in the process making things harder or worse.

[@azmanabdula]

@@ArawnOfAnnwn "Pretty sure chopping down a tree with a rock, even including the knapping process to make it sharp enough for the job, would still be a lot easier - and less time-consuming - than inventing a chainsaw from scratch" Exactly yet we dont cut down tress with rocks now do we We use 20+ tonne tree loppers " but I wouldn't call the reason for it 'laziness'" Automation is laziness in physical effort Mental effort on the other hand is daunting Factorio anyone? *Awesome game*

[@Shatterverse]

Of course, you skipped over the phosphorus problem _entirely_ and should probably do a vid on that issue.

[@SpaceG95]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/j36ne3RqituLgqM Veritasium already did it. Potassium production is not as energy intensive.

[@DanielSMatthews]

@@SpaceG95 *phosphorus*

[@IHateUniqueUsernames]

Well, he did say that he will focus on Nitrogen for this video. Maybe we'll get a follow up on Phosphorus.

[@DanielSMatthews]

@@IHateUniqueUsernames _"maybe"..._

[@SpaceG95]

@@DanielSMatthews touche

[@marianocolsin8968]

9:17 We did it boys, finaly after so many years We discovered why knowing that mitochondria is the power house of the cell can be relevant

[@owenwhite4879]

I pee on my plants. There’s plenty of phosphorus, ammonia, and other goodies for them to use

[@massimookissed1023]

I just moved a plant in my garden, and emptied the cat's litter tray into the hole before replanting the plant. Clay, sawdust, pees, two large poos, and an emptied litter tray :)

[@nikkimoritz6890]

I use compostable kitty litter for this reason exactly

[@EctoMorpheus]

@@massimookissed1023 I really hope it isn't an edible plant...

[@massimookissed1023]

@@EctoMorpheus , _Senecio Cineraria_ Silver furry leaves, yellow daisyish flowers. It's just for decoration. As long as it gets sun, it'll stay being silver. Supposed to be an annual, but this specimen is over 6 years old :)

[@FrikInCasualMode]

@@EctoMorpheus Not on leaves or stalks! On the soil between the plants.

[@selfme762]

I waited to hear about the solution of rejecting the current monoculture model. Contrary to the natural solution of not growing the same crop exclusively in one area, that is exactly how crops are grown. That method is fraught with problems. Pests that favor that crop will easily get out of hand, so heavy use of pesticides is necessary. The particular nutrients a crop needs from the soil is rapidly depleted. Native Americans had an elegant solution to this and other problems when growing crops. They planted corn, beans and squash together. The beans provided nitrogen fixation and used the corn stalks to grow on. The broad leaves of the squash shaded the ground to conserve water. With a variety of root matter tilled under, they avoided diseases and fungi inherrant to one particular species. Come at me with how this wouldn't scale well.

[@tomclarke4978]

I can’t see why it wouldn’t work but I’m sure there must be a reason or people would be doing it

[@selfme762]

@@tomclarke4978 Doing anything other than the current monoculture method is most likely to be rejected because of all of the science and infrastructure invested in it.1

[@Ninjaananas]

@@tomclarke4978 Maybe they are just not aware of it. Or it comes with increased labor costs.

[@SandraWatkinsB]

No need to bioengineer plants to add nitrogen. They already exist. Legumes such as peas, peanuts, beans, clover, and alfalfa are all plants that will add nitrogen to soil. On the other hand, grasses and brassicas will absorb nitrogen from the soil, which will prevent it from being leached away by rain or irrigation. Cutting down these plants and tilling them into the soil will return the nitrogen to the soil.

[@miatahan9506]

Thank you! All the answers to our “problems” exist in nature! If anything, biomimicry will save the humans !

[@raziphaz2219]

did you even watch the video

[@miatahan9506]

@@raziphaz2219 yes, I didn’t express myself correctly. There’s no need to modify genes or do “bioengineering” you just need a good botanist

[@Ninjaananas]

@@miatahan9506 Then solve climate change with nature. I am waiting.

[@raziphaz2219]

@@miatahan9506 but the video stated that although legumes are essential for farming now, we could possibly have more crops that add to the soil. I guess you sound like you're trying to keep it simple for the sake of simplicity?

[@ecsciguy79]

Sounds cool, but I think we need less, not more corporate control of the food supply. I don't see any of the corporations involved releasing the patents to the public. They're going to do what Monsanto does--demand money if we want to eat.

[@isaacthek]

@@marcosolo6491 your cynicism aside, the solution is publicly funded and therefore publicly available research. Many of those corporations capitalize on the government grant programs that direct tax dollars to researchers. Legally, a work produced by the government cannot be copywritten, so the research coming out of governed agencies and publicly funded universities is up for grabs. The problem becomes when those universities establish private subsidiaries to "complete" the research and patent the end products, stealing what should have been a public good to the benefit of a private corporation.

[@cleverusernamenexttime2779]

Food quantity goes up, food price goes up, food quality goes down. This is what you have to look forward to.

[@ps.2]

Man, the _argumentum ad monsantem_ is so tiresome. That name Monsanto is a mere talisman now, a boogeyman. If you don't agree - quick, about how much market share in seed production would you say they have, and how many of their top competitors can you name? If you're like most people who rail against Monsanto, you probably have no idea about their market share and you can't name any of their competitors. Which is to say, people invoke the name Monsanto to criticize a field they know very little about except second- and third-hand headlines.

[@matthewfamulski7705]

I have a video suggestion for scishow or seeker, stanene and other materials that may replace graphene in the future for computing. Thanks.

[@YCCCm7]

Interesting. Hadn't heard of stanine, pretty great stuff. I know there were a couple of configurations of graphene "sandwiching" recently that were shown to be room temperature superconductors, though, so the options are looking plentiful.

[@davidrice4873]

@@YCCCm7 room temp superconductors are fascinating

[@firefixing4125]

Read nothing of comments. Look up gabe brown on youtube

[@canis2020]

Can't replace something that isn't available.

[@SC-zq6cu]

How can you replace graphene ? Its not even in use yet.

[@raerohan4241]

I saw the title and immediately had doomsday visions of someone modifying kudzu vines to do this. I’m scared

[@epigeneticnerd4244]

Sounds like a great way to patent and monopolize the food supply... Which a well-known biotech company has already been doing-suing family farms for “patent” infringement once cross pollination occurred.

[@WhichDoctor1]

Persuade poor farmers that they need this new wonder crop to survive. Then once they have lost their original seed stocks and are reliant on buying your seed fresh every year hike up the prices to levels they can barely afford. Wait for a year with a bad harvest so they cant afford to pay for next years seed and go bankrupt. Buy up their land and consolidate it into mega-farms owned by associated multinationals. Replace most of the former workforce with machines and robots and take the profits out of the country to add to your already unimaginable wealth. All the time claiming that you are "saving the world" and "solving world hunger". I'm not opposed to genetic engineering, I just accept that corporations exist to do one thing. Make as much money as physically possible, and then make more next year. If human lives have to get ground up and spat out to add another couple digits to the bank account of someone who already owns more wealth than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes then that's just the price of doing business.

[@MatthewMakesAU]

That's a myth

[@dianewallace6064]

@@WhichDoctor1 I agree this monopoly could happen for sure. It is necessary to do this but yes, it will be abused for profit.

[@thekingoffailure9967]

@@WhichDoctor1 Excellent praxis

[@eleethtahgra7182]

The darkside of capitalism.

[@FNLNFNLN]

Gotta wonder why Gates is charging for the book if he really wants to get the message out. You want to charge for a physical copy - ok, fine (not that Gates couldn't easily afford to print and ship the entire run himself), but if Gates really prioritized getting the message out rather than grandstanding and trying to leave a positive legacy, he'd just make it free.

[@huldu]

Turns out even if you have most of the money you don't have ALL of the money. The goal is to get ALL of the money. People with that much money are in a position to do all kinds of things but in most cases it just simmers down to PR stunts and the likes. People never change.

[@christianadam2907]

I bet he did not write a single line of this book. He just slammed his name on it. Sad that the people of SciShow suck up to this guy, who has no expertise at all in any field other than making a shitty operating system. And even that he did it just for so long until he got rich enough. He is not an authority, just some guy with too much money.

[@thekingoffailure9967]

@@christianadam2907 I dont blame scishow for taking the fat cat's money for the good of continuing their high quality completely free public education. If bill wants to advertise his shitty book I'm glad independent content creators are getting the profit

[@christianadam2907]

@@thekingoffailure9967 i understand your point. They have to eat and pay bills like every other person. It is the praising that gets me.

[@r3wturb0x51]

@@christianadam2907 He actually is a really talented software engineer/computer scientist. Unfortunately, he's a completely shitty human being outside of this.

[@culwin]

OK plants, there are hot pockets in the fridge, make your own dinner

[@ghosttribe4683]

When you realize that sustainable energy is actually cheaper to produce than fossil fuels but the government subsidizes fossil fuels so much...

[@WillWilsonII]

They tried to just plant a buncha beans everywhere but people ate them and now there's a methane problem

[@chinookvalley]

hahaha!

[@patrickmccurry1563]

Flatulence is mostly CO2 with the stinky parts being hydrogen sulfide and mercaptans. Humans produce little or even no methane. Beans are full of sulfur so they may induce gas from the HS.

[@Solace6428]

@@patrickmccurry1563 I believe that was a joke, my good sir.

[@gab.lab.martins]

Wild thought here, but... maybe we stop having so many children for a while. You know, do a Thanos without actually killing anyone.

[@tachywubdub2469]

Bad idea, china did it to a somewhat successful degree and now they have more older peeps than younger peeps by a long run. Same effect that made the economy dudes freak out about baby boomers.

[@georgiasoaps]

it's been so strange seeing articles about the "baby bust" that is happening because of people choosing not to have children due to the pandemic. These articles all frame it as a dire problem we need to fix, like Americans (and probably other countries, but I've mostly seen in about America) need to have more kids ASAP otherwise our population will crash, and "the future of America is at stake" and other nonsense. The world is so overpopulated this is a good thing, but it's being spoken about like it's the end of the world.

[@tachywubdub2469]

Tbf there is probably a better way to go around it XD

[@Nanook128]

Overpopulation is a myth. We have more than enough resources to go around, we just need to get away from a system that focuses on production that is centered around profit instead of around human needs.

[@Nanook128]

@@klondike444 we are not overpopulated. We have enough resources to go around, you just have to be distributed more efficiently instead of wasted in the pursuit of profit.

[@syedushherahmad311]

This could literally change the planet............to those scientists who have and will play a role in this , Hats off!

[@DanielSMatthews]

Or not, the video is very misleading as fertilizers are only partially for supplying _Nitrogen_ they are a ratio of NPK + trace elements, and the most serious limit on them is not all of this CO2 production is destroying the climate nonsense, the real issue and absolute limit is the amount of available _Phoshporous_ Go and look up *"Peak phosphorus"* and ask yourself why people are going on about CO2 and climate rather than that other very real problem that limits total growth of the entire global ecosystem, life itself.

[@nicholaslewis8594]

Daniel, because you’re ignoring real issues while also pretending other people are ignoring real issues.

[@tomclarke4978]

@@DanielSMatthews the companies that mine phosphorus say that they have enough for hundreds of years, it’s not in their interest to say this, they could claim they were running out to drive up prices but they’re not. Other than that you’re right, soil and plants are more complex than just needed nitrogen, this will help but it’s not going to save the planet at all

[@DanielSMatthews]

@@tomclarke4978 What the "mines" say is only a fraction of the picture, there is the demand side and that is driven by both growth and P loss from soils which is accelerating due to erosion and mismanagement. Only P recycling by extracting it from runoff water and sewage, closing the loop, is sustainable, obviously.

[@crackedemerald4930]

"yay we have self fertilizing plants" "It's from Monsanto" "Mars has nice soil, right?"

[@ps.2]

For those who care about "food miles", you can't beat Martian farming.

[@DunnickFayuro]

Here in Québec, we've started a research project where farmers apply crushed but otherwise non-processed apatite rocks directly on the crops. They pair this with naturally occuring fungi that produce enzymes able to decompose the rock into fertilizer. One benefit of this is there is no way for runoffs since these fungi are in symbiose with their host plant; they produce only the fertilizer they need, no more, no less.

[@beth8775]

That's the kind of problem solving I like to hear about.

[@tomclarke4978]

Have you got a link to any more info on this? really interesting

[@DunnickFayuro]

@@tomclarke4978 I have, only, it's in french. ici.radio-canada.ca/tele/la-semaine-verte/2015-2016/episodes/361648/mycorhizes-revolution-verte-foret-champignons

[@tomclarke4978]

@@DunnickFayuro thanks 🙏

[@Jayman5281]

Doesn’t sound the the brightest idea...when humans change what nature has already created, it almost always results in disaster. Whats the 50 year outcome? Maybe we should figure that out first

[@Ninjaananas]

We are already changing nature. We have been doing it for so long that we have to change nature again so that things get somewhat more normal again.

[@chrisshipman3342]

Gates book should be titled "How to buy farm land and work up the public to make a profit"

[@MattJasa]

"You can't create a perpetual motion machine, its against physics." Plants: "Hold my fertz."

[@Hortifox_the_gardener]

Nitrogen is the smallest problem in artificial fertiliser. Sure - energy. But our real problem is phosphorus. The resources to make it are running out. We are already living in the post peak-phosphate world.

[@Celeste-in-Oz]

hope someone's researching fungi as a potential nutrient source too... they're amazing

[@magnusjensen5765]

Agreed!! Shrooms rule!

[@lunepoulet4787]

One of the few organisms that can survive the vacuum of space. That's mighty curious

[@cbsboyer]

Actually, if they could engineer a fungus to fix nitrogen during the process of decomposing organic matter in the soil, that would be a fantastic option. No photosynthesis, so no oxygen production, the mycelia is an extensive underground network pretty much everywhere in direct contact with plant roots already, and horizontal gene transfer between fungi is already pretty rampant so the trait would be likely to spread extensively if it proves beneficial to the fungus.

[@axyxgaming7915]

The wake away I am getting from this is: Instead of changing the way we farm to be more in balance with how nature works, let's engineer nature to work for us. Why don't we look into farming in a more sustainable and ecologically friendly way. Alternate grow cycles to reinvigorate the soil naturally. Set the farms to alternate in such a way that everything we like is almost always available. Not exactly simple nor easy but relatively straight forward. Bio-engineering has its places but I question if this is one of them.

[@Sciolist]

You should have talked about P part of NKP , equally necessary and whole lot rarer.

[@thepermapatch]

I do not understand why the agricultural sector is taking it to the level of biologically engineering the plants when one huge point is being missed here. Even if all species became nitrogen fixers, there is still the problem of tearing up the soil each spring, known as plowing. No plants are left at all and their root systems, which would do the nitrogen fixing, would be ripped apart. Synthetic is polluting for the water right? But why does it not stay in the soil? The structure is gone, it becomes sand. It's not the dark, moist, crumbly soil we think of because it is being broken into many pieces each year. If there was no plowing and tilling and only covering the soil and also leaving plants to be over several years, then the soil will be much more fertile and most importantly resilient for the future.

[@KalRandom]

Once you open Pandora's Box, there is no closing it.

[@ThomasBomb45]

We opened that box when we started using fossil fuels and petroleum based fertilizer

[@RandyLy]

Hey, Environmental Engineer here. Here are some solutions that I can think of. 1) Reduce food waste. The less food we have to produce, the less energy we have to spend and it just doesn't feel right to waste food when other people are struggling to eat. 2) Compost leftovers in your garden if you have one. I have the luxury of owning a backyard and just toss out any food scraps in there. Its less weight driving to the landfill, and it recycles nutrients when it decomposes. Better in my backyard than in a landfill, right? 3) Having your own garden. Fewer trips to the grocery store saves money, gas, and time, so it's a win-win. 4) Switching to renewable energy sources. This one is a no-brainer but of course, it comes with extra monetary costs and we have to weigh in the fact that the materials required may pollute and emit carbon emissions. We'll have to see when can we break even. 5) Use human waste as compost. Straight up, it sounds nasty but what's the difference between spreading cow poop and human poop in your garden, so long as it is safe/nonpathogenic? We can use the byproduct that's leftover after the wastewater treatment process. Some pay to landfill that anyway, so you might as well use it as compost. 6) Strategized planting. For every fruit/vegetable plant that I plant in my backyard, adjacent to it is a legume. I'm sure agricultural professionals and farmers already know about crop rotation. Every farmer can probably produce legumes year-round alongside their main product.

[@brianjonker510]

He is talking about legumes like clover, beans and peas.

[@mikegrinde1583]

You mean we don’t need to GMO plants to do that and kill all the bees? I grew some pepper seeds I got from a sweet pepper in the store and the fruit on all 8 plants grew without seeds... GMOs are creepy AF.

[@nicholaslewis8594]

Evil, almost like you didn’t watch the video and are just assuming it didn’t talk about natural nitrogen fixing🤦‍♂️Or are just assuming your pepper seeds are gmo with no evidence🤦‍♂️

[@tafazzi-on-discord]

@@mikegrinde1583 what?

[@Nickodemo1st]

I'm really here thinking "awww the plants are taking care of their tiny bacteria babies" lmfao

[@nightthought2497]

Fun Fact, there are plants that already do do this.

[@ps.2]

Did you even watch the video? I mean, Hank covered that.

[@nightthought2497]

@@ps.2 Plants that have been doing it for lterally their entire existence, long before colonizers got their fingers on them. Camas is a plant species endemic to north america, and one of the varietals has been used by the indigenous people as a staple food source for thousands of years. It has the property of being nitrogen fixing. With proper care, a camas patch can produce indefinitely. I did watch the whole video, smartass.

[@cornbreadfedkirkpatrick9647]

Why did the day of the triffids just come to mind?

[@Num6er47]

We could solve so many of the problems in the world if we could ever realize that our population is already out of control. Carbon emissions, energy requirements, food requirements, space requirements, species extinction, environmental pollution. I can go all day.

[@tafazzi-on-discord]

yeah but "DiCtAtOrShIP bAd"

[@Ninjaananas]

@@tafazzi-on-discord Dictatorships are bad and they certainly are not a solution to our problem. Now be somewhere else dim.

[@rickkwitkoski1976]

Nitrogen is 'vital' to make amino acids! ???? Maybe I'm just quibbling but it is ESSENTIAL! You don't HAVE amino acids without nitrogen. The very name "amino" comes from "amine" or "ammonia", which is NH3. Nitrogen is an element that makes ammonia, with hydrogen. No Nitrogen... NO AMINO acids!

[@illesizs]

Bio-engineering plants that can grow anywhere and everywhere is a brilliant idea... ...until they start growing everywhere and outcompete everything else.

[@Sinaeb]

so, weeds

[@trashqueen656]

There's a lot more needed for survival than just nutrients.

[@ingemar_von_zweigbergk]

sometimes technologies that can better the life of humans are ready, but it is easier to introduce those technologies if media speculates about the possibility of some technologies being tested

[@ColonelBanana]

Half way point. Time to go over what new info I learned. Then proceed.

[@snazzysnazzergryphon8550]

Really the best thing to do is to bring natural ecosystems back to as much land as we can. And to try and live more off the land so we don't end up messing up everything.

[@Whfox]

Carnivorous plants already do that by catching their own nutrients.

[@marekspot9314]

Nice video. Anyway, let´s do more vertical farming.

[@massimookissed1023]

You ain't gonna feed the world with cress & basil.

[@marekspot9314]

@@massimookissed1023 Let´s see in a few years what can be done with vertical farming.

[@eccentricity23]

If it's possible (in theory) for plants to produce their own nitrogen, why haven't any evolved to do so? Wouldn't that confer a massive survival advantage?

[@Bacopa68]

It's a tough trick. Best plants have done is bribe bacteria to do it for them. The legume family does it best. Keep in mind this is a very diverse family family of plants that includes weed and wild flowers like lupins and bluebonnets, food crops like peas and beans, and many trees, including big trees like lindens and acacias.

[@pauljackson3491]

I was just thinking the other day about planting peas with wheat. As in when you throw wheat seeds on the ground you actually throw wheat seeds and peas there so the pea roots intermingle with the wheat's. Getting it out could be hard but I didn't think that far ahead.

[@beth8775]

Intercropping like that works better in small scale, but a big farmer could plant clover as a nitrogen fixer/weed suppressant/soil builder and use no-till planting for their harvested crop.

[@stax6092]

This was very informative. Well done.

[@qwertyuiop1st]

Different varieties of different crops grow better in different places. Any modification of plants to produce their own fertilizer needs to be able to be extended to the thousands of varieties of plants that we grow.

[@nicholaslewis8594]

I mean you can crossbreed it into varieties closely enough to interbreed.

[@ps.2]

But there is a surprisingly small number of crops used for a surprisingly large fraction of the world's calorie needs. There aren't thousands of crop varieties using artificial fertilizer at the kind of large scale to have real noticeable externalities.

[@qwertyuiop1st]

@@ps.2 'Monocropping' is a big problem. It makes life a lot easier for pests, among other things.

[@tylercriss6435]

I do hope that there is a need for synthetic biologists in the future. I can see this as a project that all my skills and talents are suited for.

[@fuxan]

Video suggestion. Growing Native Plants I've been inspired by Dr. Doug Tallamy and others on the push to restore our lost native plants. People are turning their monoculture lawns into native plant habitats, keeping the ground pervious and stopping the addition of pesticides, fertilizers, water, light pollution, noise pollution, etc. We have all the fertilizer we need with sustainable practices by keeping plant debris where it falls.

[@seanharris6734]

As a horticulture major I don’t know what I was expecting to learn from this video lol

[@tomclarke4978]

Nitrogen’s only one part of the puzzle too, won’t soils still be losing nutrients? We can’t just keep farming soils intensively forever even if this new technology works right?

[@Donkeykongington]

This is just another way to patent a plant and make billions. Nothing less, Nothing more...

[@debbiehenri345]

@@tomclarke4978 Yes, we do need to find answers to this problem very shortly. Due to intensive agriculture it's said there are potentially only 30 harvests left in all but the most recently cultivated land. Our over-bred crop plants are far too nutrient greedy and ripping essential nutrition out of the soil much quicker than we can restore it. You only have to see how much artificial fertilizer farmers spray onto a field in a season, and compare that to the way the same plants container-grown will eat their way through the soil in their pot. It's frightening how much the soil level drops, but farmers are scattering mere granules or a little bit of animal muck over soil to do all the feeding. The actual 'bulk' of the soil is fast disappearing from farmland, erosion and flooding not helping. My present garden was once ex-sheep pasture, very exhausted with a high percentage being bare rock with tufts of grass growing in the cracks. Without buying in topsoil, it's taken 17 years of being left fallow, growing certain plants to harvest for composting, all this to raise just enough soil to plant my first very small shrubs over this rocky zone - this year. The soil is still only a couple of inches deep in places. Now that's taken me 17 years to begin restoring soil levels, and I'm someone who can wait all that time - but how on earth is a working farm meant to do the same?

[@garchompy_1561]

its not just the creation of fertalisers that releases greenhouse gases, the degredation also releases nitrus oxides and other gases that contribute to global warming.

[@germimonte]

how are plants supposed to solve the underlying problem of overpopulation?

[@theluckyaceco]

Yep, it's a classic capitalist solution, lets "innovate" in the hope we find a solution in the future, rather than - you know - making wholesale changes to how we (especially the industrial "west") run our entire society. I mean, if we need a source of ammonia, I'm pretty sure that's a biological "waste" product that could be harnessed. And we can stop consuming at such an alarming rate, move to more sustainable micro farms instead of the industrial homogeneity (and hegemony) we're currently trying to protect. There was a telling line here, if we switched all fertilizer production to renewable energy overnight the *cost* would be prohibitive. Maybe we shake down a few billionaires and stop expecting everything to make a profit for some rich white man who then wants to sell you his book. This turned into a rant. I'm so sorry!

[@Nanook128]

Overpopulation is a myth. We have enough resources to go around, we just need to move away from production centered around the generation of profits.

[@massimookissed1023]

@@Nanook128 , many of those resources are finite, and we are racing through them. There isn't even enough copper to give everyone access to electricity.

[@Nanook128]

@@massimookissed1023 we are racing through them because our production is centered around profit instead of meeting human needs.

[@massimookissed1023]

@@Nanook128 , our production could be centred around kittens & cookies, and we still wouldn't have enough copper to meet everyone's needs.

[@SuperManning11]

Watching this just reminds me of how intricately connected and balanced any given ecosystem actually is-change one thing here, and you must adjust three things over there. And it‘s easy to see how changes brought on by climate warming can set off a chain reaction of consequences that we might not have thought of at first glance. Great video!

[@pr0ph3tz]

Scishow is now the Bill Gates show

[@skylargrey8354]

Alfalfa and dandelion leaf tea maybe worm castings and compost is all you need ... Alfalfa cantains nitrogen and dandelion turn nutrients into calcium and stir it in leaves

[@rajendrakhanvilkar9362]

Great video

[@dru4670]

One day a scientist thought a polyethene molecule will be on of the most useful hydrocarbon. It is, that it's in the belly of most fish 🙂. I think let's do what nature does, before we "engineer" nature. Legumes can help with that. Monocultures also don't help. Plants should be diverse on a piece land for it to be sustainable like it's been for millions of years.

[@nikkimoritz6890]

☝️ this!

[@jammbbs1688]

When I die a farmer can have my body to make fertilizer from it I'd rather some part of me was worth something in this world 🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😭lol

[@tafazzi-on-discord]

that would be completely pointless. You could research how to engineer crops and solve this problem, or get a nice job, get rich and finance the researchers. Or again you could become a governament official that could approve public funding on this.

[@davidanthonygarcia9070]

SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!!!!

[@smurfyday]

Prices of fertilizers, fossil fuels, social media, etc. need to reflect the externalized costs. That's how people can be made to do the right things.

[@NotHPotter]

Sorta burying the lede here on just how energy intensive it is to break that N2 triple bond.

[@jonathanodude6660]

oh yeah, isnt it like one of the stablest molecular species?

[@NotHPotter]

@@jonathanodude6660 Pretty much.

[@matthewcox7985]

Bring on the Lightning.

[@diegotartaglia]

What if we found a way of teaching plants to make it's own food? Chloroplast: am I a joke to you? 😅

[@spacemanspiff2137]

The world is managing climate change in the same way I manage a term paper: 90% of the work is done right before the deadline

[@coconutcorejf]

Wouldn't something that self fertilizes be super invasive?

[@minnymouse4753]

Why not release algae eaters like sucker fish in the saltine sea. The place is artificial any way.

[@laurieparis2203]

Hands down this is the best video title on of all my subscriptions! 😆🌱

[@crispypace5653]

We need to band together and plant hemp worldwide to help save Mother Nature

[@chinookvalley]

Mother Nature laughs at us. She is being very patient with our stupidity. People don't think that we are a part of Nature, and that we are better than She. I agree that hemp/marijuana is the answer to MANY of the world's problems.

[@Chris-op7yt]

Also need less energy intensive making of P, as a lot of soils also low in P.

[@BigMobe]

I don't know what keeps weeds coming back but I'm sure someone is going to figure out how to use that to grow crops.

[@Theraot]

Hank Green: * wears red sweater * Me: Is this a Tom Scott cosplay?

[@pdaphuulz8219]

these ideas sound like they could go wrong in many many way in the sci-fi flix.

[@evilsharkey8954]

I hope any such modified plants and microbes are extensively tested in labs and contained environments before planting outdoors, since it would be really easy to accidentally create super weeds.

[@Bacopa68]

The superweeds then fix carbon in the topsoil and thus avert further global warming.

[@evilsharkey8954]

Bacopa68, what’s the point of slowing global warming if most of the wildlife gets wiped out anyway by wheat that’s collected all 6 infinity stones?

[@Bacopa68]

@@evilsharkey8954 Ha! That's the point I was trying to make. Much of the world is covered in Megawheat. It could not be stopped.

[@amandaperry660]

I find it disturbing that our corporate overlords steadfastly ignore permaculture.

[@YourAuntiTali]

I mean, absolutely go get that sponsorship Scishow, but the easiest way to avoid a climate disaster is to tax the everloving stuffing out of billionaires and use the money to fund global health and climate mitigation. The first step isn't complicated, just hard to execute.

[@ToneyCrimson]

How much money does Bill need? He is trying to sell this book like if his life depended on it...i see it on every science channel.

[@john-paulcoccia8284]

Here's a thought...Maybe Bill Gates simply wants people to READ it...

[@theluckyaceco]

@@john-paulcoccia8284 In which case he has the money and access to make it available for free to everyone, he has *chosen* to make money from it, a poor decision that shows his priorities quite starkly, in my opinion.

[@ToneyCrimson]

@@john-paulcoccia8284 If that was his goal he could distribute it for free. He is a billionear...

[@cornbreadfedkirkpatrick9647]

Thank you, I guess he wants the private jet that Al gore has now and he's not even a scientist he's a thief like Edison and Alexander G Bell and Carl Benz yes I said it he had Disesel killed for his engine

[@john-paulcoccia8284]

Naturally, the "for free" argument. Didn't see that coming...

[@S....]

Imagine rapid growth of those organisms all around the globe, consuming more and more nitrogen from the atmosphere.. Something like a Great Oxidation Event.

[@huntercrook7306]

I just love how Bill Gates tells us how to run every part of our life from farming to the medical field 2 why not just everything

[@VariantAEC]

Right isn't it great! /s

[@MorganHJackson]

So you're saying the plants need to seize the means of production... of nitrogen.

[@thekingoffailure9967]

We need to redistribute the means of nitrogen production and decentralize it from massive coal fired factories to individual plants producing only what they need while providing mutual aid to their fellow soil microbes

[@tsonic2309]

Red clover plants produce high levels of nitrogen.

[@beth8775]

Clover cover crop + no-till planting = problem solved. Multiple problems actually. It would help build soil, suppress weeds, plus built-in fertilizer.

[@luddity]

And don't forget to buy Bill Gates' new book "Why I alone can save all you poors from starvation, plagues, and heat death."

[@PixieStixx]

YES! And when done with that don't forget to read Julia Lerner new book: "Things I picked up online and want you parrot to you."

[@screamsofthedead]

If you could include percentages of emissions for the fertilizer making process with comparisons to other emissions next time, that would be great. Just saying it contributes a "significant" amount doesn't really put it in perspective.

[@falsificationism]

Let me translate Bill Gates' message: Whatever you do, DON'T change the dangerous, extractive system that created my wealth. (By realigning policy, dismantling capitalism, and de-subsidizing animal agriculture.) Instead, let's keep breaking the environment, but engineer our way out of this (don't worry, I own lots of farmland and agricultural science companies that will sell you the solution) even though we already have better systems available that have sustained humans for thousands of years.

[@ps.2]

I feel your translation skills need some work. Maybe your fact-checking skills too.

[@falsificationism]

@@ps.2 Happy to engage. Which facts would you like me to check or clarify?

[@ps.2]

@@falsificationism We can start with your conflation of _translate_ with _invent._ Translation involves taking someone's words and rendering them in a new form. I'm pretty sure he hasn't said any of the things you attributed to him. So that's either unskillful or dishonest. The reason I threw in fact-checking is that, while you were dishonest in claiming that he said any of those things, you also implicitly laid out a number of facts that, whether or not he even said them, I suspect aren't even true. Calling it lack of fact-checking is perhaps more charitable than simply calling it dishonest, so, take your pick. For example, did animal agriculture subsidies create his wealth? Not to my knowledge - I believe most of it came from software. Do we in fact have better systems available? The "thousands of years" is a red herring, isn't it? As seen in ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-agricultural-land-use-per-person we've drastically reduced our agricultural land use per capita just in the last 70 years, and anything that would undo that is a non-starter, unless you favor of cutting down more forests, as we did for thousands of years. And probably even without forests we wouldn't have enough room. Does Gates advocate to "keep breaking the environment", and if so, in what way? I mean, that could mean anything. What non-capitalist model of agriculture has ever shown to be capable of producing less starvation or less environmental degradation than capitalism? Communism in particular has been pretty bad on both of those axes. One pre-capitalist agricultural practice even has a specific negative outcome named after it: the so-called _tragedy of the commons._

[@falsificationism]

@@ps.2 That's a lot. I'll start by directing you to the USDA land use data most prominently shown in the ourworldindata you yourself have shared. For a map-based version, you can see land use in the US first presented by Bloomberg in 2018. Grazing land is BY FAR the most inefficient way to convert solar energy into calories for human consumption--accounting for nearly 1/3rd of US land use. Now, if we simply look at arable land, we use about 2x as much land to simply grow crops to feed nonhuman animals than we use to grow food for humans. Factory farming, in this context, is incredibly efficient. But you know what's even more efficient? Just growing plants for direct human consumption. Bill Gates refuses to promote the most direct way to reduce our footprints. So yes, we already have the solution available. Step 1: Remove all subsidies for animal agriculture (including soy and corn subsidies, the majority of which is grown to feed nonhuman animals). For a bonus, step 2: Redirect those subsidies to support growing plants for human consumption, including land conversion to polyculture, permaculture, no-till, etc. Note that none of this requires any significant scientific discovery. On to Bill Gates himself: He's participating in capitalism and has never challenged its core flaw. The onus is on him to acknowledge this and he hasn't. How did he amass his wealth? Not through agriculture. You're right. He did so by creating a monopoly and enclosing the commons. Not sure what your point is there. Finally, I suggest you learn the definitions of the words you yourself use, and look into the so-called "examples" of communism. Bottom line: If we can grow enough food annually to feed 70+ billion non-human animals (the vast majority of which are factory farmed and are not grazing...again, because it's incredibly inefficient), surely we can grow enough food to feed fewer than 10 billion humans. This isn't a difficult thing to figure out.

[@ps.2]

@@falsificationism Thanks for engaging! You are of course right that reducing beef consumption would go a long way toward agricultural land use reduction. I appreciate your detailed explanation but most of it I already knew and agreed with. (: In fact, the contribution of livestock to global agricultural demands on our land and our climate are so well-known that I thought I should check to see if Bill Gates has somehow missed it. And ... spoiler alert, he hasn't. I didn't dig deep into his writings, but it's clear he's aware. Does he talk about Impossible Burgers and how to decrease red meat consumption? Not sure - as I said, I didn't dig deep. As far as agricultural subsidies, I'm against them all, from animal feed (or ethanol!) to sugar beets. If you need to make food more affordable to people who, let's just say can't afford to be Whole Foods snobs - that's what food stamps are for. Or the anti-poverty program of your choice. Distorting the supply side of the market ain't it, though. I disagree that Gates has a responsibility to acknowledge his ill-gotten gains. I do agree that some of them in the 90s were ill-gotten, but I mean, what's the endgame here? Should he pay reparations to all the upper middle class people who bought Windows and used Internet Explorer back in the day? Myself, I think his money is much better spent fighting malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. (This could be a personal bias, but as it happens I am on both sides of this one. I _have_ paid for Windows in the 90s, and I _have_ had malaria in sub-Saharan Africa.) I'm not sure what you're driving at in asking me to look into the "examples" of communism. I was specifically thinking of Maoist China, the USSR, and the PRK. Who else is there? Does maybe Cuba have a better record of efficiently feeding everyone through sustainable and environmentally friendly agriculture? I don't know. The only reason I brought up communism at all is that it's the most commonly proposed alternative to capitalism. I actually don't know what -ism you favor in particular. Insofar as I implied that you yourself favored communism, I apologize. I didn't assume that and I shouldn't have implied it.

[@jhonwask]

Isn't clover a natural natural nitrogen fixer?

[@elitemook4234]

Bill gates book? Yea, no thanks.

[@scottslotterbeck3796]

The real solution is stopping runaway population growth. Please, stop at 2 children.

[@bestkamil7078]

you should do one or carbon based herbicides, or tillage

[@ZeoViolet]

...I'm so glad I got lucky with the orchid I was gifted with last year. A little research goes a long way. It's blooming again, more beautifully than before.

[@bestkamil7078]

bioengineering!!! Thanks for talking about this

[@huldu]

"Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes."

[@naverilllang]

So uh, sci-show, I know what you're trying to say here, but when something fertilizes _itself,_ the phrase usually refers to asexual reproduction.

[@mariakasstan]

I can't help but wonder if we are not wasting nitrogen every time we pee...why can't this be...''harvested?''

[@acemcplane]

A lot of folks overwater and overfeed. I only give a 5 gallon pot 3 litres of water even with a really thirsty plant. Most people out there growing with synthetics drain to waste on purpose. You do not need to ever drain to waste if you're not overfeeding and I can't stress that enough. Always use a PPM and PH meter. Humic acid also helps the nutrient storage capacity of your medium so your synthetic nutrients start acting like organic ones where you can have a bit more of a buffer.

[@KnighteMinistriez]

Couldn't we use computerized crop-dusting drones to reduce runoff? I mean you could make the drones release a precise amount of fertilizer thereby reducing runoff. Also we could just genetically modify legumes or other plants to be better nitrogen fixers. That could work too.

[@conlon4332]

4:03 These sound a lot like the kinds of things that tend to turn up in fish tanks that you don't necessarily want.

[@Vibe4ant]

IT'S ALREADY BEEN DONE! The Amazon Rainforest is an over grown human made garden, this is why we see so many new medical plants there and why it grows so much!