Ground Shift: Scale and modern farming models
Ground Shift talks to the next generation of farmers in Ghana, Australia and the USA.
From Big Ag and "factory farming" to urban micro farms, Anna Jones explores dramatic differences in the scale of modern agriculture.
Looking out across the New York City skyline, Anna hears how food can be produced sustainably, affordably and even abundantly on a rooftop in the heart of one of the world’s biggest cities. Urban farmer Ben Flanner swapped an engineering career in Manhattan for growing vegetables on top of an 11th storey building in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He believes Millennials are reconnecting with fresh ingredients, grown locally, and rejecting sugary, processed food – much of which contains corn syrup derived from the field corn grown under America’s industrial farming model.
But on his combine in Iowa, rolling through 4,500 acres at the height of the corn harvest, 28-year-old Brandon Pickard says farms have expanded in order to survive. He believes industrial farming is the consequence of a shrinking farming population and expansion is the natural evolution of a successful business. He’s proud of his corn crop and says it’s helping to feed the world.
And Anna visits an organic farm in New York state which is making agriculture more diverse in terms of the crops they grow and the farmers that grow them. Rise & Root Farm is owned and run by four women – two of them are black and two of them are gay.
Producer: Anna Jones
(Photo: Brooklyn Grange Farm. Credit: Anna Jones/³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ)
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Broadcasts
- Wed 14 Aug 2019 02:32GMT³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service Online, Europe and the Middle East & West and Central Africa only
- Wed 14 Aug 2019 03:32GMT³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service UK DAB/Freeview
- Wed 14 Aug 2019 04:32GMT³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service Australasia, Americas and the Caribbean, South Asia & East Asia only
- Wed 14 Aug 2019 12:32GMT³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service except News Internet
- Wed 14 Aug 2019 17:06GMT³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service Australasia
- Wed 14 Aug 2019 21:06GMT³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service
- Sat 17 Aug 2019 16:32GMT³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service News Internet
- Sun 18 Aug 2019 09:06GMT³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service except Europe and the Middle East
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