Food 5.0: How We Feed the Future

When I was a kid, growing up in Central Jersey, a farm meant going to visit someone from the same village in Russia as my grandfather, who owned a chicken farm in South Jersey The farm was noted for its double yolkers (one egg two yolks). As kids the place looked huge. It was a place to chase real animals feed a goat and pick vegetables and fruit. For my grandparents and their friends, it was a dream. to own land. Here in America everything was possible.Of course, the reality was that the chicken farm, and the truck farms where my family bought corn in the summer and apples in the fall, were tiny operations. It wasn’t until I found myself in college in Wisconsin and with friends and roommates from all over the Midwest, that I got see farms in the “consequential” sense. Farms that seemed to stretch to the horizon. Tended by huge machinery. But even though I “saw” them (and even larger ones in the western part of Brazil years later), thanks to Robert Saik and “Food 5.0” I now understand that I didn’t really “see” or “understand” them, because as an urbanite cut off both physically and historically from the farm I had no context and that is a problem because as Rob Saik points out farmers are going to be required to produce more and more food for more and more people and the policies and practices that will allow them to do that will require the understanding and support of those outside of the agricultural community.Food 5.0 is about providing context particularly for those, like me who do not come from an agricultural background or habitually concern ourselves with the process of how what is on our fork was produced. Robert Saik delivers what are (IMHO) two interconnected books. First context in terms of how modern agriculture has evolved from muscle to brain power (the last is my term not his) and how each phase served to extend the ability of producers to feed more people. Second context covering the tools that agriculture is deploying today and will /should use going forward. It also deals with the facts behind terms that have come to be flashpoints, such as “GMO” and “fake meat”.We, as a species need to have a rational discussion about our food supply and how we are going to meet the challenges of “feeding the future”. Food 5.0 provides a basis for having that discussion. It is accessible without being simplistic. It is not dogmatic, and it is free (or free as any discussion about this topic can be) of buzzwords. Consider it an introductory course from a knowledgeable and thoughtful professor on a complex and important topic.

The book explains modern agriculture and where it's headed in simple, clear language. The author, Robert Saik, has worked in agriculture all his life. He is ultimately rational, but his passion for the subject comes through loud and clear. As he points out, 0.2% of the population now feeds the remaining 99.8%. This results in a population with little understanding of where their food comes from, who are easily duped into spending more money for adjectives on a food package than for the food itself. His goal for modern farming is "infinite sustainability," which he defines with 5 key attributes: healthy soil, abundant, clean water, greenhouse gas balance, animal welfare and economic viability. It is easy to take one's views on modern agriculture from social media, and it is also quite easy to be disastrously misled. Walk a mile in our farmers' boots by reading this book, and we can start to take your opinions seriously.

Robert Saik provides thought-provoking insight and information backed by decades of experience about how our food was grown in the past, how it's grown today, and what the future of agriculture looks like. He implores us to reconsider our (often misinformed) beliefs about the use of chemicals, OGM, and technology and provides an enlightening view of how we can feed the world's growing population. This book is necessary reading for anyone curious about what we eat.

There aren't many books out there that highlight the idea of precision agriculture. This book focuses on the world application of technology. Highly recommend this book if you are interested in the future of agriculture.

Need a book to utilize in your high school Ag program? Check this one out!Have questions about how food is produced? Buy this today!

Rob Saik has agricultural credentials as a farmer, an entrepreneur, agronomist and innovator. 'Food 5.0' masterfully explains the realities of food and farm technology in an accessible and engaging way, oftentimes with first-person accounts drawing from his extensive experience. His rants are frequent but clearly offset from the firm foundation of information that is the backbone of the work. Anyone interested in the genetic and engineering technologies used in today's (and tomorrow's) agriculture should give this book a hard look. It is written by an expert for general consumption, and it clarifies many issues that are currently at the heart of many contentious conversations around the future of food and farming.

Have you ever wondered why farmers started using roundup? Is organic agriculture better for the planet? Rob does a great job of describing the history and evolution of modern agriculture in North America to what it is today. If you worry about your food or how it is grown this is a super pragmatic view into why farmers do the things they do and why. After going through the why of now he takes you to the future to some of the ways we might feed the people and the planet.This book is an easy read and a great introduction to some of the thinking around the future of food from inside of agriculture. If you aren't a farmer it might help you think like a farmer or at-least understand better why they think the way they do.

I found Food 5.0 to be informative and thought provoking. It's enlightening to understand the difference between the past eras of farming and what will be necessary to feed the growing world population of the future. I am not a farmer, but I am keenly interested in this topic. I respect and appreciate those who work in the agriculture industry, particularly those who are realistic and progressive and use science and modern technology to grow food. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the current discussion around what we eat.

The first half of the book provides a high-level review of agricultural development, whilst providing little critical analysis or original insight. The sort of overview you'd give to a school student.The second book details current agricultural innovation, but is painfully high-level. Topics such as remote sensing, which have huge and far ranging implications, are giving just a few hundred words. There are no references to real-world case studies or innovators, with the exception of Trimble and Agri-Trend (who the author has a commercial connection to). Considering he describes himself as a futurist, there is no original prediction re. future ag-innovations.His apologism for the agricultural sector also borders on ludicrous. Claiming that large farms are inherently sustainable because they have been around for over 100 years fails as an argument on so many levels, including their contribution to soil degradation, which is actually discussed in this book! Likewise, he dismisses innovative farming practices, e.g. organic and regenerative, without fully exploring the arguments. There are no references!The text is also very large and double spaced. In a professional font, this book would be no more than 60 or so pages long. I read the whole thing in a couple of hours.

Our human population is yet to reach its peak, and with land available to cultivate not able to increase we must turn to smarter ways of making the land we have be more productive, safer and sustainable. This is as true for Western large acre farms as it is for 3rd world subsistence farmers. This book makes it very clear where the focus needs to be and what's at stake if we waste time on anti-science objections for ideological reasons to any progress that meets the goals of infinite safe sustainability in our food supply. Written by a farmer it will help city dwellers who've never lifted spuds by hand understand how agriculture works and why land management, care for the environment and economic efficiency are all intimately bound together.

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El libro es, de punta a punta, una defensa de la agricultura industrial moderna, con total indiferencia por sus efectos ambientales y nutricionales. Parte de la premisa de que hay que producir más alimentos a todo precio, sin cambiar las pautas de consumo actuales de carne, azúcar y ultraprocesados. Claro que eso solo se puede hacer a base de tecnología y agroquímicos, pero es igual de claro que es ambientalmente insostenible.

Rob, provides a great description of the various transformational stages that impacted food production and the exciting stage we are in right now. These stages have concentrated food production to fewer and fewer growers while the rest of the population becomes further and further removed. Various technologies have made great strides in production efficiencies but at the same time the vast majority of the population has little understanding of the industry. This lack of knowledge may result in the inability of industry to use new technology to provide food security for a growing population over the coming decades.