What Is The Best Shape For A Farm?

This video was made in partnership with Gates Ventures.
The shape of a farm can tell you a surprising amount about the land it's on and the people that use it.

LEARN MORE
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To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
- Central pivot irrigation: an irrigation system that moves in a circular pattern around a central pivot point
- Contour farming: tilling sloped land along lines of consistent elevation in order to conserve rainwater and to reduce soil losses from erosion
- Strip cropping: partitioning a field into long, narrow strips which are alternated in a crop rotation system
- Terracing: a method of farming consisting of building platforms along a slope

At 3:10 we show a collage of Google Earth images from the video. Here are the coordinates for each (from left to right and top to bottom):
1: 1°15'60.0"S 37°24'11.5"E
2: 1°15'40.8"S 37°23'57.2"E
3: 7°51'04.2"S 61°35'47.1"W
4: 32°53'48.7"S 71°21'33.4"W
5: 38°53'11.2"N 35°36'11.4"E
6: 25°09'55.7"N 55°35'09.2"E
7: 37°11'37.0"N 26°47'45.7"E
8: 42°50'39.1"N 143°03'10.9"E
9: 53°58'24.5"N 0°44'01.8"W
10: 16°37'22.1"S 62°54'38.5"W
11: 46°58'13.1"N 70°51'28.5"W
12: 27°10'19.5"N 81°48'21.2"W
13: 25°48'55.2"N 110°09'02.3"E
14: 43°39'27.2"N 90°55'17.7"W
15: 28°58'14.4"S 23°55'12.6"E
16. 24°08'14.0"N 23°13'17.0"E
17. 25°48'20.4"N 110°08'57.6"E
18: 43°44'38.1"N 141°52'07.6"E

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CREDITS
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Kate Yoshida | Script Writer, Narrator and Director
Sarah Berman | Illustration, Video Editing and Animation
Nathaniel Schroeder | Music

MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC

OUR STAFF
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Lizah van der Aart • Sarah Berman • Cameron Duke
Arcadi Garcia i Rius • David Goldenberg • Melissa Hayes
Alex Reich • Henry Reich • Peter Reich
Ever Salazar • Leonardo Souza • Kate Yoshida

OUR LINKS
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REFERENCES
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[SkyTheHusky]

The most efficient way is to have a 9x9 square with one water source in the middle, since one water source can hydrate 9 blocks in one direction.

[sboochek]

In Czechia and Slovakia there are not many differences in the rural areas, but one thing you can clearly see is the change in farm shapes because in one country was in Austria and other in Hungary part of the empire, and they had different heretage laws, so on one side they have tiny stripes (all males got share) and the other stayed big (oldest son got share).

Inheritance laws play also a big part. When the land has to be divided for the heirs, you sometimes get strange shapes like e.g. the spiderweb rice fields in Flores, Nusa Tenggara in Indonesia.

[Eoin-B]

Lousiana & Farms along the Loire Valley are also shaped like Quebec as well as lots of areas in vietnaim. It's a nice French planned design to build communities & trade along a river bank.
When I was in vietnam, in many areas there was only a narrow path between the houses and the river, which shows how theese areas were originally designed.
I'm from rural Ireland and most houses are a good couple minutes walk from eachoter in the countryside with tiny clusters built on plots of family land of the same farm, so you see how the french got that right.

[PyjamaRex]

Love the "bestagon" reference!!! The puns are also shaped by a tight-knit community, even on Youtube :D

[carlssonn]

Hexagons-Bestagons 😂 i got that reference 😂

[madeofmandrake]

When the french were first settling the farmland of Montreal, it was promised that every man be given access to the river. That's a big reason for the ribbons. Imagine then that farmland will also get evenly split among the sons of the previous farmer and the land gets even skinnier.

[gracegrass]

As someone who just got off a 5hr flight during which I was in the aisle and the person in the window seat didn't open the window at all until landing... I appreciate this video

[AviatorJ]

I fly 4000 miles a week and I notice a number of these shapes as well. Mostly what I assumed they're based on was confirmed in this video but it's a neat bonus that the communities try to stick close even if the farmland ends up quite separated in the extremities.

[csstuff]

Looks like another prominent educational creator is spreading the bestagon word 💟💟

[Kaikaku]

Oh, you renamend the video. Well, I liked the old title better: "Why Some Farms Are Hexagons (The Bestagons)"

[ShawnRavenfire]

I was on a plane when I was far too young to remember, but I remember having remembered that I remembered (if that makes sense), and thinking at some point that I must have dreamed looking down from a plane, because there was no way that the world from above looked like a bunch of squares with weird patterns in them.

[sathivv]

Last time I flew across the USA the endless scrolling squares freaked me out. 640mph and squares for hours. By the time we reached the Rockies I had concluded we have turned the entire planet into squares.

[Neceros]

Your enthusiasm for this infected me and now I can't unsee how awesome farms look from above

[cerosis]

I had no idea how other farms were. I assumed they were all just squares

[robertsteel]

Thank You for continuing CGPGray's Story!

[RomulusTheWild]

What gets me is just how much of the land is farm land this is insane

[TheRealBFKelleher]

Thank you Mr. Gates for bringing us this video extolling the virtue of late 20th-century land enclosure.

[davidmccarthy]

As the shapes show, it all depends on the land you own and what it's used for. The best shape is using every farmable square foot you have.

[CraftAero]

Flying over agricultural areas in early spring / late fall is very interesting because you see the bare ground. The watershed paints the dirt light and dark like an oil painting.