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Episode 2: The problem with solutions: Techno-solutionism in agriculture
131 Plays1 month ago
In this episode, Dr. Julie Guthman discusses her latest book, The Problem with Solutions: Why Silicon Valley Can’t Hack the Future of Food. She critiques the narrow, short-term solutions for food and agriculture promoted by Silicon Valley, urging us to move beyond these capital-driven, "techno-solutionist" approaches that fail to create a truly just and sustainable food system.
Dr. Guthman is a distinguished professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. For nearly three decades, her research and teaching have focused on how neoliberal capitalism shapes and limits potential transformations in the food system.
📝 Show notes:
The Problem with Solutions by Julie Guthman https://www.ucpress.edu/books/the-problem-with-solutions/
From Farming to Biotechnology: A Theory of Agro-industrial Development.https://www.academia.edu/20776055/Book_Review_From_Farming_to_Biotechnology_A_Theory_of_Agro_Industrial_Development_David_Goodman_Bernardo_Sorj_John_Wilkinson
Gathering for Open Agricultural Technology (GOAT) https://goatech.org/
Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winners_Take_All:_The_Elite_Charade_of_Changing_the_World
Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_After_Technology
Planetary Improvement by Jesse Goldstein https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262535076/planetary-improvement/
Encountering Poverty by Ananya Roy https://www.ucpress.edu/books/encountering-poverty/paper
Tech Won't Save Us (Podcast): https://techwontsave.us/
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:13
Speaker
around the world.
Sustainable Agriculture and Social Justice
00:00:14
Speaker
We explore the sustainable transition of the agricultural and food system while looking into social and racial justice, land concentration, the impact of agricultural technologies, and the dangers of green capitalism.
Introduction to Julie Gosman and Her Work
00:00:35
Speaker
In this episode, we welcome Julie Gosman, distinguished professor professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Julie earned her PhD in geography from UC Berkeley, and for nearly three decades, her research and teaching have focused on how neoliberal capitalism influences potential shifts in the food system.
00:00:55
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um Among other topics, she has studied how the rapid growth of California's strawberry industry has relied on toxic soil fumigants shaping the entire production system and making fumigant-free strawberry cultivation highly challenging. Julie has published over 60 articles in peer-reviewed journals and also sold five books which have been awarded for their contributions to food system studies. this Her books cover various aspects of her research. Agrarian Dreams, The Paradox of Organic Farming in California, Weighing In, or Basically Food Justice and the Limits of Capitalism, The New Food Activism, Opposition, Cooperation, and Collective Action, and Wilted Pathogens, Chemicals, and the Fragile Future of the Strawberry Industry.
Critique of Silicon Valley's Approach
00:01:39
Speaker
This episode episode, however, centers on her latest book, The Problem with Solutions, why Silicon Valley cannot hack the future of food. In it, Julie critics the narrow, short-term solutions for food and agriculture promoted by Silicon Valley, urging us to move beyond these limited capital-driven fixes and techno-solutionist approaches that fail to create a treat just and sustainable food system.
00:02:03
Speaker
While the book primarily addresses agriculture, its insights apply more broadly, offering a powerful critique of solutions that ignore the deep birth structural causes of today's most pressing social and environmental crisis. Hi, Julie. Thanks a lot for joining us today. I'm really happy to have this conversation with you. Thank you so much for including me.
00:02:24
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My pleasure. After reading your latest book, I was really excited to invite you onto the podcast. I believe your research aligns quite well with our topics here.
Julie's Educational Background and Focus
00:02:34
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So to get started, can you tell us a little bit more about you and your work?
00:02:39
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Yeah, sure. I am trained as a geographer. I have a PhD in geography from UC Berkeley. um And if I've been out of the program for um well over 20 years, getting on 25. And most of my research has been about efforts to transform food production and distribution. i start My regional dissertation research was on organics.
00:03:04
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um I've done a project on pesticide reduction in the California strawberry industry. I've done many other projects um all about that. and But my latest inspiration for the book we're going to discuss today was Silicon Valley's entry into food and agriculture.
The Problem with Narrow Tech Solutions
00:03:19
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And Silicon Valley came into food and agriculture, armed seemingly with the notion that they could solve food and agriculture as most intractable problems with tech.
00:03:32
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Thank you, Julie. So to continue diving into the topic you started to mention, yeah could you explain what you define as a solution yeah and why it tends to be so appealing? So to be clear, I'm not a not opposed to addressing the big problems of the world. Of course, big problems like climate change and and sustainability and food insecurity and much more need to be addressed. But solutions, as I define them in the book,
00:04:00
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are very finite, narrowly conceived fixes to problems themselves have been bounded and rendered solvable. So you take a ah big problem and make it like, let's take think about climate change. You say, well, rather than CO2 and methane emissions, we say the problem ah is that people don't know enough about their climate footprint, so I'm going to give them an app so they can track their climate footprint. So you see a narrowed problem definition and a narrowed solution.
00:04:26
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So that's what I mean by solutions, narrowly defined problems, narrativerr narrowly defined solutions. And they are often pursued with limited knowledge of the big problem and a narrow set of tools and really a constrained sense of possibility. like we might It really hard to address climate change, but we can certainly be better informed of our climate footprint.
00:04:52
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Retractive because they seem doable, because they can be a maybe you can immediately pursue them, because they are finite, because they do seem manageable, manageable and they make people feel good like they're doing something.
00:05:05
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But the problem is that they're there' they may not be doing something. And it's it's interesting that the word root for solution is the same as absolution, a release from guilt or responsibility. And I think there's a bit of that that goes on. The solution making is like, I've done my part. I don't need to do more and dig into the really difficult problems of social change.
Farmers' Needs vs. Tech Solutions
00:05:26
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So, if we focus specifically on agriculture, in my experience, some farmers are supportive or at least very curious about new technologies to address issues like labor shortages and profitability. What has been your personal experience when talking to farmers about their perception and use of technology?
00:05:49
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Sure. So one of the things that inspired this on project on Silicon Valley was my previous project with strawberry production. and California strawberries are just are facing a number of kind of threats to the industry overall. Tighter regulation, labor shortages, restrictions on the use of soil fumigants, which is what really motivated that project because of their um because the toxicity of these fumigants.
00:06:17
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um so they're afraid So land shortages are facing a range of problems. um But in terms of labor, yeah, strawberry growers would love a robot that can pick strawberries because labor costs are high. And even though strawberry workers get extremely low wages and work in horrible conditions, they're the major cost in strawberry production. So yeah, growers would love robots and some are experimenting with them.
00:06:44
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But so that's kind of one of the things that motivated this project. But the thing is, it's not all clear that many of the technologies coming from Silicon Valley there and there's a range of them that are being sold to the public, to farmers, to food manufacturers. It's not clear that they really address growers concerns. Indeed, I i have found that entrepreneurs often imagine what these concerns are.
00:07:12
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ah rather than investigate them. um And, you know, like one of the things that the Silicon Valley is doing is creating all these kind of ways to collect data on farmers fields under the presumption that that there's more data, growers will make better decisions about what to apply on their fields. But first of all, growers aren't all that excited about giving up data to these big tech companies.
00:07:40
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But it's also not clear that and what the tech companies can give them is actually useful to farmers. ah So I think and when there's a specific problem that farmers, however, growers have, they're being, of course, so want a technology.
Tech's Role in Feeding the World
00:07:55
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But if it's being if the technology is being driven by ideas what entrepreneurs can do and provide rather than what farmers need, then you get this kind of disconnect.
00:08:07
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Yeah, very interesting. And one of the arguments often used to justify the implementation of technology in agriculture is that it is necessary to feed a project projected 10 billion people on the planet. How valid do you think this argument is and what role should technology play in ensuring global food security in your opinion?
00:08:33
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Yeah, it you know that's the foremost justification for technology development and agriculture. um One of the things I did for the research that went into this book, and I should say that the research was a collaborative project with other and um other scholars, we went to lots of events and watched lots of pitches. By pitches, I mean when an entrepreneur gets up in front of an audience and says, you know here's a big problem, here's my solution, and give me money to fund you know scaling it up.
00:09:02
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And i I think the vast, vast majority of these pitches started with this um claim that we need to feed the coming 10 billion people. So it's like they said it perfunctorily. It was just like, that's what they always said. But for a long time, the idea that we need to produce more to solve the world to solve the problem of food security has been debunked by critical social scientists.
00:09:27
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And many draw on the original work of the Nobel Prize winning economist of March's son, who observed that few cases of hunger and famine actually are a result of food shortages, rather they're a failure to access food that's available.
Political Roots of Food Insecurity
00:09:44
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And often access to food is political. I mean, I think there's no better example than what's going on in Gaza, for example.
00:09:52
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um where There's not a kind of absolute food shortage. People are starving in Gaza because their food supplies have been cut off. They can't get aid in there and their normal ways of obtaining food through you know going to the store have been demolished through bombs. So that's a great example of hunger not having anything to do with absolute food shortage.
00:10:18
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And indeed, you know there's been a perennial problem that farmers overproduce. So no, I don't find much balllily validity in these arguments that it particularly in the United States, farmers produce much more than consumers eat. And so that's why we export so much food to find markets for the stuff we overproduce.
00:10:40
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Yeah. That actually takes me back to the conversation I had with Dr. Salesholms in the last episode. He was talking about how one reason Mexican farm workers end up having to cross the border illegally, to work as fruit pickers, for instance, in the US, is actually because of the North American free trade agreements.
00:11:09
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So basically with no tariff at the border, US subsidized corn ends up in Mexico at prices lower lower than what it costs to produce.
00:11:21
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and which means Mexican farm farmers cannot make a living off their crop anymore. So I think it's another good example of how poverty and food insecurity are often less about yields and more about political issues, like you're mentioning, things that technology alone cannot really fix.
Economic Impact of Technology on Farmers
00:11:43
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Now I'd like to discuss something else that you mentioned in your book.
00:11:49
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the fact that many solution makers aim to make farmers more profitable, which seems like a commendable goal given how challenging it can be for many farmers to earn a decent living. What long-term impacts of technology on farmers' profitability have you observed?
00:12:10
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Yeah, farmers operate according to really low margin. um they really that's It's a big problem. That's why you'll yeah you see more consolidation in farming because to stay profitable, stay in business, you have to have a lot of acreage because the margins are so low.
00:12:27
Speaker
and honestly technology has been a cause of that problem more than a solution to. I mean, I've seen many pictures where um the entrepreneur says, I'm going to make farmers more profitable. And yet the very thing that they're pitching is something that they're going to sell to farmers.
00:12:45
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that's going to cut into farmers' profit. And there's this term called appropriationism. It was coined by David Goodman and Bernardo Sorge and um John Wilkinson in a book um that was written in 1980s or published in 1987 from farming to buy of technology. I still refer to it. It's the most prescient book in agrarian political economy I've ever read.
00:13:07
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um But the idea of appropriationism is that you know what is it processes that once produced are on the farm that are potentially profitable are hived off from farming and you know like And then made into commodities that can be purchased by farmers and then so that are sold back to farmers. And so you know starting with the tractor, and people used to, um or farmers used to use, um animal power on their farms.
00:13:37
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or crop rotations, so but now they they buy fertility inputs or they buy a tractor. and so so when ah Entrepreneur says, I'm going to make farmers more profitable and they're going to sell them so something that the farmers then going to have to buy or lease.
00:13:58
Speaker
they're going to cut into their profit. And it also contributes to this thing called the technology treadmill. It's ah but another long concept long used in political economy, which is whenever there's a technology that makes farmers, that makes them more productive,
00:14:16
Speaker
um At first, the early adopters of that technology will jump in and use that technology and they'll make a lot of extra profits in the beginning because they're producing more food on the same amount or more crops on the same amount of acreage. But then what happens is others get in on the act and all of a sudden, everybody's producing more and then does there's a big problem about production and there's a glut and then prices come down.
00:14:43
Speaker
so The idea that the entrepreneur that the tech industry is going to make farmers more profitable, it kind of ignores these two perennial problems in a very political economy, that of appropriationism, where they get the profit, and that of the technology treadmill.
Critique of Techno-fixes and Solutionism
00:15:04
Speaker
I also will say it's really hard to make a farmer more profitable, make the entrepreneur more profitable, and pay off the venture capitalists that fund the entrepreneur. There's not that much profit in food to go around.
00:15:15
Speaker
Yes, that's a very good point. In your book, you describe three distinct impulses, techno-fix, solutionism, and the will to improve, that in your view, contribute to the problem with solutions. Many people supporting or developing solutions, often involving technology, have good intentions, and you ref refer to this as the will to improve.
00:15:44
Speaker
Can you explain where does this will to improve originate and what are the key issues you see with it? Absolutely. So first, let me just say it a little bit about the other two a little bit about the other two things. So when I'm talking about the techno fix, I'm talking to um when a solution it reduces a complex problem to something that can be fixed with technology.
00:16:07
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um Often done with the aspirations that you don't want to change standards of living or redistribute. um And the problem with the techno fix is that problems are, um the most intractable problems in agriculture are complex and require political action. so like Technology won't fix it. When I'm talking about solutionism, I'm talking about when the solution drives the problem. Like rather than looking into the origins of the problem, you say, here's an app or I can develop this digital technology. Now I need to look for a way to make it useful.
00:16:42
Speaker
um And so I need to create a problem around it. So it could be like what we're talking about with digital agriculture. We can say, well, farmers dont can't view their fields. So they need they need ah they ah an ability to um use a remote sensor to see what's on their field and give them that.
00:16:59
Speaker
Well, don't prove is a tricky one because it's um we all want to make the better world. So this turn, the well, don't prove is not mine. It was first coined by the anthropologist Tanya Lee. um And in where she was ah thinking about her work on development in Indonesia.
00:17:21
Speaker
And development, of course, is is this huge project that was um the project of of ah the colonial, former colonial powers to fix their former colonies, um to bring them up to better standards of living. I mean, there was many attempts to develop what we call the Third World. Now, particularly after World War II, and part of development was to keep countries from going socialist,
00:17:46
Speaker
um and and to keep them in capitalist orbits at a time when much of the world was veering towards socialism. So the whole idea of development was very much a response to um you know to the socialist revolutions in China and the former USSR,
00:18:03
Speaker
um and and to bring other countries that were former colonies that ah became more impoverished following colonialism up to you know up to modernized standards. Development refers to to well-intended efforts at social betterment.
00:18:19
Speaker
And we get it. we all went up wait We all want to make the world a better place. But it's modeled after what Tonya Lee's calls trustees, but let's say development actors want rather than what those on the ground want. So they imagine what would be better. They come with specific ideas of what people in an impoverished area or maybe not an impoverished area, what they need to do to improve their standards of living. So they're very much, they're they're colonial on that.
00:18:47
Speaker
They're like, we're bringing our ideas to you. And we see the will to improve everywhere. I mean, relatively privileged people want to help, but they bring their ideas of what's needed. So I think that's a lot of what's driving tech because I do see in tech. I mean, yes, a lot of these people in food and agriculture, they want to make profit, of course, but they also truly believe or they say they believe that um that their technology will make things better. But they're not starting with people on the ground asking what they need, what they want, if they want any technology at all. all They're starting with, here's my idea for what I can do.
Advocating for Comprehensive Responses
00:19:24
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um
00:19:25
Speaker
And regardless of whether their idea would create more problems than they solve. So now we understand a bit better what is the problem with solutions. And in your book, you advocate for the concept of responses rather than solutions. What is the key difference between the two? OK, great question. So here's the thing. I mean, i guess these are ideas I'm using. We always use the term solutions. I use the term all the time. This is a way of thinking about.
00:19:57
Speaker
So response, as I ponder it, starts from a different place than solutions. Not like, what can I bring to this because of my knowledge or my skills, but what does the situation need? So assessing what a situation needs calls for an accounting of their ah of the problems.
00:20:15
Speaker
in their many dimensions rather than a rush to contain them. And so if we think about what does a situation need, leave it gives a it's like it gives us much more room of possibility because it leaves room for recognition that many of the world's problems are worth addressing stem from structural inequality and deeply ingrained sociological problems, including colonialism, including capitalism, racism, sexism, and so forth. it So we can I think like to think of response as ah as an inverse of the problem with solutions. So taking the time to consider the problem as an entirety and for whom it is a problem before acting, recognizing the root social causes and vested interest in the problem and considering how those could be changed.
00:21:08
Speaker
and in in in response to the will to improve, asking that change made-makers account for their own position vis-a-vis the problem, and really consider how their solution might harm, and and take into account under what conditions the the solution should or their approach should even be forwarded by whom.
00:21:33
Speaker
So the response is like a much more engaged, humble, reflexive way to addressing the world's problems. But here's the thing, it doesn't mean, I mean, once you start saying, well, structural inequality, I mean, out anything less than addressing that is crummy. And that's not what I'm saying. I don't want listers to think that I think that everything everywhere needs to be done all at once. Instead, I think a response takes strategy. like It's taking the problem in its totality and understanding it and then you'd think,
00:22:10
Speaker
how What is a strategy given the conditions of possibility of the world right now that can allow us to start making a dent on that problem? um And from what you can build social movements and and adjust as conditions change as conditions change. So I think it's strategy that allows the problem to remain big and complex and amorphous, but the path forward to be specific and doable.
00:22:39
Speaker
response, ideally, as a way I think about it, is like, how does the immediacy of a solution but doesn't try to narrow the problem? Yeah.
Lessons from the Green Revolution
00:22:48
Speaker
yes Thank you, Julie. I really like this explanation.
00:22:53
Speaker
And now I'd like to discuss the Green Revolution. So the Green Revolution aimed to increase crop production in developing countries from the 1960s through the use of artificial fertilizers, pesticides, and high yield crop varieties. You argue that it serves as a prime example of how a misdiagnosed problem ah desire ul to avoid political complexities and a well-intentioned will to improve led to a solution with long-lasting controversial consequences. yeah In your book, you write, as a mother of all agricultural technofixes, the Green Revolution should be seen as a cautionary tale. yeah
00:23:39
Speaker
So can you tell us what were the underlying causes of food and security that were overlooked at the time and what might a more effective response look like? I think it's important to recognize that the context of the Green Revolution was very much in keeping with what I was just talking about with development. The Green Revolution was really a counter to the Red Revolution, right? So so how can we develop former colonies in what in agriculture, so it's focused on agriculture in ways that would be pro-capitalist. So the Green Revolution, you know it's its strongholds were Mexico and India and the Philippines, Indonesia to some extent. And so so ah again, it was a counter to to Red Revolution. It's also a counter, I mean, I don't know how we, where we put like agrarian reform or land reform.
00:24:32
Speaker
But, you know, one solution at the time to agricultural impoverishment would have been to to redistribute land. And the promoters of the Green Revolution said, no, no, no, no, no, that would rock the boat too much. What we could do instead to address poverty and hunger is to increase productivity.
00:24:57
Speaker
And so it really focused on high yielding varieties of ah key grains, particularly rice and maize. And you know the problems is it came with it. the These for high yielding varieties were um developed with the presumption that you needed a but a package of water and pesticides and et cetera. So it ends up being this whole package of industrial agriculture.
00:25:21
Speaker
And again, the idea the idea was to increase productivity to feed the world. So it was very much based on these Neo-Malthusian ideas of agricultural productivity would slow down relative to population growth. But again, it goes back to the work of Amartya Sen that many, um as he noted, many food producers themselves were victims of famine. They often produced food but didn't have the income to buy what they need.
00:25:49
Speaker
And so like the Green Revolution was completely built on this idea of needing to feed, it it wasn't the coming 10 billion at the time, but it was like we would run out of food because of population growth. And again, if we look at Sen and others who said, no, no, no, that wasn't why people were hungry. They were hungry because um they didn't have ins of fish they didn't have but enough income or they didn't have jobs or they didn't have enough food assistance or they didn't have um family networks that were robust enough to keep them there, or they didn't have food aid in particular cases, or the food aid was used politically. So most hunger at the time was not from absolute food shortage.
00:26:30
Speaker
Um, so green, the green revolution was a classic techno fix in the sense that what was really, what many of argued could have been better at the time was land reform or some sort of income redistribution.
Technological and Organic Farming Approaches
00:26:43
Speaker
Um, and instead use technology to really not rock the boat. Yeah. The green revolution is a really interesting topic, obviously, and probably one that I would love to dig into.
00:26:57
Speaker
ah More in the future episode. episode I Yeah, I really think not enough people really get the full picture. Yeah Now there are many technologies being developed to reduce reliance on pesticide use including robots for mechanical weed removal and other precision agriculture tools so tell me is undeveloping this technology is a positive step forward and I'm all for reducing pesticide use. I mean, that's really what's driven many of my research project. We actually found precious few technologies in our research that would seriously reduce reliance on on um pesticide use. I don't think we talked to anybody that was um talking about um robots for weed removal, although, you know, sure that would be better, certainly better than using glyphosate.
00:27:50
Speaker
But I want to focus on the promise of digital agriculture and precision tools because I think they are are sold on the promise that they're going to reduce pesticide use, but that's not at all evident that that's what they're doing. So the the whole justification for these in terms of Improving agriculture is that if you can visualize better what's going on in the field, you will use pesticides and other inputs more judiciously um and not overuse them. Only apply where you need it. But the claim has completely not been borne out.
00:28:24
Speaker
And it's you know there's there's really no evidence that any of these digital technologies are are are getting farmers to reduce their pesticides. It's not even clear that a lot of farmers want to adopt them. but That's another story. um ah But it it's we should take note that pesticide companies are some of the players that are investing in some of these. a um Or here's another thing I think about is what farmers most need to reduce pesticide use.
00:28:54
Speaker
is alternative treatments than chemical treatments. Like they need but some of these Some of these techniques are well-established, crop rotations, or or using um beneficial insects. I mean, a lot of what organic farmers can reduce pesticide use. These are technologies that are long been been developed. But we actually saw very few of these being pitched. And so one of the things I've been thinking about about is that we actually know many of the technologies to reduce pesticide use.
00:29:28
Speaker
And again, many of them being up um um applied by diversified farmers it's or organic farmers. Organic has tended to mean certified organic, which is a whole other thing, but a lot of these are being used.
00:29:40
Speaker
So what we must need is ways to support farmers who do that rather than sell technologies, many of which have been repurposed for for military uses. I mean, we don't need technologies that are being produced that are being brought forward to reduce pesticide use. There's many already exist, but they're not getting the same sort of level of support.
00:30:02
Speaker
is what I'm trying to say. So you told us about a lot of things so far. You mentioned the primary solutions. We talk a bit about the green revolution and you started to explain the notion of response. Could you share examples of successful responses to past or current agricultural challenges?
00:30:25
Speaker
It's a tough one, you know, but um i I will just build on what I was just talking about. You could argue that organic farming in some sense was a successful response. They reintroduced technologies long in the making, like the use of beneficial in insects or crop rotations are composting many things that help reduce pesticide uses.
00:30:45
Speaker
um The problem I had with organic farming, and this is what what I first wrote about my dissertation, was not the practice, not the agroecological practice, but the system of regulation, which itself was a solution to a complex problem. And so mainly, um long story, the but um the organic farming movement wanted to differentiate what they were doing from conventional farming. And so they said, okay, we're going to certify that what farmers are doing is according to what we're going to call organic, and then it's going to incentivize growers to farm that way because they'll get a price premium in the market because the market's going to recognize that these growers are growing without pesticides or and are you all practicing better soil fertility methods, et cetera. The problem is for that price premium to hold up to
00:31:41
Speaker
to incentivize farmers, it depends on scarcity. So if a lot of people become organic farmers, and this has happened in the United States, and particularly in California where I live, um the prices erode. So um that that's pretty much the topic of my first book and my first articles about all
Strategic Thinking for Sustainable Farming
00:31:58
Speaker
this. So this is why I say, I think we have the technologies, what we need is other forms of support to get people, to get farmers to grow more sustainably.
00:32:09
Speaker
um and you know, including direct subsidies. One, let's say, non-technological innovation that comes to mind is a research project they did in California, and I'm pretty sure it was with CABG, where they intercropped sweet allicin flowers to attract beneficial insects that naturally kept pest numbers down.
00:32:31
Speaker
yeah And after a series of experiments, they were actually able to nail down the exact number of floral rows needed to cut back on pesticides while still maintaining the same yield, even though they had yeah likely less acreage of actual cabbage planted for harvesting.
00:32:51
Speaker
And now to get to the next question, what recommendations do you give your students once they grasp the problem with solutions? And how can they just contribute to addressing some of the most sin significant can social and environmental challenges of our time, but particularly in agriculture?
00:33:09
Speaker
So I wrote this book um for other students besides my students, and I use my students as kind of a counterpoint. um My students aren't particularly taken with solution culture at all. I just started teaching my class, The Problem with Solutions, just a couple of days ago. It's the second time I've taught the class, and yeah it was just the first day. And these talk they totally get that there's big structural problems. I think they could nuance their analysis at this point,
00:33:37
Speaker
But I work in a university, and particularly in the major in which I work with, um because our students do six-month full-time field studies with social justice and social change organizations. um So a they they yet they get that there needs to be structural changes. They still do a ah little bit of solutioning, not like they're kind of will to improve. they're not they're not techno and They're not interested in technology much at all. I've never heard ah ah students talk about the need for a technology, but they do ah have a will to improve. and so
00:34:11
Speaker
you know like For instance, I've seen over the years many students want to teach people how to eat and farm rather than like how do you address policy to the change out farming goes. So I don't have a hard time getting my students to grasp the problem with solutions. I have a hard time getting my students to recognize that it takes so really hard work and long-term change and that a lot of them get into working and they're interested in food and agriculture because it feels good because they like eating, as do I.
00:34:41
Speaker
or they they like farming and they don't necessarily want to do the policy work that I believe would lead to more structural change. So i think that I think they get it, we all get it. It's hard it's hard to it's hard to come up with long-term change. So I think more and more I'm trying to teach my students to think about strategy, like, okay, what can you do now?
Balancing Activism and Livelihood
00:35:01
Speaker
that is What's most necessary now to leave the field of possibility open to to address these problems in food? yeah So I encourage them to work with organizations who've been trying to effect policy on the ground and to learn how strategies are developed. That's the best I can do. Many end up i'm doing that and some don't, but that's, but they're, like I said, they're not drawn to solution culture.
00:35:25
Speaker
on on ah on the same topic, and let's talk about the young adults in general, not only about the students. In ah capitalist worlds, we're earning a paycheck is a priority for most. yeah Being a solution maker who builds technologies to solve problems while making a living can be very appealing.
00:35:46
Speaker
ah But meanwhile, young people might wonder how they could pay their rent while being political activists. Why would you recommend them? It's tough. I mean, certainly um I don't find it among my students, but certainly there are students that are drawn to the tech world, particularly this, um you know, in the Silicon Valley culture that you could do well by doing good. And it it sounds appealing. You could be a capitalist entrepreneur and still do good. And of course it's attractive. And I get that because you you can make money. So there's that. But I think that, you know,
00:36:23
Speaker
There's other opportunities to make to make a living and working on social change. I mean, it's interesting to me, um our students and our major actually do pretty well on the job market. They work with nonprofit organizations, they work with foundations, they work with governments. Those places aren't outside of contradiction because you know our students write a lot about the nonprofit industrial sector. Nonprofits are wedded to um They need the funds of foundations and the foundations are funded by rich people who get tax breaks. So it's very they're very tied into a system that it's hard to break and they see they learn those contradictions, but it's still possible for them to get jobs that minimize harm. And I think honestly, these days, I think the best we can ask young people is just like try to do work that minimizes harm.
00:37:16
Speaker
I think that's a pretty sad but realistic answer. Try to do works that minimizes harm. You probably want to good, but at least minimize your negative impact.
Policy Recommendations and Conclusion
00:37:28
Speaker
I think that's right because it's hard it's very hard to escape. the It's and impossible to s escape the contradictions and then the ban is ah and impossible to escape capitalism in ways. I mean, you can create non-capitalist institutions, but they're still guided by the logic of capitalism. So a like how do you do use that to minimize harm, to develop strategy towards something different?
00:37:50
Speaker
Julie, what do you believe should be the role of lawmakers or large international organizations such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in incentivizing or regulating the implementation of technology in agriculture?
00:38:07
Speaker
Yeah, I would just say, like I go back to what I was saying, I think we should be incentivizing transitions to agroecology. I don't think we need the tools. We need policies that support farmers in getting off the technological treadmill. I mean, I'd like to see AI regulated. I'm very fearful of AI, you know we you know particularly in the political world. We have deep fakes and I mean, I just, God, i ah But I Googled something the other day and I got the stupidest answer. um And it's like, wow, this AI doesn't really know what it's talking about. but i just you know i So I think there needs to be regulation of the tech sector, I think, more generally. In terms of food and agriculture, I just think that we should be focused on on responding, on helping farmers who are doing the right thing to do it better. yeah And I don't think technology is going to solve the problems of food and agriculture.
00:39:03
Speaker
Outside of the well-known anti-GMO movements, are there any other groups in the US that oppose or advocate against techno-solutionism in agriculture? Yeah, that's a really good question. I was thinking about that. um i I think there are those who are tied into agroecology movements who are skeptical, but I don't think it's become a platform or position of any groups at this point. The one thing I think exists is there's organizations. I mean, this goes right to your open AI. There's an organization, the acronym is GOAT, and I'm going to have to remember what it stands for.
00:39:40
Speaker
but it's about open agricultural technology. um There's another one, Farmlink, that's around here in California. and Basically, these um our organizations that want to have open access technology, that recognize that part of the problem with technology that we haven't discussed today is that it's highly proprietary. and it's not um so Once it's proprietary, that's what's caught that's what's going to make Charlie version lot.
00:40:06
Speaker
The problem is because they're going to pay for those patents. um that you know They're going to pay high prices because the technologies are patented. What I'm saying is there's organizations that recognizes that technology should be more accessible, that there should be open code.
00:40:22
Speaker
so it can be um manipulate it to be more user friendly. And so they're they're kind of skeptical of technology, but not really. they It's more like technology for good. umm just um I'm just not on board with that particularly. I don't i think I'm glad that they are um they recognize the problem of proprietary technologies. im I'm not opposed to them, but I think that I'm just not seeing, like again, like I'm not seeing how the problem the serious problems of food and agriculture are going to be addressed with technology. they it takes I think they're all almost all political questions.
00:41:02
Speaker
You know, food security, we need policy we need higher wages, we need better more robust food assistance, we need redistribution, we need to tax wealth. There's all these other things that have nothing to do with technology that I believe would make our food system more equitable, ecologically sustainable. So I'm just not convinced that technology is lit at all the path forward for fixing food and agriculture.
00:41:28
Speaker
Thank you very much, Julie, for this conversation. I think the debate surrounding solutions, technology, and the notion of progress is very important. Yeah. But I also believe that, unfortunately, it is still poorly understood by most people.
00:41:46
Speaker
Yeah. And I think you are doing a fantastic job at explaining it in a clear and yet well-documented way. um So thank you again. And before we conclude this interview, are there any recommendations you'd like to make to our listeners who want to dive deeper into the topic? Well, Sherry, you can read my book, and it's available, The Problem with Solutions, How Silicon Valley Can't Hack the Future of Food, and that's available through the University of California Press website.
00:42:16
Speaker
I have a few other books that i um that I drawn on in my book that I think give us really good analysis into the problem with solution culture. um I'll just name a few. few um winners take all by a non giriddaas Ruhoff Benjamin's Race After Technology, who talks about how technology has racist underpinnings. It's really um including robots, really great book. Jesse Goldstein's Planetary Improvement um talks about um ah the role of venture capital and and constraining the visions of entrepreneurs.
00:42:53
Speaker
Ananya Roy's encountering poverty about you know kind of how solution culture takes hold and it in poverty efforts, anti-poverty efforts. So those are some of the ones that I've drawn on that I really like. There's many others. There's a podcast, Tech Won't Save Us. um So you know but that's some of the stuff that's out there.
00:43:15
Speaker
Perfect. I will add links to your recommendations in the show notes and ah also in the transcript of this episode that we will publish on the website. Great. Thanks again, Julie. And see you soon. Yeah, thank you so much for having me on your program. It was really fun.
00:43:44
Speaker
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00:44:13
Speaker
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