Food and Sustainability

From RFK Jr. to Hollywood A-listers and Democratic senators, people across the political spectrum are jumping onto the slippery slope of nature-based solutionism.

In this episode of Handpicked: Stories from the Field, guest producer Harrison Runtz talks with food systems experts Kelly Bronson, Irena Knezevic, and Carly Livingstone about how new digital technologies are changing the ways we grow and get food. They look at how big agri-businesses like John Deere create visions of a technological future of food, examine what Amazon’s entry into online food retailing has meant for small-scale and local food retailers, and argue for a more critical understanding about the impact of technological innovations on food systems. Together, they ask vital questions about who benefits and who doesn’t from new food technologies.   Contributors Guest-Producer & Host: Harrison Runtz Co-Producers & Hosts:  &  Sound Design, Research & Editing: Adedotun Babajide  Guests   Support & Funding Music Credits Keenan Reimer-Watts  Resources (Bronson and Knezevic) (Livingstone and Knezevic) (Bronson)  See also the     Connect with Us: Email:  Twitter: @Handpickedpodc Facebook:    Glossary of Terms Big DataLarge quantities of data gathered by digital platforms, such as Amazon or Facebook, and other technologies, such as remote sensing, etc. Big data can be sorted and analyzed in different ways to uncover important insights for decision making. For instance, big data can be used to understand consumer purchasing practices to inform marketing spending and business practices to increase profit margins.   Data Mining Extracting patterns and key insights from big data sets, often using statistics and machine-learning technologies.   Data Sovereignty   The right of people to have access to and power over the data and information associated with their lives, work, or communities.     Digitization The increasing use of digital technologies across sectors to make decisions and enable practices. Digital technologies include (but are not limited to), local and remote sensing technologies, digital platforms, big data, cloud-based solutions, etc.  Farming 4.0 Also referred to as digital farming, smart farming, or precision agriculture, this type of farming makes use of sensing technology and sophisticated computing technologies to make decisions about all aspects of the farm including crop choice, inputs, irrigation, and harvesting.   Food Policy Food policies are developed by governments at different scales to guide food-related decisions and actions. They inform and govern public, private, and non-profit sector actions related to improving food-related outcomes and can create opportunities for stakeholders to work together across sectors.  Food Security   Food security is the ability to access safe, nutritious, culturally appropriate, and sufficient food all year round. A person or community is food insecure when people cannot afford or have limited or no access to the food they need to nourish their bodies. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization state that “food insecurity can affect diet quality in different ways, potentially leading to undernutrition as well as. . . obesity.”    Food Sovereignty  "Food Sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems."    Open Source Data    A legal protection that ensures that data that is owned and available for use to everyone in a particular community. In the case of Open Food Network, all users have access to all code associated with the platform but must make any alterations or new code available to all other users.    Platform   Digital infrastructure or frameworks for different kinds of exchange. For example, Open Food Network is a platform that enables digital food hubs, shops, or farmers markets.   Producer   A food enterprise which makes, grows, bakes, cooks, or produces food which it can supply to other businesses for sale.      Robotics  The use of machines to perform tasks previously completed by waged workers. In agriculture, robotics include picking and milking machines, tractors and other farming machines, and packing machines, among other technologies.   Supply Chain  All of the components of a system—including organizations, producers, suppliers, people, resources, activities, information, and infrastructures—that get a product to a consumer.    Sustainable Food System  Food systems that are “socially just, support local economies; are ecologically regenerative, and foster citizen engagement.”      Discussion Questions  How are digital technologies changing food and farming How are privacy concerns around food and farming data similar to, or different from, more general digital privacy worries (e.g., social media, geo-tracking, etc.)? Why is concentrated power in digital food and farming an issue of social justice? What are some approaches that can ensure digital technologies equitably serve farmers and others who work in food? 

The founding fathers of the social sciences recognized commensality as a major issue but considered it mostly in a religious, sacrificial, ritualistic context. ...

The high resource intensity of industrial beef in high-income economies has prompted growing interest in alternative, potentially lower environment...

Tara Garnett is a researcher at the University of Oxford where she runs the Food Climate Research Network and its sister site Foodsource.  Her work centres on the interactions among food, climate, health and broader sustainability issues.  She has particular interests in livestock as an area where many of these converge, and in how knowledge is communicated to and interpreted by policy makers, civil society and industry, and in their different approaches to food problems and solutions. Tara is also part of the LEAP project at Oxford, a Wellcome Trust-funded initiative focused on gaining a greater understanding of the health, environmental, social and economic effects of livestock production and consumption.  In particular she works closely with Jamie Lorimer, Alex Sexton and Nathan Clay, on themes which explore the rise in alternatives to animal products, and transitions in the dairy sector. You can contact Tara on taragarnett@fcrn.org.uk.

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The use of antibiotics in raising livestock is complex. We could be moving towards a less-than-ideal result due to poor understanding, over-simplistic messaging and a rush for competitive advantage.

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Warangal District, Andhra Pradesh, India, is a key cotton‐growing area in one of the most closely watched arenas of the global struggle over genetically modified crops. In 2005 farmers adopted India’s first genetically modified crop, Bt cotton, in numbers that resemble a fad. Various parties, including the biotechnology firm behind the new technology, interpret the spread as the result of farmer experimentation and management skill, alluding to orthodox innovation‐diffusion theory. However, a multiyear ethnography of Warangal cotton farmers shows a striking pattern of localized, ephemeral cotton seed fads preceding the spread of the genetically modified seeds. The Bt cotton fad is symptomatic of systematic disruption of the process of experimentation and development of management skill. In fact, Warangal cotton farming offers a case study in agricultural deskilling, a process that differs in fundamental ways from the better‐known process of industrial deskilling. In terms of cultural evolutionary theory, deskilling severs a vital link between environmental and social learning, leaving social learning to propagate practices with little or no environmental basis. However, crop genetic modification is not inherently deskilling and, ironically, has played a role in reinvolving farmers in Gujarat in the process of breeding.