Transcript for

What is food solutionism? And why does it limit us

Jack Thompson

Welcome to Feed, a food systems podcast. I’m Jack Thompson.

Colin Sage

And so at this conference George Monbiot was the keynote speaker. And I mean, he was talking about precision fermentation, and he was saying that this is probably the most important environmental technology ever developed, and he said that it might be all that now that stands between us and earth system collapse. So we’re talking about huge existential stakes here, if we don't adopt, adopt this technology.

I'm Colin Sage. I'm calling from the city of Vienna do Costello in the north of Portugal. I worked before at University College Cork.

Jack

Colin is talking here about technological solutions to food systems problems. Here’s another set of proposed solutions you may have heard about.

Garrett Broad

Mark Bittman who folks may be familiar and he has become a major advocate for agroecology. And he says quote “Agroecology is hands down, our best bet for changing agriculture's role from a driver of the greatest problems afflicting humankind to a solution.”

Jack

And that’s Garrett Broad, Associate Professor of Communication at Rowan University, talking about another solution.

Garrett

If we flipped agroecology there and we put in precision fermentation, or we flipped precision fermentation from the Monbiot quote and put in agroecology, we'd kind of be in the same place. And that's what I'm really trying to push against.

Jack Thopmson

The point of this conversation is to complicate some of the solutions and narratives around the future of food. “Technology will save the day” versus “Technology only makes things worse”. “Agroecology can feed the world” versus “only industrial farming can feed us”. 

This isn’t to say these perspectives aren’t needed, or that those using them don’t have some justification for their view. Only that these over-simplifications dominate conversation and debates. And they aren’t necessarily representative of many of the nuanced visions we have for our future farms and plates.

In this episode we’re going to talk about what happens when a bunch of people sit in a room together who normally don’t, how some hybrid solutions involve both low and high tech, and what are the consequences when only a few familiar voices dominate the discourse. 

But that’s not where this whole thing started. It actually started with a thread from Blue Sky.

Jack 

The three things that I'm thinking about today, you know, what is solutionism? How does it apply to technology and agroecology? And how can this concept help us to have more honest conversations and develop better solutions, basically.  

So I'd like to start with the kind of the blue sky thread. We did a podcast series called Fuel to Fork about investigating the fossil fuels in our food system. And this was a really interesting project, and we got to dive deep into all of the sections of the food chain and how fossil fuels are embedded at every stage, and then we also proposed some solutions about how we could phase out these fossil fuels. And I guess the kind of the seed of this podcast here was when Garrett posted on blue sky some really interesting feedback.

Garrett 

I really enjoyed listening to the podcast. And I thought the critiques of, one, the role of fossil fuels in the system, and the importance of fossil fuels and the negative externalities that come from that were really spot on. I also thought there was some good discussion about some technological solutions that are sometimes overhyped, that can maybe not lead us down the optimal food system transformation path. 

But what my post was about was this kind of flip side that I felt I heard in aspects of the podcast, and it wasn't just in this podcast, but that I read in a lot of the work that I engage here, in a lot of the advocacy in terms of food system transformation, which was this sort of okay, technology is not the solution. What is? Agroecology is the solution. Or sometimes it's interchangeable with food sovereignty or regenerative agriculture. And I just felt like there was a similar problem that is being, you know, the critique that is sometimes leveled about technological solutionism as being overly simplified, as frictionless, as not fully representative of complexity. That was my concern, that I was seeing this, and so I kind of used the term agroecological solutionism. I've used that kind of informally. Sometimes I'll say grassroots solutionism or regenerative solutionism, but the basic idea is to flip from one binary way of thinking to another. And what I would love to see is more exploration of that complexity of trade offs, of what works well, of what some of the limits are. And so that was the real kind of gist of what I had to say there. And look forward to exploring further in this conversation.

Jack 

Yeah, I think it's, it's interesting to use this concept of solutionism in different scenarios. But before we get to that, I want to ask Colin, who recently authored a paper on high tech solutionism. I wanted to ask you about, the kind of concept of high tech solutionism.

Colin

So my paper was very much coming at it, not from an anti tech or Neo Luddite position, rejecting it, but simply to say, a lot of the claims that are being made in this space are really, you know, rather ambitious, to say the least. You could say they really reflect a degree of boosterism around the technology. And that is, is okay in itself, if we understand the limits of that. But it does tend to kind of get embedded into the wider narrative around the food system. And I suppose that's the concern, is that we try not to, you know, we're trying to have a wider debate, rather than just to drag, you know, somehow seize upon these singular solutions.

Jack 

Could you give an example of when a sort of a technology is overhyped, for want of a better word, and sometimes, what is missing from that conversation, whether that might be the criticism of how this tech might be used, and who wins and who loses?

Colin 

The semaglutide range of family of pharmaceuticals, you know, the GLP-1 agonist drugs you know, such as Ozempic and Wegovy. Designed to be a solution to the problems that we're facing in overweight and obesity And in some ways, people are picking those up and saying, Yes, this is a solution to all my problems and difficulties of putting on weight and so on. But of course, what it's doing is it's overwhelming the capacity of public health services to be able to prescribe these drugs. It simply will outstrip their capacity to be able to afford the cost of these pharmaceuticals. So in some ways, and of course, in all of that, there is no discussion about what it is that people are putting into their mouths. There's no discussion about the nature of how food products themselves have changed. And there seems to be strong evidence to suggest the whole rise of ultra processed foodstuffs is contributing to this onset of overweight.

Jack 

Do you think concept of, you know, tech is going to save us? Does that ignore the like, the wider structure in which these problems occur? Does that avoid these wider conversations around things like power? 

Colin 

It does, indeed, I think, to my mind, it tends to significantly distort this wider debate partly because, you know, the technology itself becomes ever more removed from people's capacity to be able to get comprehended and Garrett will speak more about this whole issue around deficit. My concern was largely with the claims that were being made. And so at this conference George Monbiot was the keynote speaker. And I mean, he was talking about precision fermentation, and he was saying that this is probably the most important environmental technology ever developed, and he said that it might be all that now that stands between us and earth system collapse. 

So you know, we're talking about huge existential stakes here, if we don't adopt, adopt this technology. That was my concern is that we're overrating, over blowing the capacity for any singular technology to come to the rescue.

Garrett 

Technological solutionism is not new. You know, there have been people making big claims about the power of single technologies to transform the world for good for a long time. I think one of the things that's really driven this, this big sort of hype cycle in the food tech space has been the intersection with a broader way of thinking and capital formation related to Silicon Valley and the broader technology industry. 

And so Evgeny Morozov is the scholar who's kind of popularized this term solutionism and brought it into widespread use. And he talks about it with a couple key aspects. You know, one of the things he talks about is that solutionism arrives at solutions without a real, grounded understanding of the context of the problem. And then it also reduces complexity, and it offers a narrative of change that's really frictionless. And then I think there's also often an important role of a kind of pitch man, and it's all. 

Often, not always, but often a man who is sort of this, all knowing representative for humanity and for food systems in this context, right? And this is someone who's calling for investment in, maybe their company, their technology, in their idea, maybe in their own persona. And so, you know, who isn't attracted to that, right? I think most of us want to believe that there's this brilliant, beautiful solution around the corner that's going to deliver health and well being and sustainability for all, and I think many of us are, you know, so integrated into this technological way of thinking in an age of digital media and algorithms and major innovation, that, as well as the kind of, you know, shark tankification. It's in in two and a half minutes, can you pitch this world changing idea? And I think we all want to be part of that, and we want to invest in that, and we want to be able to make those, you know, solutions happen. And so you can see the appeal there. And but I think as as Colin points out, you can also, if you, you know, zoom out a little bit, you can see the limits that come from any single technology to deliver that kind of change.

Jack 

Yeah, it's interesting how you know, in two and a half minutes you don't really have the time to kind of encapsulate the complexity of the entire food system where, you know, let alone other types of problems of well.

Garrett 

And I also think it's important to recognize, you know, investors want to get in on a game that's saying this is going to be world changing. And so if you say, Hey, this is going to have some marginal utility over the course of 55 to 75 years that we think, you know, could help reduce certain aspects of planetary boundary. You know, no, that's not, that's not the Shark Tank pitch. And so I think that is a big part of it. It's about the money, but it's also about the flow of ideas in the current moment.

Jack 

So it's well established in some ways, there's a more understood that, and we hear it a lot in the discourse around the food movement, that, you know, technology isn't always the answer, and it is over hyped. And what I found really interesting about your comment on Blue sky, Garrett, was that actually is a similar thing happening with concepts in the campaign against the industrial dominant food system. And you know why? Why is that happening? If it's not a question of VC?

Garrett 

I think it's not a question of venture capital investment, but I think it is a question. I think, well, a couple things are going on here. One is, I think that people want to encourage others to, you know, come along with their broader idea and their broader movement. And for even if you're not trying to get money to that, you want to have an inspiring and powerful narrative, and so it's just natural to kind of play up the positives and maybe downplay some of the negative trade offs. I do also think that everyone has their own self interest or their interest in their organizations, and I don't think that that's a bad thing, necessarily. But like nonprofits in the broader agroecological arena, food sovereignty arena, they're looking for donors too. They're looking for support for their ideas. And so I don't think that there's like just money on one side, only in tech investment, and there's no money happening over on the other side, there's there's money there too. And I think that can lead to, you know, that that's that doesn't always mean that people are bad, right? But I think there's, there's interest on that side, and I also think there's just a lot of true believers who have heard these stories told over and over again about the kind of frictionless possibility of an agro ecological transition. And they just continue to repeat that as well, in the same ways that get, you know, people who buy into the idea that, you know, a new innovation and alternative protein is going to overnight transform our meat, you know, production system. I think we get a lot of true believers in and it gets repeated over and over again.

And that's what I'm really trying to push against. You know this idea that this thing is going to be applied everywhere, right? Maybe agroecology is going to work really great in certain contexts, and it really is something we should be pushing for. I'm not trying to say I'm against agro ecology. I think agroecology has a lot of value and benefits, but I think we sometimes assume that it is what everyone is asking for, what everyone is hoping for, both in the highly developed world and in developing agricultural context. And I think we often do that without that full investigation of local contexts that are really required to develop the kinds of solutions that I think are necessary for real food system change.

Jack 

Could you, could you just go into some of the because I know you mentioned this in in your threads, what? What are some of the tangible shortcomings in your perspective? 

Garrett 

When it comes to agroecology, there are some real trade offs, the biggest one being labor. And you know, to to shift to a significantly more agroecological food system, especially in the developed world, would require millions, 10s of millions of new agricultural workers. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but that's hard work. It's hard to get people to come into agricultural work. It would also require significant demographic change, reversing trends of urbanization. So big issue, hard to do. A lot of people want to get out of agricultural labor over time as economies develop. And so, you know, how do we make sense of that? How do we deal with those trade offs? Another is the basic technology. You know, what technologies are allowed in an agro ecological transition? What are not? 

There is some work I've seen, you know, I think of some work by a scholar named Maywa Montenegro de Wit, who has an interesting paper where she breaks down some principles for what types of technology would fit in with an agroecological transition. But I think those kinds of really close readings and considerations are few and far between. But you know, big challenges, especially in the arena of fertilization. 

Manure management is very hard, especially for thinking about a global food system. One of the real advantages of fertilizer, both synthetic and organic, is that you can put it into containers and move it around, and much harder to do with things like manure. And so I think that would be a real challenge. And then the other huge one is just the broader cultural change, right? 

There's an assumption in a lot of the agroecological literature and advocacy that, you know, if it weren't for this big, bad food system, everybody would be eating like Alice Waters and Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman, I'm naming some of these US Food movement luminaries that the true desire of global eaters and global agriculturalists is a localized farm to table style food system that is very low in meat consumption. Or if there is meat, it is coming from like the perfect, idyllic, you know, grass fed pastoralist system. I'm just not convinced that this is entirely a supply side problem. I think there is a demand side that agroecology advocates sometimes don't fully reckon with. That are we sure that this is the vision of food systems that everybody, eaters and producers really wants to buy into?

Jack 

So one thing that is coming up for me, and this is kind of personal to what I do as a journalist covering food and farming, is kind of the battle for ideas and the struggle to tell powerful, complex stories. It's something that I definitely, you know, struggle with and kind of, you know, how do you, how do you tell a really good story about a really complex food system in 1000 words?  

Garrett 

I would say to me the biggest challenge I see in these conversations is this tendency towards a real binary thinking. That you can either have industrial agriculture or you can have agroecology. You can either have food justice for laborers, or you can have exploitation. And the reality is, as much as we might aspire for a fully just, a fully sustainable system, that there's always trade offs. And you know, I think we need for a better conversation. I think we need a recognition on both ends of this spectrum, that there's not one solution, right? It's not end industrial agricultural entirely. It's also not, you know, we're going to starve if we, you know, promote agroecology. And so you see a lot of this very dismissive talk, undoubtedly, from the kind of, you know, big food power players about agroecology, that it's anti scientific, that it's, you know, that it that it would lead to mass starvation. And I find that that dismissal is really unproductive. But on the other side, I also sometimes think statements like, we need to end industrial agriculture. I mean, what does that mean? What would that look like, what would the implications of that be? For labor, for family, for community, for health, and so can we get away from these attachment to these binaries? I think it's really hard to do, especially when a lot of folks have a lot of value, you know, a lot of value invested into being an advocate for one side or the other. But I appreciate you know this podcast being a place where these this nuance can come forth.

Colin 

There was a statement you make a citation in your most recent piece, Garrett to some work from Amanda Ripley, and there was a statement that she made that, you, quote, “Complicate the narrative early and often.” I think that's brilliant, And in some ways, the whole issue is that this simplicity or simplification of narratives on either side give rise to this, this polarization that you've been describing and and so it seems to me that if we are going to have a more honest and less polarized discussion, as Jack was inviting us to to try to work towards Then we have to open up, I think, some discussion around becoming more humble, I suppose thinking in a more, you know, precautionary way around some of these issues. 

And I think, you know, in that respect, we have to start to find ways of building a narrative, an alternative narrative that falls somewhere between this shunning of technology, the agroecological kind of embracing, and this idea that singular solutions, coming science will solve our problem and find a way of of charting A course. And of course, what we have to do in that respect is reject this kind of Universalist kind of approach, and I think, re engage back with territory, with the local, with the regional, with identifying kind of both our local resources and human capabilities in in those territories, as well as color traditions and everything else, we have to find ways of recovering some of that. Otherwise, I think, you know, if we left it to Silicon Valley to provide us with our with our means, we're on the course towards Soylent Green, and nobody wants to see us heading in that direction. So we've really got to open up a discussion, but that does require a wider, a wider debate within civil society. So the question might be is, how do we, how do we enable people to participate in that debate around what kind of food future they begin to envisage?

Jack 

So one anecdote that comes to mind, I was in a job interview for as a copywriter, as I was kind of debating the the long term viability of journalism, and we were talking about the advantages of, you know, working for an organic brand, and also, but also working for a brand that actually did things in a hybrid sense, wasn't organic, wasn't conventional, and did things in different ways. And one of my kind of comments was that, you know, I think marketing is a lot easier when you're working in absolutes. 

And her response was, I don't want to tell simple stories. I want to tell complex stories. And so question that I have for you, Garrett, is like, do you have a vision of how you know agroecology and you know, more conventional farming could weave together to maximize impact?

Garrett 

So there's a couple things. So I also serve in the role of president of the board of an organization called the Plant Based Foods Institute, which is a nonprofit that advocates for sustainable plant based food transitions and just increases in plant based food opportunities for both growers and eaters. And through that work, I had the chance to meet some folks working on a really interesting project in Rwanda. And it was a collaboration between a group called The One Acre Fund and some researchers over at Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands. And what they are doing there is trying to come up with, you know, in Rwanda there's, there's very low meat consumption. But as the, you know, economy continues to develop, they're expecting much more increases in demand, and that comes with a variety of concerns about the rise of potential confined animal feeding operations and what that would mean for public health and sustainability. And so there's this really cool project where they're working on building a value chain for small holder sourced locally produced plant based high protein products. 

And so it's bringing together technological innovation, but local crops, trying to come up with optimal formulations for these plant based high protein products, and they need it to work for the local context. So it needs to be stable, produced from smallholder sourced climate resilient crops that are cultivated directly in Rwanda, also looking for ways that that technology should be available and applicable to other Rwandan, you know, folks in the broader supply chain.

And so I just thought that was such a cool project. It's very much in process, but it's like, all right, can we take some of the high tech, you know, work that's going on in analyzing the nature of protein, developing products from small holder sourced crops and and coming up with this collaboration that could help us also do things in a way that aligns with food cultures? 

And, you know, how did that that get done? You know, I haven't been directly involved in that project, but it involves bringing people into rooms together, who are usually not in rooms together, right? 

It means getting folks you know, who are doing smallholder farming in conversation with, you know, Dutch food scientists, in conversation with philanthropists, and global development experts. And you know that, to me, is, is just a great example of of how this stuff could come together. 

You know, it also speaks to, to me, one of the things in a lot of these conversations, I just get, I get really nervous when anybody says, I'm here representing 100,000,000x right? And 

I see this on kind of both sides of this debate, right? You'll see often, you know, groups like the Gates Foundation and AGRA their initiative, sort of saying, Hey, we're here representing hundreds of millions of agriculturalists. But you also see it from groups like La Via Campesina or the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa. And they'll say, you know, we represent the small holder across the entire continent of Africa, or across all of, you know, all peasant farmers around the developing world. And that just makes me really nervous, right? When anybody's trying to represent hundreds of millions of people. There is a heterogeneous, diverse background, interest, and so, you know, that's why I think we need to make sure that we're not just assuming that any one organization, and I'm not trying to say that those groups don't, you know, represent a lot of people and bring a valuable voice into the conversation, potentially, but just be careful of anybody saying we speak in a single voice. Nobody speaks in a single voice, right for hundreds of millions of people. And so, how do we build rooms, collaborative projects like the one I mentioned, that show some push and pull from different perspectives, different needs and interests, that to me, there's some real possibility there.

Jack 

What I would say about that project, Garrett, is, it sounds really thoughtful, well thought out to a local context. And also, you know, I love this idea as well. Like bringing people in that wouldn't normally be in the rooms to understand each other, I think that's a really cool step. 

Colin 

Well, the question, I suppose, is the degree to which technologies and scientific processes have been patented and basically enclosed. So we're really talking about intellectual property rights and the degree to which those frame and shape everything that proceeds, if there is sufficient development and conditions for open source technologies to be developed to a certain level and then adapted at a different territories according to local resources to make use, perhaps of local biological materials. And I'm thinking here, what are the possibilities for using perhaps underutilized crops for which there is, you know, a great deal of local farmer expertise, but yet perhaps declining market demand as people begin to engage in this nutrition transition away from those traditional food sources. So therefore, if there was a way of being able to feed into, you know, precision fermentation processes that give rise to, you know, locally adapted technologies that could make use of local resources and local expertise, I think. Would be very, very, very, very important. What we're talking about is an age of digital surveillance and an enclosure and, you know, and the closing down of opportunities for sharing. So we need to open up spaces for this kind of technology hacking to proceed, for local adaptability of these kinds of technologies and to enable those local production platforms to develop their own skills and abilities. I think that's quite important.  

Jack 

I think what that speaks to as well is acknowledging the structure and the context of which technology and agroecology are located in. You know, that addresses the issue of power and of economic control. So I think, these are some of the critiques to high tech solutionism that it doesn't really recognize the role of of power in these in these technologies, and who profits and who loses. One final area that I'd love to conclude on is, you know, how does this concept of solutionism? You know, how could that lead to better conversations and therefore better solutions in in the food system? And I'd love to start with you. Colin,

Colin 

There's a way in which some of these conversations could really begin from below. I mean, I think we have to find what kinds of grassroots initiatives might be able to take on board some of these kind of issues. And I'm thinking here being involved myself over the last 10 or more years with the Food Policy Council in Cork in Ireland. 

A Food Policy Council is an arrangement of people who advocate for a more sustainable, healthier food system, and they're working really with local local people and and hopefully with local government, to engage in producing some kind of a strategy or some kind of change on the grounds that enables people to become much more involved with the with the local food system. 

These kinds of civic initiatives go through periods of, you know, of decline and and growth and, but they nevertheless take on, many of them a capacity to take forward you know, discussion around the vision for the food system within their locality. And one of the ways that might kind of be be developed, in some degree, is through the use of these participatory methodologies, like citizens assemblies, citizens juries, these kinds of deliberative mechanisms that enable people to come together and to express their views and and so on, as well as practical kind of activities that enable people to demonstrate the degree of agency around food. I think one of the key things about much of this discussion, of course, I think it really relegates people to being relatively passive consumers who are making choices in the supermarket shelves about whether they buy a plant based or a meat based product, and that's the limit of their engagement. 

But if you can start to engage people much more as agents of their own, you know, food system, being able to construct something around some perhaps some growing, some engagement with others, around sharing food and so on. 

I think those kinds of initiatives are incredibly important and educational, and begin to give rise to opportunities for people to, you know, talk to each other about what kind of food future they they envisage. And of course, as we embrace or as we attempt to grapple with this climate emergency, and we see young people beginning to think about their own futures, it may well be that we can layer in food as a dimension of that. I mean, as it invariably, is essential kind of factor to bring that in and try to, you know, enroll younger people also into this discussion around around food, the food system.

Garrett 

I would add that, I think we need to be willing to change our mind, to alter, you know, what were our ideological preconceptions? And again, I really think that this is something that that is needed on on both sides of the spectrum of this often binary debate, right? Well, so bring in more of this possibility of a spectrum for one in so doing, be able to continue to advocate for your fundamental values while being open to, “hey, this particular practice that I thought was what was needed maybe isn't.” And so, you know, just by way of another example, there's some great work by a scholar named Rachel Soper, who did field work in the rural highlands of Ecuador talking to peasant farmers. And she kind of came, I don't know exactly what her predisposition was, but she wanted to kind of test out the extent to which a kind of La Via Campesina oriented agro ecological approach was something that these communities were looking for and were calling for. And through her field work, she just found that they weren't really right. They were much more interested in figuring out, how do they connect to, you know, markets, you know, what are other aspects of the supply chain that could be improved? How could they actually increase their, you know, yield on monocropped fields and so, you know, it's just an example of, let's not over generalize any community. Let's be willing to come in with values and perspectives, but not be so tied to a particular ideological perspective that it gets in the way of us coming up with pragmatic solutions that are in the best interest of those most affected. And so, yeah, I would say, keep making those rooms. There's, there's, I'm definitely in Professor mode here, often providing citations. But there's a another great book by a guy named a philosopher named Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò. It's not about food at all, but it's just more broadly about kind of social change and progressive politics. And you know, he talks a lot about this need to build these rooms that include diverse perspectives, and not necessarily, you know, the first person on your list who you think is going to be the representative for those 100 million people, but you know, maybe the folks working, you know, in in agricultural, you know, field work, as opposed to the head of the NGO, NGO, for instance, and, and I think, you know, to get all those folks in the room together, that's the real challenge, to push back against some of this binary thinking. Come up with solutions that are, are cognizant of trade offs, while still pushing forth our broader social and environmental values.

Jack 

I think also like admitting where a certain concept is weak but has its strengths, t that gives you credibility like and then that that allows, that allows for a space to continuously improve that concept or that way of farming, or that way of getting things to market.  

Garrett 

Yeah, but it's not great for a TED talk, right? I think there's also a really important media and culture piece of this, which is we need better journalism and media making in the broader. Traditional journalism is not the only way people get stories out anymore, obviously. And so I think we need to really push for platforms that tell these stories of trade offs, that tell these stories of change of directions when the conditions  on the ground shift. And so some of this is also about our media norms as well. And so, yeah, keep pushing for podcasts like this that allow us to grapple with the strengths and the limits. 

Jack 

So I'd like to thank Colin and Garrett for joining us here. It's been a super interesting conversation, one that's like close to my heart and way of thinking. So it's been a great, really interesting conversation. So thank you.