62. The Efficiency Trap: Why Doing More Isn't Doing Better w/ Andrew Flachs

In this episode of Hands in the Soil, we sit down with Andrew Flachs, associate professor of anthropology at Purdue University and author of two books that ask some of the most clarifying questions in food systems discourse: Cultivating Knowledge: Biotechnology, Sustainability, and the Human Cost of Cotton Capitalism in India and his most recent, Feeding the World as if People Mattered: How Small Farms Produce Value Beyond Yields. Andrew grew up in a small Pennsylvania town with a grandmother's garden he admittedly didn't love as a kid, and found his way into this work through a chance encounter with urban gardening research, a student meal cooperative, and an advisor who sent him to India at exactly the right moment. Andrew brings the kind of rigor to this conversation that comes from years in the field with farmers across three continents, combined with a willingness to question the assumptions baked into how we talk about food. Tune in to learn more about:How Andrew went from hating picking beans as a kid to becoming a leading anthropologist of food and agricultureWhy the fight to prove that small farms can match conventional yields is the wrong fight entirelyThe "iceberg economy" and all the care work, infrastructure, and labor that lies beneath the visible surface of our food systemWhat his research across the US Midwest, Bosnia, and South India revealed about what small farming families actually share across different contextsThe explosion of GM cotton seeds in India, from three brands in 2002 to over a thousand by 2012, and what that did to farmers' knowledge, livelihoods, and mortality ratesWhy farmers on organic cotton programs kept farming even when the economic math didn't add up, and what that reveals about what farming is actually forThe true costs of "cheap" food: what isn't being counted in environmental degradation, public health, labor exploitation, and soil lossWhy efficiency is often a trap, and how efficient technologies without systemic change just lead us to do more of the same harmful thingHow the current Farm Bill debate and the Iran war oil disruptions reveal the fragility of just-in-time global supply chainsWhat a resilient food system would require, and what we already know how to doBooks & Resources MentionedBy Andrew Flachs:Feeding the World as if People Mattered: How Small Farms Produce Value Beyond Yields(Use code AZFLR for 30% off. If cost is a barrier, email Andrew directly.)Cultivating Knowledge: Biotechnology, Sustainability, and the Human Cost of Cotton Capitalism in IndiaInteractive Story Map: Cotton in Indiahttps://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/20f488863e4a41a892f0dd7a346180c0Referenced in conversation:Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered - E.F. Schumacher (1973)The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need School Food and How to Get It - Jennifer GaddisBeginning to End Hunger: Food and the Environment in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and Beyond - Dr. Jahi ChappellConnect with AndrewWebsite: andrewflachs.comInstagram: @drflachsophoneEmail: [email protected] of Arizona Press: @azpress on InstagramConnect with Hannah: Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@hannahkeitel ⁠⁠⁠