{"id":34415,"date":"2018-05-21T10:31:57","date_gmt":"2018-05-21T15:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=34415"},"modified":"2018-05-21T10:31:57","modified_gmt":"2018-05-21T15:31:57","slug":"talkin-bout-a-revolution-a-response-to-the-breakthrough-institute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=34415","title":{"rendered":"Talkin\u2019 bout a revolution: a response to the Breakthrough Institute"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Talkin\u2019 bout a revolution: a response to the Breakthrough Institute<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
\n

The Breakthrough Institute have published a response<\/a> to my critical commentary on a recent post of theirs. Here I continue the debate, because I think it might clarify some worthwhile issues. I\u2019d like to thank Dan Blaustein-Rejto and Kenton De Kirby (henceforth B&D) for engaging constructively with me \u2013 a welcome improvement on what\u2019s come my way from some previous Breakthrough folk.<\/p>\n

Broadly, the issue between us is our different visions of agrarian, and therefore human, futures. I stress more people working on more small farms and a degree of deurbanisation, they stress increases in farm scale, a continued agrarian-urban transition out of agriculture and an emphasis on yield increase. On some points, I\u2019d suggest our differences are not as great as B&D suppose: for example, I\u2019m not necessarily for small farms and against yield increases or the use of synthetic fertiliser in all eventualities. But we\u2019ll come to that.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to structure my response under three headings: change, \u2018development\u2019 and wealth.<\/p>\n

Change<\/strong><\/p>\n

B&D suggest that my vision involves revolutionary change that would have to reverse robust global trends, and therefore isn\u2019t feasible. My first response to that is to ask what makes a trend \u2018robust\u2019 and irreversible. Suppose, for example, that global trade rulings force countries with large populations of poor farmers to open their markets to rich-country agricultural commodities and to abandon food price controls and social welfare provision. We\u2019d surely expect life to get tougher for the poor farmers and for them to seek other sources of income in place of or in addition to their dwindling farm income. Well, that\u2019s pretty much what\u2019s happened over recent decades. You could say that it\u2019s a \u2018robust trend\u2019. But it\u2019s a robust trend that\u2019s resulted from policy decisions \u2013 and other policy decisions are possible.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Talkin\u2019 bout a revolution: a response to the Breakthrough Institute The Breakthrough Institute have published a response to my critical commentary on a recent post of theirs. Here I continue the debate, because I think it might clarify some worthwhile issues. I\u2019d like to thank Dan Blaustein-Rejto and Kenton De Kirby (henceforth B&D) for engaging […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[20192,20,5302,15683,20193,1912,9738,9679,20194],"class_list":["post-34415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-agrarian-future","tag-agriculture","tag-breakthrough-institute","tag-chris-smaje","tag-deurbanisation","tag-food-production","tag-small-farm-future","tag-small-farms","tag-yield-increase"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34415"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34416,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34415\/revisions\/34416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}