Episode 29

The Received Wisdom - Shobita Parthasarathy

British Politics, the CHIPS and Science Act, and Rethinking the Green Revolution ft. Glenn Stone

November 02, 2022

TRANSCRIPT

Jack and Shobita chat about the disasters in British politics, the CHIPS and Science Act, and how to determine whether self-driving cars are safe. Plus we chat with anthropologist Glenn Davis Stone, Professor at Sweet Briar College and author of the recent book The Agricultural Dilemma: How Not to Feed the World. Stone argues that we've been learning the story of the Green Revolution all wrong, and this has huge implications for how we think about more recent agricultural technologies like fertilizer and genetically modified organisms.

Study Questions:

1. How is the CHIPS and Science Act being framed in the United States?

2. What are the problems with the conventional tale of the Green Revolution?

3. Why has the myth of the Green Revolution been so persistent?

4. What is the problem with GMOs, and specifically BT crops, in India?

5. How have publics gotten more involved in the decisions of the agricultural system? What are the impacts?

Related links:

• Dan Reed and Darío Gil (2022). "Insufficient NSF funding could doom the Chips and Science Act." The Hill. October 13.Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (2022). "Responsible Innovation in Self-Driving Vehicles."

• Glenn Davis Stone (2022). The Agricultural Dilemma: How Not to Feed the World. Routledge.

• Glenn Davis Stone (2022). "Surveillance Agriculture and Peasant Autonomy." Journal of Agrarian Change.

• Glenn Davis Stone (2020). "A Long-term Analysis of a Controversial GMO Crop." Nature Plants. March 13.Glenn Davis Stone (2020). "The Philippines has rated ‘Golden Rice’ safe, but farmers might not plant it." The Conversation. February 7.