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Happy to get this retweet by @dgardner - in dealing with agricultural sustainability it is important to think like a fox, not like a hedgehog, to use his terminology!
@dgardner A "fox" has many small ideas; a "hedgehog" has one big idea. It's tempting to listen to hedgehogs, as they offer simple solutions, powerful explanations, easy classifications... but they're also wrong most of the time.
@dgardner In sustainable food & agriculture, there's no shortage of hedgehog ideas: temptingly simple, powerful, and quite often wrong. The false dichotomy between "industrial/conventional" and "organic/diversified/alternative" agriculture is one of those hedgehog ideas.
@dgardner In reality, agriculture is incredibly diverse, and force-fitting it into such a simple classification is not very useful: doi.org/10.1016/j.tree…
@dgardner I've been arguing in my previous thread that it's misguided to reject all of modern agriculture in favor of a romantic view of traditional agriculture - this distinction is a 'hedgehog' idea, a black-and-white view, and it's not useful.
@dgardner But, consistent with the "hedgehog vs fox" idea, it would be equally wrong to then give carte blanche to modern agriculture. There are serious issues there, and they need addressing. It would also be wrong to assume traditional ag has nothing to teach us.
@dgardner Instead, let's think like foxes. For instance, high productivity can be land-sparing, which is a good thing; but this land-sparing effect is not automatically guaranteed and may require land conservation policies; and we need to ensure high productivity is achieved sustainably.
@dgardner What that means will differ enormously whether you're an Indian dairy farmer, an Iowa corn farmer, or a Dutch tomato grower.
@dgardner There is no silver bullet. Making progress on agriculture's sustainability challenge will require a mix of different things, but most of all a pragmatic and evidence-based outlook - in other words, thinking like a fox.
@dgardner For a good example of this, see the recent World Resources Institute report on Creating a Sustainable Food Future: wrr-food.wri.org @waiterich - a menu of options, no silver bullet.
