Thread by @DeconinckKoen

Literally every problem in the world is caused by disagreements over facts, interests, and/or values.

Well, maybe not *every* problem. But still, probably 60-70% or so?

Disagreements over facts, interests, and/or values definitely explain a lot of the difficulties in achieving better policies for #foodsystems, as we argue in our @OECDagriculture report "Making Better Policies for Food Systems" doi.org/10.1787/ddfba4…

Let's start with the facts (a very good place to start)

We now know quite a bit about #foodsystems and about what is needed to improve things. But clearly, we still have important gaps in our knowledge, too.

In addition, there are plenty of misconceptions, myths, and zombie statistics on #foodsystems. For example, you might hear the claim that we only have 60 (or 100, or another number) of harvests left due to soil erosion. scientificamerican.com/article/only-6…

@Botanygeek investigated this claim, and here's what he found: "I asked leading soil scientists if they had ever come across such a prediction in published research. Not a single one had" newscientist.com/article/mg2423…

@Botanygeek Now this is a juicy example but there are other, more mundane problems around "facts". For example, work by @sartorialfoodie & co shows that there are surprisingly few studies on how exactly we can reduce #foodwaste doi.org/10.1016/j.food…

Obviously, disagreements over facts aren't the only thing standing between us and better policies for food systems. This brings us to the second element: interests.

There is plenty of discussion on the role of interests in #foodsystems - see e.g. work by @marionnestle and @Jo_Swinnen.

Let's take one example. Poor countries tend to tax their farmers; rich countries tend to support them; and as poor countries grow richer, they tax farmers less or even switch to supporting them. What explains this?

https://twitter.com/DeconinckKoen/status/1437348506834984964?s=20

It's hard to see this as a socially optimal response to anything. But it's easier to explain in terms of different interest groups (as I learned from @Jo_Swinnen)

In rich countries, food is a small share of consumers' budgets, so there is less opposition to policies which raise food prices to support farmers.

In rich countries, there are fewer farmers too, which means it costs less to support them. Paradoxically, it makes farmers politically more effective too (easier to organize smaller groups of people).

Moreover, as countries develop, those mechanisms are joined by a third one: farm incomes tend to lag behind other sectors, giving stronger incentives to farmers to lobby the government.

How these pressures play out in a given country depends also on political institutions/governance mechanisms, ideology, inequality, and even the role of mass media (transparency etc), as @Jo_Swinnen's book explains well.

This is just one well-documented example of the dynamics of interest groups in #FoodSystems policies; but other examples exist (some well-documented, others less so).

There is a risk here, however. As Carpenter & Moss point out in their book "Preventing Regulatory Capture", "observers are quick to see capture as the explanation for almost any regulatory problem,” even if it isn't. This in turn can make us cynical about what policy can achieve

But in general, it's pretty clear that not all stakeholders are equally well represented in #foodsystems policy processes - esp indigenous groups, women, and future generations

Now, you'll generally find a lot of discussion about "facts" and "interests" in #foodsystems debates. Our third element, "values", hasn't received nearly as much attention.

And yet, when you think about it, food is clearly linked to values - from religious dietary prescriptions to veganism, from "slow food" to having dinner as a family.

For example, @JaysonLusk has shown that people who attach a greater value to naturalness, fairness, and the environment are more likely to purchase organic food; and that people's political orientation tends to be correlated with ag/food policy views

@JonHaidt has argued that there are six "moral foundations" behind the values people hold:
care versus harm,
liberty versus oppression,
fairness versus cheating,
loyalty versus betrayal,
authority versus subversion,
sanctity versus degradation

It's clear that these are relevant to food systems debates - e.g. on food safety, fair trade, naturalness, and so on

Moreover, it looks like people, countries, and cultures differ in the values they emphasize. For example, data from the World Values Survey @ValuesStudies shows big differences in how people see the relative importance of jobs/the economy versus the environment:

"Values" sound soft and warm, so you might assume this is the easy part of making better policies for #foodsystems.

In a way, interests are easy, because it's about money - so in theory you could always "buy off" the opposition (e.g. using compensation mechanisms).

Values are the hard part! There is no "compensation mechanism" for convincing someone to violate their values. Actually, this is pretty much the defining characteristic of values as opposed to interests.

@PTetlock and colleagues introduced a useful language to describe this:
- Choosing between two interests is a "routine" choice
- Choosing between two values is a "tragic" choice
- Choosing between a value and an interest is a "taboo" choice
psycnet.apa.org/record/2000-03…

As @JimGoldgeier and @PTetlock wrote: "the very willingness to consider certain categories of trade-offs is taken as a sign in many political cultures that one is not adequately committed to core cultural values and identities" ...

So, if a policy debate ends up being a clash of different values, things can get very difficult!

Perhaps you're a bit depressed now, after reading about the difficulties involving disagreements over facts, interests, or values.

BUT WAIT! IT GETS WORSE!

... because disagreements in one area can spill over into others, creating an intractable mess!

For example, interest groups may spread misinformation, or may deliberately try to stoke a conflict over values.

And once people have strong views, they tend not to listen to disconfirming evidence. (I am told we've seen some of this behavior in recent months)

(A great discussion of these kinds of biases is in @justinparkhurst's book The Politics of Evidence, available here: library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.…)

Unfortunately, there is no general "recipe" for resolving disagreements over facts, interests, and/or values, let alone the total mess we can end up in once all of those get mixed together.

BUT: That doesn't mean we're completely powerless.

The most important thing here is to think in terms of processes/institutions/governance mechanisms, rather than "quick fixes". Fortunately, much is known about how such processes look like.

We need processes that can:
- build a shared understanding of the facts
- promote transparency, accountability and a level playing field
- can find creative solutions to value differences, or else make tough calls in a way seen as legitimate

well, that was easy!

On a more serious note - of course this is hard, but in fact plenty of good practices exist. Take, for example, "building a shared understanding of the facts". One way of doing that is through regulatory impact assessments

i.e. a systematic assessment of all the possible costs and benefits and impacts of proposed new policies. There exist OECD Recommendations on how to do this, and colleagues at @OECDgov keep track of how countries are implementing these in their processes: oecd.org/gov/oecd-regul…

We had an interesting webinar a while back with @DanielTrnkaREG, Fiona Duncan @mpi_nz and @HeliHatonen on how regulatory impact assessments can be used to make better policies for food systems - see here:

Another mechanism is to rely on science academies - an example here is @SAPEAnews, which created a major review of evidence on #foodsystems for the EU

Governments of course also set up dedicated scientific advisory councils - some purely scientific, others involving stakeholders too. These can also be powerful ways to bring out the evidence on #foodsystems @EEAC_Network

Regarding interests, @OECDgov's report "Preventing Policy Capture" outlines three main strategies (see below). Transparency plays a key role here. oecd.org/gov/preventing…

This works well for things like corruption and other forms of undue influence, but politics also involves legitimate competition between interest groups. So, those who want change to happen may need to win over opponents or build an opposing coalition

How about values? The ideal solution is to find a creative solution that is acceptable to people with very different values. It's rare, but it happens!

International policy frameworks on genetic resources are perhaps one example. Plant breeders want to access these as inputs in their work, but many of these resources have been managed for generations by local communities. You can easily imagine the tensions here.

The existing agreements try to balance "access" and "benefit sharing". There is plenty of debate on whether they do a good job at this (as we discuss in the Seeds case study in our report: dx.doi.org/10.1787/ddfba4…) but it does provide a way forward.

In other cases of conflicting values, a hard choice must be made. How do you do this without alienating people? One promising approach is using deliberative practices, as discussed by my colleague @ClaudiaChwalisz: oecd.org/gov/innovative…

We explored deliberative practices in the context of #foodsystems in this webinar: - with @ClaudiaChwalisz and @sfinegan2, who coordinated the Irish Citizen's Assembly

None of these are magic solutions. But the general idea is that better policies don't fall from the sky - they require robust, evidence-based, transparent policy *processes*.

We think this is an essential part of the answer to the many challenges facing #foodsystems. In fact, it is hard to see how we would address those challenges *without* good governance that can manage disagreements over facts, interests, and values.

This, and much more, in our @OECDagriculture report "Making Better Policies for Food Systems" doi.org/10.1787/ddfba4…, and in the many other @OECD reports on #foodsystems, which can be found at oecd.org/food-systems

As I'm wrapping up a full day of tweeting on #foodsystems, let me take the opportunity to thank the many, many people who were involved in putting together our report

2020 was a brutal year, and my family was hit even harder than most - and I'm grateful to the extraordinary support of my @OECDagriculture colleagues, without whom this report wouldn't have made it across the finish line.