Agricultural economist at @OECDAgriculture, working on #AgOutlook and ag/food policy. Views are my own
Sep 21, 2021 • 57 tweets • 21 min read
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?
Sep 21, 2021 • 117 tweets • 28 min read
Pop quiz! Think about all the land occupied by buildings and infrastructure (cities, roads, factories). Takes up a lot of space. But how much, exactly?
Now think about all the land occupied for food production. How do the two compare? Which one is bigger, and by how much?
Sep 15, 2021 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
My first reaction to this chart was: there's no way this is accurate. And it isn't! Food is not, in fact, "more expensive than almost anytime in the past 60 years".
In defense of @lisaabramowicz1 and Bloomberg, the source of the confusion is actually @FAO's data itself, which they indeed present as a "real food price index". But ... that's not what the index actually is!
Jul 18, 2019 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
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.
Jul 11, 2019 • 25 tweets • 6 min read
It's been a while since I found myself disagreeing so strongly with a piece on agriculture.
It would be stupid *not* to rely on the insight and accumulated experience of local farmers, or local genetic resources. The opinion piece could have made that argument. Instead, they decided to present it as a competition between traditional knowledge and "external tech."
Jan 14, 2019 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
Our @OECDagriculture study on concentration in seed markets contradicts several of the points made in this @CivilEats article. I'd like to pick on one argument in particular - that mergers lead to less innovation. This has not been shown. 1/
It's true that a 2004 study (sciencedirect.com/science/articl…) concluded that "Increases in seed industry concentration have reduced biotech research intensity in the United States in the 1990s"; this study is the one referred to by the @CivilEats article (and many others) 2/
