Farmhand Community News #3
What I'm reading about in ag and why it matters
Howdy!
I’m stoked to share a brand-spanking new whitepaper with y’all - Inclusive Innovation in Agriculture: Redesigning Agtech Ecosystems for All. My team and I have been working on this paper for what feels like a few decades in partnership with UC Merced Valley Institute for Sustainability, Technology & Agriculture (VISTA). This is just step one to reevaluating and improving upon how we innovate in the most critical industry for humanity, especially in the context of California’s Central Valley.
Inclusive Innovation In Agriculture: Redesigning Agtech Ecosystems for All
TL;DR: Including the people who do the work in agriculture in the innovation process benefits everyone. We created a framework and shared some case studies in order to help organizations better understand and implement inclusive innovation.
My takeaway: It’s all my takeaways, with a lot of help from my fantastic colleagues: Sarah Mock, Suma Reddy, Jamil Wynne, Fayzan Gowani and Ben Weinberg and design by Charvi Shrimali. Big thanks to Leigh Bernacchi and Joshua Viers at UCMerced, and to our friends at AgLaunch, Elemental Excelerator, and Equitable Food Inititiative for leading the practice of inclusive innovation in ag and making the time to speak with us for case studies in the paper.
As you might imagine, writing about inclusivity in agriculture is a bit of a metaphorical minefield, but, it’s one that I’m personally willing to lose a few metaphorical limbs on. Read it and let me know what your takeaways are!🎥 Exposed: Latino farmworkers risk their health working under threat of pesticide exposure
TL;DR: 20 minute documentary plus accompanying text covering several individual people who work on farms and their injuries due to improper chemical use. They do a really good job of diving into the threadbare patchwork enforcement (or lack thereof) of farmworker safety and chemical applicaiton regulations, as well as the factors prevent many farmworkers from seeking medical help and reporting malpractice. They also give the farmer side of the issue a little bit of airtime.
My takeaway: It is unacceptable for people, especially people who are in vulnerable positions regarding their right to work and citizenship, to be encouraged to inappropriately use chemical pesticides by supervisors. It is unacceptable for people to be unable to report malpractice and access healthcare when they get hurt or sick because of that malpractice.
And, pesticide application can be performed by robots. I frequently talk about the fact that I want to eliminate some farm labor jobs. That is a deeply controversial statement, and I stand by it. We should not need humans to backpack spray chemicals of which they don’t fully understand the risks. People matter too much for that. We can and should move towards a world wherein farmworkers are informing better, safer, technology enabled solutions to producing food at scale in a changing climate.
I also feel the need to add that farm operations vary tremendously. There are certainly bad actors, as are showcased here, but there are also many farm operations who care very much about their people.
TL;DR: John Deere and Tractor Supply and a number of other co’s are going back to sleep*, one at a time. At the same time,
*Culturally…this is me trying to cleverly say that they’re dropping woke culture.My takeaway: 🤬🤬🤬 I have historically really respected John Deere as a company. Their DEI recruiting programs have been tremendously impressive, and it shows in their products and their shareholder value creation. Here, they claim to value their 80,000 employees, but I am 100% sure that there are many individuals within that population who are both gender non-conforming and phenomenal employees. Even in this performative roll-back of woke policy, they’re explicitly stating “We fundamentally believe that a diverse workforce enables us to best meet our customers’ needs.” They seem to be trying to have it both ways.
I understand the decision, on some level - there are a broad swath of vocal people who buy into the scarcity, fear-based mindset of Trump and MAGA movement, and some of those people are John Deere’s customers. I think it’s the wrong decision, and I think that it will be bad for short/mid term recruiting and retention and longer term company performance.
Humans of John Deere and similarly regressing companies who give a shit about your LBGTQ+, disabled, BIPOC, and otherwise “othered” colleagues, friends and family members - I see you. Hit me up if I can be helpful. There are lots of inclusive companies being built in and around the ag equipment space, and you can be a part of building them.
Have a great week,
Connie