Unifying Agricultural and Environmental Ethics

ABSTRACT

Paul B. Thompson’s agrarian ethic aims to unite the core agricultural value of providing sustenance for people with the environmental value of preserving nature into the future. His recently revised and updated book, The Spirit of the Soil, constructs a conceptual framework for evaluating normative issues in food ethics, the political economy of agriculture, and agricultural policy, as well as in environmental policy insofar as it affects agriculture. He demonstrates that the essential move in agricultural and environmental ethics is to identify systemic causes of specific problems. This makes it possible to imagine reform at the level of systems—such as economic systems, agricultural systems, and ecosystems—in a way that addresses the root causes of related problems. Thompson’s work demonstrates how engaged philosophical practice can advance philosophical inquiry while at the same time having an impact on public policy.

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Notes

1. Just as race theorists have developed the concept of an epistemology of ignorance to explain why questions about the race and class components of gangland shootings are simply not asked, the epistemology of ignorance explains why philosophers have not been interested in developing a philosophy of farming. Though not its main point, Heldke (2006) describes how and why farmers, in particular, are viewed by elites as stupid.

2. Thompson refers to the changed regulatory environment for biotech between the first (1995) and second (2017) editions of the book. However, it is also worthwhile to note how much has not changed. For half of the ten genetically modified crops currently grown in the US, some variety was approved in the mid-1990s. (Canola, alfalfa, apples, potatoes, and sugar beets were deregulated more recently). Papaya is the only GM crop to have originated in academic (i.e. public) research, in spite of much publicly-funded research on biotech remedies for diseases of regional and niche crops. The relative lack of change in the US portfolio of GM crops, in spite of the success of biotechnologies, suggests a disconnect between the agricultural system and the needs and desires of consumers and farming communities.