food2017

Food, Ethics, and Global Society

Fall 2017, University of Vermont (Food Systems Graduate Seminar: FS 355)

Office Hours: Tues and Thurs 1:40-2:40pm and by appointment

Course Description

This course introduces some leading literature on ethics, sustainability, and nutrition that is relevant to evaluating food systems. Unusual emphasis will be placed on thinking like a philosopher, thinking like an economist, ethical worries about research and publications, and leading literature on global food systems issues that are underrepresented in local discussions. Students will also gain experience running a leading global integrated assessment model, DICE, and using other methods for making decisions at the food-water-climate-energy 'environmental nexus'.

"Unless we understand how the numbers are put together, and what they mean, we run the risk of seeing problems where there are none, of missing urgent and addressable needs, of being outraged by fantasies while overlooking real horrors, and of recommending policies that are fundamentally misconceived." - Angus Deaton

Required Text

1. Gordon Conway, One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World?, Cornell UP (Comstock), 2012

Optional: Angus Deaton, The Great Escape, Princeton UP, 2013

Optional: Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons, Cambridge UP, 1990

Optional: Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, Oxford UP, 1999

Optional: Anne Barnhill et al., Food, Ethics, and Society, Oxford UP, 2016

Readings (only numbered readings are required)

August 29: Overview of Big Issues in Global Food Ethics: Individual Ethics, Collective Ethics, What Really Works

Optional: Anne Barnhill et al., Introduction to Chapter 1: The Ethically Troubling Food System, Food, Ethics, and Society, Oxford UP, 2016

Optional: "Your Questions about Food and Climate Change, Answered" New York Times (not in T)

September 5: Consumer ethics, utilitarianism, valuing ecosystems, alternatives to utilitarian ethical theory

1. Anne Barnhill et al., "Introduction to Chapter 4: Consumer Ethics", in Food, Ethics, and Society, Oxford UP, 2016 (pp. 165-183 only is required)

2. First page of Paul Watson, "Tora, Tora, Tora", in Schmidtz and Willott, Environmental Ethics, second ed., Oxford UP, 2012 (first page only)

3. Paul Watson, "Clarification on Where Paul Watson Stands on Various Issues"

Optional: 25th Anniversary Report on Dolphin Safe Tuna, International Marine Mammal Project, 2015

Optional: EWG food scores app

Optional: Austin Kiessig, "What 'Big Ideas' in Food Get Funded in Silicon Valley?", edible startups blog, 2013

Optional: Michelle Paratore, "Rising to the Food Waste Challenge", edible startups blog, 2014

Optional: MIT Food+Future Colab

September 12: Global justice, poverty, effective altruism, unintended consequences

1. Anne Barnhill et al., "Introduction to Chapter 2: Global Hunger", in Food, Ethics, and Society, Oxford UP, 2016

2. Angus Deaton, "Response to Effective Altruism", Boston Review, 2015

3. Angus Deaton, "How to Help Those Left Behind", in The Great Escape, Princeton UP, 2013

4. Bill Gates, "The Great Escape is an Excellent Book with One Big Flaw", gatesnotes.com, 2014

Optional: Peter Singer, "Famine, Affluence, and Morality", Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1972 (influential original article, with main argument widely discussed including in readings above)

Optional: Peter Singer, replies to objections: chapters 3, 8, and 9 of The Life You Can Save, 2009 (this subset of the book provides replies to other objections to Singer's main argument)

Optional: Angus Deaton and Nancy Cartwright, "Understanding and Misunderstanding Randomized Controlled Trials", Social Science & Medicine, 2017

Optional: Shanta Devarajan, "What Will it Take to End Poverty in Africa?", World Bank blog, 2012

September 19: Global justice, world food supply, sustainable intensification, tradeoffs between: organic values, local values, the environment, human wellbeing, animal wellbeing

1. Jonathan Foley, "A Five-Step Plan to Feed the World", National Geographic, 2014

2. David Tilman et al., "Global food demand and the sustainable intensification of agriculture", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011 (incl. supplementary information)

3. "Food, the Environment, and Global Justice", in the Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics, Oxford UP, 2018

4. *multi-week assignment* (it is perfectly ok and encouraged to spread some of the following Conway reading over the next two weeks: read by Oct. 10):

Conway, chapters 1, 3, 5, 6, and 7 (challenges for contemporary global agriculture, the Green Revolution, contemporary arguments for sustainable intensification)

Optional: Claire Palmer, Katie McShane, Ronald Sandler,"Environmental Ethics", Annual Review of Environment and Resources (overview of environmental ethics)

Optional: Dale Jamieson, "The Value of Nature", in Ethics and the Environment (overview of environmental ethics)

Optional Module: Leading literature on organics versus sustainable intensification and related issues

Optional: Verena Seufert et al. "Comparing the Yields of Organic and Conventional Agriculture", Nature, 2012

Optional: Alexandra Kravchenco et al., “Field-scale experiments reveal persistent yield gaps in low-input and organic cropping systems”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017

Optional: Carol Shennan et al., "Organic and Conventional Agriculture: A Useful Framing?", Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 2017

Optional: Tara Garnett et al. "Sustainable Intensification in Agriculture", Science, 2013

Optional: Tara Garnett, "Plating Up Solutions: Can Eating Patterns be Both Healthier and More Sustainable?", Science, 2016

Optional: David Tilman at al., "Agricultural sustainability and intensive production practices", Nature, 2002

Optional: Norman Borlaug and Christopher Dowswell, "Feeding a world of ten billion people: A 21st century challenge", 2005 (esp. pp. 1-8)

Optional: WRI graph on reduced demand given more vegetarian diets (WRI Shifting Diets publications here)

Optional: "With an eye on hunger, scientists see promise in genetic tinkering with plants", New York Times, 17 November 2016

Optional: Pamela Ronald, Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food, Oxford UP, 2010

September 26: No In-Class Meeting: Measuring nutrition and health; the importance of early childhood nutrition and environment; challenges for measuring the effectiveness of nutritional interventions; human values through an economic lens; wellbeing: what it is, what social conditions cause it, what are its correlates, what are good proxies for it

1. Conway, pages 21-33 only of chapter 2 (note: pages 21-33 only)

2. Douglas Almond and Janet Currie, "Killing Me Softly: The Fetal Origins Hypothesis", Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2011

3. Janet Currie and Ishita Rajani, pages 1691-1693 only of "Within-Mother Estimates of the Effect of WIC on Birth Outcomes in New York City", Economic Inquiry, 2015 (Note: only the first three pages of the pdf are required; you need focus only on the problems with previous studies regarding WIC efficacy and the authors' 'within-mother' method for overcoming them.)

4. Angus Deaton, Introduction and chapter one of The Great Escape, Princeton UP, 2013

Optional: Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, "Economic Growth and Subjective Wellbeing: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox", NBER, 2008

Optional: Amartya Sen, "Freedom and the Foundations of Justice", in Development as Freedom, Knopf, 1999

Optional: Max Roser, "Global Economic Inequality", Oxford Our World in Data, 2016

Optional: Branko Milanovic, Global Inequality, Harvard UP, 2016

October 3: Is overpopulation the main cause of global problems? What should be done about population size by governments? What should be done about population size by individual people?

Optional background: Kenneth Weiss, "As the world's population grows, hunger persists on a massive scale", LA Times, 2012

Recommended: Paul Ehrlich, Prologue and pp. 15-27 of The Population Bomb, Sierra Club (1968 edition)

Recommended: Paul Ehrlich, Prologue of The Population Bomb, Sierra Club (1975 edition) (note: one-page Prologue only; compare predictions to 1968 edition. what happened?)

1. Paul Ehrlich, "Overpopulation and the collapse of civilization", MAHB blog, 2013

2. Amartya Sen, "Population: Delusion and Reality", New York Review of Books

3. Sarah Hannan, "On the Morality of Procreation and Parenting", in Permissible Progeny?, Oxford UP, 2015

4. Julian Simon, introduction to The Ultimate Resource II, Princeton UP, 1981

Optional: Matthew Connelly, Fatal Misconception, Harvard UP, 2008

Optional: Will Masters, "How the Race Against Malthus is Changing", video

Optional: Amartya Sen, "Population, Food, and Freedom", in Development as Freedom, Knopf, 1999

Optional: Garrett Hardin, "Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor", Psychology Today, 1974

Optional: Sarah Conly, One Child, Oxford UP, 2015

October 10: Food security: reliable entitlements to food and the difference between there being enough food for everyone and everyone having enough food

1. Conway, pages 34-40 only of chapter 2 (note: pages 34-40 only)

2. Conway, chapters 4, 8

3. Amartya Sen, "Hunger and Entitlements", UN brochure, 1987

4. Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, "More than 1 Billion People are Hungry in the World: But what if the experts are wrong?", Foreign Affairs, 2011

Optional: Amartya Sen, "Famines and Other Crises", in Development as Freedom, Knopf, 1999

Optional: Angus Deaton and Jean Dreze, "Food and Nutrition in India: Facts and Interpretations", EPW, 2009

October 17: Water, sanitation, hygiene and nutrition; culture, social norms, and real-world challenges for development

Recommended: Elizabeth Royte, "Nearly a Billion People Still Defecate Outdoors. Here's Why", National Geographic, 2017

1. USAID brochure on the importance for food security of water, sanitation, and hygiene, 2013

2. Diane Coffey and Dean Spears, Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development, and the Costs of Caste, Harper Collins, 2017, pp. 23-44, 57-81, and 149-195 from pre-publication draft

Optional: Margaret Tankard and Elizabeth Levy Patrick, "Norm Perception as a Vehicle for Social Change", Social Issues and Policy Review, 2016

Optional: Karine Nyborg et al., "Social Norms as Solutions", Science, 2016

Optional: "Sanitation and Stunting", brochure, Research Institute for Compassionate Economics

Optional: World Health Organization website on water, sanitation, and hygiene

Note: these public health sources agree that proper nutrition requires more than adequate intake of food; so, arguably food security should be understood as requiring more than reliably adequate dietary intake; see FAO and USDA for definitions that do not seem to require this; FAO now stipulates that food security is to be understood as including more than reliably adequate dietary intake.

MIDTERM EXAM: Due via email October 29 at 11:59pm

October 24: Sustainability, the tragedy of the commons, virtues and vices of free markets

1. Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons", Science, 1968

2. Elinor Ostrom et al. "Revisiting the Commons", Science, 1999

Recommended: Handout on Hardin and Ostrom

Optional: James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State, Yale UP, 1998

Optional: Elinor Ostrom, selections from Governing the Commons, Cambridge UP, 1990

Optional: Elinor Ostrom, "A General Framework for Analyzing Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems", Science, 2009

Optional: Robert Frank, "Market Efficiency", Chapter 18 of Microeconomics and Behavior, 7th ed., McGraw-Hill, 2008

Optional: Robert Stavins, "The Problem of the Commons: Still Unsettled After 100 Years", American Economic Review, 2011

October 29: Midterm Exam due via email at 11:59pm

October 31: Water, fisheries, sustainability, market-based environmental policy

1. Pages 3-11, 28-46, 62-68, 91-96, and 122-130 of Ray Hilborn and Ulrike Hilborn, Overfishing: What Everyone Needs to Know, Oxford UP, 2012 (readings are a proper subset of the pdf)

2. Elinor Ostrom, selections from Governing the Commons, Cambridge UP, 1990

3. Chuck Ross, "H.35 is a Vital Step Forward in Addressing Clean Water and Agriculture in Vermont", Vermont Agency of Agriculture Food & Markets Press Release, 2015

4. Bonnie Keeler et al., "The social costs of nitrogen", Science Advances, 2016 (only the abstract is required)

Recommended: Conway, chapter 14

Optional: FAO definition of 'food security' and the 'water-energy-food nexus', in "The Water-Energy-Food Nexus", FAO brochure, 2014

Optional: Elinor Ostrom, "A General Framework for Analyzing Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems", Science, 2009

Optional: Genuine Progress Indicator

Optional: FAO, State of the World's Fisheries and Aquaculture: 2016, UN FAO, 2016

Optional: Rosamond Naylor ed., The Evolving Sphere of Food Security, Oxford UP, 2014

Optional: Bloom, 2011 documentary film

Can you think of ways that Vermont's H.35 might have tried to incorporate more market-based policy, and more self-governance of the Ostrom kind?

November 7: The food-water-energy-climate nexus: integrated assessment models of energy-climate-wellbeing, location-relative market-based policy

Key: Bring your laptop to class with Excel so you can run the DICE integrated assessment model in class (optional info on DICE)

Recommended: Conway, chapters 15 and 16

1. Robert Stavins, "Learning from 30 years of experience with cap and trade systems", An Economic View of the Environment Blog, 2017

2. Nicholas Muller and Robert Mendelsohn, "Weighing the Value of a Ton Of Pollution", Regulation, 2010

3. pages 70 and 92 only of IPCC, Technical Summary on Impacts of Climate Change (WG2TS), IPCC, 2014 (only pages 70 and 92 required)

4. Abstract only of Francis Dennig et al., "Inequality, climate impacts on the future poor, and carbon prices", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2015 (only the abstract is required reading)

5. Abstract only of Noah Scovronick et al., "Impact of population growth and population ethics on climate change mitigation policy", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017 (only the abstract is required reading)

Recommended: William Nordhaus, "Summary for the Concerned Citizen", in A Question of Balance, Yale UP, 2007 (summary of DICE model and economics of climate change)

Optional: Peter Fairley, "States are using social cost of carbon in energy decisions, despite Trump's opposition", Inside Climate News, 2017

Optional: IPCC, Technical Summary on Mitigation of Climate Change (WG3TS), IPCC, 2014 (especially pages 37-48)

Optional: IPCC, Technical Summary on Impacts of Climate Change (WG2TS), IPCC, 2014

Optional: IPCC, chapter on Agriculture and Mitigation (WG3chap11), IPCC, 2014

Optional: IPCC, chapter on Agriculture and Impacts (WG2chap7), IPCC, 2014

Optional: Robert Keohane and David Victor, "Cooperation and Discord in Global Climate Policy", Nature Climate Change, 2016

Optional: Elinor Ostrom, "A Polycentric Approach for Coping with Climate Change", World Bank, 2009

Optional: Climate Equity Reference Project, www.climateequityreference.org

Optional: "Vermont Wind Project Needs Support, So Company Offers to Pay Voters", New York Times, 12 Oct 2016

November 14: Animal agriculture, water-energy-climate-wellbeing footprints of foods, wild animals and climate

Recommended: Conway, chapter 10, and pp. 311 and 316-318

1. Pages 1-26 of Gerber et al., "Tacking Climate Change Through Livestock", FAO, 2013 (only pages 1-26 are required)

2. Abstract only of Christian Peters et al., "Carrying Capacity of US Agricultural Land: Ten Diet Scenarios", Elementa, 2016 (only the abstract is required reading - what objective for society is Peters assuming? How does the social objective assumed by the Ranganathan paper differ from the objective assumed by the Peters paper? What is the best social objective to assume in this literature? E.g., should our goal be merely to maximize the number of calories produced on our land? What objections might be raised to that objective?)

3. Summary sheet of Mark Budolfson, "The Harm Footprint of Foods", in Chignell et al. eds. Philosophy Comes to Dinner, Routledge, 2015 (only the summary sheet of the workbook is required; let me know if you have ideas for improving the analysis)

4. Wayne Hsiung and Cass Sunstein, "Climate Change and Animals", University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 2007

Optional: Aleksandrowicz et al., "The Impacts of Dietary Change on Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Land Use, Water Use, and Health: A Systematic Review", PLoS ONE, 2016 (note that this has an extensive bibliography and provides an overview of the literature)

Optional: Marco Springmann et al., "Analysis and valuation of the health and climate change cobenefits of dietary change", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2016

Optional: Janet Ranganathan et al., "Shifting Diets for a Sustainable Food Future", WRI, 2016 (esp. pages 1-21 are required)

Optional: Herrero et al., "Biomass use, production, feed efficiencies, and greenhouse gas emissions from global livestock systems", PNAS, 2013

Optional: Terence Chea, "California targets dairy cows to target global warming", Associated Press, 2016

Optional: Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, "Industrial Food Animal Production in America", brochure, 2013

Optional: Conway, chapter 13

POLICY BRIEF: outline due November 26; final version due December 12 at 11:59pm

November 21: No Class: Thanksgiving Break

November 26: Outline of Policy Brief Due via Blackboard Discussion Board

November 28: Global trade, neoliberalism, international institutions; discuss policy brief outlines in class

Recommended: Reread pages 44-47 of Anne Barnhill et al., "Introduction to Chapter 2: Global Hunger", in Food, Ethics, and Society, Oxford UP, 2016

1. Jennifer Clapp, "Trade Liberalization and Food Security: Examining the Linkages", Quaker United Nations, 2014

2. Pages 10-12 and 28-30 of Andrew Guzman and Joost Pauwelyn, International Trade Law, 1st ed., Aspen, 2009 (only pages 10-12 and 28-30 are required) (this is from a top law school text on international trade law)

3. Joseph Stiglitz, selections from Making Globalization Work, Norton, 2006

Recommended: World Trade Organization, "Briefing notes: agricultural issues", 2015 [after Nairobi conference]

Optional: Graham MacDonald et al., "Rethinking Agricultural Trade Relationships in an Era of Globalization", BioScience, 2015

Optional: Action Aid, "The WTO Agreement on Agriculture", online brochure

Optional: Roberto Azevedo, "After a historic success, urgent challenges face the WTO", WTO Press Release, 2016

Optional: Philippe van Parijs, "Thatcher's Plot -- and How to Defeat It", Social Europe, 2016

Optional: Robert Frank, "Market Efficiency", Chapter 18 of Microeconomics and Behavior, 7th ed., McGraw-Hill, 2008

Can you find more info on agricultural rule changes after the WTO Nairobi conference?

FINAL EXAM: due December 14 at 11:59pm

December 5: Last in-class meeting

In Class Discussion of Policy Briefs and Future Research

December 14: Final Exam and Policy Brief (and optional additional assignment) due at 11:59pm