2nd February 2021 | Farmers, jetpacks
Helping small farmers become climate resilient; flying cars as a fantasy future
Welcome to Just Two Things, which I try to write daily, five days a week. Some links may also appear on my blog from time to time. Links to the main articles are in cross-heads as well as the story.
#1: Helping small farmers become climate resilient
(Source: Practical Action)
Half of the food in the world is grown by small farmers. So if we want to have enough to eat as the climate crisis gets worse, it matters that small farms are able to find ways to be resilient against climate change.
The intermediate technology charity Practical Action has come up with a five point plan, based on work that it has done with smallholders in Nepal:
New farming techniques. “[I]t starts with more resilient seeds, better suited to the new weather patterns”, which in turn become more resilient crops. Training in new agricultural techniques helps farmers “to develop their skills in managing soil, water and nutrients, to grow crops more effectively.”
Water that creates abundance. “Using solar energy and some clever engineering, water from rainfall and mountain springs can be captured, stored, and distributed to homes and fields on demand. The result is bigger harvests.”
Better market access. Better IT services help “farmers keep track of local commodity prices so they can buy farming supplies at the best price, and know the right times to take their produce to market to get the highest price.” They’ve also worked on cableways to help people move goods down the mountains to market.
New income streams. Equipping women, in particular, with new business skills improves their chances of acheiving their ambitions, and multiple income streams build greater financial stability.
Building confidence. Especially for women. “With leadership training they can transform gender roles, participate in business, and have equal say in the future of their communities.”
It’s striking how little of this involves digital technologies. It’s more a mix of eco-innovation and social innovation.
Practical Action does great work and is always worth supporting.
#2: Jetpacks aren’t going to happen
At Mashable Chris Taylor has been writing a series of futures-oriented letters to the 22nd century. In one of these he lays into the idea of flying cars, despite the recent enthusiasm for them in parts of the auto industry—and, of course, Silicon Valley.
The idea of the jetpack is usually associated with the 1960s programme The Jetsons, at least in the US, but Taylor takes it back to a 1928 magazine cover featuring Buck Rogers. On this side of the Atlantic the French illustrator Robido got there in 1882–before planes were invented and the car was just nascent.
But they have also been a recurring idea of the future:
For most of the 20th century, jetpacks and flying cars had been visual shorthand for the near future. But as the years of the new millennium ticked upwards, so did the sense of a missed deadline. Hadn’t Back to the Future promised that where we were going — the year 2015 — we wouldn’t need roads? Similarly, Blade Runner had filled the skies of 2019 Los Angeles with “spinners.”
Taylor has been reporting on technology since the 1990s, and all through that time the idea of flying cars has been one of those zombie technologies that refuses to go away. The venture capitalist Peter Thiel complained that he wanted a flying car but he gor 140 characters. (David Graeber came at this the other way around in a famous essay in The Baffler). Hyundai is still hard at work on a flying car project.
As I began this letter, news came that Uber was selling off its Elevate division, which was planning to partner with manufacturers like Hyundai to make cheap, light electric passenger drones a thing. But the economics just didn’t make enough sense. Is there a reason to suspect they ever will? (To be fair, Hyundai still thinks so.)
I’ve seen enough at this stage to call it: Jetpacks and flying cars will be around in your century, but they will be niche products for hobbyists and entertainers and wealthy pilots and first responders. Even if by some miracle a startup does actually get its product into mass production, your government agencies won’t want your skies filled with millions of potential hazards any more than ours do.
I’ve always thought the safety argument would be a critical obstacle to flying cars—but then, I’m the son of an air traffic controller. The energy arguments also seem problematic. The future of transport is likely to be about less weight and less material impact per person. But this long article traces—with some great pictures—the long history of this “used future”.
Notes from readers. Following up on yesterday’s piece on Gamestop, Ian Christie shared a link to a compelling article by Luke Burgis. Burgis reads the story through the lens of Rene Girard’s work on mimetic desire. Bob Burgoyne pointed me to a long Twitter thread by Cory Doctorow that argued that which stock market bets were OK and which not was about power. And Karl Wilding mentioned John Gruber’s post linking the trading platform Robinhood to hedge funds: “Preventing their users from buying — but not selling — a particular stock is bananas. It absolutely reeks of market manipulation.”
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