The Death of Homo Economicus: Work, Debt and the Myth of Endless Accumulation by Peter Fleming.
Listen 39:06
This is the first of two interviews with Professor Peter Fleming. In this episode, Fleming gives his analysis of an economy in which the public sphere has been plundered by the billionaire class. In Part 2, he will discuss possible escape routes from this version of economic dystopia.
The philosopher John Stuart Mill pondered the evolution of our species under capitalism in the 19th Century when he coined the term homo economicus. Humans were defined as economic creatures, making rational decisions based on their own economic self-interest.
Homo economicus really found a niche in the industrialized West from the Second World War to the 1980s. Good-paying jobs were plentiful. Living standards, life expectancy and real income improved dramatically.
However, the past four decades have meant a slow strangulation of homo economicus.
In the decade since the financial crisis of 2008, we’ve seen the decline and fall of good paying jobs with benefits and the rise of inequality and the precariat. Now we’re being warned about a future without jobs as we have come to know and depend upon them.
Robots install rivets on a 2015 Ford F-150 truck at the Dearborn Truck Plant in Dearborn, Mich. Cheaper, better robots will replace human workers in the world’s factories at a faster pace over the next decade, pushing manufacturing labor costs down 16 per cent, a report from the Boston Consulting Group said on Feb. 10, 2015. (Paul Sancya/Associated Press)
And the millionaire and billionaire bankers who brought the global economy to the brink of collapse and who were subsequently bailed out by taxpayers? They’re doing just great, thank you.
For all too many people facing uncertain futures in Western societies, the economy just isn’t working for them. Or just not working, period.
But if you read Peter Fleming, you might come away convinced that the problem is that the economy is working precisely the way the very wealthy and their agents in government want it to.
Peter Fleming is Professor of Business and Society at the Cass Business School at City University London. He’s the author of The Mythology of Work, and his new book is The Death of Homo Economicus: Work, Debt and the Myth of Endless Accumulation.
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CBC Radio ·
Changing the way we work to build a more livable society (Segment 2)
A rider for the food delivery service Deliveroo makes a food delivery in London, England. (Jack Taylor/Getty Images)
Listen 32:44
This is the second part of an interview with Professor Peter Fleming, the author of ‘The Death of Homo Economicus: Work, Debt and the Myth of Endless Accumulation’. In part one, Fleming discusses the root causes of economic inequality.
Philosopher John Stuart Mill defined human beings as ‘homo economicus’, economic creatures making rational decisions based on their own economic self-interest.
For a few decades in the postwar era, there was a tacit, informal contract between the state, the business world and the homo economicus. The average person would vote for a mainstream political party, obey the law, pay taxes, buy a car and a house. In return, they would get a decent paying job with benefits to pay for it all.
But according to Professor Peter Fleming, decades of neoliberal economic policy in western democracies have reduced everything to the logic and needs of free markets, including governments and the services they provide. Fleming believes the public sphere has been denuded and captured by corporations and the wealthy while the average person is left anxious and precariously employed.
Fleming says the homo economicus are no longer economic actors. Rather, they’re being acted on and determined by economic forces beyond their control. Their humanity has been eclipsed by their economic value or cost and they’re seen by governments and business alike simply as assets or liabilities.
Peter Fleming is Professor of Business and Society at the Cass Business School at City University London. In the second part of his interview with Michael Enright, he speaks about the nature of work today and how he thinks a better way of life might be possible.
Click ‘listen’ at the top of the page to hear Michael Enright’s conversation with Professor Peter Fleming.
Two nights ago I went to visit Karla Mundy and her Rhythm ‘n Roots choir in Vancouver. I stood and listened as they sang their version of my song The River. It was an incredible moment to hear a song I’d written 2 years ago come to life with their soloist Noa Neuman Spivak and 40 plus voices. In less than a minute I was wiping some misty tears of joy and raw emotion off my cheeks. Like a proud song mama!
(Sandra speaking) I like the video! The lyrics are below. From “The River” I went to Coco’s song “Revolution“. Crazy how I came across Coco at a time when I was posting “Hear the People Sing“, a now international song of protest from “Les Miserables”.
The river is a healer
The river is a sage
The river knows no end
And the river feels no age
The river is a leader
Every single day
It’s living in the moment
And it always finds a way
Water heal my body
Water heal my soul
When I go down, down
To the water
By the water I feel whole
The river calls me over
It’s calling out my name
In the day and in the night
I hear that river all the same
It’s calling me over
Calling out my pain
Oh a river gathers tears
Just like a river gathers rain
Ch
The river is a traveller
Always on the go
A river never worries
If it’s fast or if it’s slow
River take me
To where I need to go
Oh, and I will just relax
And let the river flow
The Man Who Knew Infinity (book Robert Kanigel 1991 and movie 2015).
The story of real-life mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who, after growing up poor in Madras, India, earns admittance to Cambridge University during World War I, where he becomes a pioneer in mathematical theories working with his professor, G. H. Hardy.
Hardy and Ramanujan had highly contrasting personalities. Their collaboration was a clash of different cultures, beliefs, and working styles. Hardy was an atheist and an apostle of proof and mathematical rigour, whereas Ramanujan was a deeply religious man who relied very strongly on his intuition.
Near the end of the movie after Hardy learns that Ramanujan, back in India has tragically died at age 32:
. . . every positive integer is one of Ramanujan’s personal friends . . An equation for him had no meaning unless it expressed the thought of God.
Well, despite everything in my being set to the contrary, perhaps he is right for is this not exactly our justification for pure mathematics? We are only mere explorers of infinity in the pursuit of absolute perfection. We do not invent these formulii. They already exist. And lie in wait for only the very brightest of minds like Ramanujan’s ever to divine and prove. So in the end I have been forced to consider Who are we to question Ramanujan? let alone God.
POSTED ON FACEBOOK PAGE FOR HELLIWELL PICTURES
I just re-watched your film “Glimpses of Heaven“. The light that shines through by the end is worth every minute of the beginning darkness. What a wonderful gift you and the 3 people who tell their story, have given to us. I am forwarding it to others; it will be helpful in their lives and communities. With many thanks to everyone who played a role in this artful work.
2. Oh! That’s where I recognize your logo from – – I see where “High Plains Doctor” is also one of your films. Wow – – just think of neural pathways in our brains being activated by streams of the stories you tell. We’d have a sea-change, as in the original use of that word by Shakespeare in The Tempest; an element of the supernatural involved. I think Wayne (Glimpses of Heaven) might call that the “life force” at work. George might call it, in part, “the inner voice” that brought him to his sister. And Peter might call it fortuitous encounters – – the right person at the right time. Or the fact that he was meant to live. (I don’t like speaking for other people; I won’t have captured the complexities.) Once again, many thank-you’s.
From The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/04/carbon-bubble-could-spark-global-financial-crisis-study-warns?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=277105&subid=8093198&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2
by Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent
Advances in clean energy expected to cause a sudden drop in demand for fossil fuels, leaving companies with trillions in stranded assets
A sudden drop in demand for fossil fuels could happen before 2035, a new study shows. Photograph: Florian Gaertner/Photothek via Getty Images
Plunging prices for renewable energy and rapidly increasing investment in low-carbon technologies could leave fossil fuel companies with trillions in stranded assets and spark a global financial crisis, a new study has found.
A sudden drop in demand for fossil fuels before 2035 is likely, according to the study, given the current global investments and economic advantages in a low-carbon transition.
The existence of a “carbon bubble” – assets in fossil fuels that are currently overvalued because, in the medium and long-term, the world will have to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions – has long been proposed by academics, activists and investors. The new study, published on Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that a sharp slump in the value of fossil fuels would cause this bubble to burst, and posits that such a slump is likely before 2035 based on current patterns of energy use.
Crucially, the findings suggest that a rapid decline in fossil fuel demand is no longer dependent on stronger policies and actions from governments around the world. Instead, the authors’ detailed simulations found the demand drop would take place even if major nations undertake no new climate policies, or reverse some previous commitments.
That is because advances in technologies for energy efficiency and renewable power, and the accompanying drop in their price, have made low-carbon energy much more economically and technically attractive.
Dr Jean-François Mercure, the lead author, from Radboud and Cambridge universities, told the Guardian: “This is happening already – we have observed the data and made projections from there. With more policies from governments, this would happen faster. But without strong [climate] policies, it is already happening. To some degree at least you can’t stop it. But if people stop putting funds now in fossil fuels, they may at least limit their losses.”
By moving to a lower-carbon footing, companies and investors could take advantage of the transition that is occurring, rather than trying to fight the growing trend. Mercure said fossil fuel companies were likely to fight among each other for the remaining market, rather than have a strong impact on renewable energy businesses.
Prof Jorge Viñuales, co-author, said: “Contrary to investor expectations, the stranding of fossil fuel assets may happen even without new climate policies. Individual nations cannot avoid the situation by ignoring the Paris agreement or burying their heads in coal and tar sands.”
However, Mercure also warned that the transition was happening too slowly to stave off the worst effects of climate change. Although the trajectory towards a low-carbon economy would continue, to keep within 2C above pre-industrial levels – the limit set under the Paris agreement – would require much stronger government action and new policies.
That could also help investors by pointing the way to deflation of the carbon bubble before they make new investments in fossil fuel assets.
The paper supports the view of some policy and investment experts that economics and technology are now driving action on climate change, where before impetus was all from policymakers. Former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres told the Guardian, a year after Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of the US from the Paris agreement: “There is a big difference between the economics of climate change and the politics of climate change. Is Trump going to stop that advance [by businesses towards low-carbon technologies]? I don’t think so.”
Frédéric Samama, of Europe’s biggest asset manager Amundi, also believes investors have reached a “tipping point”, in relation to taking action on greenhouse gases through their portfolio management. He told Bloomberg last month that “until recently, the question” of climate change was “not on their radar screen”.
Separately, an analysis in Nature Energy forecast that global energy demand would be about 40% lower than today by 2050, despite rises in population and income, and a growing global economy. The authors found that such a scenario would allow the world to stay within 1.5C of warming, the aspirational goal set under the Paris agreement.
(Note: 2013 interview of Snowden. 12 minutes. Link in the article below, worth listening to a second time.)
By Ewen MacAskill and Alex Hern
Five years after historic NSA leaks, whistleblower tells the Guardian he has no regrets
Edward Snowden remains in exile in Russia. Photograph: Lindsay Mills
Edward Snowden has no regrets five years on from leaking the biggest cache of top-secret documents in history. He is wanted by the US. He is in exile in Russia. But he is satisfied with the way his revelations of mass surveillance have rocked governments, intelligence agencies and major internet companies.
In a phone interview to mark the anniversary of the day the Guardian broke the story, he recalled the day his world – and that of many others around the globe – changed for good. He went to sleep in his Hong Kong hotel room and when he woke, the news that the National Security Agency had been vacuuming up the phone data of millions of Americans had been live for several hours.
Snowden knew at that moment his old life was over. “It was scary but it was liberating,” he said. “There was a sense of finality. There was no going back.”
What has happened in the five years since? He is one of the most famous fugitives in the world, the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary, a Hollywood movie, and at least a dozen books. The US and UK governments, on the basis of his revelations, have faced court challenges to surveillance laws. New legislation has been passed in both countries. The internet companies, responding to a public backlash over privacy, have made encryption commonplace.
Snowden, weighing up the changes, said some privacy campaigners had expressed disappointment with how things have developed, but he did not share it. “People say nothing has changed: that there is still mass surveillance. That is not how you measure change. Look back before 2013 and look at what has happened since. Everything changed.”
The most important change, he said, was public awareness. “The government and corporate sector preyed on our ignorance. But now we know. People are aware now. People are still powerless to stop it but we are trying. The revelations made the fight more even.”
He said he had no regrets. “If I had wanted to be safe, I would not have left Hawaii (where he had been based, working for the NSA, before flying to Hong Kong).”
His own life is uncertain, perhaps now more than ever, he said. His sanctuary in Russia depends on the whims of the Putin government, and the US and UK intelligence agencies have not forgiven him. For them, the issue is as raw as ever, an act of betrayal they say caused damage on a scale the public does not realise.
This was reflected in a rare statement from Jeremy Fleming, the director of the UK surveillance agency GCHQ, which, along with the US National Security Agency. was the main subject of the leak. In response to a question from the Guardian about the anniversary, Fleming said GCHQ’s mission was to keep the UK safe: “What Edward Snowden did five years ago was illegal and compromised our ability to do that, causing real and unnecessary damage to the security of the UK and our allies. He should be accountable for that.”
Jeremy Fleming of GCHQ addresses a security conference. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA
The anger in the US and UK intelligence communities is over not just what was published – fewer than 1% of the documents – but extends to the unpublished material too. They say they were forced to work on the assumption everything Snowden ever had access to had been compromised and had to be dumped.
There was a plus for the agencies. Having scrapped so much, they were forced to develop and install new and better capabilities faster than planned. Another change came in the area of transparency. Before Snowden, media requests to GCHQ were usually met with no comment whereas now there is more of a willingness to engage. That Fleming responds with a statement reflects that stepchange.
In his statement, he expressed a commitment to openness but pointedly did not credit Snowden, saying the change predated 2013. “It is important that we continue to be as open as we can be, and I am committed to the journey we began over a decade ago to greater transparency,” he said.
Others in the intelligence community, especially in the US, will grudgingly credit Snowden for starting a much-needed debate about where the line should be drawn between privacy and surveillance. The former deputy director of the NSA Richard Ledgett, when retiring last year, said the government should have made public the fact there was bulk collection of phone data.
The former GCHQ director Sir David Omand shared Fleming’s assessment of the damage but admitted Snowden had contributed to the introduction of new legislation. “A sounder and more transparent legal framework is now in place for necessary intelligence gathering. That would have happened eventually, of course, but his actions certainly hastened the process,” Omand said.
The US Congress passed the Freedom Act in 2015, curbing the mass collection of phone data. The UK parliament passed the contentious Investigatory Powers Act a year later.
Ross Anderson, a leading academic specialising in cybersecurity and privacy, sees the Snowden revelations as a seminal moment. Anderson, a professor of security engineering at Cambridge University’s computer laboratory, said: “Snowden’s revelations are one of these flashbulb moments which change the way people look at things. They may not have changed things much in Britain because of our culture for adoring James Bond and all his works. But round the world it brought home to everyone that surveillance really is an issue.”
MPs and much of the UK media did not engage to the same extent of their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, the US, Latin America, Asia and Australia. Among the exceptions was the Liberal Democrat MP Julian Huppert, who pressed the issue until he lost his seat in 2015. “The Snowden revelations were a huge shock but they have led to a much greater transparency from some of the agencies about the sort of the things they were doing,” he said.
One of the disclosures to have most impact was around the extent of collaboration between the intelligence agencies and internet companies. In 2013, the US companies were outsmarting the EU in negotiations over data protection. Snowden landed like a bomb in the middle of the negotiations and the data protection law that took effect last month is a consequence.
One of the most visible effects of the Snowden revelations was the small yellow bubble that began popping up on the messaging service WhatsApp in April 2016: “Messages to this chat and calls are now secured with end-to-end encryption.”
Before Snowden, such encryption was for the targeted and the paranoid. “If I can take myself back to 2013,” said Jillian York, the director for international freedom of expression at the digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “I maybe had the precursor to [the encrypted communication app] Signal on my phone, TextSecure. I had [another email encryption tool] PGP, but nobody used it.” The only major exception was Apple’s iMessage, which has been end-to-end encrypted since it was launched in 2011.
Developers at major technology companies, outraged by the Snowden disclosures, started pushing back. Some, such as those at WhatsApp, which was bought by Facebook a year after the story broke, implemented their own encryption. Others, such as Yahoo’s Alex Stamos, quit rather than support further eavesdropping. (Stamos is now the head of security at Facebook.)
“Without Snowden,” said York. “I don’t think Signal would have got the funding. I don’t think Facebook would have had Alex Stamos, because he would have been at Yahoo. These little things led to big things. It’s not like all these companies were like “we care about privacy”. I think they were pushed.”
Other shifts in the technology sector show Snowden’s influence has in many ways been limited. The rise of the “smart speaker”, exemplified by Amazon’s Echo, has left many privacy activists baffled. Why, just a few years after a global scandal involving government surveillance, would people willingly install always-on microphones in their homes?
“The new-found privacy conundrum presented by installing a device that can literally listen to everything you’re saying represents a chilling new development in the age of internet-connected things,” wrote Gizmodo’s Adam Clark Estes last year.
Towards the end of the interview, Snowden recalled one of his early aliases, Cincinnatus, after the Roman who after public service returned to his farm. Snowden said he too felt that, having played his role, he had retreated to a quieter life, spending time developing tools to help journalists protect their sources. “I do not think I have ever been more fulfilled,” he said.
But he will not be marking the anniversary with a “victory lap”, he said. There is still much to be done. “The fightback is just beginning,” said Snowden. “The governments and the corporates have been in this game a long time and we are just getting started.”
Suncor Energy files application for 160,000-bpd Lewis oilsands project
2018-02-27
Geoffrey Morgan
CALGARY – Canada’s largest integrated energy company has filed an application for a massive new oilsands project defying expectations of slowing growth in the oilsands.
The Alberta Energy Regulator issued a notice Tuesday that Suncor Energy Inc. is seeking regulatory approval to build a 160,000-barrels-per-day steam-based oilsands project north of Fort McMurray called Lewis. The project would not require federal approval from the National Energy Board, which Ottawa is currently reorganizing.
Regulatory filings from Calgary-based Suncor show the project – which would be built in four identical 40,000-bpd phases – would cost $6.2 billion in total and the company hopes to begin construction in 2024, with oil production starting 2027.
“This is a growth project,” Suncor spokesperson Erin Rees said in an email, adding that the company has not officially sanctioned the project.
In its application, Suncor said the project would contribute almost $3.4 billion to Alberta’s GDP and employ an average of 580 construction workers per year and 1,000 construction workers at its peak it 2027 and 2028.
The permit will help Suncor plan its next projects to replace the production that will end in the 2030s, according to one analyst.
“The life of mine plans show production ending. It’s so far away that nobody really thinks about it, but it’s probably a decade of planning,” GMP FirstEnergy analyst Michael Dunn said of the mine retirement.
He said Suncor is looking at ways to boost production so that its oilsands upgrading facilities — vital for the company to get a higher price for its bitumen — will continue to be fully utilized.
“All these things go into the decision-making,” Dunn said, adding that Suncor will need to look at replacing its production from its base mine potentially through lease swaps with Syncrude or through new projects.
The Lewis project’s timeframe aligns with Suncor’s efforts to boost production ahead of the anticipated closure of the company’s main mining operation north of Fort McMurray in the early 2030s. Suncor’s detailed mine plans, and the AER’s tailings plans, show the company’s primary mining operations will wrap up in 2033.
“With Suncor’s Oil Sands Base Plant approaching end of mine life (2033), the AER is concerned with the length of time remaining to resolve Suncor’s site-specific issues,” an AER report from Oct. 2017 states. The AER approved Suncor’s plan to address those issues the regulator had identified.
Suncor produced 296,700 bpd from mining operations in the fourth quarter of 2017, which accounts for roughly 55 per cent of the company’s operated oilsands production with the balance coming from steam-based projects.
Suncor has also recently boosted its stake in the Syncrude oilsands mining venture to 58 per cent and is also ramping up production at its recently completed $17-billion Fort Hills project – neither of those projects will expire in the 2030s.
During an earnings call this month, Suncor president and CEO Steve Williams described the Lewis project – and the company’s Meadow Creek East and Meadow Creek West projects – as the next wave of growth for Suncor, beginning at the end of 2022. “You will start to see one of those come on every 12 to 24 months,” Williams said.
At the time he said those “replication” projects would drive growth for Suncor rather than investment in major new projects and blasted Canada’s current regulatory and tax framework as being too burdensome for major projects like its recently completed $17 billion Fort Hills mine.
A protester takes part in a March Against Monsanto in Paris in May 2016. The European chemical and pharmaceutical giant Bayer is buying Monsanto — and dropping the U.S. company’s now-controversial name.
Francois Mori/AP
Originally, it was just a name — Olga Monsanto’s name, to be precise.
Around the turn of the 20th century, she married a man named John Francis Queeny. He named his artificial sweetener company after her. And over decades, that company expanded from the sweetness business into agri-chemicals, where it began to dominate the industry.
These days Monsanto is shorthand for, as NPR’s Dan Charles has put it, “lots of things that some people love to hate”: Genetically modified crops, which Monsanto invented. Seed patents, which Monsanto has fought to defend. Herbicides such as Monsanto’s Roundup, which protesters have sharply criticized for its possible health risks. Big agriculture in general, of which Monsanto was the reviled figurehead.
And soon Monsanto will be no more.
Bayer, the German pharmaceutical giant and pesticide powerhouse, announced in 2016 it would be buying Monsanto in an all-cash deal for more than $60 billion.
Now, as the merger approaches, Bayer has confirmed what many suspected: In the merger, the politically charged name “Monsanto” will be disappearing.
The combined company will be known simply as Bayer, while product names will remain the same.
The move is not exactly a surprise — it makes sense that Bayer might want to weed out some of the intense negative associations associated with the Monsanto brand. In a way, it’s an indication of how successful anti-Monsanto protesters have been in shaping public perception.
In the company’s latest statement, Bayer implicitly acknowledged how hostile debates over genetically modified crops and other agricultural products have become.
“We aim to deepen our dialogue with society. We will listen to our critics and work together where we find common ground,” the chairman of Bayer’s board of management, Werner Baumann, said in the statement. “Agriculture is too important to allow ideological differences to bring progress to a standstill. We have to talk to each other. We need to listen to each other. It’s the only way to build bridges.”
NPR’s Charles has reported extensively on genetically modified organisms. As he has noted, the political and social impacts of Monsanto’s disappearance might reverberate not just in the U.S., but in Europe.
In the U.S., one question is whether protesters who have joined “Marches Against Monsanto” will “still march if there’s no Monsanto,” he says.
Meanwhile, in Europe, there has long been broad opposition to genetically modified crops. After Bayer acquires Monsanto, “suddenly, the leading seller of GMOs [will] be European, rather than American,” Charles writes. “Would that matter? It’s hard to say, but it seems possible.”
Bayer’s acquisition of Monsanto is part of a larger trend of consolidation in the agriculture industry — already dominated by massive corporations.
Once the merger is complete, on June 7, one of the world’s largest pesticide producers will be combined with the world’s largest seed company.
A major discontent among the people of Ontario in the Election (June 7) is the price of energy. i.e Nuclear Energy. They call it a “hydro” problem.
Excerpt from Global News:
WATCH: How big is Ontario’s hydro problem? And can the Liberals, NDP or PCs fix it?
The Progressive Conservatives have done their best to fan the flames of voter resentment by blaming the premier, the CEO of Hydro, and Hydro’s board of directors for rate increases.
Whatever the technical and legal justifications, paying the CEO of Hydro $6 million a year (Doug Ford’s “six-million-dollar man”), along with the board members voting themselves generous fee increases, has been like rubbing salt in the wounds of angry consumers.
I documented the West to East success in Canada of opposition to the nuclear industry and a sampling of the corruption between the nuclear industry, the Government and the University, Saskatchewan:
Surprising how much of mainstream media reduces the resistance to what “Monsanto” represents, to “environmentalists”. “Corruption” as the main issue! Monsanto is the evil empire. It is not difficult to provide the documentation to make the case.So now, “Monsanto” is “Bayer-Monsanto”. = = = = = = = = = = =
Top officials for Monsanto and Bayer defended their proposed $66 billion merger before skeptical senators on Tuesday, insisting that the deal would lead to greater investments in technology that could help American farmers. (Sept. 20) AP
The name Monsanto is no more but not necessarily for reasons that would satisfy the seed and pesticide company’s many critics.
Monsanto, often assailed for its impact on the earth and on human health, will shed its moniker after German giant Bayer officially acquires the company on Thursday.
While health and agricultural firm Bayer had been considering axing the Monsanto brand for some time, the decision to abandon the name was made official Monday.
“Bayer will remain the company name,” Bayer said in a statement. “Monsanto will no longer be a company name. The acquired products will retain their brand names and become part of the Bayer portfolio.”
Bayer signaled Monday that it would take steps to “strengthen its commitment in the area of sustainability” after the Monsanto deal is complete.
“We aim to deepen our dialogue with society,” Bayer Chairman Werner Baumann said in a statement. “We will listen to our critics and work together where we find common ground. Agriculture is too important to allow ideological differences to bring progress to a standstill. We have to talk to each other. We need to listen to each other. It’s the only way to build bridges.”
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