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<p>Hello all,</p>
<p>As the next reading group meeting is already approaching, here is
a summary of what we talked about last time.<br>
</p>
<p>Katie took detailed notes during our discussion in the first
meeting, and we wanted to share a bit of these.</p>
<p><i>During the first meeting of the Fossil Free Agriculture
Reading Group, we had a discussion about yields in organic and
industrial agriculture. Something that accompanied us throughout
the discussion was a critical inquiry of terminology/language:
We talked about the strictness of definitions of "organic" and
"agroecology" and the need to distinguish such terms from
small-scale agriculture. From a discussion about food waste and
its relation to yields, we then moved on to issues of
responsibility, talking about the role of civil servants and our
communication with policy makers. This brought us back to the
issue of language and how public discourse often presents
behaviors (such as eating meat) as inevitable, which makes it
seem like system change is impossible. Yields are an example of
a terminology that appears to have no alternative, and we came
up with possible other measurements, such as how many people are
fed.</i></p>
<p><i>Some of the questions that came up are:</i></p>
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<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%"><i>What is the
value of having a (legally) regulated definition with a very
clear meaning (e.g. certified organic) vs. a less clearly
defined but more expansive definition (like agroecology)?</i></p>
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<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%"><i>Where does the
discourse we have today, for instance regarding yields as a
quantification of agricultural productivity, come from?</i></p>
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<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%"><i>What else could
we quantify instead of yields?</i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%"><i><br>
</i></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%">Looking forward to
seeing you soon,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%">Jula<br>
<i></i></p>
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