Andrew Flachs

@ashattuck.bsky.social giving a great lecture in the horticulture department at Purdue! To know about the risks of the global pesticide complex we first need to have usable data about who sprays what and where it’s made

Israeli conductor arrested while protesting near Gaza border Ilan Volkov spoke out against the war in Gaza while conducting Brahms’ Symphony No.2 earlier this month.

Israeli conductor Ilan Volkov has been arrested while protesting near the Israel-Gaza border.

Read more: clssicfm.co/4gx5aPS

The Andhra Pradesh Community-managed Natural Farming team and the good folk at the Kasisi Agricultural Centre in Zambia have some *very* exciting results from their trials. Can't say much more, but it'll be a gamechanger. events.futureeconomy.forum/natural-farm...

In the interest building solidarity, I recognize that scholarship and its associated politics are diverse. It includes problematic roots that contemporary scholars disagree with. Open access version coming soon, so if paywalled please see: andrewflachs.com/s/Ethnobiolo...

This was a remarkable paper to write, in part because both ethnobiologist and degrowth reviewers curbed earlier versions where I was too focused on hatcheting arguments and not planting enough seeds. A shifting kyriarchy mis-applies ethnobiology, anthropology, degrowth, and other ways of thinking.

venn diagram of ethnobiology and degrowth thinking

If the point of our work is not just to interpret the world in various ways but to change it, then ethnobiology and degrowth scholars are allies in action-oriented, imaginative research. Both ask how to scale up reciprocity and care. This is a way of being, a relationship. It is not a product.

Both conversations work to transcend problematic histories: ethnobiology opposes extraction and appropriation, while degrowthers reject Malthusian and ecofascism. But as long as these inform public conversations around human–ecological relationships and downscaling, the work is never finished.

Degrowth research offers a vocabulary to contribute to larger discussions of political economy and political ecology. It tends to emphasize political economy and industrial relations, centering/combatting capitalism while glossing the fine details of how communities co-create environments.

Ethnobiology offers meticulous case studies into the web of life, neither studying life apart from human influence nor centering its intersection with humans. While we work in a world shaped through colonial hierarchies and capitalist extraction, we rarely center this context in our research.

Ethnobiology and Degrowth: A Review of the Opportunities for Collaboration, Generative Inquiry, and Solidarity in Socio-Ecological Research - Andrew Flachs, 2025 For centuries, global political economic relations have been informed by a model of growth premised on transforming plants, animals, knowledge, labor, water, an...

New paper on the intersections of ethnobiology and degrowth: two ways of understanding our place in the world through action-oriented, imaginative research into socioecological relationships.

doi.org/10.1177/0278...

We offer these resources as we enter the High Holy Days this year in grief and in outrage. Our movements have grown to greater power than ever, and yet we have not yet had enough power to shut down the US-Israeli war machine waging death, destruction, and famine on Palestinians in Gaza.

Map of Fijian communities navigating food access

Great intersection of ethnobiology, food security, and food sovereignty from Kaminski and colleagues: communities manage political ecological change by combining long-distance and local food systems ojs.ethnobiology.org/index.php/eb...

Free and open access as always from Ethnobiology Letters

“Look, there’s structuring structures that structure, and that’s why the poors don’t choose to be better” David Brooks, probably

What is this “culture” thing anyway? Do any person or persons specialize in its analysis?

Social reproduction, unpaid and keeping us alive as ever

The foliage of this hardy, prickly, perennial genus resembles the artichoke (Cynara cardunculus) and has similar culinary uses.

Fabulous ethnobiology research from Tassel et al. on ‘Akkoub (Gundelia spp. and Asteraceae) in Palestine, newly out in Ethnobiology Letters

ojs.ethnobiology.org/index.php/eb...

Starvation as genocide - IPES-Food IPES-Food statement on Gaza. Mass starvation is deliberately being used by Israel as a tool of genocide against the Palestinian people.

The intentional denial of food and water in Gaza is a crime against humanity, a violation of the international human rights to food and water, and a breach of humanitarian law.

Our statement: ipes-food.org/starvation-a...

#FoodIsNotAWeapon #ProtectGaza

What's the point of a university education if you come out of it not being able to write the first draft of a letter without "AI assistance"?

Great work!!

Who is an American farmer? Who counts in American agriculture? - Agriculture and Human Values Agriculture and Human Values - The most recent changes in the US Census of Agriculture (CoA) have caused substantial increases in the number of farmers. At the same time, by including lifestyle and...

Here's my open access paper "Who is an American farmer? Who counts in American agriculture?"!
I show that using $1,000 sales value as the threshold to be considered a farmer in the Census of Agriculture + increasing the # of operators per farm results in vast overestimates of "farms" & "farmers" 1/

Some of us paid attention in Hebrew school: “it is difficult to consider any deaths as natural in Auschwitz, regardless of one's interpretation, as prisoners frequently died from disease, starvation, exhaustion, and, above all, beatings.” www.auschwitz.org/en/education...

Is Weiss aware, and if she is does she care, that Holocaust Deniers have made *exactly* this same argument about how the death tolls in the camps are inflated?

But then again, producing enough food hasn’t been the problem since Malthus’ time doi.org/10.1093/acre...

Concentration and crises: exploring the deep roots of vulnerability in the global industrial food system The world has experienced three global food crises in the past 50 years. While unique triggers sparked each of these crises, they all exposed extreme concentration within the global industrial food...

But industrialized ag is also heavily consolidated and functions as a site of financial speculation, while neoliberal retreat has left states unable to channel food to hungry people www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

GM Crops and the Jevons Paradox: Induced Innovation, Systemic Effects and Net Pesticide Increases From Pesticide‐Decreasing Crops The Jevons paradox describes how increased efficiency in the use of a resource can paradoxically increase rather than reduce its overall consumption. In agricultural systems, efficiency is confounded...

This same process can also intensify the use of chemical pesticides, even when working with GM crops designed to curb pesticide use onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Land tenure and agricultural expansion in Latin America: The role of Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ forest rights Agricultural expansion remains the most important proximate cause of tropical deforestation, while interactions between socio-economic, technological …

More capital/input intensive ag also often leads to expansion of that farming, not land sparing, because it produces for an infinite growth market www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The assumption here is that this ag produces food and spares land, but in a food regime intent on growing capital, these factory-inspired farms expand monocultures while not providing more food for hungry human consumption

‘Targeted assassination’: Israel’s killing of Al Jazeera staff condemned Israel’s killing of five Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza prompts global outrage and calls for accountability.

Israel’s killing of five Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza prompts global outrage and calls for accountability.

Email from the "PUBLIC RECORDS OFFICE" to Kate Starbird asking for all emails from Jan 1 2021 through July 30 2025 with any of the following keywords: "diversity and inclusion" "DEIA" "DEI" "Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging" "DEIB" "gender identity" "racial preference" "ESG" "organizational equity" "intersectionality" "anti-racism" "critical race theory" "LGBTQ+" "transgender" "cisgender" "gender ideology" "white privilege" "privilege walk" "cultural humility" "equity audit" "restorative justice" "racial equity" "implicit bias" "microaggressions" "inclusive pedagogy" "identity-based oppression" "systems of oppression" "queer" "non-binary" "sexuality" “Trump” “fascist”

If anyone is curious about the current list of search terms being used by right wing activist organizations to harass university professors, here's a public records request I received today from Mike Howell of the Heritage Foundation. Not intimidating or meant to curtail by my speech at all, right?

As I detailed in WHITE FLIGHT, segregationists in Atlanta absolutely loved public services -- buses and trolleys, parks and pools, golf courses and tennis courts, etc. -- right until they were forced to desegregate and "stolen" from them. They abandoned them and built up private alternatives.