We have a food system that is broken in so many ways.

And in fact, that's just generally recognized, even by the large corporations who have broken it.

Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Jim Thomas. Jim is the research director at the Etcetra Group and has over 25 years of international experience tracking the impacts of emerging technologies on human rights, biodiversity, equity and food systems. The Et cetera group does important work to address the socioeconomic

and ecological issues surrounding new technologies that can have important impacts on the world's

poorest and most vulnerable people. That includes doing technological assessments on new technologies that are being proposed to

be implemented around the world, monitoring global governance issues, including on corporate

concentration and trade in technologies, and of course they work closely and partner with civil

society groups and social movements, especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. I was really happy

to talk with Jim because, first of all, I think that the food system and what is happening in the food system is incredibly important.

And certainly it's a conversation that, you know, we've been having more and more lately that is coming up in the media,

especially as we've seen the impacts of the pandemic, supply chain disruptions, the war on

the food system and certainly food prices and what that is meant for people to be able to

feed themselves. But at the same time, October 16th, you know, in the next few days as this

episode comes out, is World Food Day, which is an important time to think about the food system

that we depend on, how we get our food, and whether it is an important time to think about the food system that we depend on,

how we get our food, and whether it is the best way to structure that food production for

sustainability, for equity, and to ensure it's not at risk as these kind of structural crises

that we can face might become more common with the climate crisis. So in this conversation, Jim and I talk a lot about the way that tech companies and big agriculture

companies are pushing new technologies into the industrial food system, what that actually means

for food production, for food workers, what it means for the control of these major companies

over the system and increasing consolidation that's occurring within that system.

There are a lot of reasons to be very worried about the direction that the food system is

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