Andrew Flachs

Explores how the Jevons paradox applies to agriculture, arguing that increased efficiency—especially through technologies like genetically modified (GM) crops—often leads to greater overall resource consumption, rather than conservation. Demonstrates how GM crops have contributed to expanded pesticide use and agricultural land, rather than reducing them.

Examines how local farmers and food distributors in the U.S. adapted to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic by using spreadsheets Findings show that while these tools supported efficiency, simplicity, and growth, they also introduced tensions for farmers committed to diversity, stability, and human connection in their practices. 

Draws on research with organic cotton and coffee farmers in India, as well as a brief case study with small-scale heritage farmers in Bosnia, to argue that sustainability, broadly conceived, must account for factors beyond resource-efficiency or yields.

Challenges the claim that genetic modification (GM) is simply a continuation of plant domestication, arguing that while GM and crop breeding share similarities, both differ significantly from domestication by shifting plant evolution from farms to centralized institutions. 

Explores how cotton farmers in rural South India choose between genetically modified and organic seeds, revealing that these decisions are shaped by more than economics—they involve social, ecological, political, and personal factors.

Identifies the rise and fall of hotspots of new, alternative farmers across the United States from 1992 to 2012. Discusses how these hotspots are clustered around peri-urban corridors close enough to cities to sell their products but outside key factory farming or urban areas where land prices would be prohibitively expensive.

Describes how farmers make very different kinds of decisions about their private GM hybrid cotton, publicly bred rice varieties, and heirloom saved vegetable seeds. Explains the effect on how these technologies spread and how producers interact with these different markets.

Shows that we need to better understand the key local stakeholders who adapt development programs to the needs of the local community, and their motivations for doing so. 

Shows that Indian GM cotton farmers are increasingly planting their fields denser. Explains that this change in planting density sets off a wave of related changes in agricultural technology, the most important of which is an increase in herbicide use that incentivizes new but currently illegal GM herbicide tolerant cotton seeds. 

Analyzes a decade of Indian farmer GM cotton seed choices. Shows that farmers are statistically less likely to plant a seed that they have planted before and that there is no relationship between a farmer's yield and the seed they plant in the following year. Demonstrates that the only predictive factor for a given farmer's choice is the sheer presence of that seed in the farmer's nearest neighbor's field.

Argues that organic cotton farms in Telangana, India are more biodiverse than GM cotton farms — not because organic agriculture is inherently biodiverse but because these programs incentivize farmers to grow a larger spread of crops than farmers working in conventional cotton markets can afford to grow.