Blockchain Chickens with Robert Yaman and Bailey Norwood
Join us (along with Robert Yaman and Bailey Norwood!) to discuss Xiaowei Wang's formidable book, Blockchain Chicken Farm.
The work presents a boot-on-ground dystopian vision of animal welfare, the technology and incentives driving it, and the economics that underpin it all: "Sanqiao chickens are under heavy surveillance. In addition to wearing the ankle bracelets, the chickens are tested every two weeks...for any signs of antibiotic usage, which is illegal under the category of free-range. While it may seem like overkill, it might be a small price to pay in order to win back public trust. These chickens are delivered to consumers’ doors, butchered and vacuum sealed, with the ankle bracelet still attached, so customers can scan the QR code before preparing the chicken. Scanning this code leads them to a page with details about the chicken’s life, including its weight, the number of steps it took, and its photograph. In Shanghai, these details are seen as a sign of authenticity and food safety, while in the United States they could easily be read from an animal-welfare angle.”
About out discussants:
Robert Yaman is the founder of Innovate Animal Ag, a think tank bringing a techno-optimist approach to farm animal welfare. After a decade in the Silicon Valley biotech ecosystem, he started IAA to run a DARPA-style model for animal agriculture: scouting high-potential, neglected technologies, de-risking them through research and targeted funding, and working with producers to bring them to market.
Bailey Norwood is an agricultural economist at Oklahoma State University, where he pursues an eclectic mix of research topics, from consumer preference measurement to the philosophy of gardening. His four books include (1) Compassion, by the Pound, about farm animal welfare (2) Agricultural and Food Controversies, part of the "What Everyone Needs to Know" series by Oxford University Press (3) Meet the Food Radicals, where he interviews individuals on the fringe side of agricultural and food, and (4) Agricultural Marketing and Price Analysis, a textbook used across the U.S. and Greece. On the teaching side Bailey is mainly known for his Farm2Fork class, which involves lectures recorded in a brewery, the OSU football stadium, and a stone mill, and where the students manage a vegetable garden at the local food pantry where they donate the produce to the food insecure.
See you there!