The Problem with Solutions: Why Silicon Valley Can’t Hack the Future of Food

A concise and feisty takedown of the all-style, no-substance tech ventures that fail to solve our food crises.

Why has Silicon Valley become the model for addressing today’s myriad social and ecological crises? With this book, Julie Guthman digs into the impoverished solutions for food and agriculture currently emerging from Silicon Valley, urging us to stop trying to fix our broken food system through finite capitalistic solutions and technological moonshots that do next to nothing to actualize a more just and sustainable system.

The Problem with Solutions combines an analysis of the rise of tech company solution culture with findings from actual research on the sector’s ill-informed attempts to address the problems of food and agriculture. As this seductive approach continues to infiltrate universities and academia, Guthman challenges us to reject apolitical and self-gratifying techno-solutions and develop the capacity and willingness to respond to the root causes of these crises. Solutions, she argues, are a product of our current condition, not an answer to it.

Julie Guthman is a geographer and Professor of Community Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her previous books include Wilted: Pathogens, Chemicals, and the Fragile Future of the Strawberry Industry.