Week 1 HW: Principles and Practices
| Does the option: | Researchers | Farmers | Government | Business | Elders |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Protect The Environment. | |||||
| • By reducing accidental plant colonization. | 1 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| • By disincentivizing farm land expansion. | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Protect Non-Normative Agriculture. | |||||
| • By ensuring crop diversity. | 1 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 |
| • By incentivizing polycropping and permaculture. | 0 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| Influence Consumer Consensus. | |||||
| • By building trust in crop transformation. | 3 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| • By fighting disinformation. | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 |
| • By developing great end-products. | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| • By developing a great brand. | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
Researchers — anyone working on developing the crops. Farmers — anyone working on growing the crops. Government — anyone working on lawmaking associated with the crops. Business — any business-side component of funding or selling the crops. Elders — indigenous or other wisdom teachers.
My focuses to best mitigate risk on this project would be threefold:
- Establish a great brand that creates great products. Nothing builds institutional trust like authentic, direct communication and consistent top-tier execution. The success next generation of transformed crops will depend on the end-consumer brands’ ability to communicate to the audience better than that haters will. The only true solution to this problem is direct communication between scientists and consumers via a company that works across the range from research to end-product deployment.
- Get involved in lobbying from day one with a focus on the comparatively under-invested arena of executive branch lobbying. If we don’t want to get regulated out of existence, scientists must be in conversation with lawmakers as early and as often as possible to develop smart regulations and proper incentives for the synthetic biology economy.
- Make deep relationships with the farmers growing our plants. No one knows the land or the plants like the ones tending it. If we want to do this right we must befriend our growers and learn from their daily experience brining our seeds to fruition.