Comment by seltzered_
11 hours ago
That doesn't seem like an actual quote in the original article, but this a fair point to bring up and a reminder that Gates has been problematic on his views on climate.
First, in the essay he mentions "Using AI, low-income farmers will soon be able to get better advice about all these things than even the richest farmers get today and increase their output substantially.". There may be some truth in this, but it's worth reminding that this is more of a 'productivist' worldview, and historically productivity gains in agricultural practices have benefitted farmers that were already wealthy (see books like The Globalization of Wheat by Marci Baranski [1] on the Green Revolution where "Borlaug’s new technologies ultimately privileged wealthier farmers, despite assurances to politicians that these new crops would thrive in diverse geographies and benefit all farmers").
Gates has also been criticized in the past for being influenced by figures like Bjorn Lomborg, where he had a (now-deleted) essay [2] with him, and there's a decent thread by energy entrepreneur Jigar Shah on Gates being off on climate issues for 15 years [3]
[1]: https://upittpress.org/books/9780822947349/
[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230601175906/https://www.gates... (June 2023)
[3]: https://bsky.app/profile/jigarshahdc.bsky.social/post/3m4del...
The Green Revolution most certainly did improve the lives of tens of millions of low income farmers in India. The high yield crops also permanently removed the spectre of famine from India, saving tens of millions from starvation.
To retcon this into “only rich farmers benefited” is weird. Certainly there are many rich farmers out there. Of course their incomes increased when they could plant more productive crops. But so what if they make money? They’re feeding everyone!