The University of Arizona Press
June 23, 2026
Food Sleuth radio host Melinda Hemmelgarn recently interviewed Andrew Flachs author of Feeding the World as if People Mattered: How Small Farms Produce Value Beyond Yields. This book draws on fifteen years of anthropological research, taking readers to fields in South India, Eastern Europe, and North America, where people are already feeding the future amid global change. From these fields, Flachs shows us how a radical rethinking of the value of small farms and farmers is already happening. Listen to part 1 of the interview here and part 2 here. Flachs is an associate professor of anthropology at Purdue University, a father of two children, and a semi-retired musician.
Asked about creating more farms and more farmers instead of increasing yields, Flachs replied, “When we think about increasing yields, what sort of systems are we perpetuating? There is this specter of food production, overpopulation, and environmental degradation that is so tied to a crisis mode of thinking (from the 1970s). If we see it simply as a production question, then all of our solutions end up being how do we create more and more of this thing. The United Nations [and other international researchers] have concluded that the problem of world hunger is not that there is not enough food, it’s that food cannot reach the people who really need it.” This food distribution problem is already being solved with a variety of local farming methods in different parts of the world. Listen to the full podcast interview: part 1 here and part 2 here.
About the book:
Backyard gardens flush with cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers where bees buzz and chickens scratch. Beyond, a forest filled with blackberries and jewelweed. Inspired by childhood memories of his grandmother’s overflowing backyard garden, author Andrew Flachs has embarked on a multi-continent, decades-long look at agriculture and its value.
The dominant view of agriculture has focused only on what we produce. It sees value in terms of capital gains or yield efficiency, masking how our global food system produces tremendous amounts of food commodities while failing to feed people, support rural communities, or enhance ecological well-being. Feeding the World as if People Mattered asks us to look more deeply and more humanely at what we perceive to be most valuable in our agricultural systems. Bringing together conversations in agriculture, economics, anthropology, and the environmental humanities, Flachs deftly shows how small farms reproduce social and ecological relationships that are the only sustainable path forward.
