In this installment, KMO speaks with Colin Tudge and David Blume about the possible applications of high technology, genetic engineering, robotics and artificial intelligence in farming.

Both of the guests on this week's program have long and impressive bios which I did not even attempt to do justice when I introduced them. Here is a tasty tidbit from David Blume's bio:

KQED, San Francisco’s Public Broadcasting System station, asked Dave to put his alcohol workshop on television, and together they spent two years making the ten-part series, Alcohol as Fuel. To accompany the series, Dave wrote the comprehensive manual on the subject, the original Alcohol Can Be A Gas! Shortly after the first show aired, in 1983, oil companies threatened to pull out their funding if the series was continued. KQED halted the distribution of the series and book (see this current book’s Introduction for the whole story).

CT nurses the conviction that human beings are basically both sensible and nice and that if only democracy could be made to work—creating societies based on people's real desires and values, as opposed to those assumed by economists and governments—then the world would be a much better place. After so many decades of muddle-headedness and abuse, it may well be too late to keep the world in a tolerable state. Yet this still may be achievable, and is surely worth a try.
Read More About Episode 77: AI (Agricultural Intelligence)...

KMO and author David Blume spell out the difference between ethanol as a huge corporate/government boondoggle and ethanol as a strategy for re-localization and bio-remediation. After that KMO visits with organic farmer Patrice Gros and two of his energized and idealistic interns.

David Blume is the author of Alcohol Can Be a Gas!: Fueling an Ethanol Revolution for the 21st Century.

In the podcast, I mentioned that we didn't have time for David to reproduce all the points about ethanol that I've heard him make on other programs. If you're interested in hearing more from David Blume on this topic, I would direct you to Alan Graf's Third Planet Report. David also appears in two episodes of Peak Moment. Here's the first:

You can find David Blume's website here.

You can find the cyberspace home of Ross & Rebecca Williams here.

You can learn more about Patrice Gros at the Foundation Farm website.