Speculating on collapse: Unrealized socioecological fixes of agri-food tech
研究了2023年两种曾被寄予厚望的农业食品技术（生物工程动物蛋白替代品和垂直农场）为何经济上失败，发现它们试图通过投机替代传统生产系统，但未能及时实现成本竞争，反而因传统系统持续盈利而自身估值过高。
Circa 2023, after receiving much hype and investment, two agri-food technologies touted for their world-changing potential, bioengineered animal protein substitutes and vertical (indoor) farms, began to falter economically. Tech sector observers attributed the fall to typical hype cycle dynamics; this paper provides a deeper read. Based on research involving over ninety interviews with agri-food tech sector actors and observation at nearly 100 industry events, we show an unrealized socioecological fix as first conceptualized by Ekers and Prudham. As attempts at preemption, these technologies were able to attract excess capital to an area believed to be in need of fixing, and their backers anticipated and in some cases tried to promote the devaluation of legacy production systems. But the technologies on offer failed to become cost competitive in a timely way since legacy production systems continued to be productive and profitable. It was these new companies that became uncompetitive and overvalued, which in turn turned investments in them into bad ones. Ironically, the agri-food tech sector has eschewed a path which might have made their products competitive, which is social regulation of legacy production systems. Instead they effectively speculated that such systems would implode under their own contradictions.