Smells like Team Spirit: A Response to Comments on The Spirit of the Soil

The Spirit of the Soil was updated for its 2nd edition in 2017. Three comments on the update are addressed here. First, productionism was not intended as a explanation of farm management decision making, but as a paradigm for agricultural science and a philosophy of food systems, as a whole. Second, linking cultural values in food systems could usefully be approached using an ecosystem services framework, but that does not exhaust the significance of food practices as formative for virtues. The larger goal of the book was to illuminate philosophies of technology that shape food system practice.