I had been driving country roads for close to an hour. The dull purr of pavement eventually gave way to the steady rumble of gravel, like a hailstorm hitting the vehicle’s underside. I saw the white tops of the iconic blue Harvestore silos peeking up over the dancing corn tassels well before the other buildings and farmhouse came into view. As I pulled into the half-mile-long driveway, a gentleman emerged from the airport hangar—like doors of the machine shed and walked toward his equipment laid out on the front lawn. It felt like the morning of a farm auction, before the crowd and auctioneer appear. There before me were ten John Deere implements, all laid out in two perfectly spaced rows.
As I walked from my rental car, the man stretched out his arms, standing among his equipment: “Welcome to tractor alley!” And so began my interview with Bart, a forty-something corn, soybean, and sorghum farmer whose operation is located in north central Kansas. I had found him through a friend of a friend. An acquaintance who manages a John Deere dealership in southern Iowa connected me with the manager of a John Deere dealership in south central Nebraska, who told me about Bart. Bart’s “alley” was a flat and impeccably manicured four-acre lawn that stood between his house and the gravel road. The equipment was parked just far enough away that dust from passing cars couldn’t reach his prized possessions. Green as far as the eye could see: John Deere, grass, surrounding cornfields, and, lest we forget, the money those diesel giants embodied. “More than two million,” Bart said when asked how much these lawn ornaments cost.
Conceived by a Kansas City company that has been leasing combines for more than fifteen years, MachineryLink Sharing advertises itself as a sharing platform—it’s called MachineryLink Sharing, after all. The firm promises to help farmers make money by renting, on a shortterm basis, their equipment to those who cannot afford, or who choose not, to buy these machines outright. The arrangement therefore is not equivalent to Uber, even though the two companies are often portrayed by the media as analogous.1 Bart does not drive fellow farmers around. His equipment is shipped, via big rig, to whoever is willing to pay the price.
Speaking of cost, it is not exactly cheap to rent equipment through this sharing platform. “Generally,” Bart told me, “you’ll spend anywhere between $20,000 and $50,000 to use my equipment.” Later that day, he showed me an invoice that backed up this claim. It was for a tractor he had leased for 200 hours at a cost of $38,000 to some guy in Washington State. That might sound like a lot—it is. But for most of Bart’s customers it is still a deal, a point he emphasized more than once.
Taking back the invoice, Bart slipped into the staccato speech pattern of a rehearsed sales pitch. “MachineryLink covers repairs almost 100 percent of the time; oil changes are fully covered; belt costs are split fifty-fifty. If the equipment is down for more than forty-eight hours, they’ll get you another one in just a day or two. With MachineryLink, you’re also getting peace of mind.”
The practice isn’t exactly new. Farmers have been leasing equipment for generations, borrowing it from one another for even longer. The platform’s innovation lies in allowing farmer-to-farmer leasing, versus business-to-farmer.
MachineryLink offers access to equipment in a sector plagued by financial barriers that can be as insurmountable as Mount Everest in the winter. As if the rising price of farmland weren’t bad enough, just one of Bart’s tractors cost more than what people in the nearest town were paying for houses. I know car dealers whose inventory does not match the cost of what Bart has on his front lawn. And then there are his routine maintenance costs. A single tire could cost as much as $5,000, times eight for those eight-wheel-drive behemoths.
MachineryLink offers significant advantages, reducing the costs of doing business for some producers. Farming is a business with incredibly tight margins, and they are only getting tighter. Average U.S. farm incomes have been on a steady decline for generations, dropping by 36 percent in 2015 alone.2 MachineryLink is a platform with the potential to turn a red end-of-year ledger black for a group repeatedly getting the shaft. These upsides, however, should not keep us from asking about the downsides—particularly any effects beyond the financial ones.
My time with Bart concluded with a tour of his new four-track John Deere tractor—it has four tracks, each in the shape of a triangle, instead of wheels. From the cab, I saw another vehicle’s dust rising in the distance before I heard it. The truck came into view seconds before it passed. “That’s Scott,” Bart told me as the sound of the big block diesel engine receded, overtaken by the wind, rustling leaves, and the occasional moo—Bart also milks. “He’s not a huge fan of this piece of equipment.” What’s not to like? I thought while fiddling with the computer positioned to the right of the tractor’s chair, as in cop cars.
Getting up, I asked what he meant. Bart took off his hat and crumpled it in his hand. Then he began using it to swat at the empty air, chasing imaginary flies. After a couple swipes, he opened it back up and placed it atop his head, slightly off-center. He proceeded to tell a story. It was about him, I soon learned, even though he referred to himself in the third person.
I was told about two neighbors who used to borrow each other’s equipment. The practice had begun with their fathers and continued until recently, when one neighbor started using a sharing platform and traded up his older implements for newer models. The neighbors, of course, were Bart and Scott.
Now that Bart was trucking his new pieces of equipment across the country, they were no longer available to be borrowed, or what some would call shared. This, in his words, “hasn’t exactly been a plus as far as neighborly relations are concerned.”
This was neither the first nor the last time I heard stories in which formal sharing actually pushed people apart rather than bringing them together. As Bart described the rift with Scott, his explanation was telling. He seemed to be saying the platform encouraged the commodification of relationships: “I can make $20,000 or $30,000, or I can let my neighbor use it for free. You do the math. Unless I start charging the guy”—he was talking about Scott here—“a comparable rate, the tractor’s going to the guy who’s going to pay.”
Here, then, are more reasons to temper our sharing triumphalism with a critical eye, realizing that such exchanges are not without tradeoffs. As with this one: sharing more this way means sharing less that way.
You might think that we know a lot about the sharing economy’s role in fostering community. It is called the sharing economy, after all. But we have been putting emphasis on the other word, which explains why we know far more about the economic potential of these emerging practices than we do about what they mean for civil society.
Given their relative newness, we’re only beginning to understand their noneconomic impacts: one of the earliest studies to examine the societal consequences of these newfangled platforms dates back only a few years, to 2012. The research examined the experience of members of Zipcar, a for-profit car sharing enterprise.3 With Zipcar, members rent cars for as little as, to take those available on the campus of my university (Colorado State), $7.50 per hour. Members can use an app to locate their automobile—they’re often scattered throughout designated neighborhoods—by honking its horn. Through the app, users can also unlock the car’s doors and start the vehicle. The study found that the platform did nothing to build users’ attachment to the community, which should not be surprising, considering that a person can rent and return a Zipcar without ever coming into contact with another human. Convenient? Yes. Community building? Not a chance.
But then again, we ought to expect that from platforms intentionally designed to reduce social interaction.
Most sharing platforms involve at least some social contact. With Uber, a proprietary platform facilitates the exchange—so efficiently, in fact, that communication is not necessary to complete the transaction. The platform “tells” the driver where to go, and the company automatically charges the trip to the rider’s credit card. Drivers are at least encouraged to be convivial, and riders, if for no other reason than to be courteous, generally reciprocate. There’s no obvious reason to think these platforms harm social relations. But if the earlier story about Scott and Bart is at all generalizable, then we have an obligation to learn more.
In his late twenties, Nathan reminded me of a character in a Tim Burton movie. His style was a cross between Goth and vintage 1930s gangster—pale skin, jet-black hair in need of an oil change, dark double-breasted jacket, and black fedora. Nate was a college student, and he and his closest friends could be considered heavy users of food sharing platforms, claiming to get between four and six of their meals weekly through them. Nate’s platform of choice was Feastly, though he also mentioned occasionally using Josephine and Eatwith.
“He doesn’t expect me to pay, of course. But still, my eating at his house might be keeping a paying customer out.” Nathan was telling me about his longtime friend Jack. Jack had started selling food regularly through Feastly, one of the better known and longer established food sharing platforms. Meals generally cost from $25 to $75. Of that, Feastly takes a 20 percent cut, for the platform and the vetting of cooks to make sure the food is up to par. The chefs keep the rest.
It is a pretty straightforward business model. You go online and purchase a spot at someone’s table for a specific meal. And then, at a prearranged time, you go to the chef’s house and eat—a dinner party you pay to attend where you don’t know anyone.
Nathan expressed sentiments that I had heard from others. Jack used to host “truly legendary”—Nathan’s words—dinner parties: five or six courses, mixed drinks, games, and comradery. “Then his weekend nights started to be booked with paying dinner parties.” Nathan slapped his hands down on the wooden tabletop between us with the word “paying.”
Jack still has friends over for dinner, Nathan among them. Yet this rarely happens during weekends anymore, as those tend to be his most profitable nights. Nathan explained: “The gang rarely all gets together anymore for these meals, with people having to work the next morning.” He admits this is more of an inconvenience than something worth losing sleep over. Yet Feastly has caused the group real angst.
Nathan spent a good deal of time trying to explain how the feeling of these dinner parties changed—he used the terms “feel” and “feeling” repeatedly. “First, you can’t help but feel like you ought to be paying, given that someone else could be eating there, and paying for it, if it weren’t for your presence.” Nathan and his friends soothed their consciences by bringing more to the dinners than they had before. “Whereas before I’d bring a bottle of wine, I usually bring a couple bottles now, or a bottle and some appetizers.”
This guilt does not seem entirely unfounded, given one of Jack’s new favorite topics of conversation at these dinners, when he finds time to host them. According to Nathan, “Jack likes to announce how much he would have made had he charged us for the meal.”
I decided to get Jack’s side of the story, a delicate prospect, since I had no intention of throwing Nathan under the bus by revealing his concerns about their friendship.
Pulling into Jack’s driveway, I immediately spotted the signature tail fins, and then the rest of it. A fully restored ’57 Chevy Bel Air was parked in the garage. Remembering Nathan’s style, I was expecting to meet another twenty-something rocking the retro look. Instead, a young man sporting a high-and-tight military-style haircut stood at the door, wearing khakis and a polo shirt. After welcoming me, he guided me to his kitchen, an open space with a large table at one end and an island in the middle, followed by a peninsula that connected to the rest of the counter and cabinet space.
I had told Jack over the phone that I wanted to talk with him about his experiences using Feastly, as I had learned from a friend that he was having considerable success with the platform. Given that Jack had only an hour before he needed to leave, we made quick pleasantries and got right to work.
He was making between $500 and $700 per month, after Feastly’s commission and the cost of the food. He told me he had always wanted to be a chef. The platform allowed him to live out a childhood fantasy, though he doubted he would continue it over the long term. He was planning instead to go to law school and become a real estate attorney.
Ultimately, it was he who directed the conversation to the subject of his friends and their increasingly infrequent dinner parties. He had been hosting parties with the same group since graduating from high school eight years before. At the high point, he was having friends—mostly the same friends—over twice a month. That had changed about a year ago, when he started using Feastly regularly.
“I wouldn’t say I’m choosing money over friends—really.” His downcast eyes and the fact that “really” came out a whole two octaves higher made me wonder if he was trying to convince himself as much as me. He admitted, “If I have become money focused, it is because I have to; that stove isn’t going to pay for itself.” Later, he added, “I can have my friends over, or I can have paying customers over who will help me recoup expenses.”
Jack had bought a high-end commercial stove about six months earlier, thinking his new gig would help subsidize its cost. I was not surprised to hear this. All this talk about how peer-to-peer platforms reduce consumption—why buy a drill when you can use someone else’s?—misses the fact that sharing can also increase consumption by creating new revenue streams. I had heard about this more than once in the context of Uber—of someone buying a second car, perhaps even one a step up from what they could otherwise afford, hoping their income from this platform would cover the difference. I also saw this with Bart and MachineryLink. Before joining the platform, Bart had owned one tractor that was less than twenty-four months old. When I spoke with him, he had six pieces of equipment that were more or less new.
By the halfway mark of the interview, I felt pretty confident that Nathan had been telling the truth when he said Jack liked to announce during dinner parties how much he would have made had he charged for the meal. Jack had already admitted to being fairly calculating about whom to have over—paying strangers or nonpaying friends. After all, that stove wasn’t going to pay for itself. Later, he confessed to “wishing [his friends] would cough up a few bucks when they came over to eat” so he could spend more time with them. I then knew Nathan’s descriptions were spot-on.
“Never mix friendship and business.” Peer-to-peer platforms give new meaning to the saying, reminding us that in commodifying previously private actions—sharing tractors, meals, rides—we risk crowding out those actions, and the people attached to them, for opportunities that pay. I am not suggesting Jack’s transformation is representative of your typical peer-to-peer chef. But it is a reminder of what can happen when you start putting a price tag on activities that previously didn’t come with one.
So what is gained and what is lost through platforms such as Feastly and Josephine? Again, our understanding of them is largely limited to their economic impacts.4 We can cite, for example, how “in 2015, the sharing economy created 60,000 jobs in the United States and attracted a total of $15 billion in financing,” while projecting that the sector is expected to “generate $335 billion in revenue for 2025.”5
We have to be able to say more.
These “side hustles”—there’s a term to drop if you want to sound like a player in the sharing economy—can reduce barriers for aspiring entrepreneurs. The restaurant industry is not for the faint of heart or stomach. In conventional foodscapes, this means owning expensive space and kitchen equipment and then figuring out a way to pay for it all while hoping against hope to eke out a profit. Roughly 60 percent of these businesses fail in their first year, and only 20 percent survive to see their fifth anniversary.6 Can sharing substitute for business acumen, knowledge about food safety, or the ability to cook? Of course not. Sharing is not a panacea. But it does make entry into the food business less daunting.
What’s less clear is these platforms’ potential to build community, in the immediate term, at least. Remember, we are talking about one-off exchanges here. But perhaps the societal value of these exchanges should not be measured exclusively by their ability to generate durable relationships. Hoping that sharing platforms create friends could, in fact, be seen as putting the cart before the horse, especially given the state of the world today. It is hard to make friends with people you cannot stand being in the same room with, or who you think are “drug dealers, criminals, rapists,” if we are talking about forging friendships with Mexicans and your feelings align with those of President Trump.7
Can we say anything about whether these platforms make people more comfortable being around others, especially others different from themselves?
I first met Ben while eating dinner at a stranger’s house. We were part of the same meal sharing dinner party, friends of a mutual friend. Seated next to each other for the entire meal, we had plenty of time to get to know one another. By the end of the night, we had exchanged contact information and agreed to meet the next day to discuss Ben’s experiences with Cookapp, the platform responsible for our introduction.
We met the next morning at eight o’clock in a cute six-table café, complete with the little bell on the door, decorative pressed metal on the ceiling, and what looked like original art deco floor tile. First, we reviewed what had happened the night before. We both agreed that the food, and the goat curry in particular, was spectacular. We also talked about cricket—the game, not the insect. Our host hailed from New Zealand and had cricket memorabilia scattered throughout the house—vintage wickets and stumps and a signed photograph of New Zealand cricketer Brendon “Baz” McCullum.
Then our coffee came, and we got to the business at hand.
“I wouldn’t say I’ve made many friends from it—excluding yourself, maybe one or two others.” Ben had been using Cookapp for more than a year. The platform first launched in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in May 2013, becoming available to New Yorkers in February 2014. It is a meal sharing platform, not all that different from the likes of Eatwith, Feastly, and Josephine.
In the case of Cookapp New York, eaters come to the “restaurant,” which in this city is typically an apartment, for good food and sometimes awkward conversation, all for less than what they would spend eating out. Guests are encouraged to make a “suggested donation”—around fifty bucks, according to Ben, depending on whether liquor is included or the event is BYO, “bring your own.” The “suggested donation” wording is a workaround to exempt these practices from New York City’s health department policy, which does not allow selling meals out of a residence.
Ben admitted to using Cookapp and other platforms like it about once a week. When I asked him to describe his experiences, I was surprised by what he recalled. I was expecting him to talk about the food. Instead, he focused on the hosts and other guests. Their unexpected quirks, like a fascination with cricket. Their religion: a subject that was not raised with any frequency, though over one meal a host’s Wiccan identity became a subject of conversation—“I’m still not 100 percent sure what Wicca is, but what I heard involved stuff I could get behind.” Nationality: during the previous eight meals, Ben had met people from Iran, Italy, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia.
In hindsight, and after talking with others about their experiences with these platforms, I realized there was nothing extraordinary about this. Others too were more concerned with whom they met than what they ate, especially when those encountered were different in some way.
Ben was now reflecting on his earlier comment about not having made many friends through these experiences. “Sometimes it’s not friends we need as much as opportunities, opportunities to get to know people different from ourselves.” It was an interesting insight. We want our sharing opportunities to build social networks, to create friends. But it is hard to make friends with people if you fear or hate them.
With that, the conversation turned as we discussed how growing one’s network of friends might actually contribute to today’s societal ills. Ben again: “Racists have friends, who are mostly all racist too. Growing that circle of nastiness isn’t going to help anyone.” This brought us back to the issue of whom we are befriending.
Earlier, Ben had talked positively about meeting people different from himself, meetings made possible by meal sharing platforms. Those experiences were no doubt weighing on his mind at this very moment.
Elbows on the table, holding the stainless steel napkin dispenser in both hands, he gazed at his reflection. The image gazing back was warped and contorted—I know because I could see my own reflecting on the opposite side. He studied the distortion for several seconds before adding, without looking up, “I would like to see what would happen if someone like that sat down and broke bread with an undocumented immigrant. Or, better, a Muslim.” Looking up, he added, with a small chuckle, “Perhaps that is precisely what they need.”
It is important that we create opportunities for people to work together. Our future depends on it. But this requires a willingness to actually work together. You cannot force collaboration, any more than you can force two people from different backgrounds to eat together at the same table and have a conversation. Yet what if people came to that table for the prospect of good, affordable food? What if getting to know people different from you were an unintended side effect? Might people let their guard down long enough to see the person across from them as a person and not as, for example, someone associated with drug dealers, criminals, and rapists?
If you think we ought to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, or if you think one group is culturally superior to another, I have a pretty good idea of who you are going to choose to collaborate with, namely, others who think and pray as you do and perhaps even look like you. That is exactly the direction we don’t want to go as we seek to build sharing communities.
I soon learned that Ben’s comments about racists befriending racists were rooted in a very personal example. Leaning forward over the table, in a voice that was definitely a few decibels lower than usual, he told me about a racist uncle whom he referred to coldly as “the butt-hole.”
His uncle, I learned, is a popular guy and has been for a long time. Prom king. High school football captain. But beyond that cliché, he is, according to Ben, “just a really well-liked guy, if you like that sort of thing.” That last dig is a reference to his uncle’s largely homogeneous network of connections. His friends, a crew of like minded compatriots, all get their news from the same television and radio programs. They even look the same. Ben pulled his smartphone from his pocket and showed me his uncle’s Facebook page. One group picture looked like a scene on the set of a Spike TV program about custom motorbikes—Harleys, wraparound sunglasses, jeans, black shirts, and faces sporting facial hair and grimaces more than grins. And, of course, they were all white. “They all believe in the same politics,” Ben added.
“I don’t hate the guy,” Ben explained as he returned his phone to his pocket, continuing, “I just wish he’d have these experiences.” By “these experiences,” he meant those not quite peer-to-peer encounters that Ben found so rewarding, meetings that were created through food sharing platforms. He added, “I can’t see how he could still hold some of the views he holds if he got to know the people he’s vilifying.”
With that, he looked up and smiled. Then the smile turned into a full-fledged grin, spreading from one ear to the other until he looked like a clam just opened. “He would never intentionally break bread with someone not like him—not, how do I say it … white. Can’t have illegals in our country!” Ben intoned, his voice dropping an octave and becoming gravelly as he impersonated his uncle. “But maybe,” back to Ben’s voice again, “he would if it were under the pretext of getting some good, old-fashioned home cooked food.”
As Gandhi explained, the enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it’s fear. Fear is born of ignorance. We should always be vigilant when it comes to scouting for practices with the potential to reduce ignorance about, and thus fear and hate toward, others.
Here’s to appealing to the better angels of our nature, and to finding ways to keep them well fed.