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Posted on April 20, 2023 | 29 Comments
The time has come to announce my new book, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future: The Case for an Ecological Food System and Against Manufactured Foods. It’ll be published in the UK on 29 June and the US on 20 July, with ebook and audio versions also available. So there’s no excuse… I’m delighted that Sarah Langford, the author of Rooted, is writing a foreword for it.
The folks at Chelsea Green have come up with this attractive but unfancy cover, which matches my feelings about the book.
I wrote the book in a two-month blur as a job of work that I felt somebody had to do to combat the head of steam building around the case for a farm-free future associated with George Monbiot’s book Regenesis and the Reboot Food initiative. And if that somebody was me, so be it.
My original motivation was mainly just to critique the fanciful ecomodernism of Reboot Food, which I believe is apt to bedazzle people of goodwill but with limited knowledge of food and farming into thinking that a technological solution is at hand that will enable them to continue living high-energy, urban consumerist lifestyles while going easy on the climate and the natural world. Really, it isn’t. The danger is that farm-free bromides will, as usual with ecomodernism, instil a ‘great, they’ve fixed it!’ complacency at just the time when we need to jettison the techno-fix mentality and radically reimagine our social and political assumptions.
So the book takes a somewhat polemical approach in critiquing the arguments for manufactured food. But actually I found that this provided a pretty good foil for making an alternative case for agrarian localism, what I call in my book ‘a predominantly distributed rural population, energy restraint, diverse mixed farming for local needs, wildlands, human-centred science, popular smallholder democracy and keystone ecology’. So the book has that more positive framing too, much of which will be familiar to regular readers of this blog or of my previous book, although I like to think I’ve pushed a few things forwards. Still, it’s a short book, so a more detailed exposition awaits.
What I don’t and won’t do is offer some alternative technical or social one-size-fits-all solution. Solutionism of this kind is itself part of the problem. I daresay that will lead to some incomprehension in the book’s reception along the lines that if I can’t provide an alternative ‘answer’, then I can’t have anything worthwhile to say. Naturally, I don’t subscribe to that line of reasoning. Researchers, opinion-mongers and writers of books just don’t have ‘the answer’, whereas you – whoever ‘you’ are – probably do have part of an answer locally. But you have to work at it. Maybe my book will help. In that sense, what I offer is a bit like the answer of farming itself. Instead of the magic beans and golden geese of the Reboot Food narrative, all I can realistically offer is a bare seedbed awaiting productive work. The scene then has to be peopled by others, ordinary working people, doing the work.
Or maybe you could think of the book as an exercise in rewilding, because the nature of wildness is that you can’t really tell what’s going to happen next.
Anyway, I’ll be interested to see what kind of reception the book gets. Possibly, it’s presumptuous of me to expect it’ll get much of a reception at all, but my tweet from a few days back announcing the book has had around 34,000 views – so by my humble standards I think there may be an appetite out there for this.
I’m not going to steal my own thunder from the book pre-publication, but I thought I’d offer loyal readers of this blog a few tidbits by way of a sneak preview.
So, after some introductory material the book asks whether the energetics and economic geography implied in the manufactured food narrative are feasible (as I just said, I can’t give too much away just now about the book’s contents, but I’ll offer a clue: the answer is a two-letter word beginning with ‘n’). Then I consider whether the case against the wildlife and climate impacts of familiar plant-and-livestock based agriculture articulated in manufactured food narratives is plausible (answer: it’s complicated – let’s call it a two-letter word beginning with ‘n’ again, but with a side of three-letter word beginning with ‘y’). Next, I move on to examine whether a farm-free future for humanity is likely to involve what ecomodernist pioneer Stewart Brand called ‘urban promise’ – urbanization as a positive and prosperity-enriching experience. On that one, we’re back to a straightforward answer – the two-letter ‘n’ word again. Or at least we are if we have any commitment to justice. Finally, I make an alternative case for agrarian localism as the best means of securing human and natural wellbeing and climate stability, involving long-term human relationships with the land that, like all long-term relationships, require regular and ongoing work.
So there you have it. If you’d like to read the full version (or alternatively hear me reading it) I’d suggest pre-ordering a copy now! But I daresay I’ll write more about its themes on this blog once the book is out, albeit most likely with a bit less expounding than I devoted to my previous one.
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“Solutionism of this kind is itself part of the problem” – I couldn’t agree more – Well done for sticking your head above the parapet to write something like this – The idea that all the problems with manufactured food have been resolved and that there’s going to be sufficient renewable energy for such a product on the necessary scale (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0pt3ioQuNc) and that none of these things will have negative ecological impacts seems nuts to me. That’s not to say that manufactured food might form part of the answer – tofu anyone – but to me it seems to be about scale. I read Monbiot on manufactured food saying we had to stop it being taken over by the large industrial food corporations – well there’s a man who can’t learn from experience – if there’s money in it and if there’s more money at greater scale then they’ll take it over.
Funny I used to enjoy reading both Monbiot and Kingsnorth but they seem to have headed in opposite directions, become increasingly strident and tiring – its like they’ve joined the ranks of the professionally outraged
https://autoearth.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/30Years.jpg
Is processed food at the bottom of some of these numbers ? I think they probably are , reading the sides of food packages here in the USA is becoming a job for a organic chemist even potato chips ( crisps elsewhere ) are GM .
What happens when the goop factories get contaminated by the overzealous use of pesticides/ herbicides ? What are they going to put goop in ? Plastics are out and so are tins because of net zero and will the factories work with intermittent electricity ?
What are they going to use as fertilizer to grow bug food ,what it the feedstock they going to ferment come from ?
I could go on …..
I’m looking forward to reading it – I just preordered.
I couldn’t find a link to preorder the book in the post, so here’s a link (to Chelsea Green’s US site): https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/saying-no-to-a-farm-free-future/
https://www.smh.com.au/national/farmers-crippled-by-satellite-failure-as-gps-guided-tractors-grind-to-a-halt-20230418-p5d1de.html
Don’t think this is farm free but it’s certainly farmer free .
Technoutopian screw up !
I was talking to a farmer in his 60s the other day about all the changes he’d seen and the high tech nature of much farming now. I asked him if it still felt like farming to him – there was a long pause before he finally said yes – the pause was interesting because he’s pretty invested in high tech farming – does a lot of contract work alongside working his own land. I don’t want to claim to know what the man was thinking but I did get the impression he felt something had been lost from farming as size and technological sophistication has increased.
That’s a book which needed to be written. Thanks for writing it!
When a bad idea like Monbiot’s manufactured food loses money for venture capitalists, I’m not so bothered, but the prospect of government funding being wasted on it by clueless politicians is troubling.
Looking forward to the new book; I found Langford’s ideas on getting more people into farming quite inspiring. In a similar vein, this article points to a possible way forward, land access and income both forming key components when considering a move to a more land-based lifestyle.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2023/01/21/lifestyle/han-no-han-x-farming/
From the Japan Times article:
“By inviting people to try growing food while earning a modest income, the magic is that you are likely to realize you don’t need as much money as you thought you did. The agricultural lifestyle brings not only a fair amount of food, but also happiness and fulfillment for free — which you had previously chased by spending money.”
Think of the money saved if you spent a few hours in a allotment garden .
TV , nope . Netflix nope , gym subscription , nope , some need mental health help others drugs , that and a lot more could be solved by an allotment garden and a bottle of beer drunk while leaning on a fence talking to your neighbours !
Very glad to hear this, will pick up a copy. It’s been weird to see Monbiot go full ecomodernist, and I’m looking forward to your rebuttal. I suspect the “they’ll think of something” crowd (to borrow John Michael Greer’s phrase) are too committed to wishful thinking to question any of this stuff, but would be good if the book could convince some fence-sitters.
Also, off-topic but speaking of Greer: I’ve thought for a long now time it’d be extremely interesting to hear the two of you do a podcast or something together. For my money you’re the two brightest stars in the “alternative green” (or whatever you’d want to call it) movement, and there’s both a lot of overlap and some significant disagreements I’d enjoy hearing you work through. Plus you both come at it from complementary but very different perspectives. Maybe if you happen to know some of the same podcasters? Probably unlikely, but one can hope…
Anyway, best of luck with the book launch!
A Greer and Smaje get together on the Doomer Optimism podcast? I’d love to listen to it.
Though if it gets to talking religion/mysticism, I insist we add a Christian on there too… (Paul K are you reading this??)
To be honest, I think approaching it from more of a practical and political angle would be more fruitful, since it’d be harder to find common ground on the spiritual side. Besides, I suspect Greer wouldn’t be too keen on doing a podcast with Kingsnorth anyway after their recent-ish argument about magic (but I could be wrong, of course).
That said, I’d be interested to hear Greer’s thoughts on Kingsnorth’s “wild Christianity”, as well as Kingnorth’s thoughts on Druidry, especially Christian Druidry, which is of course a thing too.
https://unherd.com/2023/04/americas-empire-is-bankrupt/
Here is a interesting piece from Greer for your perusal .
I look forward to it!
Thanks for the comments and links – and thanks AJ for the pre-order link, a small detail I’d forgotten.
Well, a conversation with Greer … and Paul Kingsnorth … could be interesting, I guess!
… and if you persuade the ghost of David Fleming to drop by as well 😉
As I’ve said before, what I find most persuasive is that people coming from such *very* different places converge on similar expectations of the future, and, more important, very similar practical advice.
Already ordered, now waiting to read it.
Can’t wait to read it, looks great. I have a suggestion that your publisher gets on to the U tube channel ‘Politics Joe’ that gave George Monbiot a platform to rant about ‘neo-peasant bullshit’, I think at heart they are a good bunch and should give right of reply. Would be a good place to promote the book/position.
Here’s the interview:
https://youtu.be/534E9_7Dmg8
Thanks for further comments.
And Joel, thanks for the suggestion about Politics Joe. I saw that Monbiot had done an interview but so far haven’t got beyond the ‘Destroy All Farmers’ titling (I see they’ve slightly changed that now). Guess I’d better listen to it. Since he’s said that he’s pro-peasant, the key question is when does a peasant become a neo-peasant?
And Kim, could you direct me to the Greer/Kingsnorth magic argument? Perhaps I need to catch up a bit with their writing. I haven’t really looked at Greer’s since his Trump stuff, but for surehe has some interesting ideas.
Interesting indeed that people do land on the ‘neo-peasant’ space from many different starting points – and also on the cultural/spiritual malaise space, as Dougald points out in his recent book. Well…some people, anyway!
Hope your book does well , counter arguments against the status quo are all important now , as someone said doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome is insanity .
John Greer said ‘collapse now and avoid the rush’ in 2012.
Two hopeful books I read 20 years ago … by Annie Hawes, a Brit. who settled in Liguria, Italy in the 1980s. Their tradition, lasting to the late 20th.C, included lots of smallholdings whose owners all knew how much land, olive trees, vines, etc it took to feed a family … and provide prodigious amounts of wine and olive oil.
By the early 21st.C, when she wrote her first two books, it was all becoming highly relevant again, i.e. it had never left people’s consciousness. By contrast, my impression is that most urban Brits. are good targets for Monbiot’s ultra-processed plant foods or synthetic meat. The UK also legalised all GM food recently … how convenient.
All I can suggest is disssenters buy enough land to be useful, collectively or individually and work out where they might live. Around here there are lots of 1970s and 1980s village or suburban houses with up to 1,200-1,800 m2 (third- to half-acre) gardens. Chickens are quite legal in suburbia it seems. You can grow a lot on ~1,200 m2. Gardens are a bit small-scale for a dairy cow … but see William Cobbett’s books for inspiration.
AAlthough I don’t think more processed food is the answer, I also know people are getting fed up with the world slaughtering billions of animals each year, with much of it going to waste. We don’t need the pools of waste that overflow into creeks and streams and then have farmers spray it on their crops, with recalls for Ecoli bacteria for tons of vegetables and meat. We also don’t need to be stuffing our animals with GMO-processed feed, steeped in glyphosate, dicamba, and other toxic chemicals, which then pass into our intestines destroying our immune systems.
Scientists are already creating plant-based synthetic meats, which I don’t find wholly unsatisfying, from Beyond Meat, especially their meatballs and link sausages. If scientists can come up with similar results without using GMOs and
cancer-causing ingredients, then I say let’s at least try them after properly tested.
No one is coming to save us. We must do it ourselves. The political party system has hijacked democracy. Ruled by money, it serves the tyranny of wealth rather than the well-being of the public. If we can establish local resistance networks before the next round of attacks (censorship, mandates, digital IDs, CBDCs, climate change, lockdowns, 15-minute cities, etc.) we may still have a chance to communicate and live.
LocalResistance.org provides a safe, anonymous search tool to easily locate neighbours in your own city or town who share your concerns and who are willing to stand together and press for truth locally. By linking locally we can find strength & support, we can communicate, coordinate, educate & resist.
We need a worldwide network of independent local resistance cells, too numerous to eliminate, autonomous and locally controlled, acting continuously to expose and expel all of the corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and corporations who would deny our personal freedom, sovereignty and natural rights. Check it out. Spread the word. Thank-you. https://localresistance.org
The last thing we need is fake food.
Our bodies are not responding well with the manufactured food we eat now.
Cancer and chronic diseases have been on the rise since the 1980s coinciding with increased pesticide use and GMOs; and managed care has become the norm due to the power of Big Pharma instead of preventive care.
Definitely would like a copy of the book when it comes out. I do not like them digitally.
With “Saying NO…” being released later this month, some reviews of the book (from the likes of Vandana Shiva, Joel Salatin, Hunter Lovins, Allan Savory, and others) have called it ‘important’, ‘timely’, ‘brilliant and compelling’, ‘lively and superbly written’…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Editorial Reviews
‘We are heading to hell in a techcart driven by the unlikely twins of Extremist Rewilding and Big Food; if we don’t pull on the brakes sharpish, our countryside will be reduced to a monoculture of lynxy scrub and our food grown in vats. If you want real food, food security and a truly biodiverse countryside, please, please read this book.’
John Lewis-Stempel, author of Meadowland
‘A thought-provoking, intelligent response to George Monbiot’s Regenesis. As the author remarks, this is a provocation to thought rather than a summation of the truth. Setting out the principles of good agriculture that can have benefits to people, land and nature. A case for a rural agricultural landscape that delivers food without wrecking the planet. Agrarian localism as an alternative that may succeed given present challenges on alternative land use.’
Jake Fiennes, author of Land Healer
‘Chris Smaje’s Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future is a timely response to those who are constructing a dystopia of farms without farmers, food without farms, while promoting more industrialisation of the food system. Farming with care on a small scale is the path of ecological regeneration and returning to the earth. Thank you, Chris, for writing this important book for all of us.’
Vandana Shiva, activist and author of Terra Viva
‘Chris Smaje has laid down an indictment – as unremitting as it is undeniable – that cuts through the jargon-filled, techno-worshipping agricultural futurists who promise silver-bullet fixes for having your cake and eating it too. This brilliant and compelling book is at once hopeful and persuasive about the future of food.’
Dan Barber, chef at Blue Hill and author of The Third Plate
‘Everyone in the food business needs to read this book. If you think the future rests in time-tested local authenticity, Smaje’s arguments sound like affirming angels. If you think the future lies in techno-sophisticated urban manufacturing plants, you owe it to yourself to learn the best arguments from the opposing view.
For many of us in the local authentic food space, George Monbiot is our nemesis in the public debate of food’s future. Will it be local, democratised and heritage driven, or will it be manufactured by techno-sophisticates suddenly converted to humble, charitable ends? Smaje cuts precisely and directly, eviscerating Monbiot with superb and quotable verbalese.
Never have I enjoyed reading a blow-by-blow narrative as much as this lively and superbly written polemic.’
Joel Salatin, co-founder of Polyface Farm, and author of You Can Farm and Polyface Micro
‘Chris Smaje shows us that it is people, working in communities and in tune with their local environment, who can provide answers to our food, energy and climate questions. In Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future, Chris has written an intelligent and absorbing analysis of a complex problem, and one that should be essential reading for us all.’
Hunter Lovins, founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions and author of A Finer Future
‘Chris Smaje provides a comprehensive and reasoned counter to George Monbiot’s Regenesis, politely demolishing Monbiot’s ecologically naïve belief that urban dwellers can subsist on food manufactured by corporations, presumably without the use of fossil fuel energy. Smaje’s deeper, more global coverage of the social, cultural, economic and environmental realities of the agricultural dilemma raises issues that no one can afford to ignore. Without agriculture, we cannot have an orchestra, church, economy, city or any business. It is the foundation of civilisation under global threat of climate change.’
Allan Savory, author of Holistic Management
‘This book is the much-needed antidote to the crazy excesses of ecomodernism in all its guises. A paean to sanity and to humanity’s reconnection with the living planet, this is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we can move beyond the industrial paradigm to something that is actually regenerative; for anyone who wants to know how we can feed ourselves without recourse to fantasy fuel sources or further empowerment of the see-want-take value systems pushed by the multinationals and their outriders. It’s essential reading, really, for anyone who eats, but most especially for farmers and growers and anyone involved in the creation of policy, at whatever level.’
Manda Scott, author of the Boudica: Dreaming series and host of the Accidental Gods podcast
‘Chris Smaje is a powerful, humane and practical thinker on our relationship to land and farming, and this book offers a convincing rejection of the ‘ecomodern’ theology currently being promoted by many prominent environmentalists. In a time of division, Smaje offers a human-scale and heartening alternative to elite green technocracy.’
Paul Kingsnorth, author of Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist
‘This is a much-needed book – and Chris Smaje is exactly the person to write it. He builds his case with care and humility, highlighting the gaps in the evidence used by advocates of a ‘farm-free’ future, but also bringing into view the assumptions that are hidden behind their loud insistence that ‘you can’t argue with arithmetic’. For anyone disoriented by the ecomodernist turn in environmentalism, this is a book that will help you find your bearings.’
Dougald Hine, author of At Work in the Ruins
‘Chris Smaje’s devastating critique of the farm-free future projected by ecomodernists is also an intriguing forecast of what Lewis Mumford in The City in History called the ‘end of the megalopolitan cycle’, and an eloquent appeal for reruralisation.’
Simon Fairlie, author of Going to Seed
‘A real powerhouse of a book. Chris meticulously disentangles the case for a future of our food being grown in laboratories for what it really is: energy intensive, corporate driven and lacking resilience.
His justification for a mixed small-scale farming landscape, for a nature-rich, job-rich and food-rich world, is not just convincing for the betterment of our collective economic, social and environmental health, it’s really humanity’s only hope to restore our connection to this planet, and heal.’
Lynn Cassells, coauthor of Our Wild Farming Life
https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/saying-no-to-a-farm-free-future/
It seems plainly obvious that better soil, local resilience, less chemicals and building community can all be part of a better future, and one that now needs increasingly rapid large scale action to combat climate change.
It is maybe too much to ask small farms to solve all the world’s issues but, as I have seen that proposition elsewhere (OK here: https://www.climateandcapitalmedia.com/regenerative-agriculture-the-business-that-could-offset-all-human-emissions/). I do have a few questions:
In the list of “most effective solutions” seen at (e.g.) https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions regen ag doesn’t get a clear jersey, in fact Silvopasture (cows with trees) gets up because the trees compensate for the cows but is much inferior to “Plant rich diets” (and reduce food waste).
The regen ag argument looks good, especially when you see National Parks etc coming to life, the no till, perennial crops etc all seems to make a lot of sense. But then the cows, widely acknowledged to be the least efficient way of producing protein, and burping. The CO2 capture health of the soil looks great but what are the externalities? Per hectare (or useful unit) and in concentration how do the burps balance the soil fixing, taking CH4 as having a Global Warming Potential of 82x that of CO2?
I read your writings on energy (Hoestra, Smil etc) and the transition to renewable energy is difficult to say the least, in reality all solutions are needed (including nuclear say the IPCC) and fossil fuels only as a last resort (artificial CCS has not worked anywhere at scale). The comments on transport are sound, about 20% of USA’s fossil fuels go into food production, much into transport and much more into artificial fertilisers. Re-localisation sounds like a good thing then and the artificial fertilisers are fighting a losing battle on calories in vs calories out. Inefficient food machines (cows again) then seem to give all those gains back. Small farms could be the answer to some of these issues but the cereals (externality) and the low calorie conversion efficiency of cows (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015/pdf) is pushing that manure uphill again. And another reference you might have: Smil, Vaclav, Feeding the World: A Challenge for the 21st Century, MIT Press, 2000, p. 145-157.
Not many people want to acknowledge the huge monoculture destructiveness of mega-farms and the many, many issues they are introducing (goodbye Amazon). Savory’s demonstrator programs etc have shown us many positives.
To my understanding to date issues with small farms are scale, high land usage, lack of global arable land, high costs, low intensity (scaling again), methane (seaweed?), low calorie efficiency (above), non included externalities,… and there are many advantages, nice to have.
It’s good to see people giving this some serious thought. As someone who wants to be convinced that small cattle farms are part of a global solution (vs the existing solution of mega-farms with monopolised seed etc) – I don’t yet see it. I’m also not convinced that plant based meat or insects are an answer either.
Can Monbiot and Savory (and yourself) both be right and also wrong? (Perfect enemy of good?)
Thanks for that Arthur. I’m short on time to answer properly now, but I’ll replicate your comment under the appropriate post a few weeks down the line and try to answer comments on the book more fully then.
I’m sympathetic to aspects of the regen grazing arguments, but not fundamentally aligned with them. Generally, I think there’s a need for less livestock – and for the livestock that we do keep to complement rather than compete with human food production. This is the idea of default livestock that I discuss in my book – I think it’s very important.
Regarding livestock and climate change, I think there’s a danger of focusing overly on the proximal nature of the problem and missing the underlying problems. The underlying problems are fossil fuel use and a high-energy, high-capital, global economy grounded in maximizing returns to capital, resulting in the overproduction of arable grains. If you want to cut agricultural methane emissions, the best way to do it is to cut fossil fuel use and returns to capital. I explain why a bit more in my book.
If we’re focusing on ruminant methane specifically, I also think it’s important to frame it in terms of GWP* and not GWP. Anti-livestock folks like Monbiot are scornful of GWP* but I’m not sure he’s really grasped it. It puts a different complexion on your comments above about ruminant emissions.
If the argument is that the climate emergency is so great we have to do whatever we can to cut methane, then okay part of that probably should be cutting ruminant herds (albeit very carefully in view of the human and ecological ramifications). But in that scenario it’s vastly more important to cut fossil methane and fossil fuels generally. The over-emphasis on ruminant methane involves at best prevarication over the necessary changes, and IMO quite a bit of blame-shifting and futile efforts to preserve business as usual.
I discuss most of this in more detail in my book.
@Arthur, Twice you mentioned the non included exernalities of small scale local agriculture. What do you see them being ?