Author of Finding Lights in a Dark Age, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future and A Small Farm Future
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Posted on May 26, 2023 | 59 Comments
The UK publication date for my book Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future is a month away. You’ll have to wait a little longer in the US, but you can get your pre-orders in here (UK) or here (USA). In any case, it’s time I turned my attention on this blog to heralding the forthcoming event. I’m not planning such a huge blogathon around this book as the last one, but I think it’s appropriate to focus this blog around its themes for a little while. Apologies for leaving things hanging in relation to the promised follow ups to my Bakhtin post. They’re actually quite relevant to the new book, so I’ll get to them soon enough in this cycle.
Right, well for reasons I’ll explain shortly the recommended soundtrack for what I’m going to say in the rest of this post is the album ‘Home’ by the Hothouse Flowers, in particular their cover of ‘I Can See Clearly Now’, which you can find here, complete with charming early-90s visuals. So please click <Play> and read on.
First up, I’m holding a local launch for the book here in Frome on 22 June at the excellent Rye Bakery – further details as per below or here. I’ll be in conversation with ffinlo Costain of 8.9ha, introduced by Rowan Phillimore of the Gaia Foundation, followed by a glass of something and book sales/signings handled by the also excellent Hunting Raven Books. Hope to see some of you there. But no flying, now.
The official launch of the book, though, is going to be at the Groundswell Festival on 28 June, where I’ll be in conversation with Sarah Langford, author of Rooted, and indeed of the preface to my book. I’ll also be on a panel later in the festival discussing the foods of the future. I’ll post about other events here as and when.
Talking of posting ‘here’, there’s about to be a makeover of this site. The blog is going to continue essentially as is under its existing URL, but I’ll also have a new author home page and will be joining the Substack bandwagon. It should all hang together and make things a bit easier for people to follow the blog, but apologies in advance if there are any teething problems.
Meanwhile, I’ve been busy narrating the audiobook version of Saying NO… Here I am at the Bert Jansch studio in Frome, which is kind of cool as Bert is a musical hero of mine. With my level of musical talent, I never imagined I’d be laying down tracks in a professional recording studio with a sound engineer, but there you have it. My thanks to Milo and Dom from the studio, and Eliza at Chelsea Green, for making it such a smooth experience.
We had to wrap up early on the first day of recording because the aforementioned Hothouse Flowers were playing at the Cheese and Grain, Frome’s premier music venue to which the studio is attached (the name suggests that prior to its present musical incarnation the venue may once have had other purposes somehow connected to the concerns of this blog…)
I didn’t begrudge Liam and the lads their soundcheck, and my voice was getting a bit hoarse anyway. I remember liking their album ‘Home’ when it came out in 1990. Back then, I was living in London, working for the Man, or at least for the NHS, and spending most of my spare time rock-climbing on the crags and sea cliffs around Britain. On one memorable midsummer Sunday I was pinned somewhere high on Clogwyn Du’r Arddu, the cathedral of Welsh mountain crags, as darkness fell. We got back down to the road not too shy of midnight and set off for the long drive home and work the next day, knackered from the climbing. For some reason I only had that Hothouse Flowers album (a cassette, maybe?) in the car. I blasted it out at full volume over and over to stay awake, with the lines of the motorway lanes mesmerising me into a weird kind of somnolent wakefulness as I gunned towards their ever-receding union.
I enjoyed climbing for a few years, but I rarely do it now. I had my share of hairy moments, did the odd free solo, but I was never a particularly bold climber and the contrivance of stacking the odds just so in my favour with a boot-full of modern paraphernalia came to seem a bit artificial – though the shocking death toll of friends and acquaintances in those years didn’t make the alternative too attractive.
Anyway, I mention all this because my work these days makes me acutely aware that it’s now the whole of humanity free soloing above the freakin’ void (notwithstanding the discussion under my last post – I mean if we’re talking civilizational-level disorder, that means everybody, right?) And nobody can see the safest way up and out. Who can see clearly now? Not me, for sure.
What, to be honest, I can’t clearly see happening is a smooth ecomodernist transition to low carbon, high energy, urbanist food security and rewilded nature. I can clearly see a route to lower-energy agrarian localism with tolerable security for human food needs and nature, but not really a convincing social pathway for it to happen other than through political crisis. In both my books, I’ve done my best to chart a path through that crisis and discuss the kind of politics that might see us through.
This usually gets short shrift from ecomodernists who believe they’re on a clear route through via more tech acceleration. It’s just that this belief doesn’t seem to me to have anything very solid anchoring it, which isn’t great when you’re poised above the void. It would be nice if they treated the alternatives to a bit less ridicule.
So … I’m nearly done with massacring the metaphor, but when the void is yawning below and only your hands, your feet and your humanity are keeping you aloft, it’s probably better to make an honest appraisal of the two unpromising routes ahead rather than dismissing one of them out of hand with spurious reasons.
To that end, in my next post I’ll offer a quick run through of some of the main spurious arguments against agrarian localism.
Finally, I’m currently reading professor of biology and bee expert Dave Goulson’s excellent book Silent Planet: Averting the Insect Apocalypse. I wish I’d read it before sealing the deal on my own book, because thanks to his one I can see clearly now some lines of argument I could have sharpened up a bit more in mine. So it goes in the world of writing, I guess – the limitations of one book drive you on to the next.
Anyway, just a couple of headlines from Goulson’s book. The dramatic worldwide decline in insect populations is being driven by many human forces, not just agriculture – but agriculture looms very large among them. And at the frontline of the agricultural onslaught is the huge amplification in the use of pesticides, herbicides and synthetic fertilizer in recent decades, all technologies designed to increase agricultural yields and decrease agricultural labour inputs, if you see what I’m saying…
A nice thing about Goulson’s book is that he doesn’t single out farmers for blame for this horror show. Like the rest of us, they were only following orders – for yield increase, cheap food, economic efficiency, scale economies, technological ‘progress’, suburbs and malls, and so on. Another nice thing about his book is that he homes in on what’s surely the correct policy approach, and very likely the inevitable drift of human biogeography in the coming years – small-scale, low impact production for local needs, and ruralisation. While, ahem …other writers… have been saying this for a long time in the face of much ridicule, it’s nice to see an eminent academic singing from the same sheet.
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All sounds good and promising.
You mention Goulson. In a similar example, while 5G technology has been touted as a ‘gamechanger for precision agriculture’
https://www.undp.org/policy-centre/singapore/blog/5g-gamechanger-precision-agriculture
simultaneously a number of studies have measured increased body temperatures, among other changes, in insects exposed to 5G frequencies – another reason why, perhaps, we all see a little more clearly through the windscreen.
Amusingly unappealing graphic on the latest Monbiot column – again, his clear vision calls for something termed “pollution-free factories”. Never mind the oxymoron, feel the insouciance.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/26/farming-good-factory-bad-global-food-crisis
I saw that monbiot article – factories running on renewable energy which will be pollution free so long as one ignores the mining of rare earth metals, lithium etc and one ignores the fact that that sort of mining implies global supply chains which implies fossil fuels and on and on – I read something recently that said the UK parliament’s climate change committee was recommending the UK govt. start planning for 4 degrees c increase in global mean temps – that sort of change
would make arguing about SFF v ecomodernist heaven fairly irrelevant I fear.
“…an honest appraisal of the two unpromising routes ahead”
One of the climbing route is claimed to be feasible using some recently invented climbing equipment that’s not quite available yet, and has some troubling manufacturing issues.
The other climbing route involves tried-and-true methods.
Yes,
Torturing the climbing metaphor even more:
I won’t claim any skill or much experience rock climbing, but since I don’t have any gear, all I ever do is free climbing.
And I find that the single most important skill is knowing my limits.
I don’t commit to that hold or take that jump unless I’m confident that I can make it.
Which means that quite often, my route is partway up, then back down.
I’m not sure how well this fits the metaphor…
But if you want to get to the top, you can often walk around to the back side of the crag or boulder and take the easy pathway up, where the hillside meets it.
In a world all ready strapped for energy the economists are IMHO adding another level of energy consumption above what we are all ready at , all the goops ferments and soylent green have to have a feedstock , animals are self powered wandering and eating at will whereas goop needs grown feedstock with all the agri chemicals fertilizer and diesel just to get it out of the ground , then manufactured into goop and we will need a lot of goop . Animals are inefficient converters of garbage into food but they are self powered with fertilizer as a by product , goop factories are going to need terrawats of new energy production .
Tangential anecdote: my brother is very into climbing, it’s good for his mental health. “At least when I’m climbing,” he says, “I know why I’m afraid.”
Thanks Kathryn, that’s an excellent anecdote.
I know exactly what he means.
And for me it is really good practice noticing that fear is useful information, especially if I listen to what it is telling me, rather than doing a simple recoil from it.
Meanwhile: I hope the move to substack won’t take away the ability to read your blog posts via RSS feed, which is how I first see most of them.
When I read the latest GM column in the Guardian I felt kind of sad for him.
He doesn’t seem to understand that there won’t be as much cheap energy in the future as there is now. Nor does he understand how much wind / solar/ tidal / nukes are going to have to up their game, regardless of the cost, to provide even half the energy that fossil fuels supply now.
Part of that cost is going to be environment degradation due to mining and the use of (fossil) energy required do the mining and manufacturing of ‘renewable’ energy infrastructure. Make no mention of slave labor conditions in cobalt mines.
Hopium addicts can’t grasp the reality of our current predicament.
It would be the selfsame accusation from the ecomodernists, I fear – i.e., any present-day faith in timeless ways is the real hopium – hence the loggerheads. I’d personally plough in the direction that has a long track record, but who knows what the future holds.
I don’t hang out with ecomodernists so I don’t know their arguments very well. wouldn’t that accusation be based on their assumption that cities will be the way of the future ? Any discussion of a SFF does not have to incorporate and support their unreasonable wishes.
You only have to check out how much copper will be needed for a technoutopian future to know its a non starter , they are mining seams of 1% ore grade now !
Yes, I think that pretty much is what the ecomodernists say – but, as per Monbiot’s latest, usually without any engagement with how serious thinkers are articulating ‘faith in timeless ways’. The way I see it, unless the ecomodernist hopium pays off – and the grounds for their hope aren’t strong – then a (more) small farm future is where we’re headed, like it or not. The hope is to make it as likable as possible. So the hope of agrarian localists is more akin to ‘I hope it doesn’t rain on the parade’ while the hope of the ecomodernists is more akin to ‘I hope the good fairy grants me my wishes for all the lovely things I want’. I think the former is a more reasonable hope.
Thanks for the comments – much to agree with and not much to add. Yes, GM’s new article is an extraordinary piece of rhetoric. I’m toying with the idea of writing a short critique, partly because it’s a good foil for summarizing some of the arguments in my new book, and partly because … well, it’s just so damn misleading.
Kathryn, as I understand it, RSS will still be the tech underlying the sign up, but the new website will just have a simple field for entering your email address. I hope that doesn’t mess up your access too much, but I’m told that getting signed up to my blog is an epic adventure for most, so it’s probably time I updated it. But y’all pat yourselves on the back for finding your way here.
Definitely write a reply, the guardian should post it surely?
Hmm.
To subscribe to the RSS feed of your current site I simply put the site URL into my RSS feed reader, which did the rest. I didn’t need to give my email address at all, and I do not get your posts emailed to me (nor do I particularly want to, though I will settle for that if an actual RSS feed isn’t available).
Substack seems to me to be a solution to something that shouldn’t have been a problem in the first place but perhaps I am just too old-skool in my use of tech.
GM doesn’t want anyone to die and doesn’t want the Wild to die either, and I guess trying to square that circle led him into the ecomodernist shiny trash can. People dying was his critique of the Dark Mountain manifesto, I remember him in tears during a TV interview talking about how scared he is for his kids future, and he rages at the death of our rivers. Who wouldn’t feel the same way?
But fear is the mind-killer and unfortunately, his fears have led him, judging by his recent writing, to desperately trying to mitigate what he sees as inevitable using the Master’s Tools. Probably because he tries his best to be rational and do everything by the numbers without examining the foundations he’s stood upon to infere what he does, leads him into Bill Gates’ open arms.
There is a recent article by Maren at Death in the Garden about GM food.
Change comes from unforeseeable events, and what springs up in the aftermath depends on the ground and what is lying dormant. Expect thistles before mother trees.
If you ask for my opinion Chris, (which you are not!) why waste your time and energy challenging George Monbiot’s views/ideas?
We all know he is barking up the wrong tree and that “gloop”/”studge” is a non starter. There just isn’t going to be enough non fossil fuel energy around to build and run the infrastructure to make the stuff.
Take Diogenese10’s comment above about availability of copper as a starting point.
The pursuit of “studge” is a dead end and a waste of resources/energy and we shouldn’t be going down that route. But then again, building aircraft carriers is also a dead end but we will keep making them until we no longer can.
I should really be learning how to look after and ride a horse, but I don’t. I’ll continue driving my van until I can no longer do so and then worry about owning a horse.
We are doomed to fail before we can succeed.
This is also true but it does allow for alternative information to be presented
I have read a paper by the society of geologists that humans will have to mine as much copper in the next two decades as they have done since the beginning of the metal age to build out net zero infrastructure , that’s just the build out not repairs / replacement after the build out .
I’m not expecting to ever be rich enough to own a horse. (But then, I can’t afford to run a car either.)
@Benn – thanks, interesting comment. I think you’re right that orientations to death are important here. The fear of it among the EMs incites it, and those who wish for wildness in nature want to expel it from humanity in such a way that the latter is likely to compromise the former. I hope to say more about this in due course.
@John – now why didn’t you tell me that months ago? I’ve written the damn book now! I take your point, and I wrestle with how much time is worth wasting on the EMs. The way I rationalise it is (1) I spent time writing the book so nobody else had to (and kind of enjoyed it…) (2) GM is a powerful voice who’ll pull people into the EM universe that might otherwise turn themselves to more useful ends, so sometimes you just have to fight the good fight, and (3) while I agree that failure must precede success, I think it’s worth trying to make the failure as gentle as possible however one can.
@Joel – I’m wondering how much to engage directly with him, so that’s useful feedback. But I doubt the Guardian will print anything from me!
Sorry Chris. I wasn’t trying to downplay your efforts.
If you enjoyed the process of writing the book then that is reason enough.
And I would pay good money to watch you “spar off” with Monbiot over “studge”. (I actually really enjoyed reading Monbiot’s Feral book. Found it very interesting and took my thoughts on new journeys.)
But with “studge” and any other EM techno fantasies, I fear we will need to try them all (and fail), before we “smell the coffee” and then reality is all that is left.
I still think that ultimately, that “reality ” looks like will depend on how much surplus energy there will be available. That will determine what is possible.
I’ve decided, that the best course of action for myself, is to try and learn as many skills as possible,that would be useful in a SFF.
Latest on that list is how to make a biochar retort.
Then, when/if my daughter ever gets off Tiktok, I might be able to pass on some useful knowledge to her 🙂
Anyone know of any up and coming scythe workshops in Somerset? Or how to build/maintain a composting toilet (using biochar)?
The day before the Green Scythe Fair, there’s an Introductory Scythe Course at that location.
Introductory Scythe Course (£100)
at the Green Scythe Fair – Saturday 10th June 2023 10am–4pm
[Green Scythe Fair main event is Sunday 11th June 2023]
Thorney Lakes, Muchelney, Somerset
https://www.greenfair.org.uk/
Thanks Steve.
That is definitely in my neck of the woods!
I’m now enrolled on the introductory scythe course/workshop at the Green Scythe Fair.
Happy Days!!!
I’ve also inherited a beautiful curvey scythe to take along with me.
Thanks for the link Steve L.
John, if your curvey scythe is the English/American variety, and you don’t have an Austrian (Continental) scythe, I suggest checking with the instructor because the courses are probably focused on the use of the Austrian-style scythes.
http://scytheassociation.org/the-english-scythe-revisited/
@Steve L
D’oh!!!!! What was Brexit for if I can’t use an English scythe !!!!????
In fact, it’s a curvey American, Western one.
There is a difference?????
Oh well. I’ll just have to use one of theirs.
Mine wins on aesthetics though!
The Austrians win on weight, though, which – after a few mornings haymaking this week – I guarantee counts for something!
May your peening ring true and your Niegung be well set…
Having watched a few YouTube videos last night, I’m beginning to realise the size of the rabbit hole I’ve volunterally entered!!!!!!!!!
I’ve just cleared out a garage from whence the scythe came from. I’m a bit worried that some of the “scrap metal” that I chucked out might have been for the peening!!!! D’oh!!!!!
Scythe Courses 2023
Scythe Association of Britain and Ireland (SABI)
http://scytheassociation.org/courses/
No need to apologise, John. No offence taken.
Steve is as usual on the money with the scythe fair. Regarding compost toilets, well there’s this online course, run by Cordelia Rowlatt, who’s very good on these things (full disclosure: she’s my wife): https://www.lowimpact.org/categories/compost-toilets/online-courses
Don’t know about the biochar side of it though – where do you see that fitting in?
I’ve read a bit about biochar in composting toilets keeping the smells down and being good for the composting process in general. Trapping in nutrients etc.
PS. Thanks for the link. I’ll check out Cordelia’s course.
Humanure Handbook is a good reference. I have a 5 gallon bucket inside a box with a loo seat, and each time I go, I add a sprinkle of char. Living Web Farms on youtube has a great biochar lecture series. I make it and put it through a cheapo shredder to grind it up. Works well.
Thanks Ben.
I’ll check it out.
Chris you said in response to Joel:
But I doubt the Guardian will print anything from me!
I’m curious – why do you think that? I got so fed up with the grauniad that I gave up reading it at the start of 2018 – but I admit they did seem to make more effort to print stuff that opposes their ‘line’ than most other news outlets, so why not give it a go? You’re a published environmental thinker!
Well, long story, but maybe you’re right. Never say never, I guess.
This usually gets short shrift from ecomodernists who believe they’re on a clear route through via more tech acceleration. It’s just that this belief doesn’t seem to me to have anything very solid anchoring it, which isn’t great when you’re poised above the void. It would be nice if they treated the alternatives to a bit less ridicule.
I think there’s more than sufficient ridicule being dispersed from all quarters. So I have to agree that it would indeed be nice if we ALL could treat alternatives to a bit less ridicule.
Pillorying fermentation products as goop or studge with the immediate aim of ridicule is no more mature or helpful than some ecomodernist diatribe about romanticism aimed at SFF folk.
The energy requirements of fermentation run a gamut from amazingly simple to amazingly complex. I can raise several dozen cabbages in the garden over the summer – but I can’t consume that many in the short time they are at their best. With a simple crock I can make sauerkraut and enjoy my cabbages until the next growing season allows me more. This crock is tech as simple (more simple) than a scythe. Glass jars for canning – a similar story.
I don’t imagine myself making penicillin in a kitchen fermenter, but I also don’t imagine making a scythe from raw materials [bought my scythe at a farm auction for $10 several years ago]. Where the level of complexity rises beyond my skill set I defer to the appropriate level expert. I have the feeling our ancestors did the same. I might ponder whether once upon a time a cooper ridiculed a smith, or a stone mason ridiculed a carpenter.
George’s vision(s) for a way forward with goals of softer impacts on the environment seem laudable. Some of the means he advocates toward these goals will come up short in certain situations – but are just as likely to succeed in some other situations. If I’m stuck on the side of a cliff with no obvious way forward I doubt I’ll turn down the offer of a rope to save my arse.
Here is another review, recently published in Fermentation [an open access journal]
https://www.mdpi.com/2311-5637/5/1/8
The subjects of that article, *traditional* fermented foods and beverages (not the energy-intensive “precision fermentation” products which have been called “studge”), are wonderful in my view. I haven’t seen any ridicule of traditional fermented foods..
If I was stuck on a cliff, I would probably turn down the offer of a beanie cap with a battery-powered propeller, even if it had a built-in solar panel for charging the battery. Where’s my jetpack?
: )
Where’s my studge?
: )
When can we buy Solein in a supermarket?
2021?
“Q: When can we buy Solein in supermarkets?
We aim at to be on the market in 2021”
(from this Solar Foods Q&A dated 18.11.2019)
https://web.archive.org/web/20210311004230/https://solarfoods.fi/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Solein-Q_and-A_FULL.pdf
Clem, I daresay your admonition for courtesy on all sides is salutary, but it’s not exactly a level playing field. Where are the articles in mainstream news outlets mocking dangerous technofantasies and urban idylls in the manner of George’s latest ill-evidenced diatribe in the Guardian? As per my latest post, I’m just kinda tired of the #BucolicIdyll and #BackToTheStoneAge vibe.
If Monbiot and the RePlanet folks were tentatively promoting the technology as a possible tool in the box, that might be fair enough, if still energetically unconvincing. But what they’re gunning for is 90% urban residence by 2100, 75% of global farmland ‘rewilded’, and the abolition of most agriculture (Monbiot: ‘the problem with intensive farming is not the adjective. It’s the noun’).
As I see it, they’re basically fomenting a class war against peasants, farmers and rural people, invoking a hugely energy-intensive technology that’s clearly not going to work, while ignorantly ridiculing agrarian localist approaches that they appear to know very little about, and give little appearance of caring.
So, okay, I will try to be more polite. I think my book is fairly polite for the most part. But it’s not easy. And I think there’s a fight brewing.
David might have suggested a playing field disadvantage against Goliath – but he didn’t let matters stop him. [sure, a story… but you see my point]
Most matters worth contesting are difficult… so yes, it is NOT easy. If it were easy, some less qualified one would have solved it and we’d be off to some other debate.
Above Steve L admits that he finds some fermented foods acceptable (traditional ones). OK, so at one point in human history those foods were not traditional, they were novel, new, experimental even. They were very likely disliked by most of humanity… until such time their value could be appropriately realized and now they are traditional. They had value then, and still have value to this day. What will become traditional in the future is yet to be known.
Steve’s given example of a prediction for a new food to be on shelves in a couple years not coming true… oh, ouch. The history of most new tech adoptions is littered with such.
The danger of industrial capital scooping up new innovative methods is more a problem from where I’m perched. George doesn’t dismiss this – he carefully cites this as a potential problem and talks about what might be done to prevent this (though from what I have seen he might spend a bit more ink on this matter).
But even where industrial capital takes advantage in the near term, patents do expire and in the longer term tech becomes available to all. Smart phones all over the Global South attest to this.
There is plenty of hyperbole in Mr Monbiot’s discourse. Call that out. But please do so with a touch less hyperbole on this side. To predict that something is “clearly not going to work” is an example of what I’m seeing; and I’m guessing it’s not something David said to his folks before engaging Goliath.
When we debate what will and will not happen in the future with a specific timeline, it sets us up for failure (Steve L makes this point for me). Discussing potential futures with humility and grace can stop the matter boiling into a heads I win tails you lose outcome based on the current power dynamic at play.
I remarked that the so-called “traditional” fermented foods were actually wonderful, not just acceptable. My dislike of the so-called “precision fermentation” foods has nothing to do with them being new, or how they taste; it’s mainly about their energy-intensive processes and infrastructure requirements.
“Precision fermentation” would still require a heckuva lot of energy per kilogram of protein (compared to farming with natural sunlight) even after it’s no longer new food and people have acquired a taste for it. There are thermodynamic limits to the processes which cannot be improved upon.
My supermarket comment lists just one example of the over-optimistic hype coming from the “precision fermentation” industry. I think that industry hype is fair game for a reality check.
Due to the thermodynamic limitations and other process issues, I’m convinced that the “precision fermentation” of food won’t be financially viable for private industry without substantial government backing. So instead of being worried about “industrial capital scooping up new innovative methods” for the precision fermentation of food, I’m more concerned about limited government funds being spent on subsidizing that industry, when those funds could otherwise be spent on tackling societal problems which don’t have solutions already available that are as straightforward as making food from seeds, soil, sunlight and water.
Taking other animals as an example, perhaps most humans also always loved fermented foods. I say let’s hear it for Imprecise Fermentation (at least once a year):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MxNLg3rCdw&ab_channel=WorldstarVEVO
So, putting a timeframe around things is helpful. Indeed, who knows what the distant future will be like? But really we need to decarbonise the global energy system over the next 30 years, otherwise the situation is pretty desperate. Which means that we’re going to have to swap out a LOT of fossil fuel use for low carbon electricity, very quickly. So if there are things (like food crops) that are currently energized with low carbon sources (the sun), it seems unwise at this juncture to replace them with a technology that’s going to demand almost all or more than all of the existing supply of low carbon electricity. There are some hard energetics here that aren’t going to change any time soon. So I think I’m on pretty safe ground in saying that the technology is “clearly not going to work” within the relevant timeframe – but that’s not to say a lot of time, energy and money won’t be spent/wasted on trying to make it work for other reasons.
I’m ready to engage Goliath, whether it works or not. Though while we’re with this metaphor, I’ve got to say that David and Goliath didn’t engage each other very politely. But if Goliath wins (and Goliaths usually do) I think, as I’ve said, his plans for saving people and wildlife will turn out to be fictions. I’m sure other and better Davids will keep stepping up. But I think this is going to be a hot fight. And Mr Goliath has already expressed his contempt for me. So politeness … well, we’ll see …
But really we need to decarbonise the global energy system over the next 30 years, otherwise the situation is pretty desperate
Sure. And 30 years is a timeline you and I might witness (scary though that seems). But the level of desperation this one predicts can be much different than the level of desperation predicted by another. There are many here among us who think matters are TOO desperate already. Yet our population continues to grow.
In Plato’s ‘Republic’, he wrote: “our need will be the real creator”, which evolved over time to ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’. Technology is not always a matter of inventing something that doesn’t already exist. Tech is more frequently the use and application of things we already have to hand, but either ignore or don’t completely appreciate. Decarbonising our global energy system can come about in many different ways.
But for me, the precision fermentation (PF) future needn’t be held ransom to power generation. I’ve argued earlier here that there is a gradient of PF technicals from easy to complex. The old traditional foods can be fermented in wooden barrels or clay crocks. Some of the newer protein types can also be fermented in lower tech systems where the energy needed by the microbes comes from biomass we already have to hand and can upscale (eg., corn cobs). There certainly are economies of scale where gigantic stainless steel vats are currently de rigueur for the tech in question… but this doesn’t translate into a MUST for potential applications.
Upscaling corn cobs to human food might well be compared to feeding plate waste to pigs (actually I’d argue it’s better). And corn cobs are just a beginning. We tend to argue that herbivores are needed to turn grasses into human food. But grasses aren’t digested by the herbivore – but by the microbes in their gut. Skip the herbivore and digest the grass directly in a fermentor.
Whether we decarbonize or not, there are ways to make foods we want from resources we either can’t digest or don’t wish to. And YES… farming is one way to do this. My favorite. But where farming is too difficult (UAE, I’m thinking of you here) there could be benefits from PF.
The whole PF from electricity is likely too far out. But even with all the difficulties you wish to throw in it’s path there is no way to be absolutely positive that it cannot be done. Necessity is a Mother.
By the way, I am grateful you’re considering the role of David in the present discussion. And though I imagine your Goliath actually does have some ground to stand upon, I will offer to help you tilt at some of his less worthwhile arguments. Civility though…
I think synthesizing the protein is the energy intensive part.
The gut biome makes the nutrients available for the animal to make the protein, not the actual protein itself.
Corn and beans are very low tech and can provide a complete protein.
Sure, I’m not arguing that there is no application anywhere for any of these technologies. But I am arguing that they’re not “the beginning of the end of most agriculture”, as some have argued, on technical grounds. And also normative grounds. You can skip the herbivore, but in doing so there are a lot of other things you’re skipping too, and some of them may tell.
“Tech is more frequently the use and application of things we already have to hand, but either ignore or don’t completely appreciate”
Agree with this. It also encompasses social technologies, including institutions that enable us to make do with less … by accepting less … or sharing more. Old technologies that IMO need a ‘reboot’, but we tend to gloss over them nowadays in the search for alchemies that give more for less.
As to the civility, I don’t think I’ve been all that uncivil in the circumstances but it’s good to have you here as the angel on the shoulder. I will try not to raise a #technofantasy for every #bucolicidyll that comes my way. But a lot have come my way over the years, and it’s wearisome.
OK, I can’t quite resist running with the David and Goliath metaphor here!
So, first: defend your sheep from wild beasts, sometimes using your bare hands (because that’s what you have).
Next: find five smooth stones, and put them in a bag…
David’s victory over Goliath was not only that of the unlikely underdog, but of someone with experience in battle, a decent sling, and excellent aim.
I note also that Goliath looked enormous but mostly stood around being threatening, and some of David’s success may actually have been in calling his bluff.
More power to your elbow. I wouldn’t like to say in advance whether your aim is exact enough; nobody really thought David could slay Goliath, they just didn’t have any better ideas. But I think that Clem’s point about politeness, while having a bit of a tone-policing ring to it which is understandably tiresome, is right in at least one aspect: David didn’t beat Goliath by copying his tactics of intimidation and threat, but by employing his own.
An argument in the Grauniad might sell some books; I don’t know whether it would change hearts and minds. And this is where the metaphor starts to break down, at least for me; because while Monbiot champions an ecomodernist vision that I find at best unlikely and at worst potentially dystopian, I don’t think the financialised corporate factory food capitalists are using Monbiot to try to intimidate anyone, and I don’t think discrediting him does much to reduce their power. If what we’re dealing with isn’t an army with a single point of failure but something more like a hydra, we’re going to need a different approach than a heroic sharpshooting shepherd with some smooth stones.
Nice metaphor wrangling, Kathryn! I’m short on time to reply, but I’ll ponder your wise words 🙂
Clem.
I’m not anti “studge”. In fact I’ve eaten a fair bit already in the form of veggie sausages.
It’s just that I don’t see processed foods being a viable option when our available energy is going to keep shrinking. And I don’t see processed/ lab food replacing photosynthesis long term.
In the meantime, I would still eat it if it’s available.
I’m a relatively new convert to sauerkraut. I’ve perfected my recipe and make a mean fermented egg as well.
On a fermentation technical question. I stick my sauerkraut in the fridge when ready, to stop the fermentation process. If I didn’t have a fridge, how cold does the sauerkraut need to be to halt fermentation?
Cold is only one way to stop fermentation. Boiling works as well. So canning can serve.
Now simple canning is getting to be a bit less simple. Diogenese has noted here (maybe months ago now) that even the glass jars typically used in the past are not as easy to come by. So this is another difficulty we’ll need to address. Glass containers existed prior to fossil fuel tech so there is hope.
Does boiling kill off the probiotics?
How cold does sauerkraut have to be to halt fermentation?
On glass.
It still amazes me that glass can be made so cheap that it’s financially viable to sell a handful of olives in a glass jar!!!!
Back in the day, only kings could afford to own glass!!!!!!
You can drain the liquid off the sauerkraut and replace it with brine (3 or 5% I don’t remember which right now). We kept it in a corner of our living room all summer.
Kimchi can be fermented until it stops. It is very acidic and will for a mother on the surface like kombucha or vinegar. Traditionally it was buried in a crock in th back yard.
Thanks Greg.
Interesting stuff.
Think I need to read around the subject a bit more.
I have a 2′ deep, ventilated (air brick) void under the down stairs suspended floor.
Not exactly a cellar but am thinking of putting a trap door in the floorboards to create access and storing my sauerkraut down there. Haven’t discussed with the rest of the family yet though!!
Fermented shark anyone????
Decarbonizing within a 30 year window was raised above. If you have about 40 minutes to invest, there’s an interesting video here that touches on future farming and food production with a view to establishing (or better yet, tweaking and improving) carbon markets, carbon offsets and ‘insets’. The panelists are western European and they touch on political developments in the EU as well as some proposed legislation in the States. Regenerative agriculture gets a fine airing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDcqoBpHjvU
Thanks Clem, I’ll take a look