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 June 11, 2023 | 60 Comments
Mostly some news items and a bit of housekeeping in this post, rather than any substantive topic, before getting back to business next time.
First, in relation to my poll about a possible trip to the USA, the crude data fell out this way –
1st place: Go, with qualifications
2nd place: Just go
3rd place: Just don’t go
And the result, after some data smoothing and correction (including my instinctive tendency to favour the underdog) is that I’m not going to go.
I won’t bore you with the details of my decision-making process, except to say that one factor that influenced me was the debate on here about whose voices globally I should be listening to, amplifying or otherwise orienting to. I’m perfectly happy to get feedback, criticisms and suggestions along such lines here on my website, but somehow that vibe started to feel a bit too weighty as I contemplated stepping into the new persona of Chris Smaje, jet-setting international author, with a burden of wider expectations.
So instead I plan to offer you merely Chris Smaje, Somerset blogger, who reads and writes what he freaking well likes. Though, as I said, I remain open to corrections, clarifications and suggestions, and part of the decision does involve trying to open myself in a different way to other influences – more on that another time. Meanwhile, I’d like to thank everyone who participated in that very informative discussion. And to all the people in the USA and Canada who, publicly or privately, invited me to visit or talk. It was genuinely touching and humbling to receive so many generous invitations.
Still, talking of humility – and here I’m moving to my second theme – never let it be said that Small Farm Future’s CEO is a man lacking all vanity and self-importance. To that end, I can now exclusively reveal that this is the last blog post going out under my old smallfarmfuture.org.uk URL. Henceforth ye shall know me by my name: chrissmaje.com.
(Fun fact: in truth the domain of this site has always been chrissmaje.com, but I’ve been concealing it all these years. No more lies! No more lurking in the shadows! Liberate chrissmaje.com!)
The change should make no difference to existing readers. If you go to smallfarmfuture.org.uk it should take you straight to the blog, which will have all the old content and the usual features albeit in a slightly different format. If you go to chrissmaje.com you should find my author homepage (coming soon), from where you can easily navigate to the blog while additionally meeting any other Chris Smaje related needs, within reason.
The author page will have a lot of information about my books, other publications, podcasts and live events as well as the blog and will be searchable across all those domains. So it should be a lot better than this creaky old site. There will also be a Substack element, if you’re so minded. But I’m reliably informed that if you’re already subscribed to this blog in the old-fashioned way, it will continue to work.
Some parts of the new site may be a bit skeletal when it first goes live, but I’ll be filling it out as and when I can. It will have a few more photos, which is troubling me somewhat as I’m the world’s worst and laziest photographer. So if any readers would care to send me their own (ie. not copyrighted) landscape photos to feature on the site that are broadly illustrative of a small-farm-future theme, I’d very much appreciate them.
I hope it all goes smoothly when I switch to the new site, but do let me know if you experience any problems or just generally let me know your opinion of the new site if it’s something that I might be able to change or improve. If you can’t get to the Contact form on the site, you can reach me at smallfarmfuture.private (at) protonmail.com.
Welcome to the brave new world!
Third thing … dammit, I was sure there was something else … oh yes, that’s right, I’ve got a book coming out in a couple of weeks (in the UK anyway – it’ll be a few weeks more in the US).
Possibly I’ll be a bit busy for a month or so publicising it (see new website for details of events…). Plus I need to try and fit in a bit of actual farming. So please forgive me if I don’t respond to emails or blog comments as smartly as I otherwise might. This time shall pass. I do, however, intend to keep blogging throughout this period with various book-related posts.
Far be it for me to recommend that you buy a copy of Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future. However, I can tell you that it’s shorter, cheaper and a bit punchier than my previous offering A Small Farm Future. And it has more jokes. Also, this time there’s an audio version with my dulcet (though a bit croakier towards the end) tones to accompany you as you Bluetooth your way around your neo-peasant holding.
I blush to say it, but the book has had some nice feedback so far from advance reviewers. So I’m going to reproduce their comments below in a sneaky attempt to subliminally influence you into buying it. Not least because, as will be revealed in my next post, I could do with the money…
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 has long been a powerful, humane and practical thinker on our relationship to land and farming. This book is a powerful, well-argued and convincing rejection of the ‘ecomodern’ theology currently being promoted by leading British greens. In a time of great division, Smaje offers a human-scale and heartfelt 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
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Those are some pretty impressive reviews. Congrats!
BTW Glad to see Lynn’s blurb. Enjoyed their book and appearance on This Farming Life.
Well done for choosing not to fly – it’s easy to dress up choice as necessity and so avoid choosing to do what’s difficult.
As Mr Miller says – some impressive reviews! Nicely done.
A shame we won’t have in person meetings on this side of the pond, but a new book and a new web space will have to do for the time being.
Bravo ! Now let’s hope the book sells like hot cakes !
Hopefully your new book will bring a dose of reality to thinking about consumption, pollution and climate change. I’m looking forward to reading it.
Tried to go to the new website but there is nothing there yet but a blurb from the domain name registration company…
Meanwhile, in listening to your latest Doomer Optimism podcast, on studge and decentralisation, it occurs to me that there may be a useful distinction to be made between things that are easy to scale both up and down, and things that only “work” on larger scales. I’m not sure I can articulate it succinctly though, so let me have a last bash at a long, meandering comment here before you flip whatever switch is getting flipped…
I can make wine in my kitchen with fairly simple equipment, and the thing that might require scaling up would be running out of space or a ridiculous glut of fruit (…which is how I got into home brewing in the first place, the freezer was nearly full and it was far too hot for turning that many blackberries into jam). I don’t use clay pots that I made myself to do it, but I do fundamentally know how I could create an airlock if I had to, and a bung with a wiggly tube full of water isn’t fundamentally different in how it works than an upturned bowl with the edges submerged in water. So my current winemaking is trade-dependent and even manufacturing-dependent, but my ability to make wine is much less so. It’s nice to use a reliable strain of yeast, but I’ve used wild ones before now. It’s nice not to have to filter the water first, but I do still have to keep everything pretty clean.
Meanwhile, my ability to, say, engrave music at home using a computer is also thought of as decentralisation, and in a way, it is — certainly the publishing houses are now much more about access to markets for sheet music, and handling the interminable paperwork over copyright and royalties, than about the actual physical process of producing scores. But my ability to do that is much more strictly bound by the technology I have available: without a computer, I would either need to learn lead engraving (amazing, beautiful, but…nope), or write scores out by hand (…also nope, though I do think I could make passable-but-time-consuming handmade paper, passable-but-time-consuming ink, and a passable-but-time-consuming quill from materials I find locally) — or perhaps play around with a mimeograph or similar. And if I did that now it would be pointless in terms of getting my scores distributed.
Perhaps blogging is a clearer example of something that we think of as decentralisation, but which still relies on access to technology. I do probably know people who have the kind of knowledge necessary for making computers from scratch, if I can get enough of them to focus on one project for long enough, but I don’t think many of them have the experience of working with raw materials that would be required (I have made paper before, and I know where to find oak falls for ink; making the papermaking screens would require me to level-up my woodworking and spinning skills substantially from where they are now, but isn’t beyond the realm of imagination… though I’ll hold off on quillmaking until avian ‘flu is a little less prominent). If we were allowed to cannibalise existing e-waste, though, we could probably do pretty well…
This may seem like a slight digression from studge. I think what I am getting at is that a certain level of high-tech decentralisation or democratisation of access is only possible within a wider technological and social framework.
Home canning is another example that springs to mind, where getting a suitable pressure cooker to use for canning was rather annoying for me here in the UK because domestic pressure canning is almost unheard of here. In the US it’s much more common, and if you can’t afford equipment there do exist in some places small scale canneries where you turn up with your jars (or purchase them on-site) and your fruit (or whatever) and people who know about the various aspects of food safety are available to advise you — much like individuals in towns in Europe in past centuries could bring their grain to the town mill to be ground, or their bread dough to the bakery to be baked. The thing about all the more traditional examples is that they are things it’s possible to do at home if you have enough time and put in enough work, but people saw fit to build windmills, or communal ovens that achieve more even temperatures for baking with less fuel per loaf of bread than a hearth fire, or whatever. It’s often easier to scale things up than down.
The question is, could that kind of social and technical support infrastructure arise for decentralised studge production? Could it be scaled down? Well, probably, there are loads of people using 3D printers, after all. It only requires a sufficiently high-energy society with sufficient room for expansion of markets, and a commitment on the part of the designers of the precision fermentation processes to an open-source rather than proprietary model, so that different corporations can produce appropriate equipment for the artisanal gourmet home precision fermentation hobbyist.
But…we aren’t looking at a high-energy future in the first place, and so far I haven’t seen any open-source initiatives in this field. So to me, Monbiot’s claim that precision fermentation of proteins for food use will occur on a localised, decentralised basis, rather than the current financialised corporate factory model, simply doesn’t sound very likely. As with the claim that we can get rid of farms and have bacterial factories instead, I ask “how?” and find that there isn’t really an answer.
I do think small batch precision fermentation might be an interesting avenue for producing medicines. I think I have commended here before the work of Four Thieves Vinegar; part of their approach is to look at how to synthesise various drugs on a small scale, rather than using factory-scale processes (which very often involve making a big batch of something and then further processing it to remove impurities). But Monbiot isn’t talking about medicines, and I honestly wouldn’t want to do too much of this myself, as I’m not that confident with actual pharmacology and it’s the sort of thing where getting it wrong can be pretty terrible.
For example, at an endotoxin concentration as low as 1 ng/ml it reduced pregnancy success rates by 3 to 4-fold during in vitro fertilization of human IVF embryos
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.21.537778v1.full
Somewhat above my head but it’s pointing out the problems with ” fake meat ” ( goop ) fermentation .
Thanks for the comments and well wishes. I’m looking forward to discussing the book with folks here.
Briefly, in relation to Kathryn’s interesting comment, could SCP production be scaled down to local levels technically? Probably yes, if you think PV panels, stainless steel bioreactors, hydrogen systems and all the rest of it scale locally at all. But the bigger question is whether it will scale locally economically. We know that farming & gardening can scale locally, but mostly doesn’t for economic reasons. The same will be true, only much more so, for SCP, as I argue in ‘Saying NO…’
Also, as you say, the SCP doesn’t scale energetically. And a few neighbours could much more easily club together locally to raise a couple of pigs…
Your scale up/scale down point regarding wine also raises an issue that I only touch on lightly in my book but could prove to be a big problem, namely contamination. In home wine-making, it doesn’t matter that much if a demijohn spoils. Whereas in commercial wine-making it does matter if a batch spoils. And I think there are big issues about scale up of SCP and spoilage, which is why the technique to date has mostly been used for low volume, high value food additives, not for high volume, low value food staples.
The issue of the endotoxins and nucleic acids in the SCP may also be a stumbling block…
I might say that gardening and farming do scale quite well locally in economic terms, if and only if you remove the cheap energy of fossil fuels for both production and transport in the industrial-scale world. I suspect I would be preaching to the choir.
In addition to my big pressure cooker that I use for canning low-acid foods, I have an Instant Pot: a small electric pressure cooker. I don’t know how that compares to a stainless steel bioreactor in terms of complexity, though.
Distributed hydrogen sounds to me about as practical as distributed nuclear: that is, if it’s not technically and economically viable within a fossil-fueled economy, I find it difficult to believe it will become so without fossil fuels. Perhaps I overestimate the difficulties, and we will reach a point where fossil fuels are sufficiently expensive that the costs of home hydrogen are comparatively competitive, but we still have enough energy sloshing about to actually put that kind of infrastructure in place… but it still seems to me to be an order of magnitude or so harder than, say, replacing natural gas for cooking with compost methane for cooking (this is a relatively low-tech thing, to the point that there are videos on YouTube of how to set it up, though currently plastics are involved, as with almost everything).
The spoilage problem is a big one, and applies to other modes of production too: a small flock of hens will be less catastrophic in terms of how many people are affected if the birds contract avian influenza; a small store of grain is likely to poison fewer people if infected with ergot. And when my home-brew wine is too tannic or too acidic I can decide to age it in the bottle for a few years, or turn it into vinegar.
It is consistent with eco-modernism to think that all technical problems are solvable and all will become worth solving when fossil fuels are scarce enough. That sounds like a very comforting worldview to me from the outside! But even as a relatively privileged western white lady, I have encountered in my own life both problems for which there is no clear technical solution, and problems which do have solutions and which I think would be economically worth solving, and yet which don’t look like they’re really being taken seriously as problems in the first place. In spring 2020 we hugely reduced both urban air pollution and street homelessness pretty much overnight, but neither of these are seen by those with power as problems worth solving on that scale, even though the longer-term economic effects would be of net benefit (and this has been shown again and again and again, everywhere that there are low-tradfic schemes, and everywhere that has a “housing first” policy). Something being both technically feasible and economically beneficial doesn’t seem to be enough to make it happen.
@Kathryn
On a complete tangent.
The Green Scythe Fair was great fun.
I’m hooked on scything and am sticking with my heavy English scythe as it’s what I have.
The Austrian ones are a lot lighter and adjustable though.
Lots of interesting stalls on show as well. (The poor guy doing the bronze casting was quizzed relentlessly by myself to squeeze every drop of information out of him. My next project)
Hope you enjoy your birthday present.
Glad to hear it, John.
Scale matters of course.
Here is a new approach to human nitrogen fixation where scale (and resource use) are at the heart of the matter: https://www.wearenium.com/#0
Rather than reflexively dumping on this approach as some ecomodernist technofix… why not imagine it just another tool in the tool box (albeit a tool in need of further development/refinement).
Nium looks potentially interesting, though “small reactors placed alongside hydrogen facilities” is still not quite something I would do in my kitchen.
Their own website says “By using the greenest Hydrogen and having low energy requirements we are able to make the greenest Ammonia”
So at least some of my concerns about precision fermentation are the same as the ones about ammonia production: what are their inputs?
I had rather hoped they were using urine. Oh well.
Kathryn:
From another page at their site:
Due to the technology enabling us to make Ammonia at very low temperature and pressures, the process is able to switch on and off effortlessly enabling it to work well with renewable and intermittent energy sources. We are able to make ammonia using 16x less energy than the current process.
So the inputs are electricity, and air (for the N). Significantly the electricity can be intermittent, so wind and solar are potential sources. If the energy savings are real this looks very interesting.
And yes, I don’t imagine this is something one will do in the kitchen.
Without knowing more about their proprietary catalyst, it remains difficult to know exactly how this can scale and whether it will indeed be world-changing.
I’d like to go on a tangent here about intellectual property and how in the current legal framework, certain innovations only spread if you can patent them appropriately to prevent copycats… but that also means some things that are deemed insufficiently profitable never quite take off because it isn’t worth the risk of being sued for copyright infringement.
If Nium can substantially replace nitrogen from Haber-Bosch and similar processes, that’s very good news indeed for a gentler transition, especially if it’s something that could be done on a farm scale (I am thinking of perhaps a large shed with solar panels and a wind turbine, steadily cranking out whatever Nium is into safe containers, and being cheap enough to set up that it’s better for the farmer than buying conventional nitrogen fertilizers), but without knowing more about their process it’s hard to know whether that is possible technically, never mind economically. So I still consider it a pretty big “if”.
Meanwhile, I can still manufacture nitrogen fertilizer myself at a garden scale — though generally not in the kitchen, but rather the lavatory. And I still think “huh, we don’t have enough fertilizer in the right places” and “huh, we are using precious drinking water to flush away our urine and excrement” are two problems that could be solved by normalising the use of human (and other animal) waste for agricultural fertilizer. I mean, I actually know how I would go about doing this; no proprietary catalysts required, and the only reason I don’t do more now is that carrying liquid urine two and a half miles on a bicycle is somewhat unpopular as a household chore and we don’t really have the facilities at home to do much with it. Yes, it needs some care in collection, processing and use, but this is also true of other nitrogen sources. I am working on getting the allotment committee to put in composting toilets rather than the horrible chemical portaloo, but, well, committees.
And of course some cover crops are also great nitrogen fixers and have the added advantage of improving soil health, again without the use of any special secret proprietary catalyst (which may or may not be sold on a subscription model).
Liking the new look blog site
Talking about contamination just look at the USA where veggies are regularly recalled , as near as I can find 9 million pounds of meat were recalled , thousands were made sick when huge plants screwed up on cleanliness , finds were paid , fingers slapped , and nothing changed .
Rewinding , what point in time do we rewild to ? and what lived there then ? England has been farmed for 3000 plus years ……
Just a quick note to say the RSS feed appears to have updated itself — I am reading this on chrismaje.com via a link from my feed reader.
Finding Our Niche by Philip Loring has some examples of the kind of future I want to have. Active participation in the ecology, increasing diversity, community and connection. Hooray.
Reading it, it occured to me that there are two ways to get food. Either alter features in the landscape so the ecology brings forth from within itself what is needed, or impose your will on the individual organisms to conform to your wishes.
So, controlled burning to encourage fresh growth to attract wild cattle which are hunted and eaten, or chain them into enclosed areas and force them to breed according to what you want, with hilarious consequences like smallpox. Bit like the difference between fermentation and “precision” fermentation, maybe.
Bit off topic but want to give my wife a break.
Hmmmm.
I’m having problems replying to comments. When I click on “reply” it doesn’t seem to open the comments box to type in replies.
Am I missing something?
Testing testing!
Ah. OK. Cool.
It works if I use Firefox
More thoughts on
“Can there be an energy transition?”
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2023/06/12/if-only-we-had-an-island-or-two/
Regarding scaling down of “studge” production to small scale
(I don’t seem to be able to reply to specific comments)
I agree with you Chris. Why would anyone invested in the equipment and energy generation to make “studge”?
Would it be an advantage over
growing veg and raising a few beasts?
I can only see that it would be worth while if “studge” has a long shelf life, very nutritious or very, very tasty.
I am also having the same problems as John is, unable to reply to comments, at least using Chrome on my phone. I will try with a big computer and various browsers, probably sometime tomorrow.
See, it’s easy! No, actually this does seem to be a problem. Thanks both for letting me know. I’ll see what I can do.
Yes, more congratulations on the new book and new look and all those effusive blurbs!
Firefox on Linux works for reply!
Thanks.
Oops… this was meant to be nested above…
Apologies – I think we’ve fixed this now
Simon (web dev)
It appears to work in Chrome on Android now; thank you!
Thanks Simon.
Two recommendations for Philip Loring’s book have come my way in a week, so I’ll have to add it to the pile – it looks very interesting. Thanks Benn.
Good to see Clem’s shoutout for newfangled ammonia chemistry and John’s for oldfangled scything side by side. I’m sorry to have missed the scythe fair this year – it’s always an illuminating occasion. We’ve had the best ever weather for haymaking the old fashioned way here in Somerset lately. I scythed a load yesterday morning, turned it this morning and then got it into the barn this evening. Still, the weather doesn’t feel right. I fear I may still be short of hay before too long.
Clem, regarding your comment about reflexively dumping on the new tech … well, I don’t know if that was aimed at anyone in particular here, but since this site is one of the few on the internet that likes to create a safe space for Luddism, I’m inclined to take the bait (incidentally, I’m currently reading Gavin Mueller’s interesting book ‘Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Were Right About Why You Hate Your Job – more on that soon, perhaps).
As I see it, ‘another tool in the box’ thinking is okay up to a point, and I don’t necessarily object on principle to given modern high-tech developments (I do to some … like nuclear fission … or fusion …) But there are two problems with it. Or maybe it’s the same problem.
First, when we place technological innovations into a global economic framework that emphasizes maximizing returns to capital, we find that certain technologies are no longer just another tool in the box but become essentially the only tool in the box, and others fall away. Hence we have a scythe fair but not a drum mower or baler/wrapper fair … at least not one with the same ambience.
Second, there are path dependencies associated with this process. I could argue that the scythe is another tool in the box when it comes to forage preservation, but it’s mostly going to stay in its box without a major social transformation of the agrarian and residential patterns forged by more mechanized technologies. Since for various reasons I think such a transformation is wise and perhaps necessary, it does make it harder to see technologies that militate against such a transformation as purely neutral.
There are also perhaps some knock on implications in terms of how to access green hydrogen. Anyway, I’m not entirely sure whether I can view green ammonia as another tool in the box, and if I don’t whether choosing not to is a considered or merely reflexive choice. Still, I’m open to further arguments that it IS just another tool in the box…
” …when we place technological innovations into a global economic framework that emphasizes maximizing returns to capital, we find that certain technologies are no longer just another tool in the box but become essentially the only tool in the box, and others fall away.
Might this same discussion have occurred following the deployment of the first primitive scythe?
Indeed I’d like to riff on the example of the scythe for a moment. Surely the first scythe was not the same as those on display at this year’s fair. Surely there are scythes on offer today that are sold for money. Maybe not seen by everyone as “emphasizes maximizing returns to capital” but in the realm of government tax policy I’m guessing the VAT isn’t lining out too much distinction between a new scythe and a drum mower or a baler/wrapper.
But let’s roll back in time to the appearance of the first scythes. Before their appearance one presumes a hand held blade was used for the purpose. Would a technician of the hand held device bemoan the arrival of a scythe as likely to replace her cherished tool? Would she hearken for the beloved ambience to be lost when there are no longer hand blade fairs?
Now I must offer my thanks and appreciation that you have not dismissed the Nium tech out of hand just because it is a new technology. And if I may, I’d like to peer into a future where the present technology for N fixation (Haber Bosch) might end up being a tech for which you’ve suggested: “and others fall away. Would that be a bad thing? Will we one day wish to organize a Haber-Bosch fair?
I share some Luddite tendencies… for instance, I would push to have the current commercial race for the further enhancement of AI paused so that more thought might be invested into how and where such tech is placed into society at large.
Once a new technology springs forth from human creativity it continues to undergo refinement and modification. We who inherit these new methods and materials have an opportunity (actually a responsibility) to further riff upon them and determine their potential use in our own tool boxes. If they don’t fit in your box, perhaps they still fit in mine. Further along, there should be review of the powers and implications of their further applications. Gun powder and dynamite have both useful and unhelpful applications. So we regulate them. Indeed the use of a scythe to sever a human’s head is seriously frowned upon.
Basically my position is that in a space held to be safe for a Luddite like ambience, the knock on chastisement from the outside that such a space hearkens to a romantic vision might need to be worn as a badge rather than an insult… at least until a considered and not reflexive choice is on offer.
Clem asked, “Would a technician of the hand held device bemoan the arrival of a scythe as likely to replace her cherished tool?”
She probably would if the new technology threatened her livelihood or her subsistence. She could then be portrayed as being against new technologies, instead of actually being pro-livelihood and pro-subsistence.
livelihood: [noun] means of support or subsistence (Merriam-Webster)
Here’s a supporting example:
“Machinery was not the only object of the rural Luddites’ wrath. The sickle was being replaced by a scythe to which was fixed a wooden frame known as a cradle. Farmers could now employ one man with a scythe to do the work of six men with reaping hooks. Angry spalpeens in Kilkenny and Tipperary broke scythes and cradles as a protest against their use.”
from
Irish Peasants, Violence and Political Unrest, 1780-1914
Edited by Samuel Clark and James S. Donnelly, Jr.
Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2003
(quoted from page 317)
I’m curious about Clem’s admonishments against “reflexive dumping” on ecomodernistic technologies. Are there any supporting examples of such “reflexive dumping” done by Chris at this blog or in his books? The criticisms from Chris seem to be considered, not reflexive.
@Steve L
Reminds me of a video I watched on YouTube.
Someone introducing a scythe with a cradle to a community in India that harvested using sickles.
The sickle harvesting involved squatting down, causing long term knee joint issues.
A head to head “race” between the scythe/cradle v the sickle was very onesided.
Never really understood how the Indian community hadn’t heard of a scythe???? But then your quote above might have something to do with it???
We humans are a funny bunch.
A tool that improves productivity or at least reduces “effort in” may still be rejected for other reasons than pure logic.
Reminds me of the term schistogeneses in “The Dawn of Everything.
Communities rejecting an technology or cultural practice because it’s what the neighbours do!!!
Snowshoes being the example that stick to mind.
On the cradle point.
I didn’t see anyone at the Green Scythe Fair using one. Why is this? In the YouTube video it made perfect sense. Is it cultural or is there a practical reason not to use one?
Found a clip from the documentary. Can’t find the whole thing though.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=scythe+v+sickle+YouTube+&&view=detail&mid=A7A53E845AE9F6186BBAA7A53E845AE9F6186BBA&&FORM=VRDGAR&PC=XIBA&ssp=1&safesearch=moderate&setlang=en-gb&cc=GB
John:
I think the advantage of a cradle added to a scythe is for harvesting a cereal like wheat or barley. When you wish to bundle plants the cradle helps. If “mowing” grass or hay then bundles are undesirable as they don’t dry evenly.
The function of a grain cradle on a scythe is to deposit the cut grain crops on the ground such that the top-heavy stems remain aligned, with the ears consistently at one end. This makes it possible to pick up a handful of aligned stems to quickly make a sheaf. Without a cradle, the cut material can fall in various directions as it’s being cut by the scythe blade.
For cutting grass, there’s no need for such a cradle as it doesn’t matter if the grass stems are jumbled, and the scythe blade (without a cradle) tends to move the cut grass into windrows during the normal swings. Scything with a cradle would be slower and require more effort than scything without, since (a) the cradle adds some weight to the tool, and (b) the swing of the scythe has to transport the cut material throughout the cutting stroke before the cut material is deposited on the ground.
Here is the entire 10-minute video which was mentioned, made by Alexander Vido, with 28 million views.
Scythe Project in India 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Im_8sI0QFQ
Steve L and Clem.
Thanks for that. Makes sense.
If hay is going to need to be put on a rack to dry, then I guess it doesn’t matter how it falls when cut .
Yep, I’ll definitely second Steve and Clem’s point. I’ve cut a lot of hay with the Ausrian scythe no problem, but cutting wheat last year with one lacking a cradle was an exercise in frustration. Luckily, I have a serrated sickle gifted me by a certain reader of Small Farm Future to try this year. But if anyone’s had good results cutting cereals with an Austrian scythe and cradle, I’d be interested to hear about their methods.
Addendum – ah, now I’ve remembered the video link and had a look that pretty much does it. Thanks!
Then there.are people like me, who read this set of comments and wonder about adding a makeshift grain cradle to the electric strimmer. (I do charge the batteries using solar, in summer. I don’t have much call for a strimmer in winter.)
Interesting line of enquiry you’ve opened up, Clem. I regret I don’t have the time right now to reply as fully as I’d like, but I’ll make a few summary points, perhaps with a view to fleshing them out in future. Viz:
– there’s a big difference between money as a means of exchange and capital as a logic of compounding value that drives an economic world system.
– as I see it, the creation of a global economic system over the last few centuries grounded in the logic of maximizing returns to capital provides a qualitatively different context within which the introduction of new technologies must be seen. I don’t think sickle:scythe and organic N:Haber-Bosch N can be seen as homologous technological changes for this reason.
– regarding my point about the ‘ambience’ of the scythe fair, and with reference to Steve’s point, I was using the word more as shorthand to mean ‘trying to advocate for and defend the possibility of renewable livelihoods’ than any connotation of antique charm. Therefore I very much doubt there will be any Haber-Bosch fairs in the future, except perhaps of a purely nostalgic character (and probably not even those). What’s important about the scythe fair is not that it’s celebrating an old technology for the sake of its oldness, but advocating for it as a technology of the present and future for the sake of its appropriateness.
– the nature of the contemporary global economy and its capital-maximizing logic is such that there’s really only one tool box, with vastly more room in it for drum mowers than scythes. So those of us who want make more room in the box for scythes have a problem. But I suspect that in the longer run those of us who want to keep favouring the drum mowers over the scythes will also have a problem. At present, it’s difficult to find live and let live options in this space.
– I discuss Romanticism in Chapter 6 of my new book and I’m largely comfortable in identifying with it. As I see it, a Romantic approach to a new technology would be to embrace it only if it serves extant social and spiritual collective values. An anti-Romantic approach would be to embrace it because it’s doable and serves somebody’s ends. If the first approach is criticized for being ‘romantic’, my question would be okay but what exactly is the objection?
– some years ago, I showed in the renowned Vallis Veg mowing trial that mowing efficiency reached its peak with the development of the scythe and it’s all been downhill since then with the introduction of newer mowing technologies: https://smallfarmfuture.org.uk/?p=799. As I said in my previous post, really it’s all about the energy futures…
In defence of the Green Scythe Fair.
It wasn’t all about scythes.
Some of the demonstrations may not be particularly relevant to our futures. The bronze casting for example (though it was fascinating!!!! I now understand why we moved from bronze to iron).
But the rope making machine was fascinating, clever, simple and very relevant to our future. It wasn’t a “quaint” bygone machine but a tried and tested, low energy, low maintenance solution to making cordage. It still had to be made/forged from steel, but once made, would last a very long time.
Old Singer, hand cranked, cobbler’s sewing machines also caught the eye. Not sure how long they could be kept going in a SFF but very useful bit of kit.
I think that any “kit” that can, CRUCIALLY, reduce energy inputs and speed up a process will be invaluable in a SFF.
Great book (breaking things)! Really looking forward to your new book, high praise from the Shiva! Well done man, exciting times!
Thanks Joel. In case anyone’s interested, I’m going to be doing an event around the book with Vandana and possibly A.N.Other in London on 18 July. More details to follow when I have them.
Definitely interested….
PS talking of technology, I’m glad the technical glitches to the new site seemed to be ironed out. But do let me know if you have any other problems or your thoughts generally on the site.
On the old site, I kinda liked that your posts Chris were in a different background colour to the rest of the comments.
Made navigating through the posts a bit easier.
Also a “Notify me updated of further comments” tick box would be useful.
(Apologies if it already exists, but I haven’t found it yet)
Sorry. That was really bad English!
I meant to say, email notifications of new comments would be really useful to keep up to date on conversations.
Thanks John. I’ll have a think about these points.
Some more thoughts to add to the question”Can there be an energy transition”.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2023/06/17/258-written-in-the-skies/
Above in a reply to me Chris said:
– the nature of the contemporary global economy and its capital-maximizing logic is such that there’s really only one tool box, with vastly more room in it for drum mowers than scythes. So those of us who want make more room in the box for scythes have a problem. But I suspect that in the longer run those of us who want to keep favouring the drum mowers over the scythes will also have a problem. At present, it’s difficult to find live and let live options in this space.
First of all, I’ll suggest there is more than one tool box. And further, I’ll suggest there will continue to be more than one tool box… regardless of the size of the farm future. One might rationally consider the evidence of global markets, the vast bandwidth of social noise and other global human phenomena to suggest that the Homo sapien living here in 2023 is a member of a global village with no further agency than to succumb to only one way of living. But I don’t think this is the case.
There are many here among us who still farm with horses and hand built kit. Here in Ohio we don’t call them Luddites. They prefer ‘Amish’. They are a remarkable folk. I mention them because their tool box is VERY different – and because no one is forcing them to change their tool box. In fact there are protections in place to allow them this freedom.
Above Steve L wondered where I might have seen a “reflexive dumping” here. One example, a comment that George Monbiot’s vision “can’t” work. It wasn’t said that it ‘may not’ work, or that it ‘may prove difficult’ in light of current economies and the surrounding fields of in place technologies.
At very outset of Chris’ earlier book he lays out 9 things that create trouble for modern man. I really like that particular set up. If we focus all our attention on only one or two things at a time I fear we fall into the trap of missing the bigger picture, or of putting out one fire in front of a bigger blaze.
Global capitalism can cause problems, I won’t dispute that. But it can solve a few as well.
Cheap food is a blessing and a curse.
Cheap nitrogen is a blessing and a curse.
The hegemony of the English language is a blessing and a curse.
While drafting this I accidentally typed ‘toll’ when I meant to type ‘tool’… so the sentence read: toll box… an interesting juxtaposition. Perhaps there is a Global toll box. If not, perhaps we might benefit if there were one. But I’m not going to take off a shoe and pound on the table that there can’t be one (or that there must be one).
When encountering a new tool (or a novel technology):
Pick up the tool, turn it around in your hands. Puzzle over it. If it doesn’t work for you, put it down and move on.
If it doesn’t appear to work for you in its present manifestation you have a different set of choices. You can put it down and move on, or you might riff on what you see so as to adapt it in some fashion to suit your needs. If you perceive the tool might cause harm, then by all means take steps to prevent the harm you imagine. The tool itself is not the matter. It is how one employs it.
Oooops…. at the onset of Chris’ earlier book he lays out ten crises… not 9. My bad, apologies.
So…okay there’s more than one toolbox, but what proportion of US grain crops are grown with an Amish toolbox? What proportion of English preserved forage is cut by scythes? I think my point above about path dependencies holds. Not everyone walks the designated path, but that’s an option available to few within a wider political economy geared to ensuring that that’s so. Which is why I can only agree up to a limited point with the idea that it’s not the tool, but how you use it. When it comes to choosing which tools dominate the box, it very much IS the tool and the political economy behind the tool.
Regarding reflexive versus considered critiques of ecomodernism, I’ve written thousands of words about ecomodernism on this site over the years, and sometimes get criticized for soft pedalling my critique – one word choice of ‘can’t’ over ‘may not’ doesn’t really do it for me as evidence that my critique is merely reflexive. When feeding the world via SCP involves at an unrealistically bare minimum over eight times its current low carbon electricity supply I think the gap between can’t and may not gets small enough to call off the bets. Of course it’s conceivable I could be wrong. But there are plenty of other reasons discussed at length in my writings to suggest why ecomodernist solutionism is likely suboptimal.
Still, I appreciate you pressing an alternative view and helping to keep me on my toes.
I know you to be well versed in statistics. I’ve a bit of experience with the subject myself. In most biological systems I’m familiar with we typically use alpha values around .05 for making claims. When I see “can’t” (as opposed to “may not”) it reminds me that there remains some (albeit small) probability of making an error.
Writing thousands of words on a subject is a fine credential, I’ll admit. But it doesn’t give license to shut down debate; so I too appreciate your parting thought that my needling your views won’t get me banned.
Earlier in our recent conversation on the value of the Regenesis projections Steve L expressed a concern about how research into possible SCP paths is funded. I think this is an important topic – what are the roles of public research, private research, non-profit efforts? Is venture capital good or questionable?
Chris wrote, “one word choice of ‘can’t’ over ‘may not’ doesn’t really do it for me as evidence that my critique is merely reflexive. When feeding the world via SCP involves at an unrealistically bare minimum over eight times its current low carbon electricity supply…”
Sounds to me like the “can’t” claim was a considered one (based on evidence), not a reflexive one.
“Can’t” is a courageous claim, much more easily proven wrong than “may not”. But the issue here isn’t whether Chris is correct or not, it’s Clem’s assertion about “reflexive dumping”.
There seems to be more evidence for Chris’s “can’t” claim than for Clem’s “reflexive dumping” claim. Perhaps Clem is doing some reflexive dumping of his own, on criticisms of high tech?
: )
It looks like Solar Foods found a use for the relatively small amounts of the bacterial protein ‘Solein’ they are currently producing: put it in gelato at a seaside restaurant in Singapore, “now officially on the menu” accompanied by much hoopla.
“Solein, together with vegetable oils, replaces dairy in the ice cream product…”
https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2023/06/19/solar-foods-enters-the-market-with-solein-ice-cream-in-singapore
Another use for the microbial protein powder ‘Solein’:
“…for patrons of Axiom’s Philippe Starck–designed space hotel, scheduled to open next year…. each of the hotel’s $55-million-paying guests will be able to toast their grand adventure with wild mushroom Solein tortellini.”
https://www.vogue.com/article/will-solein-change-the-future-of-food
Thanks for the updates, Steve. The ball is rolling!
Re the new tech debate, I guess my closing argument there is that holding out for the possibility of a full energy transition may be suboptimal, even if it proves possible. And if it doesn’t prove possible, it’ll probably be even more suboptimal…