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Posted on July 27, 2023 | 130 Comments
I’m not the most enthusiastic of public speakers – I prefer public writing, which I find a better medium for crafting what I want to convey. When I have spoken in public, I’ve opted mostly to address sympathetic audiences likely to be receptive to my words. Sometimes, this has invited the accusation that I’m preaching to the converted.
It’s a strange metaphor, really. The proportion of all sermons that have been preached to the converted must surely be considerably north of 99%, and I doubt many congregations complain that the sermon they’ve just heard was wasted since they already believe. I’ll concede that preaching to the unconverted involves impressive skills and a fortitude I lack. Still, it strikes me that the ‘preaching to the converted’ jibe misses a large part of what preaching is actually for.
I’ll come back to that at the end of this essay. But first I want to narrate a few events from the past week or so, loosely connected by what I’ll call the science wars over food futures.
My tale begins with ‘The Debate’, as some are calling it (not generally in a good way) between Allan Savory and George Monbiot entitled ‘Is livestock grazing essential to mitigating climate change?’
I don’t intend to say anything much about the debate itself, if that’s the right word for what happened. I’ll simply commend the essay ‘Two arrogant men’ by Gunnar Rundgren, a friend of this site, as the best of the postmortems I’ve seen.
There are interesting and important issues relating to grazing ruminants and climate change, but in my opinion these issues – along with the wider issue of meat and livestock – have occupied way too much of the debate around Monbiot’s book and around food futures generally. This has led to an over-emphasis on livestock and an under-emphasis on fossil energy as agents of climate and ecological harms, while obscuring various other issues too.
One of those other issues is the way that the concept of ‘science’ gets mobilised in discussions of food futures – indeed in political argument generally. In the aftermath of the debate with Savory, Monbiot and many of his supporters pronounced that science had been the winner. Monbiot tweeted,
…what counts in try (sic) to determine where the truth in such matters lies is not shouting matches but peer-reviewed science – the whole body of evidence across the scientific literature.
It’s a reasonable position on the face of it. Of course, there can be difficulties in weighing up the ‘whole body of evidence across the scientific literature’. Some issues like human-caused climate change are pretty straightforward, but across most of the issues that Monbiot discusses in Regenesis the evidence is more equivocal – often in my opinion a lot more so than he credits in his writing.
One small example is this peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal questioning the yield potential of the dry perennial grains that Monbiot extols. Perhaps he’ll update future editions of his book and acknowledge that the whole body of evidence across the scientific literature doesn’t unequivocally support greater yield potential in dry perennial grains. To be fair, this article criticises the one I’ve just cited, making a counter case. For reasons long ago outlined on this blog I don’t think its arguments are persuasive. But so it goes on. Turns out the peer-reviewed scientific literature itself can be an arena of debate, argument and uncertainty – not just a shortcut to ‘the truth’.
Indeed, one of the things that’s struck me about Monbiot’s approach to science in The Debate and in his recent writings is how often he invokes it too generically and sweepingly as a ‘whole body of evidence’ to claim support for his position. In this way, ‘science’ as a practice of knowledge-generation easily gets corrupted into ‘SCIENCE’ as an essentially rhetorical, political or even quasi-religious claim to higher authority – the difference between science and scientism, on which I and many others have previously written.
Where Monbiot did cite specific studies in The Debate, such as one about the lowered impacts consequent upon a worldwide turn to veganism, it seemed to me that with some knowledge of the field it’s easy to see how such a study, while plausible within its own framing, could also be implausible or irrelevant within other ones not mentioned. And so it goes, again. Not some capitalized and rhetorical appeal to SCIENCE as truth, but an arena of debate, argument and uncertainty.
What, then, to make of this further tweet of Monbiot’s:
They’ve thrown all their favoured champions at me – Allan Savory, Patrick Holden, Simon Fairlie, Minette Batters – to no avail. Now they’ve got so desperate they’re invoking imaginary heroes. Who is it? The Green Knight? Prester John? Gandalf the Grey?
You could say he was provoked, but this is a notion of science deployed to win rhetorical victory points, and debate as combat between the champions or heroes of a ‘them’ versus an ‘us’. It’s hard to imagine a less scientific mentality. They say you can judge the eminence of a scientist by the length of time they hold up developments in their discipline. Monbiot isn’t a scientist, but maybe it’s a mark of his eminence as a public figure that he’s holding up debate about food futures and turning it into this kind of showbusiness.
Anyway, so much for The Debate. Roll the clock forward a week, and instead we have The Conversation. In fact, two conversations, in London. Rather less feted occasions, I confess, involving me.
One of them was the interview I did with Oli Dugmore of PoliticsJOE, which is now available here – kind of a follow-up to an interview Oli previously did with Monbiot. My interview seems to have generated a bit of attention, but since it’s all I can do to keep up with the comments of you kind people here on my home website I must admit I’ve only skimmed a few of the online comments arising from it. In relation to the positive ones, thank you very much. Among the negative ones, there’s the old chestnut that low-input agrarian localism can’t scale to feed 8 billion+ people. On the contrary, I believe it can – in fact, I believe it may be the only thing that can. I wrote a brief thread on Twitter about it here and will perhaps try to write something a little more in depth about it on this site in due course.
Another issue in some of the comments runs along the lines that manufactured food is more efficient than plant-based agriculture, which is more efficient than animal-based agriculture and any farmer who says otherwise is speaking out of low self-interest. There are a lot of problems to unpack in such statements. I unpack them in my book, and I suppose I’ll try to unpack them in future blog posts here. But I do wish Regenesis hadn’t fed this level of ignorance. And, as I’ll outline further below and in later posts, I’m starting to wonder if this particular ‘debate’ has gone beyond the stage where talking is useful.
Anyway, moving on, the second conversation involved me and Vandana Shiva sitting on a sofa with our compere Flo Read from the Unherd Club, talking about the War on Farming in front of a packed audience. Not 100% within my comfort zone (see opening paragraph), but the sofa was pretty comfortable, thanks, and I quite enjoyed the occasion. Not least because I met a couple of valued commenters from this site in real life for the first time, proving that my blog isn’t just some holographic projection of my own disordered psyche (unless of course the entire event was itself part of said projection – gosh, science and truth … so difficult!)
Prior to the event the American Council on Science and Health wrote to Unherd, proclaiming “activist Vandana Shiva is a mortal threat to the most vulnerable”. It prompted a minor storm in my Twitter feed, seemingly mostly from people in the US claiming biotech expertise and complaining about her menace to the poor and needy.
I was a bit worried that a mob would be awaiting, but Vandana was supremely unconcerned and in the event the audience seemed thoroughly engaged with our shared agrarian localist agenda. A scan down the list of the ACSH’s objections turned up the usual kind of stuff that’s also been levelled at me over the years in my own lower profile way:
“Shiva rejects technologies which help farmers (mostly women and children) to alleviate the painful, back-breaking labour of hand-weeding” and “invents misleading and deceitful connections between useful agricultural tools and war, demonizing the use of fertilizers”.
Well, I don’t think there’s much doubt that the history of fertilizer is entangled with the history of warfare, and of agricultural enclosure (see Glenn Davis Stone, The Agricultural Dilemma; Vaclav Smil, Enriching the Earth; Aaron Benanav Automation and the Future of Work). As to technologies to alleviate back-breaking farm labour, a remark of Stone’s is worth bearing in mind: “When you hear outsiders bemoaning the horrible toil of farming, it is probably not empathy you are hearing, but a self-serving pitch from people with interests in external inputs”.
You don’t need to probe too far into the ACSH’s background to gain a sense that something similar might be in play.
In the past, despite sometimes being perhaps over-argumentatively pro low-tech localism I’ve also been prepared to argue the scientific grounds around the case for corporate biotech vis-à-vis distributed community agrarianism, to acknowledge that it doesn’t always map straightforwardly onto the baddies versus the goodies, and to concede – heaven forfend! – that people like me and Vandana may sometimes get things wrong.
But I’m losing my appetite for such equanimity. As a sometime writer of peer-reviewed articles, reviewer of the same, and part-time spreadsheet-brained number cruncher, it’s not that I’ve become averse to evidence-mongering per se. It’s that I’m increasingly averse to the contexts and ways in which evidence is invoked. For example, the aforementioned book by Glenn Davis Stone is, among other things, a carefully argued case that the Green Revolution and the ministrations of Norman Borlaug contributed to the precarity of the poor, and to further building out the public money to private corporation pipeline. As I see it, Borlaug and his heirs have been a far more mortal threat to the most vulnerable than anything Vandana has done.
To substantiate that point would require a lot of detailed evidence presentation, along with the exploration of different worldviews that cannot be gainsaid by evidence alone. If I felt there were genuinely open spaces in contemporary political culture for such exploration in good faith, then perhaps I’d be inclined to engage more. I’ve already spent a couple of months writing a book in which I engage with the evidence and worldviews around manufactured food and agrarian localism. I’m glad I did it, so that there’s a consultable document in the public domain that lays out a localist alternative to the flimsy ecomodernist case for manufactured food. But I doubt it will change many minds. And, however much analysis you do, I don’t think you can ever do enough to stop someone else from saying “I think you’ll find the science suggests the opposite of that”. Frankly, I’m tired of disingenuous neo-Malthusian narratives boosted by corporate interests against food justice activists along the lines that scientists and corporations are holding the thin blue line against the hunger of the poor.
Meanwhile, as I mentioned above, it feels to me that the political space for such engagement and for so-called ‘evidence-based policymaking’ is closing. It was always vulnerable to subversion by ‘policy-based evidence-making’ in the words of the old joke, and that now seems to me the reality of the debate on food futures and the wider drift of politics. Maybe I’m overreacting to what I’m seeing in my own little bubble, but it seems to me that it’s rapidly becoming a class conflict in which the most important question facing environmentalists, farmers, consumers, citizens, corporations and politicians is not so much ‘what does the evidence suggest?’ as ‘who are my allies in the emerging fight over food and land?’ When that happens, the time for debating what ‘the science says’ is more or less over.
I’ll offer some more reflections on that in my next couple of posts. For now I’ll conclude by returning to my opening remarks. I lack the skills to preach to the unconverted, and in the present political moment it doesn’t seem like a good use of time. Hopefully my writing and maybe even my speaking might convince a few waverers from getting hoodwinked by some of the more preposterous ecomodernist claims, but mostly I’m happy to preach to the converted, to provide – in the words of Joel Salatin from his blurb for my book – some affirming angels to help give them strength for the battles which are surely coming.
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Ina church context, am not sure the function of preaching is really conversion, at least not directly. Indeed one could argue that true conversion of heart is the work of the Holy Spirit, and preaching makes only a small difference one way or another. I would also add that conversion is rarely a one-time affair but rather a lifelong process.
The function of preaching, at least in church, is to take a passage of scripture and reflect on it and present that reflection to the gathered congregation; to render it understandable where possible, to point to the mysteries of it where understanding escapes even the preacher, to relate it to the lives and experiences of the people there and to begin to answer together the question “so what?” (or, less bluntly, “what does this mean for how we should live?”)
How we answer that question does have knock-on effects, and these may well include conversion of the unconverted. How we live may be a more powerful apologetic than any sermon ever preached.
‘Another issue in some of the comments runs along the lines that manufactured food is more efficient than plant-based agriculture…’
Some of the problems with these ‘more efficient’ arguments were unpacked in Chris’s recent article ‘Questioning the Case for Farm-Free Food’:
https://chrissmaje.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Questioning-the-case-for-farm-free-food.pdf
Meanwhile, once again I haven’t been paying attention, but I don’t recall Vandana Shiva having anything too terrible to say about the simple hoe, which certainly alleviates much of the pain of hand-weeding. Another technology that helps with this would be saving seeds of varieties that are better at outcompeting weeds. Yet another approach is to eat the weeds: not possible with every weed, but certainly on the cards with many; in dry climates, mulching also helps keep the weeds down, and feeds the soil.
I suppose if all you know how to do is spray poisons, everything looks like a problem to be solved by spraying poisons, but it’s pretty disingenuous to say that someone who doesn’t want to see women and children dependent on handling poisons that destroy soil life is against “technologies that alleviate the painful, back-breaking labour of hand-weeding” and you really don’t need all that much horticultural knowledge to see the technologies that are being erased in that accusation.
The more people grow even a little bit of their own food the less this kind of ignorance will prevail.
The whole point of today’s industrial farming is to get people off the land and it has worked ( for a while ) but the costs of fertiliser , chemicals, fuel and machinery are getting to the point that people are cheaper . Yes the his is a fantastic invention , I have spent hours in my youth singling turnips and sugar beet / general weeding , the fields were never as ” clean “as they are now but those weeds had deep roots pulling up minerals from deep underground , that’s why today’s foods are short of all kinds of minerals .
“Among the negative ones, there’s the old chestnut that low-input agrarian localism can’t scale to feed 8 billion+ people.”
Maybe some people (like Monbiot) don’t like the idea of having to grow their own food. Would rather keep their publishing/journalism careers.
LOL ! A bit of hard work to get their sustenance would do a lot of good .
This may he’ll the sermon ….
https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=221&v=EAyLyTcAzDI&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fkunstler.com%2F&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo
Help !
I hate spell checkers !
Yes, go ahead and preach to the converted.
Further to Kathryn’s comment above, another function of preaching in a church is to inspire the members. Create energy and enthusiasm.
I’ve always considered proselytizing (preaching to the unconverted) as a symptom of insecurity in one’s beliefs. Trying to convince others as a proxy for convincing yourself.
But if your belief is so right, anyone with an open mind will see it.
Anyone without an open mind never will, no matter your rightness and rhetoric.
I also believe that our time is best spent doing the things that we feel drawn to do, for whatever reason. Within the bounds of some kind of ethics.
So if you are tired of arguing with people who aren’t willing to listen, that’s fine with me.
If instead, you follow your inspiration, and pass that on to your willing audience, who can predict what new (or old) ideas may come up?
Thanks.
I decided debate was pointless sometime ago. I used to get angry about stuff – “how can they think …” “Can they not see that….” Haven’t they read …..”
Now I think I’ve never changed anyone’s mind about anything – saw my 80+ year old father yesterday – he’d just been reading his Telegraph and was outraged by woke bankers shutting Farage’s bank account – I asked him what woke was – he couldn’t define it but it was definitely the problem – I think most debates are like that – dearly held positions, lots of confirmation bias and heads in the sand – I don’t exclude myself here – I realised sometime ago that I’ve a (slight ) tendency to be attached to being right and so tend toward confirmation bias in my reading of ‘evidence’.
I think you’ve talked about solutionism in the past Chris – I think mostly debate is that – it gives the feeling of movement while changing nothing.
I am ecstatic that youtube algorithm led me to your work. I ordered both your books today and look forward to reading them. I am a small farmer and an activist and i can identify with your feelings about public speaking vs public writing. Unfortunately for you and fortunately for us life thrust you into the sun’s ray and that offers affirmation and solidarity to the rest of us.
I have been exasperated with Monbiot for some time. Gunner’s observation that both him and Savory reject hundreds even thousands of years indigenous and traditional land management is right. Todays organic, permaculture and regenerative practice comes out of indigenous and traditional practises. Its not new. But its under severe pressure by the march of urbanism and modernism.
I think Mr Monbiot should take up planting some food and this will bring him back to earth. Putting hands in the soil is good for many illnesses.
Thanks for referral to my blog on the Debate, i.e. the two Preachers having parallel sermons. Regarding Kernza and Monbiot, I find it particularly ironic that one argument in favor of Kernza is that is produce a lot straw to be used as animal feed. https://www.farmprogress.com/crops/kernza-saves-soil-produces-grain-and-forage-for-cows
On the link between war and fertilizers, the link is/was certainly there. But less well known is perhaps the link in the other direction: “The link between fertilizers and war is old. In Sweden, France and Germany from the 16th to 18th century farmers were forced to deliver saltpeter, a nitrate compound, to the governments to make gunpowder. That nitrate was extracted from the urine and manure of livestock. This meant that large quantities of nutrients were taken from farming, depleting soils and literally exploded into thin air. The antithesis of converting swords into plowshares. (from my book Global Eating Disorder).
Considering the claims that enormous quantities of munitions are used in the war in Ukraine I have tried to figure out if 1) ammunition in general still are made with fossil gas as feed stock and 2) if so, are the quantities used so big that they affect gas markets? But I haven¨t really put enough energy into it.
It goes back further than salt petre sticking a quiver full of arrows in a cow pat just for one .
As for war just making the steel for shells is a major energy hog never mind for tanks, artillery , fuel and transport
We can preach, or we can debate, or we can voice our concerns. I like to point out some strategic facts to hopefully alert others/ increase awareness/ ‘raise consciousness’. If I can do it without apparent attachment to the outcome, then I think it can be heard better as a FYI instead of a sales pitch.
There are already lots of subtle and not-so-subtle sales pitches regarding ‘precision fermentation’ in the media.
Not-so-subtle: The ‘food from thin air’ slogan being presented like a factual claim (when it’s actually untrue, it’s from bacteria grown with other ingredients besides air plus a huge amount of energy is required).
More subtle: When chefs discuss the manufactured food powder by describing how versatile and ‘earthy’ flavoured it is.
In all the sales pitches, I’m seeing that the following distasteful fact is being ignored or downplayed, and I thus consider it a strategic fact for increased public awareness:
***The protein powder is actually bacterial protein powder, as in 100% bacterial (with treatments to remove toxins and supposedly make it safe enough for human to eat).***
If I was offered a smoothie with the choice of either pea protein powder, soy protein powder, dairy protein powder, or 100% bacterial protein powder, one of those options seems rather ‘crappy’ to me. The general public might agree with me, which is why ‘consumer acceptance’ and ‘consumer adoption’ are described in this recent paper as the biggest challenges for the commercial success of microbial foods:
“The biggest challenges for microbial foods in terms of both commercial success and beneficial environmental impact will ultimately be consumer acceptance and adoption. At present, it is not clear whether microbial food products will be able to replace animal-derived foods (meat, eggs, and dairy) within a timespan that is short enough to have any significant impact on slowing climate change. For example, mycoprotein has been commercially available in the United Kingdom for nearly four decades, yet a recent consumer survey of England, Wales and Northern Ireland found… ”
Beyond Agriculture ─ How Microorganisms Can Revolutionize Global Food Production
Tomas Linder
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsfoodscitech.3c00099
Bacterial protein powder (with treatments to remove toxins and supposedly make it safe enough for human to eat) seems so less appealing and less appetizing than the farmed pea proteins and soy proteins and dairy proteins in common usage today. Pointing out the 100% bacterial composition could help ‘keep it real’ for people otherwise swayed by the well-funded advertising and slick PR campaigns which downplay the true nature of these novel food.
I believe these energy-intensive novel foods are environmentally harmful and counterproductive substitutes for farmed foods. I would like the general public to be better informed about them before deciding whether to use them, so I will point out some strategic facts in my relevant interactions with other people. If you readers here agree with me, then I suggest you do likewise.
The mainstream media might be ignoring Chris’s new book, so word of mouth has increased importance.
These strategic facts, quoted below from the paper I referenced earlier, are handy for countering any implied (and false) equivalences between ‘precision fermentation’ products and traditional fermented foods. In summary, ‘microbial foods consist (100%) of microbial cells that have been ruptured’ and processed, while microbes are only a tiny percentage of a traditional fermented food.
‘Before proceeding, it should be clarified that fermented foods such as cheese, kimchi, or tempeh do not qualify as microbial foods although they employ microorganisms as part of their preparation. The key difference between microbial foods and fermented foods is that the bulk of the edible biomass in fermented foods derives from the original substrate (dairy, cabbage, soybeans, etc.) rather than microbial biomass. It should also be noted that microbial foods are different from probiotics. Probiotics consist of live microbial cells meant to confer health benefits when consumed, while microbial foods consist of microbial cells that have been ruptured ─ and in some cases specific fractions such as protein have been extracted and purified.’
Beyond Agriculture ─ How Microorganisms Can Revolutionize Global Food Production
Tomas Linder
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsfoodscitech.3c00099
Chris.
On preaching to the converted…..
I think that, if you enjoy the intellectual “sparring” with the likes
Monbiot, then great. But once you stop enjoying it and it’s just making you cross, then maybe it’s time to put your energies elsewhere?
But I don’t think that you will ever get Monbiot to change his mind. He has invested too much into arguing about “studge”, that there is no going back now.
But if by continuing to engage in the debate with Monbiot, you manage to get the debate into the mainstream, there might be some merit in continuing?
But, I don’t think the public is ready for a SFF. As I’ve said before, a SFF is not very attractive compared to modernity and it’s not common knowledge that modernity is coming to an end.
I keep my thoughts to myself, these days. (Except on your blog)
I know that, telling all my friends/family that their worlds are going to be completely upended, won’t get me invited to many dinner parties!!! (Actually, I hate dinner parties !)
I don’t think that the “studge” debate is going to change government policy any time soon either. Political debate is still all about growth and technology.
Until there is a fundamental change in circumstances, I can’t see much traction in promoting a SFF.
I can see “fundamental change” taking two possible forms. One swift (collapse) starting with the financial system.
And the other more protracted.
With a swift change, I think food supply, (or rather lack of) will be key. No food and lots of people won’t make it to a SFF. It could all be done and dusted in 6-12 months☹️. Those that stockpile now and keep there heads down, might make it through to the other side?
A slow transition allows the time for (some) people to realise the new reality, and start provisioning for themselves. . There are plenty of folks out there already doing this. “Preppers” are a bit of a media joke at the moment, but they may end up inheriting the world.
I think that there is going to be a real demand for teaching the practical skills for growing/storing/preserving food with everything that goes along with that. Textile manufacturing, salt production, coopering, smythying etc etc…..
The “political” framework is much harder to “teach”, imagine and predict. The permutations are limitless, as us humans have shown in the past.
I’m inclined to think that the “politics” will take care of itself.
If politics becomes more “localised”, as I think it will, then it will come down to “personalities” of the individuals at any one time, as much as it will be about policy.
Out of curiosity, what is it that you hate about dinner parties?
And are dinner parties different than getting together with friends to share a home-cooked meal?
I think the latter can be very important in building community, and it is one of the things I regret losing due to pandemic constraints. (I want to sort out the back garden to make it suitable for such gatherings, but this keeps falling to the bottom of the to-do list.)
@Kathryn Rose
(Out of interest. Are Kathryn Rose and Kathryn the same person?)
I make the distinction between dinner parties and having friends round for a chat and a bit of food.
I think of dinner parties as being slightly formal affairs with people that I wouldn’t consider close friends. Making small talk and having to be a bit “fake/polite”. All a bit stodgy.
Where as hang out with friends is a much more relaxed affair. I can be a bit more myself without worrying about offending anyone.
Hi
Yes, Kathryn and Kathryn Rose are the same person, me.
I don’t always remember to delete my surname from the autofill…
Dinner parties do sound unpleasant, put like that. Why do you think people have them, rather than just inviting some friends around?
“I’m inclined to think that the “politics” will take care of itself.” (John Adams)
This, I think (if I understand the claim correctly, which I may well do not!) may be among the most dangerous of ideas in our world today.
We require–ideally–as much proactive response time as we can manage to muster. Waiting for the shit to hit the fan, then responding to the shit, seems to me the worst of all popular ideas in the “marketplace” of ideas. It will require years of hard, shared, work to prepare for what many of us know is coming. What’s coming (very soon!) is a global food crisis emanating out of a rapid departure from the Holocene.
I guess what I mean is that it is difficult to create a concensus.
Even the earlier debate on the C. S. Lewis article threw up lots of contrasting views by people that are broadly on the page.
It’s very difficult to know how the post industrial/climate change transition is going to play out.
Getting a plan that is going to work on a large scale that everyone can agree on is probably impossible.
People will react to events as they happen and those reactions will vary from place to place.
Plus, societies are constantly in flux. Changing all the time. (Not always for the good) Politics never stands still.
That’s kinda what I meant from “politics taking care of itself”.
Being proactive is definitely a good idea, but it helps to know what the eventuality is that one is planning for.
“Getting a plan that is going to work on a large scale that everyone can agree on is probably impossible.”
Not so very long ago the favored strategy of medical doctors toward roughly half of all illnesses was “bloodletting” –https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting Or, sometimes, snake oil.
When a person has devoted as many hours, days, months and years to trying one’s best to understand energy topics in relation to ecology and economy, one generally concludes that what passes for sound sense in relation to the climate / biodiversity / etc. crises resembles the profound medical ignorance of the time of George Washington.
One wearies of having to explain, again and again, why and how it is that the mainstream / conventional / popular narratives on “energy transition” are bollocks. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english-thesaurus/nonsense And no one should have to explain this over and over again. It should be common knowledge. But it isn’t, because bollocks is what happens to politics when the media decides what we think and what we believe, and when the media is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate capitalism.
Everyone needn’t agree on a plan or a strategy here. What we need to do, however, is first to call bollocks for what it is. Then, and only then, can we discuss what to do about it.
Unfortunately, almost no one knows that “energy transition” as it is being sold to us by corporations and their media lapdogs (and universities) is bollocks. They are selling leeches and sharp razors to the bloody fools who are buying ’em.
Here’s one of my articles on
the mainstream / popular energy transition narrative. There are a number of others, too.
The Energy Transition Narrative
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-10-17/the-energy-transition-narrative/
This one starts out talking about the biosolids bollocks in order to set the stage for the energy transition bollocks story.
In a later article, I explain another primary reason the mainstream story on energy transition is false — which is the fact that we don’t have enough of the more rare metals and minerals to make the popular story transition.
James
My preferred blog on all things energy is Surplus Energy Economics.
James
I’m totally in agreement with you on the fallacy of “energy transition”.
I also accept that the Energy Costs of Energy are on the rise. That we are on the cusp of de-growth as there isn’t going to be enough surplus energy to keep the economy expanding.
I also accept that energy IS the economy. Without fossil fuels pretty much all activity in the economy stops.
Building a global consensus on how to manage the political and social upheavals of de-growth is the bit I struggle with. What that would look like and if it would even be possible to implement.
John –
“Building a global consensus on how to manage the political and social upheavals of de-growth is the bit I struggle with. What that would look like and if it would even be possible to implement.”
For what it is worth, degrowth is non-identical with post-growth or the end of growth. Degrowth is a general pattern of proactive responses to involuntary energy descent and the risks associated with carbon emissions. Involuntary energy descent just happens to people, whereas degrowth is mostly *voluntary* responsiveness to increasing energy scarcity and global weirding.
As lovely as it would be to have “global consensus” on degrowth as a response to our predicament, clearly that’s not going to happen anytime soon, so the thing for us to do is to enact degrowth anyway, wherever and whenever we can. It need not be a “global consensus” for us to make enormous strides in that direction.
My political framing on all of this is what I call microeutopian theory and praxis. From the Greek: micro (small) eu (good) topia (place). Thomas More, the author of the book from which Utopia entered our language, deliberately chose his title so that Utopia would mean “no place” (see:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia#Etymology_and_history )
Microeutopian political theory and praxis is moslty just localized forms of prefigurative politics.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefigurative_politics What do we regard as “good”? What’s a good place?
Do we really require a global consensus to create good places? No, we need a few folks who agree with us on our praxis enough to collaborate with us in its enactment in our local places, including at the bioregional scale.
I don’t need a majority of people to be my collaborators before I can enact my politics, and do so effectively. What I need are some local friends who are ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work.
“I also accept that energy IS the economy. Without fossil fuels pretty much all activity in the economy stops.”
Exosomatic energy, for the most part “is” the economy … or, rather, it is the caplitalist-industrial economy. Globally, 84% of this exosomatic energy is fossil fuels sourced.
Whether we do it voluntarily or involuntarily, or some combination of the two (which is what’s already beginning to happen, even if global fossil energy use is continuing to expand), we will be phasing out fossil fuels. In phasing out fossil fuels the proportion of energy use which is endosomatic will increase. That is, “the economy” doesn’t come to an end as we phase out fossil fuels. What ends is the proportion of energy use which is exosomatic.
At present, machines are doing almost all of the work of “the economy”. So there is a huge amount of exosomatic energy expenditure. In the near-enough future, more and more work will be done using endosomatic energy. Obviously, then, “the economy” will thus shrink considerably. It will become vastly less focussed on meeting luxury desires, and more oriented toward meeting our most fundamental needs, such as for food, shelter, water and medicine.
Currently, the proportion of the energy economy (in ‘developed nations’) which is exosomatic energy is so vast and overwhelming that it seems almost silly to mention endosomatic energy. But I mention endosomatic energy because that’s the future of the economy, for the most part — whether we like it or not. So this discussion isn’t really silly and irrelevant. It’s the very core concept necessary to understanding where we must travel to if we are to feed, clothe, house and otherwise care for ourselves and one another.
James.
Yes I agree with all of that.
How much surplus energy that will be available, I think will ultimately dictate what will be possible and shape society and politics going forward.
I think that it is possible to live “good” lives on much less energy.
The bit I’m finding difficult to predict is how we get from here to there.
James
I’m liking the idea of “prefigurative politics”
What would be the foundation principles of my idea of a SFF???
I guess kindness.
I also think that people have a inate sense of what is fair in any given situation. It’s what allows for compromise.
I can see this being possible at a local level but can it be scaled up to the relationships between strangers?
I guess all I can really do is create some practical resilience in my own personal circumstances and hope there is enough left over to collaborate/support with others.
The other day I heard a definition of regenerative agriculture as “farming practices that increase the stable carrying capacity of the land”
I like that definition quite a lot.
I think practices that increase local carrying capacity or resilience can be broader than just agriculture, though.
John — what happens if you work to increase the resilience of your local community first, rather than working on your own and seeing if there is anything left over for others? What would that kind of resilience-oriented localism look like in your context? What would it feel like?
Global consensus is indeed a hard nut to crack, but there is so much we can do on a local scale that is worthwhile.
@Kathryn
“John — what happens if you work to increase the resilience of your local community first, rather than working on your own and seeing if there is anything left over for others? What would that kind of resilience-oriented localism look like in your context? What would it feel like?”
I hear what yo are saying and yes, I am a bit of a “loan ranger” and don’t get involved in my local community on an organisational level as much as I could.
My excuse is that I’ve got a family that is quite demanding on my time /energy which does leave me with much capacity for community organization. (Plus I find people annoying)
Also I don’t really want to share my thoughts with my family, friends and community. (I keep it to places like this blog!)
I don’t want to be a killjoy and profet of doom. People aren’t ready for it yet. Especially my kids. They are too young. They need to go and live their lives and have some (fossil fuel powered) fun.
So, my strategy is to try and educate myself as best as possible and learn some new skills that might be useful in a SFF. Practical knowledge that I might be able to pass on as and when people are ready.
So, I retreat to my shed to make rocket stoves, ferment cabbage, solar dehydraters, and biochar retorts. My family think I’m slightly mad! (Ceracticus Pots from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang)
Next on my list is composting toilets and water storage/purification.
I’m still on the lookout for an IBC as a water store.
(Top tip. DON’T pay for one up-front and then meet the seller in a pub carpark to make the exchange!!!! After trashing one pair of shoes, work trousers and having to replace a ton of gravel from my driveway, I’m no further down the road to ownership, but perhaps a little bit wiser?????!!!!!!)
Preaching to the converted , yes you are but bringing lots of new thoughts to the converted that enhance our arguments for a small farm future against the tecnoutopians and others that never get their hands dirty and probably could not name one plant living in a pasture .( I have learned a great deal about fermented goop here that would have taken days for me to find )
As for goop what does goop taste like ? Meat has its own taste so does cabbage and everything else , goop by the seems of things needs a whole chemical infrastructure to make it taste like something you would eat , another energy hog needed to replace naturally grown food
I’m impressed with the way this little essay helps put a useful frame around the politics involved here. And it’s really a matter of political framing, as you say, Chris. There are those who have more power of influence than we who advocate for an agrarian localist approach to livelihood, and they are not on our side. And they have bigger weapons than we–, weapons of political influence more than comportment with scientific “fact”.
My heart is well broken. But I thank you for helping shape the deep context and framing for the political conundrum we’re all so sadly facing. Maybe the point of a broken heart is for it to break open, rather than closed.
Much love, my brother, and much gratitude.
This reminded me of these lines from a hymn by William Cowper:
Oh make this heart rejoice or ache;
Decide this doubt for me;
And if it be not broken, break—
And heal it, if it be.
It is about a crisis of faith rather than of climate, but personally I find a lot of parallels.
Thanks for the comments – I appreciate the various interesting lines of thinking and the general supportiveness. Also, welcome Nazeer to the Small Farm Future community!
Just to pick up on a few points –
I think I’m on a similar journey to Bruce regarding the pointlessness of debate, but I haven’t yet managed to get quite so far along it. If I did debate Monbiot it certainly wouldn’t be with a view to changing his mind, but with a view to showing some of those listening that there’s a trail towards other ways of thinking. However, in the light of Monbiot’s tweet I quoted above I think I’d find it hard to agree to debate him, even if he wanted to.
Likewise with other adversaries I’ve tangled with online lately. I think you need some level of good faith and common ground to debate – otherwise there’s nothing to be gained, and possibly something to be lost. But in the absence of such common ground, politics does then potentially veer into the arena of out and out conflict I mentioned above. I’m planning to explore that further in the next couple of posts.
One of those posts bears on the possibility mentioned by Steve L that manufactured food boosters will simply ignore my writing because it reveals some truths they’d prefer not to publicise. I’m not the best person to make judgments about that, but of course I’d be delighted for my book’s message to be spread by word of mouth. You know what to do!
On the matter of the shit hitting the fan, I agree with the view that it’s important to do one’s best to generate good politics ahead of time as much as possible. My only caveat is where that blends into the view that if we do good politics now then maybe the shit won’t hit the fan. As I see it, the shit will definitely be hitting the fan (it already is), and part of the impact will lie precisely in the uncontrollability of the associated politics. That doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t try to control the politics, but if they proceed on the basis that they might succeed completely in that task, I think they’re probably setting themselves up to fail.
James, thanks for your supportive words and I’m sorry about your broken heart. I’ve been struggling with a degree of climate and political grief of late, but let us keep doing what we can – indeed as Eric says in whatever ways we feel drawn to.
Finally thanks for the interesting thoughts on weeding, hoeing and fertilizers. And thanks generally.
Chris –
I’ve been grieving for *years* … about the climate, biodiversity loss … the whole shebang. And when I say I’ve been grieving, I mean deep sobs and faucet like tears, even mucus flowing from my nose. Much of grief’s process are these bodily eruptions, and the best thing we can do is to just allow them to happen, get out of their way, let them have their time to do what they must do.
For years now I’ve been watching and listening to this video from Francis Weller, and sharing it widely. I listen over and over again, because it’s much more profound than anyone can comprehend fully in one sitting. Weller is a genius. Here’s the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaI-4c92Mqo
On reflection Chris.
Perhaps the best you can hope for is to keep banging on the door?
If you have the energy, that is!
Your message is the right one. I just think your a bit before your time.
People aren’t looking for alternatives just yet. They are being told that growth is just round the corner and tech will save the day.
There may be some kind of glitch in the software running this blog site (?).
Most posts here are followed by a “Reply” button. But some are not.
I’m unable to reply to some of John Adams’ comments. There is no such button following some of these.
I think it’s probably just the nesting of comments. You can only go to so many levels of comments upon comments before you run out of levels. If you track back to a previous level of comment you should be able to reply. The nesting isn’t quite as obvious on my new site as it was on the old one.
Let me know if this works – otherwise I can raise it with the tech folks.
Nesting comments….
Maybe that’s how it is. Let me explore…. Hmm.
James.
If you put @John Adams at the beginning of your post, I’ll know it is directed at me.
Hi Chris;
A saying I like is “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear”.
I take it to mean that when knowledge which was available all along is finally recognized as significant, our awareness of and engagement with it takes off like an aha moment.
Interpretations may differ, but to me it raises two questions. First- how did the student get ready? What event/train of events got them to that point?. That implied question is the crux of how paradigms flip and individuals get their “Paul on the road to Damascus” epiphany. The teacher role is necessary, but who or what will be the slap upside the head to make the student ready?
Second- What about the teacher? How does the teacher stay patient, waiting for the moment when they can pass on their wisdom? Especially when collapse nears.
I think you did fine in the Joe interview. Cold comfort, as it will unlikely move the needle. I think the bold certainty required in the profit centered world of punditry is an unfortunate feature, tending to provide the sense of order that most consumers seem to need, but leaving science and the associated nuance and caveats out of the narrative. Keep your qualified and nuanced statements. You never know if virality may hit and maybe you will move the needle.
Some observations on the interview:
“Last Child in the Woods” is a book that voices the concern that children disconnected from nature are subject to mental and physical harm. I would add that disconnection from nature writ large means the voting public will not value those things in their best interest like a healthy ecosystem, and not push back on corporate exploitation of the natural world. It is the emotional tie derived from direct experience that gets people out on the picket line ( or lying in the road).
Studge consumers in urban centers will have no idea whether policy setting elites are making wise decisions.
One phrase I really liked was that a techno fix without a societal fix is not a solution. I would also flip that and say that a societal fix without a a techno fix will still provide better outcomes.
Some of the negative comments at the Joe site reminded me how energy blind so many people still are. How profoundly it underpins everything in the global economy is scary as hell once you acknowledge that it has begun decline. I’ll second John Adams recommendation for the Surplus Energy Economics website.
I wrote a super long comment on the last post on the governance structures of the C of E (seriously it’s probably boring even to those who are interested in these things), and then I read here and find people talking about broken hearts and pre-figurative politics, and the readings in church these past few weeks have been parables about what the Kingdom of Heaven is like, grain and yeast and mustard seed and treasures buried in fields, real agricultural-eschatological stuff, and earlier while I was threshing soup peas (poor crop this year at church but the allotment did better) this afternoon I heard a fantastic rant from Margaret Killjoy about what to do next (the latest This Month In The Apocalypse episode of Live Like The World is Dying podcast, available from https://www.liveliketheworldisdying.com/s1e81-this-month-in-the-apocalypse-july-2023/ and there is a transcript there too), and…
…well, the shit is certainly hitting the fan, and whether it hits you directly or you “only” get a fine spray of slurry is largely a matter of luck. There’s no point pretending otherwise. But I think there is something to be said for willing hands and open hearts and pre-figurative politics and utopian eschatology, for teaching skills and learning kindness. There is something attractive about picking each other up, wiping our faces as best we can and helping one another, not because it will make any difference to the spray of manure, but despite it.
We are not defined by what happens to us, we are not defined by our failure to convince the world to take the fan seriously, or the shit; we are defined by how we choose to respond and, I believe, by a sort of grace — I suppose putting it in secular terms I might say that as long as we live, we can continue to choose our responses. There is a dignity in that, a humanity.
The reality will be hard to bear at times, and messy and incomplete. Some of our choices will be very constrained indeed. It’s worth doing anyway.
Sometimes we are indeed called to preach; other times to wipe the dust from our sandals and move on.
https://www.dw.com/en/climate-change-do-not-overstate-15-degrees-threat/a-66386523
Don’t overstate 1.5 degrees C threat, new IPCC head says
Interesting it comes from the IPPC
Kathryn:
“The other day I heard a definition of regenerative agriculture as “farming practices that increase the stable carrying capacity of the land”
I like that definition quite a lot.
I think practices that increase local carrying capacity or resilience can be broader than just agriculture, though.”
This certainly does open up a can of worms.
Historically, traditionally, the ecological concept of carrying capacity generally applied only to a given species in its use context — e.g., reindeer or humans. And that conceptual framing worked well enough … until human overshoot came to be the dominant theme on pretty much every square inch of Earth’s surface.
Humans have been drawing down Earth’s carrying capacity (for *all* species, taken as a *whole*) for multiple generations of industrial humanity’s existence. And it was happening even before industrial humanity, but at rates so small in their influence and impact that it’s almost not worth mentioning in this context.
In short, there is really no singular concept in ecology (presently) called “the carrying capacity of the land”. There is the human carrying capacity of the land, for sure, but what this measures is the carrying capacity of a species — in its modern adaptational form — which habitually draws down what we might call “general carrying capacity” — or the carrying capacity of land seen through the lens of ecological health for all species which would normally inhabit a given ecoregion or local place.
Of course, industrial civilization’s principal, albeit mostly unconscious, aim or trajectory is to increase human carrying capacity at the expense of the carrying capacity of all other species.
So if we’re going to talk about regenerative agriculture (and other practices) in a deeply ecologically informed way, we will have to take serious our need to consider all of he species which would inhabit a place without total human dominance of that place. We’d have to look at agricultural practices within a richly ecological context, and one which aims to preserve biodiversity generally.
“…preserve biodiversity generally”
Good, I can stop worrying about the weeds and rabbits and the neighbor’s chickens in my wheat patch.
Not that I was really worried enough to do anything about those things anyway.
I think you make an excellent point about “carrying capacity (for *all* species, taken as a *whole*)”.
Of course, preserving biodiversity means an end to large-scale monocropping as we know it.
And in my micro-scale grain farming, it is quite obvious that if I leave room for non-crop species, then my grain harvest becomes much smaller.
This doesn’t bother me much at my scale, but it is a real concern during these times when everyone is talking about needing to maximize yields.
Thanks.
So if we’re going to talk about regenerative agriculture (and other practices) in a deeply ecologically informed way, we will have to take serious our need to consider all of he species which would inhabit a place without total human dominance of that place. We’d have to look at agricultural practices within a richly ecological context, and one which aims to preserve biodiversity generally.
Sounds to me like a good idea.
I think a humanist approach, or an approach that prioritises human needs at any rate, can still fit with this if we recognise that we are truly interdependent with other species, and if we learn to balance short term vs long term needs.
“I think a humanist approach, or an approach that prioritises human needs at any rate, can still fit with this if we recognise that we are truly interdependent with other species, and if we learn to balance short term vs long term needs.”
I used to believe and think along these sorts of lines. But that’s when I still believed it was likely that we could depend upon an honest application of reason to such matters as collectives of humanity, eg., as nations or states.
I no longer believe that nations or states are guided by reason or “rationality”. So I no longer believe in this framing for such issues and topics. Or, rather, I would not want to put all (or most) of my eggs in that basket.
But, to understand what I’m saying here you first need to understand what I regard to be the key issue in politics in today’s world. We reason in large collectives on the basis of what we learn in schools, universities, and in the media — and while listening to corporate-capitalist oriented politicians. So the institutions of education, very broadly understood (media ought to be for education, not disinformational propaganda), are essentially broken from the point of view I was raised to believe in around what democracy amounts to. Which is to say that I don’t believe we have democracy here in the USA, there in the UK, or much of anywhere, so far as I can tell.
Collective reasoning is broken by the same process of politics which is the way, as I like to put it, that “money bends light”. Think of a spoon in a glass of water. The light is bent and the spoon seems disfigured. But it’s an optical illusion. The spoon has the same shape when withdrawn from the glass of water.
I’m saying we’re not really even allowed to bring reason, logic, fairness, justice, … even truth or fact… to our politics at present. We’re not rational collectively because of this. Everything is distorted for us before it reaches our eyes or ears.
But a few of us can see through the illusions, and we are the adults in the room, and we need to find one another and find a means to re-capacitate reason, logic, facts, truth, justice, etc. in our politics.
It will not — and cannot — be an easy task. But we must.
Those who still understand that up is up and down is down and the directions of the compass are what they are…, who are oriented to reality as it is, need to come together to talk about how to help the others find their bearings.
PS – (correction)
I meant to say: “Historically, traditionally, the ecological concept of carrying capacity *is* generally applied only to a given species in its use context”….
I could not delete my comment and replace it with the correction, nor edit the post — as these are not options commenters have here.
Thanks Chris for another fine and hilarious post. I can assure you I’m real. It was insightful to see you and Vandana Shiva in the shadow of Parliament. I found the jarring Westminster ‘wit’ of the host (and the majority of the audience) garish in the light of you earth bound souls. It reminded me a little of Rushkoff’s meeting with billionaires on how to deal with security guards in the apocalypse. Like you say, strange bedfellows. I’ve been digitally chased down myself for commenting about my undying love for Shiva, they’re a tenacious, potty mouthed lot!
I’m with you – and Malcom X! The land is our birth right and without the realisation of that fact, anything less is a failure. We can all come to realise and acknowledge black consciousness, regardless of our skin colour. I say this because class and hierarchy are deeply embroiled in the colonial exclusivity of a global murderous racism. To paraphrase Lewis R Gordon, whilst there is a people who believe they are more than human, the white supremacist, believing there is a people less than human – then humanity is destroyed in the space rent between.
Like you say, we didn’t draw the lines, enclose the land and enforce it by violence. Some one did. That murderous psychopathy must meet with thermodynamic facts if humanity is to infact remain human.
Then we can get back to some enlightened agriculture and some medieval festivalling!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=teyX3TnrEo4
A link to Gordon
Thanks for further comments & links. I’ve been off doing a bunch of things, including arguing on Twitter. It’s much more pleasant arguing here – thanks for the various supportive remarks.
Only time for a few quick thoughts.
Interesting discussion on carrying capacity. Agree with James that increasing the carrying capacity for humans has been the trajectory of industrial civilization, but I’d say this is more an unintended consequence rather than an aim. The principal aim has been to increase the flow of capital, mostly to rich countries and rich people. I believe the carrying capacity could be higher, and the impact on other species lower. But only with a different political economy to the present one involving less energetic and material flow. As it stands, the unintended long term consequence of industrial civilization seems sure to be a reduced carrying capacity for humans and many other species.
I talk about the implications of this a little bit in Chapters 3 & 7 of my new book, especially in relation to keystone species. I don’t think we should be aiming to negate our impact on other species – the impossible dream of the ecomodernists – but definitely to reducing it by rethinking it in cultural/spiritual terms.
I’d commend Kathryn’s comment under my last post about C of E structures. Food for thought about wider politics to which I hope to return.
The issue of working on community resilience before one’s own interests me. In a sense I’d say people who are producing food for others are doing that, but farmers are currently getting clobbered all ends up. I started working as a market grower out of the conviction that it was helping to build my community’s resilience, but I’ve drifted away from it because the market pressures involved were ultimately undermining my personal resilience. Our market garden is still going, but we’re increasingly working towards building a small community on our holding which is supported by the food & fibre production on the site outside market mechanisms. All of which is to say, there’s a whole bunch of interesting issues wrapped up in all this!
Re energy transitions, this is a no-clean-energy-transition-is-likely-or-possible friendly site, so I hear you guys! I’d be interested in any thoughts on Sunak’s new embrace of cars and fossil energy … and from what I gather something similar from Biden, albeit with perhaps a bit more greenwash? The take in a lot of mainstream environmentalism is that a clean transition is eminently possible, so the foot-dragging must be about corporate influence etc. Seems to me more likely that those in power recognise a transition that preserves the political status quo & economic growth as usual isn’t possible. So a choice between retaining short term power or a liveable planet long term. No contest! But other thoughts welcome…
Sunak’s comment about supporting people to “use their cars to do all the things that matter to them” is rather nonsensical to me as a lifelong non-driver who still does things that matter — to me, and, I hope, to my household and wider community. Even people who have mobility or other access needs could reasonably be supported to do things that matter to them without using cars, if car culture were less dominant (hegemonic, even?)
Why not support people to do the things that matter to them in ways that are less harmful long-term? Why not support people to walk or cycle or ride horses?
It’s all so unimaginative.
Sunak’s pivot to the car and more oil exploration doesn’t surprise me.
Politically, he didn’t really have a choice.
Most people’s lives/existence/livelyhoods are so deeply intertwined with fossil fuels, that it’s political suicide to try and curb car use. Most people wouldn’t even be able to get to work without a car.
That’s why the “green agenda” isn’t about alternate means of transportation. It’s about replacing the petrol engine with an electric one. (Which isn’t possible)
As I’ve said before, I wonder if the people in Just Stop Oil really understand what stopping oil really means.
The inevitable failure of any attempt at an energy transition and an increasing Energy Cost of Energy will result in such a massive/profound change in society that most of us are unwilling to contemplate.
But not as massive/profound as climate change!!!!!!
So Sunak is only kicking the problem down the road. Sorry…no pun intended .
Politically, he didn’t really have a choice.
Most people’s lives/existence/livelihoods are so deeply intertwined with fossil fuels, that it’s political suicide to try and curb car use. Most people wouldn’t even be able to get to work without a car.
Yes and No. “No” because there is the possibility of attempting some sort of explanation to the public. Some sort of “more in sorrow than anger”. Some attempt at proper communication. some attempt to show you really understand the issue. Which I don’t think many politicians do – insulated by their own limited experience (as we all are, of course).
There could be at least some attempt at spreading the news that actually, some perfectly normal people don’t use cars for everything. That a substantial chunk of people would like to use cars less – if it were made more practical for them. The research is there already (Best known being a study by Gillian Anable – and see also Kathryn’s comment above)
The shouty car lobby and nutjob petrolheads are always gesturing to some vast army of “the motorist” – but many of that army are conscripts who’d be happy to defect if they saw a way out.
@Martin
I’m not sure it is just petrol heads and the shouty car lobby though.
Just look at the volume of traffic at rush hour. Most of those people don’t have much of a choice. (Move closer to where they work?)
Take my own personal circumstances.
I drive a van. Without my van I could not do my job. (Self employed plumber). I live in a rural area. My customer base isn’t concentrated like it would be in a city. I need to drive to suppliers to get the materials before I can even do a day’s work. The amount of tools I need to carry etc etc. Change jobs? Perhaps. But all the people around these parts will still need a plumber (who will need a van).
On a broader note. Government can’t inform the public of the coming Energy Costs of Energy “crunch”. If they did it would spook the markets and bring on a financial crash (which is coming anyway!). No politician in their right mind is going to be the one to give out the bad news.
Fossil fuels ARE the economy. The Somerset Levels near where I live, flooded a few years back. It caused a lot of people a lot of hardship. Especially farmers. The flooding was from too much rain. But to maintain The Levels, fossil fuels are used to constantly pump water off the lowlands plus rheins are dredged (using fossil fuels) to maintain drainage. Without fossil fuels the whole area would be (will be) under water.
Tell all those people that they pretty much will lose everything the own and become refugees, they will probably prefer a new oil well in the North Sea.
(Sticking to the plumbing theme.)
Sure, large urban areas could have transport infrastructure that reduces the need of cars, but………..
Without fossil fuels, city’s could not function. Even the water that comes out of the tap (faucet for you Americans) is only possible because fossil fuels.
Yep I agree , without fossil fuels the economy and western civilization would collapse , there is another problem to add , debt , governments borrow money with the idea of will be paid back yet without economic growth it can’t be paid back , borrowing from tomorrows GDP to pay for today , that is why western politics are focused on growth , we all know this can’t happen in a finite planet but all politicians believe this is the only way to proceed , they have no ” plan B ” unless you count the world economic forum , ya know ” you will own nothing and you will be happy ” , a tried and failed system , western governments are thrashing around trying to find new sources of revenue , carbon taxes are the latest wheeze to try and pay down debt , they are in catch 22 , higher energy bills slow spending and growth , subsidising energy production causes further unpayable debt but keeps growth moving forward , there is simply no way out .
I agree entirely that most of what we now take for granted is based on fossil fuels. But that is going away sooner or later, and where does that leave your business?
My spouse used to know a tree surgeon who ran his van and equipment on biodiesel he made from used chip oil. I wonder whether that, or some other creative transport option, might be an option for you.
Certainly there are tradespeople in London who ride bicycles or take the Tube to work; that sort of thing is, of course, much harder in rural Somerset than in a big city.
That said, an e-assist cargo bike would work pretty well on the levels (I have certainly enjoyed cycling there), and the “e-assist” bit would help with the hills. Capacity is pretty good, you’d certainly fit, say, a toilet in one, though a bathtub might be more difficult. They’re much cheaper to run than a van, too, so maybe you could use the van for days where you need to carry a lot of stuff to install, and the bike for days when you only need some tools or smaller parts.
And then when the van becomes impossible to run, you already have another form of transport, one that incidentally can run without the battery, if it comes to it.
There will be some initial outlay with this type of plan, and I don’t know enough about plumbing work or your mortgage to know how practical it is in terms of the numbers. You may decide you can’t afford it. But plumbers existed before vans did, so it must be possible for plumbers to exist after vans are obsolete.
At risk of giving unwanted advice, I might argue that you can’t afford not to think about how to adapt your business to a lower-fossil future. If your business isn’t viable without being able to drive a van long distances fast for cheap, then your business is simply not future proof, and anything you invest in it now should go toward changing that. A prolonged disruption in supply or price spike in diesel will put a lot of tradesmen out of business; don’t let one of them be you.
People will presumably still want plumbing in that future, so you’re in a good position compared to some. And you could move your business in a more sustainable direction in terms of the work you actually do, too: learn all about composting toilets and greywater systems and rainwater collection, and help people get those installed. I know when I think about the intricacies of how to deal with rainwater collection on a domestic scale I am sometimes annoyed that I can’t just call a plumber about it, and I’m a relatively hands-on person who is willing to experiment. Managing all of that safely in a flood-prone area is definitely something where I would want to take professional advice.
As the communities around you are forced to drive less and work more locally, and as cities become harder to inhabit and rural population rises, you may well find yourself with a more local client base, too.
As for the Levels themselves, my understanding is that they were drained by the Romans, re-drained by Cistercian monks in the 12th and 13th centuries and repaired by Dutch drainage engineers in the 17th and 18th centuries. I would have to look into how tidal sluices work to understand it all, but I’m sure as a plumber you can get your head around it. Perhaps we should be building some windmills too, though, as there are some more recently-drained bits that are dependent on pumping stations. Which isn’t to say there won’t be flood events — but there absolutely are ways to manage flooding that pre-date fossil fuel adoption, and once people realise what is at stake, it should be possible to organise the maintenance of such a system.
@Kathryn
I didn’t mean for my post to sound like little old me having a moan about my circumstances.
I’m in a fortunate position compared to many.
I was just using my van and plumbing as an example of how difficult lifestyle changes for most people can/will be.
When I can no longer run a van, then I will no longer be plumbing.
No one will be able to afford a plumber.
No one will have need for a plumber!!!
When fossil fuels run out, there won’t be any water coming out the taps!
Central heating will be redundant. (No fuel)
Plumbing didn’t really exist before the industrial revolution. And that, that did was with lead pipes !!!
Here in Somerset, people used rivers or they had wells in the garden. Lots of properties still have them. All of this will come back into play. It’s the more urban settings that will really struggle.
It’s just not that simple for people to make the changes they need.
As you mention in another post. Getting out of London isn’t that easy. And it’s not an option for everyone in London.
All I was really saying is that it’s just not easy…….for anyone.
@Kathryn
PS.
When I can no longer run my van, a boat will probably be of more use to get across The Levels!!!
@John
I wasn’t trying to have a go at you — and I know nothing I suggested is easy. I also know very well the difficulties of trying to get out of London!
However, I think there is a huge distance between the current state of plumbing (and transport) technology and the more basic use of wells, rivers etc in terms of what could be done to serve similar functions (clean water for drinking,cooking and washing, safe ways of dealing with sewage, and maybe some irrigation or at least water storage for livestock) in a low-fossil-fuel economy, and it’s worth being prepared for something in between those two, both in terms of financial astuteness and in terms of enabling the maximum number of people to live well.
I don’t particularly want to see a return to the days of cholera, so I really do hope you’ll keep on plumbing (or maybe advising apprentice plumbers?) even when the time comes to ditch the van. The work you do is not only about the convenience of having hot and cold water coming out of the taps, lovely though that is, but actually an important part of sanitation and disease limitation. The need for that won’t go away just because petrol (or diesel or whatever) gets too expensive.
How standardized is the actual plumbing these days? I don’t mean taps and funny-shaped toilet seats or whatever, but the bits and pieces that make it all go? If a house is abandoned, or just loses mains supply, could you reasonably strip the tubing out and use it for a rainwater catchment system that goes to a filter and then to the kitchen tap, for example?
@Kathryn
I guess the point I was trying to make was that…..
When it gets to the point that I can no longer afford to drive/run a van then I will stop plumbing.
Not because I can’t plumb without the van (though it would be difficult) but because no-one will be able to afford a plumber!!!
My running costs will have increased to the point that I can no longer pass the costs onto the customers.
And equally, my customers will also find that their own jobs/income will probably cease to exist once fossil fuel scarcity cascades through the economy, for the same reasons.
@Kathryn
“How standardized is the actual plumbing these days? I don’t mean taps and funny-shaped toilet seats or whatever, but the bits and pieces that make it all go? If a house is abandoned, or just loses mains supply, could you reasonably strip the tubing out and use it for a rainwater catchment system that goes to a filter and then to the kitchen tap, for example?”
I think, if it got to that stage, it would be a whole lot easier and less hassel to transfer water from a rainwater catchment system to the kitchen sink using a bucket.
@Kathryn
“I think, if it got to that stage, it would be a whole lot easier and less hassel to transfer water from a rainwater catchment system to the kitchen sink using a bucket.”
I’ve actually been giving water storage /filtration some practical thought lately.
Once I get the IBC to store the rainwater from my roof.
MSR filters sell filters that work off gravity.
Fill a container with water and hang it up on a hook. The water passes through the filter to another container lower down.
I’ve used MSR filters on camping/tracking trips to drink river water. The water tastes great after filtration and the microbugs?……..well, I’m still alive!
Could always boil the water if worried.
It’s only for drinking after all. I wouldn’t go to all that bother to wash clothes, dishes etc.
You also have to add the number of jobs relying on cars and taxes earned from them , removing cars would put at least a million people out of work , the electric car is just a scam , he’ll a UK rail freight company is scrapping electric locomotives and turning to diesel traction because of the cost of electricity .
Do you have a link for the UK rail freight company scrapping electric locomotive stock and switching to diesel?
https://www.railtech.com/all/2023/07/25/db-cargo-uk-grounds-electric-fleet-following-rocketing-electricity-prices/?mc_cid=de6d0ff76c&mc_eid=4961da7cb1
There ya go
“Most people wouldn’t even be able to get to work without a car.”
One of the most fundamental premises woven into the fabric of all of my thinking about these matters is the premise that not so long ago fossil fuels at least appeared to be cheap, measured in both environmental / ecological impacts and financial cost to the “consumer”. And then this became less and less true. And now it’s a completely obsolete premise about the cost of fossil fuels.
(Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines something as obsolete when it is either (a) no longer in use or (b) no longer useful. A belief or a premise can become obsolete in sense b, and that’s the design premise which is now obsolete for industrial civilization as it was designed generations ago.
The upshot here is that we built our material culture, way of life, means of livelihood, cities, modes of transport and transportation, food supply, etc., etc., around a premise which was relatively true some several decades ago, but which is clearly no longer true — and thus obsolete.
In other words, if people “can’t even get to work” without a car, they should adjust to the obsolescence of the premise that it’s perfectly fine to live too many miles away from one’s workplace.
When fossil fuels were cheap in the various senses of having low financial or ecological costs (in proportion to today) it seemed to make sense to have a long commute to work in your car, and thus to live far away from your work. Today, that premise is obsolete in sense b. And so we should adjust to reality as it presents itself to us.
All of this is obvious only to those who have thought about it at any length. And I’ve devoted my entire adult life to getting clear about such things, so it’s rather obvious to me that overwhelmingly most people simply cannot think clearly about these matters, because they’re totally convinced that there will always be conditions like the conditions at present, in which “cars are simply necessary” for life.
No. They are not. Period. Full stop.
“overwhelmingly most people simply cannot think clearly about these matters, because they’re totally convinced that there will always be conditions like the conditions at present, in which “cars are simply necessary” for life.
No. They are not. Period. Full stop.”
But I don’t think it is as simple as that.
People can’t just give up the jobsthey have (with the car commute) and find one more local to home.
Sure, some people can but it’s not realistic option for everyone.
Not everyone lives in an area where there is work in their chosen field.
It’s not that simple to re-train and still pay the mortgage.
People are stuck on the merry-go-round and it’s difficult to get off.
“But I don’t think it is as simple as that.
People can’t just give up the jobs they have (with the car commute) and find one more local to home.
Sure, some people can but it’s not realistic option for everyone.”
****
This, I think, is why it’s called a climate, biodiversity, etc., “emergency”. When it’s an emergency, as opposed to a very slight inconvenience, people have to make very difficult, and often very painful and difficult decisions.
We — as a collective — don’t yet really accept that we’re in an emergency situation, and so we’re pretending that there is plenty of time to make difficult decisions later, down the road a bit, any time but now.
If you knew what I know from a many years long devotional study of the situation, you’d see that there is no avoiding the emergency mode of response. That’s because what seems to be a range of options at present is rapidly closing in upon us so that what appear to be our reasonable options at present (“our”, being most folks), will soon appear to be a luxury we really cannot afford.
The luxury-based, luxury-dependent mode of economy which has characterized the post-war era is about to end — completely and utterly. And that means “jobs” will be extremely scarce, at best, and the option to dillydally about making extraordinary changes and shifts in livelihood is rapidly nearing an end. There will not be the luxury of deciding whether to commute fifty miles to work in a car. It will not be possible to do that anymore!
No one knows precisely when this abrupt shift will happen, or how abrupt it will be, but this truly is an emergency anyway, since that day is coming relatively soon. The Luxury Economy will end. It will end gradually or abruptly, but it will upend what seems to be reasonable public discourse either abruptly or gradually — but not so gradually that the preparations for the transition afford us leisure to drive around in circles and look like absurd morons while doing so.
I can promise you this. The day is coming. It’s coming soon enough, and the time for preparing is shorter than we’d wish it were.
Remember I said so, as you’re apt to be living through it in the near future.
@James
I know it’s coming.
I think to speak of Sunak is to invoke the bad faith actors that you were describing in your original post.
To follow up on what emerges from constant good faith (energetic) engagement with bad faith actors and corrupt arguments is exhausting. The energy is better spent on the task in hand, that Kathryn defines as a kind of radical empathic gifting, which I am saying will have to be moving definitely towards or from a land base.
Sunak works as I kind of test of the hierarchies being contested here (via CS Lewis), in that he is destroying a traditional position of power by being an eligitimate corporate place keeper within a largely captured institution.
My understanding of the black power position is that, none of this is a surprise. Those institutions were only ever for those interests, and that our only logical way forward is to build our own outside of them.
This converges with your last comment (and I think the spirit of the post) in that your own small holding is moving out of the market institutions that surround it, that you sense there is no argument to win, or humanity to call forth from the current institutions. This gives us a great freedom to act.
It is also a part of the grief being described, as we lose the faith we had in those institutions.
I applaud your move to intersufficiency!
I know we’re always trying on (the comments section of this) blog to not condemn whole swathes of institutions and histories but I’m increasingly questioning the basis of that position. Sure, its good to be polite and think things through.
I think that the world will function well enough without all of the present forms of coercion and dehumanisation that passes for government and law, and that the idea that it won’t is insinuated by said institutions through oppression backed by violence.
I am an animal or cohesive part of a living earth system, evolved over 100,000s of years to flourish in this ecology. Part of this is an inherent embodied understanding of how to organise and communicate. The Dunbar number coincides with indigenous social structures because we feel how to work together.
The ruling class establishment is now facing the kind of apocalypse that has been meted out to the peoples of the earth for the last 500 years, and is still inacted on many peoples to this moment. The few intellectuals that enjoy proximity to that establishment and see the inevitable are insane with grief and pulling on every last magical straw they can. In a sense we must face Monbiot and his legion of orphans with the same radical empathic gift of love as we would any lost child.
I have to feel like every feeling body has at least the possibility of feeling this sense of the world, in that we can work it out, because actually, we know how.
I think we need more working examples of what your attempting to do on your small holding Chris, to really show people how it can work. I would like to see this local intersufficient model become the focal point of The Real Farming Conference, and all the relatable networks. If people see it, they will get it. I’m tempted to say there is nothing else worth doing!
I think not far into the future we are going to have to decide what is ” usefull ” work , is shoveling bits of paper around office blocks usefull ? Financial ” services ” or even the stock market , these jobs only exist because of energy and more importantly agricultural excess production , government policies and diesel make it possible , energy more than anything else makes the system work and we are on the downside of the curve started way back in the days of steam transporting food into ever growing cities , the jobs that float on todays froth are going away , I read yesterday that by 2030 by its will be 10% worse off than they were in 2000 and 50% worse off by 2050 , discretionary spending will cease and with it millions of jobs and commuters .
Soft landing , hard landing ? Only time will tell
Thanks for the answers to my question. I agree that Sunak’s take is crass and unimaginative, but ultimately I’m with John when he says that Sunak doesn’t have much choice within existing parameters. Since, however, his choice is disastrous, I’m basically with Joel when he says we need to try to make do “without all of the present forms of coercion and dehumanisation that passes for government and law”.
For that reason, I also agree with Joel when he says “we must face Monbiot and his legion of orphans with the same radical empathic gift of love as we would any lost child.” Kathryn talked along similar lines about the need for kindness.
I agree with this, although I’m not always very good at doing it in practice. At the same time, as I said in the OP, I think we’re heading into new arenas of class conflict where the defining feature is that there is no longer a basis for a conversation between the relevant groups. Perhaps it’s possible to maintain empathy and love across radical, non-communicative schism (Christianity has some powerful teachings here, no doubt). But not easy. I’d welcome further comments on that!
It’s certainly hard to convince people of much if you don’t have enough empathy to at least understand their position. I fail at this all the time of course.
As for love… I can’t possibly try to represent the entire body of Christian thought on that, but I will say that there are people I try to love who I don’t really like very much. I don’t necessarily have to feel any warmth toward someone or be “nice” to them in order to do right by them as a human being. Remembering that they are created in the image of God, and infinitely loved by God, despite whatever flaws I might see, sometimes helps put my own feelings into perspective. If my actions as a result are sometimes lacking in warmth, well, my own flaws are simply part of being human. From here we could go into the problems of free will or theodicy but I’m unlikely to settle that in one blog comment either, it’s been two thousand years and change.
I will say that sometimes I argue with people because I think they are wrong and I don’t want them to gain power and act on those wrong beliefs, and sometimes I argue with people because I love them and want to hold them to a higher standard, and sometimes I argue with people because it’s the best way for both of us to understand one another better and get closer to something that is true.
A further thought re: Sunak’s cozying up to car culture — is he trying to draw some culture war lines, perhaps? Setting the stage to blame the cost of living crisis on “woke environmentalists” rather than 13 years of Tory policies (and 43 years of neoliberalism) in a context of resource and energy scarcity? Because that is… certainly a choice, though not, in fact, the only choice available to him.
I will be very sorry if the existing Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and School Streets go; they’ve made a huge improvement in my experience as a cyclist here.
In The Battle of the Beanfield we can see within modern living memory, recorded on video in sleepy England, the unquestionable right of our government to enforce violence against women and children to remove them from the land.
I think loving people despite themselves doesn’t mean we have to speak or act with them, and we can and must fight against their tyranny. The loving is a strategy to remain in relation, to not fall into hatred and cycle that through our emotional and cultural metabolism.
It is, as you say, a practice, where you are presenting the functioning alternative – that is quite literally a better place to live. I cannot stress enough the importance of making these real places of intersufficiency that can be visited and experienced. They’ll be messy and half baked and most of all fun! The argument now is the activity of living it – and getting as many people doing it as possible, because we may need to defend it.
Do the organisers of the RFC have a list of enlightened aristocratic (or other wise) land owners who want to reestablish the village with all its industry? If regen farming is generally understood as a tool for ameliorating our crisis, are there fund managers, interested billionaires – I know extinction rebellion certainly had some big backers?
And then, what about us on here – whose ready to sell up what they got, pool resources, be brave and find a spot to make a stand?
The club is all their law, stand up now stand up now
The club is all their law, stand up now
The club is all their law, to keep all men in awe
But they no vision saw to maintain such a law
Stand up now diggers all
A difficulty here is that non-violent resistance only works very well when it’s widespread, and the rich are going to continue having ammunition for a long time.
I struggle a lot with the dichotomy between staying where I am and building local community resilience in a somewhat piecemeal way, and getting the heck out of dodge (or London…) while it’s still possible — but having to start over in all that local community work, as an outsider, with a group of other outsiders. Let’s just say that right now I have eggs in both baskets, though the “getting out of London” basket is really part of a different primary purpose which doesn’t actually guarantee getting out of London. (Not putting in writing here what my plan is, but in any case it is not straightforwardly replicable by people who aren’t me.)
I love the diggers quote, thank you Kathryn. I am singing it through to the tune of get up stand up by the wailers, works well!
I think I’ve asked you this question before but does the church have farm land and rural properties it can make (or be made to) make available? Or, alternatively, does it have funds to put land into trust for ‘regen’ purposes?
Like you say ultimately, we little people will have to provision our own plan. It’s the wheat from the chaff and the sheep from the goats time and I have absolutely no doubt that the great and good institutions of our time will have nothing for us. I’m OK with that, because there are people within them, like you! And I believe in them.
The Church of England does own some land, but given how badly it was burned by decisions in the late half of the 20th century (selling off land to pay running costs), and the general state of the finances of the church (generally running at a deficit), I doubt the Church Commissioners are going to want to give it away. And it’s not as if it’s derelict land.
I think it’s probably better to engage with a specific local church and work to convert some of the churchyard to a community garden/wildlife habitat/etc, or to do some kind of creative joint fundraising effort with a community toward buying a piece of land for regenerative work, than to expect the Church Commissioners to cough up anything at all. If I were looking for a community that might be interested in moving forward on this type of action, I would probably start with the A Rocha UK eco-church scheme website (if you register as an individual you can use their search tool), but ultimately it will require actually getting to know (and getting to be known by) people in that congregation first.
Chris.
I would be interested in hearing some more about your experience running your place and trying to sell into “the market ” and the ideas you have, moving away from this model.
If you feel happy to share, that is?
Details of electric railway loco withdrawal is here
https://www.railwaygazette.com/uk/db-cargo-uk-withdraws-class-90-electric-locos/64615.article
Irrespective of the environmental breakdown the ‘Cost of Living Crisis’ shows that the current economic order is in crisis.
There must be a question about the level of support that the State might get from its own security forces when the you know what hits the fan.
Then of course bear in mind that the current structure of the economy is dictated by fossil fuels, remove them and the world will be a very different place. The world my father grew up in before WW2 didnt have widespread car ownership – what had made a great difference when he was at school was the arrival of the bus..
Then of course bear in mind that the current structure of the economy is dictated by fossil fuels, remove them and the world will be a very different place. ”
Look at what the ” super rich ” are invested in , zeros and ones plus real estate , it’s a lot like the Dutch tulip mania of a couple of centuries ago , some of the smartest people on the planet got their fingers burned in that one .
Chris Smaje’s article ‘Seven Fantasies of Manufactured Food’ is now available from The Land Magazine:
https://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/sites/default/files/Precision%20and%20Prohibition%20-%20web.pdf
An article that’s largely about Chris Smaje’s new book was recently published at Naked Capitalism, written by a Professor of Biochemistry:
Article title: “Science Versus Scientism in Real Life: Where Do We Go from Here?”
“This brings us to my primary focus here, which is another recent example of scientism in pursuit of an improved industrial food system. George Monbiot of The Guardian published Regenesis in 2022. Having been a sometime reader of Monbiot as a sometime reader of his newspaper, I started reading this one shortly after it was published. Monbiot is an excellent writer, and he is earnest. With previous books of his (Out of the Wreckage and How Did We Get into this Mess?) on my shelf, I looked forward to this one. I did not get very far, however. The book is a contribution to something called Ecomodernism, which can best be described as a scientistic approach to the proper place of humans in the Anthropocene ecosphere. In my view Ecomodernism is directly analogous to the Effective Altruism and modern philosophy of William MacAskill and the scientistic cheerleading of recent books like Virtual You.
“So I decided to wait, and that wait has been amply rewarded by Chris Smaje in Saying No to a Farm-Free Future (currently on sale direct from the publisher, Chelsea Green)…”
Science Versus Scientism in Real Life: Where Do We Go from Here?
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/08/science-versus-scientism-in-real-life-where-do-we-go-from-here.html
An interesting endnote in that article written by a Professor of Biochemistry, concerning unexpected problems with microbial food for humans:
“[5] Studies such as these papers from 2021 and 2022 have shown this to be technically feasible, as a laboratory exercise. But as noted, bacteria also produce toxins that are not always benign. The use of yeast grown in fermenters to produce the amino acid tryptophan more than 30 years ago when it was all the rage to use this dietary supplement as a sleep aid caused an “outbreak” of eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome because the yeast cells had been tweaked to overproduce tryptophan. A contaminant in the partially purified tryptophan caused the disease; nearly 40 people died. Yes, yeasts are our evolutionary cousins, unlike bacteria, but the use of microbes to produce food for human consumption cannot be assumed to be harmless.”
Science Versus Scientism in Real Life: Where Do We Go from Here?
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/08/science-versus-scientism-in-real-life-where-do-we-go-from-here.html
Thanks for the links Steve. The studge debate gets into gear in The Land Magazine!
I’m finding the ongoing debate above about prefiguring, states, communities and so forth very interesting & informative – thanks all. But I’m short on time to contribute. I may try to post some thoughts at the weekend. Feeling the need to get another blog post written when I can too!
Late last night, I came up with a plot line for a not too distant future dystopian world, where Studge Corporation lobbies the Government to criminalise people that grow their own food!!!
The State hunts down and prosecutes those people clandestinly growing spuds in their back gardens !!!!!!! (people being driven to the “crime” because they are sick of eating Studge)
Then I thought that it’s not that far fetched an idea after all !!!!!!
The government already hunts down and prosecutes people for growing the “wrong” plants!!!!
And it wasn’t that long ago that people where hunted down and burnt at the stake for having the wrong thoughts!!!!
I need a title for the novel.
Any ideas?????
Armastudgeon?
Seriously though John/rainwater harvesters, you might find this company’s products useful:
https://wisy-water.com/en/products/rainwater-filter/downpipe-filter
@Simon H
Thanks for the wisy link.
Definitely on my shopping list.
The government already hunts down and prosecutes people for growing the “wrong” plants!!!!
I mean, yes and no. I am aware that it’s illegal to grow, say, hemp without an appropriate license in the UK, and this is faintly ridiculous as it means people who want to grow it as a fibre crop have great difficulty doing so, and people who want to grow entirely different strains for recreational drug use just… do it anyway, and mostly don’t get caught at it unless they’re also dealing, because it’s often not worth the trouble for the government to “hunt” them down. I have no interest in this myself, but I certainly know where the hydroponics supply shops are and I know they would know who to talk to about seeds and plants.
In another example, I grow poppies openly, without worrying at all about being hunted down, because I am not using them to make drugs, have no intention to use them to make drugs, and they’re widely accepted as ornamental plants.
And then there are various rules and regulations around importing plants because of concerns around plant diseases and pests. On the whole I think some of these regulations are probably pretty sensible, I’m personally glad that we don’t have the colorado potato beetle here, or squash vine borers for that matter, or various plant viruses (though I expect these are probably inevitable eventually); but I don’t know what it’s like to be faced with these restrictions as a professional grower.
If growing my own food were actually made illegal (which seems highly implausible to me as a premise, even in a future where there is some kind of imposition of studge, but might work in a sufficiently well-crafted fictional setting), but I did have enough calories available, I would probably go for growing various plants that can be both ornamental and edible, rather than spuds particularly.
A more plausible mechanism, I think, would be government subsidy of studge to the point that it becomes so much cheaper to buy than meat, and so widely available, that smaller farmers go out of business entirely and the large factory farms then raise their prices, making meat a luxury food available only to the rich elite while the rest of us eat studge. Of course, at that point the studge corporations would also increase prices. But in that scenario, protein crops like beans and nuts, or clandestine backyard poultry (for the eggs, and occasionally one for the soup pot) would probably be more attractive than spuds.
But that isn’t vary far away from the current situation, where industrial-scale factory farming is subsidised to the point that smaller (and more ecologically resilient) farmers find it difficult to compete financially, and anyone who is findng money a bit tight (including many, many agricultural workers) ends up eating poor quality, lower-nutrition food as a result. This is a huge injustice, but not because anyone is going to hunt me down for growing potatoes.
There are raids on farmers legally growing flax in the USA because it looks like cannabis , even when they have a federal licence it costs them millions of $ to fight cases in court so yes farmers are prosecuted for growing plants that the dept of ag / dea does not like .
Do you mean hemp? Flax produces linen and linseed, bearing a small blue flower on a thin stem.
I have a vague memory of a comedy film set in WWII, where a family is trying to hide a pig from the authorities. The reason being that during rationing, all livestock had to be handed over to The Ministry of Food (or whoever it was called) for equitable distribution.
PS. I wasn’t being serious about Studge Corporation 🙂
But somewhat famously, vegetable gardens were positively encouraged.
@Kathryn
Did that count as positive discrimination towards vegetarians?
Having read George Monbiot and yesterday having read Sarah Langford’s enjoyable “Rooted” as a gentle introduction to Regenerative Farming I am wondering where to go next in terms of understanding where exactly Small Farm Futures sit in the big debate on the best way ahead for the planet as a whole.
Noting the above discussion on degrowth (more likely to reach unplanned collapse on current trajectory in my opinion) and Rishi “having no choice” than to approve 100 New oil & gas licenses in the North Sea (a huge mistake in my opinion, with the recent “ULEZ made us lose it” lever being extremely well used by the disingenuous populists to justify a flip on politics based on a conservative area that was never likely to vote Labour”). The car based economy does exist and tradesmen dont have the option of carrying all their gear to work on the underground but electric SUVs exist also (and will a lot more in the near future) – the ULEZ bans older high emission vehicles – so go ahead and incentivise their replacement. The bad politics of ULEZ – with the mayor set to charge 200 million pounds in levies is not justifiable for a policy that should be revenue neutral if we want to fund an orderly change of behaviour which addresses emissions (the ULEZ issue) and in future assists with climate change. It is not perhaps entirely unconnected that Rishi’s wife’s family business signed a 1.5 billion deal with BP very recently.
On the subject of small farms, I not yet read either of Chris’s books. Where to start? As an Engineer I was looking for numbers. Sarah L doesn’t provide anything like that : big ag without subsidies cannot work, small plots don’t work, paperwork kills, diseases wiping out, soil is collapsing with excess chemicals, cost of chemicals destroys the business case, Organic is small scale, lower yield, can charge more, use small fields, silviculture, mixed crops – but then is it just niche? And the ownership, foreign product, overproduction, pretty vegetables and waste are all stacked against farming. The case for good soil seems clear but then George tells us that the case for regen has never been proven at scale, and Chris says he thinks we can feed 8 billion people. Hannah Ritchie (Our World in Data) tells us that we don;t have to replace all fossil fuels as when we electrify everything and reduce the massive wastes we only actually need just over 1/3 of the power now used.
Do either of Chris’s books give a start to a sceptic (“not converted”) like myself. Watching Kevin Anderson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQzdK1uGhWA&t=2s it seems we have a couple of decades to make massive changes (and its not at all likely). Perhaps the resilience part of relocalisation will be the more important.
Hi Arturo, good to have you here.
I think Chris’s book “A Small Farm Future” is probably better for conveying the systemic nature of the problems we are facing, and “Against a Farm-Free Future” better for explaining why precision fermentation is not going to be a magic bullet to feed the world and could even be detrimental, with number-crunching to back it up. I’ll confess here that I haven’t actually read the latter yet — sorry, Chris! — it is right at the top of the “to read” pile, but I’m not spending a lot of time indoors at this time of year and haven’t read anything longer than a blog post for some time. I’ll catch up again in winter.
I think the other thing that has convinced me is growing some of my own food, very much on an amateur level, and watching my grocery bill fall (despite inflation) and the variety and quality of our diets improve. Sure, it’s a lot of work, but it’s worth every bite. I daresay not much of what I produce or forage is accounted for in the Our World In Data numbers.
I would say that the commenters here are a pretty broad church as these things go. We are all concerned about the future, we all agree we are in some kind of trouble that is going to necessarily lead to much more local and labour-intensive food production, but we don’t all have the same ideas about how we get there from here, or even what things like governance and infrastructure might look like “there”. This makes for wide-ranging and fruitful conversations.
Hi Kathryn,
So “losing touch with the land” and, as you say, growing your own food seems to be definitely part of the big issue. People have become divorced from nature and don’t see where their food comes from (having watched a few nasty videos it is also very understandable how very few people can bear to thing about that. “Death is part of life” for farmers Sarah says in her book – but she pays someone else to take care of it.)
So then, is vegetarianism or George’s bacteria the solution at scale? The obvious answer is “it’s complicated” – and I suppose Chris’s first book must address that. Yesterday I got two books from the library, I am now reading “The Vegetarian Myth” Lierre Keith an ex vegan arguing against vegetarianism after 20 years of being one, and also “Soil Science for Regenerative Agriculture”. I have questions.
Today I think the trajectory is also towards ‘more local and labour-intensive food production’ but not for any good reasons when viewed globally. The system is failing (rapidly). I read “The Parable of the Sower” just to check out the future and wasn’t encouraged about how that goes. We have seen with the pandemic how resilience is important at all times, and those global supply chains with the cheap and chemicalised food are likely to fail (as they are doing again this week with Russia burning grain in an attempt to instil disorder)
It seems to me that the SFF is by definition small scale with high(er) costs due to that very lack of scale – and globalised supply systems actively promote this in the same way as manufacturing was all exported to China in search of cheaper wages – to the extent that we now blame China for being the primary source of the GHG problem (as they make our things.)
Sarah Langford’s book explains how the entitled rich of London help sustain the SFF business model with purchases by a “progressive urbanite who has bought their wheat grains form a hip London bakery” (at an inflated (or ‘true’ price)). She also says that “being in touch with the land changes you”, the same being true for nature. In the YouTube clip I posted above Kevin Anderson tells how he recently rode 950km through Ireland and saw almost zero non domesticated animals, though he does itemise the few dead animals he saw (killed by traffic).
So, Chris is preaching to the unconverted here (but then again, as I haven’t yet read his book I cannot say that. Allan Savory said the same “you haven’t read my book so we’re not disagreeing”. Good point Allan.
Well, yes, growing food on a smaller, more diverse, more resilient scale is going to have different costs than doing it on an industrial scale with fossil fuel inputs.
But those fossil fuel inputs and that industrial scale of farming are vastly more expensive, in terms of their impact on humanity and on the rest of the world, than our market system prices them. Cheap food is only cheap at the point of purchase.
A lot of people don’t like to hear that. A lot of people try to make out that anyone against cheap food is also against the poor, that only rich urbanites can “afford” food grown and produced under good conditions (or at least less damaging ones) but that seems like nonsense to me when the same system that allegedly provides cheap food is a system that puts agricultural workers in poverty and enriches the providers of various fossil inputs.
Yes, a more resilient system will probably require more people to produce at least some of their own food. It may well mean eating less meat (but not, I think, complete vegetarianism, at least in regions where plants don’t grow all year round). Yes, that will probably involve more human labour than paying a supermarket or other large corporation to exploit people and destroy soil. Yes, we’re running short of time in which to make the absolutely massive cultural changes needed. William Gibson noted that the future is already here, just not distributed evenly. The same applies to collapse. Catastrophe is already here for the people whose crops are being burned, for people dependent on collapsing fisheries, for people without access to clean water, for people who don’t have safe housing and are reliant on food banks and soup kitchens for their daily bread. From their perspective, we are already out of time.
Probably the most important thing isn’t to be convinced of exactly which vision of the future is correct, but to start now in living differently and finding a more resilient path forward. You can see some of the major problems of the current globalised supply system; but the current system wasn’t designed, it emerged over time. So will whatever systems are in place in the future. I think it’s fair to say that a Small Farm Future is more a direction of travel than an intricately planned destination.
So do read Chris’s books, and find out whether that convinces you of anything; but whether you are convinced by everything he writes or only part of it or even nothing at all, you can probably take some other steps to improve your own resilience and that of your local community. Start where you are.
I don’t know exactly what “where you are” looks like, but the advice I would give to almost anyone is:
– Get to know your neighbours, and get involved in any local mutual aid efforts where you live.
– Grow some food from seed, without using poisons (herbicides, pesticides) or industrial fertilisers.
– Learn, and eventually teach, some other skill that might be useful in the event of further disruption to supply chains.
To quote Bernice Johnson Reagon,
There’s a new day coming.
Everything gon’ be turning over.
Everything gon’ be turning over.
Where you gon’ be standing when it comes?
Hi Kathryn,
Perhaps I am in the converted after all – in the objective rather than fully with the methodology (fully). As to “fossil fuel inputs and that industrial scale of farming are vastly more expensive” – it is true that Big Ag (inc GM) sees big yields that SFF cannot compete with – and the subsidies make it unreal, however in the now medium term the ‘externalities’ that are being taken (the biosphere including the soil), the labour, the land are indeed the true cost. Fossil fuels drive ‘the system’ which does not recognise energy as being an input. Luckily this has led us to recognise things such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and “Doughnut Economics” and planetary boundaries.
I agree entirely that the first issue is (like an alcoholic) to recognise that we have an urgent problem and to take steps to correct it (or oppose the status quo of it). Food will be part of the solution, sustainable agriculture being the means. The techno-optimists will (and do) tell us that chemicals and GM can fix it (at scale), whilst at the same time destroying the soil, the culture and the systems that have brought us this far.
So I see it on two scales. On the global scale (the 8 billion) we have a massive issue heading for a fall. On the micro/local scale, yes, we can make a difference, we can also take the insurance policy of learning to grow our own without becoming preppers and will probably be healthier and happier for it. Thinking globally and acting locally is about what most of us can do. As they say “Every dollar you spend is a vote for the kind of world you want to live in”.
So can I say that currently I am unconvinced that regenerative farming works as a positive contribution to stopping climate change on the big scale – which is why I am reading a book on soil science to better understand how keeping ‘methane machines’ (cows) is the best way to reduce CO2-e. And simultaneously I can see that healthy soil, resilient communities, strong support for wildlife, biodiversity, communities and all the rest is required as much for human (and humanity) well being as for what it provides to the 8 billion as a whole.
We have to meet somewhere along there in the middle. We are told that fossil fuels/capitalism is pulling the Chinese peasantry out of poverty (where the ‘poverty’ definition has recently been defined upwards to “earning above $2.15 a day” ) at the same time we hear that the global top 1% have more than the bottom 50% of the world’s population.
At the small scale where “all politics is local” I can indeed benefit by gaining a better understanding of the small farm, permaculture, resilience and how this plays out on a personal and state level. I am often told that there are cautionary tales somewhere (e.g. https://mylespower.co.uk/2022/07/30/vandana-shiva-and-the-seeds-of-the-sri-lankan-farming-disaste).
I am listening and taking your advice above – we have a grower in the family who is very onboard with the organics. I may get there – and continue to work on my understanding of the holistics – for which I currently appear to be in the George Monbiot ‘camp’.
Open discussion is useful in that regard. Politics, corporate misinformation and entrenchment do tend to make it all more difficult.
@Arturo
I am.not in Sri Lanka so can’t comment too closely on this, but I would entirely expect that if you take people who are skilled at farming with industrial poisons and fertilisers on degraded soil and then you take away the poisons and fertilisers, the first few seasons are going to be pretty grim.
Using poisons means not enough food for predators and the prey population (that is, the pests) will explode before the predator population catches up. Similarly, industrial fertilisers don’t do much to support the soil microbiology that actually enables plants to get nutrition from soil, and without intervention it takes time for the soil microbiome to recover. And seeds bred for maximum yield under conditions of industrial fertilizer and no pest or disease pressure aren’t going to do well when they don’t have industrial fertilizer and they do have pest and disease pressure.
None of this is evidence that “organic doesn’t work”. It’s evidence that it takes time and care to reverse the ecological damage done by industrial methods.
@Arturo
For me the debate isn’t really if modern industrial farming or SFF/organic/localised is best placed to feed the world.
Without fossil fuels, industrial farming is not a thing.
Whether a SFF/organic/localised system can replace industrial farming outputs is open to debate but I’m not sure there is an alternative.
@Kathryn:
Indeed it does seem that the Sri Lankan approach was to ban glyphosate etc without also providing the necessary skills, time and products required to support a more organic way of farming. Hence an explosion of pests and failed harvests. It is clear that each methodology is a system and if parts are missing then you fail (rapidly).
@John: it seems some tests for ‘feeding the world’ are on their way: India (40% of world rice exports, 22.2 million tonnes) have banned the non basmati rice exports and Russia are bombing grain stores with the intent of ‘starting a global grain crisis’. Simultaneously Spain and much of North Africa are desertifying (there was a place in Saudia Arabia seeing 57C yesterday.) Interesting times for food.
Thanks for some stimulating conversations here & welcome Arturo. I’m going to comment briefly then try to move on to writing the next post!
Wise words from Joel about love and staying in relation but not necessarily speaking or acting with – something I’m going to explore in upcoming posts. And a great call to action too. I’m interested in hearing about people’s efforts to get land and build alternatives, something I’ve been involved with in various ways.
Building on that, I’ve been thinking about a new writing project. Once my present engagements around my previous books are done, no more arguing from me, I think, with ecomodernists, Marxists and others on a different track. I’m thinking about writing instead about our little piece of land and what we’ve learned about building a land project – the wildlife, the farming, and most of all the people on the land and in the wider community, and hoping it might be useful for other people on similar journeys. Any thoughts?
On that note – John, I’ll aim to write something about the adventures of a veg grower in the mainstream economy. In the meantime, Chapter 14 of ‘A Small Farm Future’ lays out some of the main issues.
Talking of present engagements about my books, ‘Saying NO…’ has got its first reader review on Amazon. One star. Ha ha, only way is up!
@John Boxall – agreed, there’s an autonomous economic and geopolitical meltdown in play, which is only partly connected to the biophysical meltdown and I think will bring the curtain down on the present global political economy even were there magic techno-fixes to deal with climate & energy.
Re John A’s studge dystopia, while I doubt we’ll see governments directly squashing small local food production efforts, what we already see is the numerous explicit and implicit ways that monopoly capital working with governments tilts the playing field in its favour against small-scale local production. As the crises multiply, I think governments will try to micromanage broader scale food production and land use in a range of ways, many of which will prove counterproductive at best. As in World War II – the enabling of local domestic food production could be quite good (reverse the ban on feeding food waste to pigs for example?), but I suspect some of the wider land use decisions won’t be so great. More on that soon.
Re a few of Arturo’s points – as I’ve said here and in the OP, I’m slightly losing interest in trying to convince anybody of anything, but yes in my two books there are quite a lot of arguments, often with numbers attached, about why a shift to agrarian localism (a) makes sense, and (b) is probably going to happen anyway. Just want to suggest caution with the idea that large-scale mainstream ag is more productive (it often isn’t, as discussed in my books, depending somewhat on how you define ‘productivity’), or that it delivers economies of scale. It delivers *some* economies of scale, mostly on measures that I think will matter less in the future, while also delivering diseconomies of scale in other respects. It’s true that regen ag hasn’t been proven at scale in the contemporary world. But I think existing mainstream industrial ag has now pretty much been disproven at scale. So it’s a small farm future or bust. Agree at present it’s ‘niche’. So the question is what mechanisms can make it less niche, in order to avoid the ‘or bust’ scenario? I discuss this particularly in ‘A Small Farm Future’, without suggesting that there’s anything massively promising to avoid ‘or bust’. At the local level, though, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that small plots do ‘work’.
Another book on all this that I thoroughly recommend is Glenn Davis Stone ‘The Agricultural Dilemma: How Not to Feed the World’. See https://shepherd.com/best-books/why-we-must-adopt-low-impact-local-food-systems
Thanks Chris,
I am in “information gathering” mode. The book I am reading today “The Vegetarian Myth” is actually quite enlightening on the travails of big ag. I will add the Agricultural Dilemma and your first book to my list. The “what mechanisms can make it less niche, in order to avoid the ‘or bust’ scenario?” is of course part of the big question: “is there a way out of this mess?” From the informed, the answers are mostly “No,but” for the majority, and then there’s a question who the minority will be and what they will be doing.
I would love to read about your farm, Chris: what works there, what doesn’t, what you’ve learned, which things you do “the hard way” (slug control?) and where you make compromises (*cough* plastic*coughcough* — at least if my own experience is anything to go by, though I do avoid single-use plastics pretty thoroughly at least), how you relate to and integrate with the rest of the community, what you would do differently if you were starting again, which seeds do well for you and which don’t, which you save on-site and which you buy, what your days and your diet look like at different times of year, and how on earth you find any time to write given all of this!
@Chris
“Re John A’s studge dystopia, while I doubt we’ll see governments directly squashing small local food production efforts, what we already see is the numerous explicit and implicit ways that monopoly capital working with governments tilts the playing field in its favour against small-scale local production”.
My studge dystopian was very much tongue in cheek but on reflection…………..
If we end up in a place where the majority of economic activity is in food production, then what remains of a functioning State/Government may take food away from farmers as payment of taxes.
It wouldn’t be the first time its been tried.
Looking forward to hearing about your experience “down on the faaaarm” Chris.
Keep meaning to pop in when I’m next passing but I never seem to be passing!
John, I’ve got it: how about a choose-your-own dystopian adventure series, something along the lines of ‘Fight the Powder’, to get the kidz onboard? Sample plot line could involve battling against Finnish bodybuilders who’ve been unknowingly using bacterial-based protein powder for years as a guinea pig population, brains now shrunk to the size of testicles, bent on destruction etc. Are you, as a spud-growing freegan hero, ready to take up the challenge? 4:99 from all good bookshops.
Funnily enough, I did cross paths with a female Finnish body builder once.
She was a bit odd. Maybe it was because of the protein shakes she had been drinking?
I wonder what effect consuming unicellular synthetic proteins and the like has on the gut microbiome/immune system.
I used to love those choose your own adventure books!
One of the advantages of grains is that they can be stored, well enough that they can also be taxed. I think it’s pretty difficult to get around this with anything that has a long storage life. Hence tithe barns and similar; as you say, it has been tried.
Another unpleasant example is treating grains as a cash crop and letting people grow more perishable starches such as potatoes for their own sustenance, which sortof works until you get potato blight. Or you can make sure the only way for most people to survive is to earn enough money to purchase most of their food, and then make sure you don’t ever pay them enough for whatever they do sell that they can ever really get out of that trap. My understanding is that few industrial farmers today get the majority of their own food from the farm, and suggesting that they might try it is like suggesting that a plumber do without a van.
My broader point here is that evil governments imposing laws on simple honest farmers are not a prerequisite for any of this, and that many people today aren’t really in a better position than a mediaeval peasant struggling to pay a grain tithe.
Choose your trap wisely.
“Building on that, I’ve been thinking about a new writing project. Once my present engagements around my previous books are done, no more arguing from me, I think, with ecomodernists, Marxists and others on a different track. I’m thinking about writing instead about our little piece of land and what we’ve learned about building a land project – the wildlife, the farming, and most of all the people on the land and in the wider community, and hoping it might be useful for other people on similar journeys. Any thoughts?”
I can certainly understand the appeal of that project. It sounds lovely. And I think you should do it. But….
I think your next book, even if it is a small (short) one, ought to be much more challenging … the sort of project you’d many times wish you’d never taken on because it is dauntingly difficult and … ack!
That is, I would like to see you do the very hard work of carving out the space of a dialogue which all of us who see a near term low energy economy, one characterized mainly by very local agrarian cultures and economies, can wend their way into being from within the horrible constraints of the present — such as a lack of access to land for most who would like such a way of life … and the political conundrums in this which are apt to cause headaches and heartaches both.
If you don’t take on this challenge, certainly somebody ought to, and soon! But who? Who is prepared to take this challenge on, if not you?
If I could tie you to a chair in my basement and … (I don’t have a basement)… and that approach won’t work, anyway, so I’ll simply beg you and look very pouty while doing it.
Let me try to make my book notion / suggestion just a little more clear. When I used the word “dialogue” I didn’t necessarily mean the proposed book project ought to be in the form of dialogues (thought that would also be fine by me!), but, rather, that the book would — ideally — support a dialogue which we all need to be having. That dialogue is around the question of how it is we can begin to create very low energy local / agrarian economies ahead of their being utterly necessary to prevent social chaos and mass famine in the wake of a fast approaching collapse of the luxury-based and luxury dependent mode of economy which is in place in what we now call “the developed world,” or “the rich world” or “the Global North”?
I believe we need to build a bridge to that future on an emergency basis immediately, as rapidly as possible, because the present energy and materials dependent economy is going to come completely unwound within the next several (how many?) years. And it takes years to build a bridge to the future we’re heading into.
No one is better equipped to help us fathom (and dialogue about) such a bridge-building project as you are, Chris. We need you!
The film about the Pig is
‘A Private Function’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Private_Function
There are all sorts of bizarre rules in the USA, including bans on hanging washing out to dry
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11417677
And food growing
https://sustainableamerica.org/blog/believe-it-or-not-it-may-be-illegal-to-grow-your-own-food/
https://civileats.com/2022/08/20/two-states-right-to-garden-laws-local-food-community-nutrition-security-illinois-florida/
The bit of good news is that in the UK no restrictions can be imposed by a local authority on chicken keeping
Laws can be changed, including ones about keeping livestock.
But there is something around the effectiveness of the state, its perception by the public and its legitimacy here — after a certain point people will simply break laws, and if enough people are willing to do so, changing the laws is pointless. I certainly witnessed this around lockdown rules locally after the news broke that the Tories had definitely been having parties, but I also observe it around things like parking restrictions — if people know they won’t get a ticket, some of them are perfectly happy to park somewhere that they aren’t supposed to (because, for example, it blocks step-free access needed by wheelchair users). I’ve seen my share of illegal activity by landlords and letting agents, much of which has gone unchallenged. Oh, and almost every tenancy agreement I’ve ever had has said I’m not allowed to hang my washing out anywhere that it can be seen from the street, but a tower block in London on a sunny day is very much a laundry-fest.
Laws also take resources to enforce, something which could become increasingly difficult to navigate.
For me, the role of Government/The State is a double edged sword.
I think/hope that it can maintain some role/power during the transition to a SFF.
There are going to be lots of climate/economic refugees on the move. This time from cities to the countryside rather than from the dust bowl.
I would rather that this movement of the “New Okies” is managed by Government than the “Vigilante Man” or “White Caps” (or the KKK)
But governments can also enforce rules that I would consider silly at one end of the spectrum or outright draconian at the other.
@John Boxall.
Wow!!!!! And I was only joking!!!!
The one about hanging out your washing was particularly………”surprising” (shocking)!!!!!
But I guess if you have had “organisations” like The White Caps, anything is possible and not necessarily “policed” by the government/State.
On the other hand……… I live in an ex 1930s council house. It has quite a large back garden, as it was seen desirable at the time, that (working class) people would be able to grow some of their own food. Government can get some things right.
(In contrast, I look at all the new builds going up in the local area. They have gardens the size of postage stamps)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DsEFyiUQR78
Interesting
Misleading ‘sell’ from this morning’s Farming Today, which fortunately wasn’t repeated verbatim in the broadcast:
“Today we ask how farmers could be impacted by the availability of lab-grown meat, which can be produced without emitting greenhouse gases, and using a fraction of the land needed for conventional livestock farming.”
Thanks for further comments and book writing suggestions. I’ll probably come back to the latter here in due course – maybe some hybrid of what Kathryn and James are suggesting.
Advanced review copies have passed across my desk of a few forthcoming books which folks here might find of interest in relation to some of these issues:
Brian Miller ‘Kayaking With Lambs: Notes From An East Tennessee Farmer’
Peter & Miriam Wohlleben ‘Our Little Farm: Adventures In Sustainable Living’
Ben Hartman ‘The Lean Micro-Farm’
Morgan Philips & Rupert Read ‘Transformative Adaptation’
I like the hybrid idea, a combination of “this is how it has worked on our farm” and “this is how what we did could be made accessible to more people”.
A number of books do already exist written by people lucky enough to get hold of some land; I’ve read some of them myself. And while I often enjoy them, I am also frustrated when the structural issues of how inaccessible that can be are ignored. I mean, yes, it is a big risk for a middle class city-dweller to sell their home and move to the countryside, but I want an agrarian localism accessible to people who don’t have a home they can sell, who can’t find employment in the countryside and so can’t easily pay rent there. I want an agrarian localism that works when houses in the suburbs no longer command the kinda of prices that allow for purchasing rural land. I want an agrarian localism accessible to people who are currently reliant on food banks and soup kitchens — which, for at least some of our guests at church, is going to mean a longer process of rehabilitation (probably longer than it would take me, an amateur gardener, to learn to farm — and I think that could take some years, though I am doing what I can.)
Which isn’t to say that I expect your vision of agrarian localism to solve all problems of disconnectedness, poverty, disempowerment and exploitation; but rather that it does need to make the world better and more just for people who, in the current system, are destitute. I think it can, or at least I know you think that the possibility is important, because awareness of issues around access to land runs through so much of your work.
Much as I would enjoy reading about the nuts and bolts of which seeds you use and how actually do sheep work anyway, another book about middle-class educated intellectual worker bourgeoisie getting hold of some land and turning into middle-class educated homesteader bourgeoisie won’t, by itself, make much contribution to the wider justice and access issues. The “what compromises do I make and why?” bit perhaps offers richer ground for a fruitful discussion, though.
At the same time, a discussion of only the problems and obstacles in attaining an agrarian localism society doesn’t give people much to grasp in the way of positive narrative vision. In a world where small scale farming is pilloried as a privileged hobbyist’s “bucolic idyll” or derided as a route to grinding, back-breaking poverty, offering a more realistic picture is important.
The “intellectual worker” label is not meant as an insult, by the way; I believe that we desperately need people who are engaged with these issues on both practical and theoretical levels, and you seem to have a pretty clear vocation to both. I only really want to know how you balance the two because I see myself heading in a similar (but different) direction, with practical self-provisioning alongside another type of work. But we’ll see; my spouse was just given four weeks notice on his current job (part of being a contractor is that kind of expendability and we are not panicking yet, but the knock-on effects on others if he can’t find something in six months are a little scary) so I am currently examining my own choices — and finding that I don’t, currently, regret my focus on allotment work over the kind of paid office jobs I might otherwise prioritise.
Another rich contribution, there, Kathryn.
I fully agree. The agrarian localism pathway is one which should be accessible to all. And for many of that all this will probably necessitate the creation of agrarian localist land projects on a village scale in rural settings — on commonly held land. Ecovillages, if you will. But the real deal, not the jet-setter / commuter versions which are not really ecovillages at all.
I am a strong believer in the virtues of solidarity, which term for me always implies solidarity across the usual divides — e.g., class, race, gender, sexual orientation, educational level, etc.
Is it impossible to grow a movement powerful enough to embody such solidarity with regard to land access and access to the agrarian localist way of life? It might be! I can’t say for sure. I’ve been pushing rope for most of my adult life. I’m weary of it. But of one thing we can be sure, if such a way of life is not widely available to all people who want it — and fast — then when the economy no longer functions as it has for the last fifty years grinds to a halt (and it will! and not so far down the trail) countless millions will have to try to do it under the most dire of conditions imaginable. And that will not be pretty.
The time to build a bridge to another world is well before the old world has ceased to function altogether.
I think it’s fair to say there are signs that the (monetary) economy already doesn’t function the way it has in the past. High interest rates, for example, are “meant to” reduce inflation, all other things being equal; but that doesn’t work when the inflation is caused not only by the devaluation of currency but by scarcity of supply of goods and services, or monopolistic profit-seeking (Ricardian rent-seeking). The levers we are accustomed to using have already broken.
Another sign might be the increasing inequality between rich and poor even in relatively wealthy nations, which has driven a large number of people into such abject poverty that they are not able to participate in the monetary economy as consumers or as producers, and struggle to participate in more informal economies.
There is a third sign that I am watching for, and that is the kind of intermittency of supply of basic needs that means even those who hold considerable power are affected. What that actually looks like might be, I dunno, Rishi Sunak not able to drive anywhere for want of petrol, or Rupert Murdoch’s presses unable to print for lack of electricity. Events like this might be a blessing or a curse, depending who steps into the resulting power vacuum, but they will come long after the rest of us are dealing with disruptive changes to our livelihoods.
The second-best time to plant a tree (or an idea) is now.
Chris, it turns out that I use your announcements of new posts on Facebook to prompt me to visit.
Yesterday I though, “Hm. Seems like a while since Chris posted, I should check out Small Farm Future.” And it turns out I am three posts and hundreds of comments behind. I spend yesterday catching up, including linked articles and infuriating twitter threads.
Out of all of this I think the conflict can be summed up as, “People who look at reality, and try to determine worthy responses versus people who start with a fantasy and keep fantasizing about ways to achieve it.”
Yes, I’d definitely want to write about the politics of accessing land. And then the politics of what happens once you’ve got it 🙂
I write about building land access movements in ASFF in relation to the idea of a supersedure state. It’s a critical question.
And … nice to hear from you Ruben. Yes, I’ve fallen a bit behind with FB. Will try harder!
I think it is a great idea to distill and communicate your years of work, experience and practice- and it naturally follows that it becomes an introduction, and bridge for others to ‘cross over’.
I wrote a comment on Colin Tudge’s site and he has asked if we have a longer essay to further define the Care Home Farm – I’ll send you over a copy when we’re done.
We have to keep banging away at this false dichotomy presented by the money economy, as it becomes increasingly irrelevant. To return to Arturo’s numbers, it is simply not easy to find out how much of this is needed to do that – another basic reason to establish resiliency facts for a functioning local agrarianism.
We stopped off at a friend’s holistic managed grazing farm in the cotswolds (paddock farm), who Alice recently met on a regen farming course. You can rent an acre for £80 that’ll cost you £20000 to buy. 95 % of their farm is rented (pastured grazing), from the landlords interested in the regen values they are bringing. It is how far and deep these ‘enlightened” landlords are willing to ‘share power’, for a better life and shot at the future – the tenancy position doesn’t allow for tree planting, the corner stone of a successful transition. From their work, the pigs and the chicken is a household scale animal and should just not be scaled! They are also running an experiment of pig ‘tractor’ to heritage grain – more research for a sff.
Does the tenancy allow for trees planted by wild animals?
Our next-but-one allotment neighbour has a hazel stand and I now have at least four hazel trees. The plot with the big old oak tree is further away, but we get some of those too. Meanwhile at the Soup Garden we get squirrel-planted walnuts (and I have no idea where the walnut tree is) and ash and sycamore seedlings, usually in the most awkward places. It sometimes feels like not having trees is more challenging than planting them.
If I catch them small enough, I put the nut trees in pots to transplant.