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Posted on December 21, 2024 | 44 Comments
And so we come to the end of another year’s blogging. Twenty-six posts authored by the editor-in-chief here, with two guest posts from Alice and Jake – my thanks to them. All told, there were 1,886 comments (including my responses) to my own authored posts. And, when aggregated, my posts amounted to 68,704 words. Sheesh, I got so exhausted from all that blog writing that I decided to take a break and do something different – so now I’m writing a book.
Sincerest thanks to all commenters for keeping things alive here. My least commented post was Another England, or Another Rome? with a mere twenty-four comments. It was one of my longest too, meaning I had to expend 142 words for every response. C’mon guys, help me out a little.
The most commented post was How many solar panels can dance on the head of a pin?,with 184 comments, turning out at twenty words per comment. A bit more like it.
It’s customary at this time of year for me to hold out my begging bowl and politely ask for donations in recompense for all those words. So many words. Well, if you’re minded to click on the Donate button so I can run out and buy an extra parsnip for my festive meal, I won’t try to stop you (I’m joking of course – the parsnips are in the garden, if only we can remember where we sowed them…) And for those people with a paid subscription on Substack or who have otherwise donated during the year, I extend my sincere gratitude.
But having somewhat embarrassed myself earlier in the year by moaning about the impoverished life of the writer/grower, I’m not going to actively ask for donations. Compared to most people in this crazy word, I’m more than fine financially. Embarrassment aside, I do think it’s good to check in with myself and others sometimes about how to value things. Ultimately, if there’s any value in my writing it’s in non-monetary forms, so what I’d most welcome is a few words if you’re minded to give them in the comments below about whether it’s all worth it. I get quite a lot of positive comments about my writing, and a few brickbats too. So, as Santa gets his sleigh organised, I’ll settle for the usual end-of-year moral accounting – on balance, have I been naughty or nice?
I’ll wrap up this post, if you’ll pardon the pun, with some more Christmassy accounting via a nod to Charles Dickens. Time, then, for three short ghost stories of the past, the present and the future.
A personal ghost from the past I’d like to lay to rest is spending too much time arguing against ecomodernist techno-fix solutionism in general, and more specifically its food system variants in the form of things like manufactured food and radical ‘land-sparing’ rewilding, which I’ve critiqued in recent writings like this one, and this one.
I wrote quite a bit over the last year that followed up on my book Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future, laying out some positions around ‘feeding the world’ with small-scale local mixed farming, renewable energy and the energetic implausibility of manufactured food (see also here) in response to various critics – many of whom were polite (thanks!), but not all of them. I think I’ve now pretty much said what I want to say on those topics, at least for the time being.
But a propos of my past critique of manufactured food it’s worth checking out this recent comment from much valued commenter Steve L, who’s been tracking the share performance of pioneering bacterial high-protein slurry manufacturers Solar Foods. Just as Steve says, with shares currently a snip at under €5, I trust those who’ve been telling me – quite loudly in some cases – that I’m just an ol’ backward-looking romantic who’s off the pace of developments in the modern food industry will put their money where their mouths are and buy in.
As I see it, the real backward-looking move belongs to the ecomodernists, with their ultimately apolitical 1960s-style ‘white heat of technology’ framings around how to solve the world’s problems – what Anthony Galluzzo calls an “ironically backward-looking desire for those high-modernist “lost futures” of the twentieth century” in his book, Against the Vortex: Zardoz and Degrowth Utopias in Seventies and Today. I wrote about his book here, and I’d thoroughly recommend it – at least for those who like to take their social theory neat.
Anyway, dispelling naïve tech solutionism is a thankless task. No sooner have you laboriously critiqued one dread manifestation of it than another one comes along. I want out. Die, damned ghost!
Meanwhile, farming is hot in the present news cycle here in the UK in respect of the farmer protests arising from the government’s partial removal of inheritance tax relief on farmland.
I won’t get into the details of this, wherein the devil lies. I favour inheritance tax in principle, but I believe this policy change will be the final death knell of the few remaining mid-sized family farms and a gift to further corporate and rich-list landownership.
What’s been especially depressing is the outpouring of public bile I’ve seen against farmers, and the endless repetition of ignorant talking points along the lines of farmers as subsidy junkies, “if they can’t make their farms pay, then they should quit and let someone who can take over” etc etc. The nadir for me came when somebody online dismissed a farmer’s statement that people relied on farmers for all their food as “incredibly arrogant”.
True, some of the agitation against the policy has come from self-interested rich folks who stand to lose out from it (Jeremy Clarkson, get outta here). True, also, it’s wise to ignore blowhard opinions on the internet. But I’ve seen much the same ignorance from senior academics and thought leaders.
Now, I’ve been feeling slightly bothered about how unbothered I’ve been about Trump’s electoral victory over in the USA. Oddly, the IHT brouhaha has got me down more. I mean, it’s more immediately local to me, but possibly less important in the scheme of things. I guess in the case of Trump, the problem is that the electorate was basically presented with the question ‘Trump or Harris?’, to which the correct answer is no. So giving them a bald either/or choice is a blunt tool. Whereas the outpouring of absolute blame ignorance about the basic realities of food, farming and material life from otherwise thoughtful, well-educated and caring people I’ve seen around the IHT issue leaves little doubt about people’s true thoughts. It also leaves me somewhat despairing about how we’re going to pull through.
One part of this relates to the whole question of absurdly low food prices and absurdly high land and housing prices that we touched on in discussions here recently, and I’ve also written about from time to time. It’s a deep structural issue that the government isn’t addressing. Fiddling around with IHT doesn’t begin to address it.
Another part is about the political dividing lines that are opening up. A sideshow issue here is that the Labour Party had a historical opportunity to bring the traditional Tory-voting farmers onside in view of farmers’ disillusionment with the latter party, and they’ve blown it big time within a few months of taking power. But there are so few farmers (part of the problem…) that it doesn’t really matter electorally. The Labour Party’s indifference is similar to the Tories’ indifference. To both parties’ shame and to the long-term peril of this country, they both care more about return on assets than about food security. Maybe it takes a farmer to talk some sense about this issue.
A more interesting aspect of the dividing lines is something we’ve touched on here from time to time and I’ve been feeling more strongly in myself lately in respect of the way that the old left/right distinction is breaking down and politics is reforming in different ways. I’ve recently been reading some of the literature about the professional-managerial class – I was embarrassingly ignorant about it until recently, kind of assuming it was just a US term for middle class or white collar. Reading up on it, a few things have clicked into place for me about my own politics, my career trajectory from university teaching to the land, and why I find myself embracing a somewhat eclectic mix of political views that cross familiar old political barricades.
I hope to say a bit more about this. But not now. In the future.
I’m spending a lot of time at the moment writing my book, currently titled Lights for a Dark Age. Writing books sucks. Writing books is hell. The book is about the future. I can’t wait for the future to happen so that I’m not writing the book anymore. My festive wish is for light at the end of the tunnel for Lights for a Dark Age. Obviously, though, it’s going to be a great book. When I’m in the future, I hope to look back at the past and be delighted that I wrote it back then. In the past.
The book, and pretty much everything I’ve said above, circles around a similar set of issues. Our present historical moment emphasises limitless self-referential synthetic refashioning. This isn’t going to turn out well. We need to emphasise limits, local ecological implication, appeal to the virtues and critical tradition-making. It’s easy for this not to turn out well too for various reasons, among them the fact that we’re so far down the road of limitless synthetic refashioning it’s hard to change course safely. But we have to try. I will give you the manual. But some of the pages are a bit blurry at the moment.
And with that it remains for me to wish everyone a joyous festive season. I will be back in 2025 with more hard-won wisdom from the editor’s chair. But probably not all that much wisdom until I’ve finished writing my book.
I’m reading a whole bunch of stuff at the moment as background for Lights for a Dark Age. Recreationally, I’m reading Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Though it’s a twisted form of recreation – anyone who calls me a doomer ought to spend some time in the dark dystopian world of Ms Butler’s imagination. I’m gonna give myself a one-day break on Christmas day, and have a look at Laurie Lee’s Village Christmas and Other Notes on the English Year and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry.
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Hi Chris – I’d like to say thank you for providing one of the most interesting places on the internet (even if I don’t always find time to read you let alone all the comments – which often seems more like essays in their own right)
I recently read something about the guy accused of shooting the health insurance executive in New York. The piece talked about his social media and who he followed – their were both right and left leaning voices there. The author of the piece suggested that the shooter was the archetypal American voter and that politics no longer split left/right but pro-system/anti-system – that sounded right to me.
I’ll be interested to read your thoughts on the rise of the professional-managerial class – I think starmer is their poster boy.
Hope you and yours enjoy the festivities – hopefully there will be more than just parsnips on your table.
Chris, I hope you know this on some level, but you’ve been a real light in a dark age already.
I read “A Small Farm Future” sometime in 2020, less than a year into having my own allotment; the Soup Garden had started in October 2019 with a view to maybe eventually growing enough vegetables to make soup for ten people once a week, because that’s what the soup kitchen at church was like at that stage. Since then I have diversified my growing spaces to include the Far Allotment and taken a (very part time) paid job growing vegetables for a community garden. Discussions you have hosted here have been crucial in helping me to situate my own work in the wider context of food systems, in helping me to figure out how and when to talk about food systems in my own communities, and in encouraging me to regard my own small-scale horticultural efforts as significant, not despite their small scale, but because of it. Having a space in which to discuss and develop these ideas, without getting bogged down in culture wars nonsense, has also been a real boon to me as a weirdo who is extremely wary of the right and rather disillusioned with the left. Thank you, so much, for all of your words, and for your cultivation of a robust and respectful commenting space.
the parsnips are in the garden, if only we can remember where we sowed them…
Allow me to indulge briefly in the sin of envy. I know exactly where my one surviving parsnip from this year is, and I’m a bit afraid to pull it for Christmas dinner because I know that bed has had carrot root fly this year. The dilemma, of course, is that if it doesn’t have carrot root fly I should clearly keep it to produce seed for next year, and if it does, there may not be much to salvage for the table anyway. The idea of multiple parsnips is luxurious indeed! (But I do have potatoes and sweet potatoes and oca and Jerusalem artichokes and black salsify and I think some white salsify somewhere and carrots and beetroot and leeks and celeriac, so I’m really not too worried about a general shortage of root vegetables.)
Anyway, dispelling naïve tech solutionism is a thankless task. No sooner have you laboriously critiqued one dread manifestation of it than another one comes along. I want out. Die, damned ghost!
Naive tech solutionism, or at least individual instances of it, will die out eventually, simply because they are naive and can’t work. The question is how much damage their grift will do in the meantime. I’m grateful for your voice in opposing some of these silly projects, but very glad you are focusing your attention in other directions now.
farmers as subsidy junkies, “if they can’t make their farms pay, then they should quit and let someone who can take over” etc etc
I mean, if they’d like to try making a farm profitable in the current economic system, without relying on short-termist dead-ends like fossil fuels and global markets and limitless self-referential synthetic refashioning, I would invite them to have a go. I consider my own growing extremely profitable, but it is only possible to do this because I don’t really compete with global markets in any way: I eat or give away what I grow. This renders my work illegible with reference to measures like GDP; blurry, perhaps.
somebody online dismissed a farmer’s statement that people relied on farmers for all their food as “incredibly arrogant”.
Well, I suppose I technically don’t rely on farmers for all my food! But really that’s because I grow some of it myself and forage some of it myself. You could argue that this makes me a farmer too; I think the lines (especially those between cultivation and foraging) are blurry and it would be unsurprising if someone put wine cap spawn in some of those manicured woodchip-mulched ornamental beds in the park, or inoculated some fallen logs with spore slurry. Ahem. Similarly, the lines between hunting (for food rather than sport) and ranching can get blurry: if we put out mineral licks for deer, and install fences, and control populations fairly closely, and otherwise modify a landscape to make it more amenable to hunting, are we really hunting any more? I’m sure there are similarly blurred lines between aquaculture and other forms of fishing. But I will say, quite unreservedly, that I depend on people doing labour for all my food: even the foraged stuff doesn’t hop into my basket or bag of its own accord. I will say that if we take a broad view of “farming” as including all kinds of labour involved in getting food from the earth (or water or sky) to the market or kitchen, then of course I depend on farmers for all my food (and in that case yes, I also count as a farmer).
Given the furore around IHT, and the wealth of some of the voices within the debate, I wonder whether the person who said this was trying, albeit extremely clumsily, to articulate that not all of the people who do that labour are landowning farmers who will be affected by the changes to inheritance tax. Perhaps I am too charitable.
I don’t think the whole thing has been handled very well by Labour but “neoliberals are politically incoherent when it comes to material conditions” isn’t exactly news either, and I don’t see much in the way of coherent food systems policy from any party at the moment (disclaimer: I haven’t really been paying attention).
Whereas the outpouring of absolute blame ignorance about the basic realities of food, farming and material life from otherwise thoughtful, well-educated and caring people I’ve seen around the IHT issue leaves little doubt about people’s true thoughts.
How many of them do you think actually know many farmers, though? Of people I speak with regularly I can think of three who know any people actively involved in farming (admittedly in a narrow-ish definition): me, my vicar, and one of my plot neighbours at the allotment, whose sister works with Kenyan farmers (I think). A lot of these otherwise thoughtful and caring people are just repeating what they’re told by media outlets that have profit motives in direct conflict with the communication of truth. Perhaps it’s the same type of problem we have with tabloids blaming immigration for all our problems, when actually immigration is (at least partly) a symptom of systems of enclosure and extraction from which we in the global north often benefit in material terms (though I would argue we are impoverished in spiritual terms by such reliance on systems of oppression). If the only farmers you know of are people like Jeremy Clarkson then you’re not likely to feel too warmly toward them; if the only immigrants you know are coming for your job, you’re not likely to feel too warmly toward them either, but both of these are convenient lies.
It also leaves me somewhat despairing about how we’re going to pull through.
We’re going to do what we can wherever we are to create and support better systems, even while the rest of the world seems to be going mad, even if we can’t completely extricate ourselves from the machine. We’re going to move in the direction of ecological resilience, solidarity with the poor, subsidiarity in our governance, even if we can’t get there overnight. We’re going to feed the hungry and give water to the thirsty and visit the prisoner and welcome the stranger. We’re going to roll up our sleeves and do the work that gets us that bit closer to a world free from injustice, because it is worth doing the right thing anyway even if we fail due to our human imperfection. We’re going to keep talking, sometimes arguing even, about what the right things might be; keep trading ideas about what might work in various contexts, keep challenging each other, keep encouraging each other, keep picking each other up and dusting each other off and even, sometimes, catching one another before we stumble. We’re probably going to have to pick our battles, and some of them will be the wrong ones and some of them will be the right ones. We’re going to rejoice in the harvest and in the turning of the year, and lament over all that is lost. We’re going to learn, again and again, how to love and tend to one another and the whole Creation of which we are a part. We’re going to try.
Or some of us are, anyway. I am. I am going to try.
And then we’re going to die. But that would happen whether or not we tried. I believe that I would prefer to die knowing that I tried. Pardon the darkness here: it’s Advent, an appropriate time to contemplate death.
Writing books sucks. Writing books is hell. The book is about the future. I can’t wait for the future to happen so that I’m not writing the book anymore.
Keep going.
Sometimes vocation is about finding the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet, as Buechner articulated so beautifully. And sometimes it’s more about turning up and doing the work that’s right in front of you, taking a breath, and doing the next bit of work that’s right in front of you. Sometimes, it’s both.
I haven’t written a book, so please take any of my advice on writing with a large grain of salt, but it strikes me that you can only write one word at a time. A word, a sentence, a breath. Another word, another breath. You’ll get through this book, like you got through the last two, by writing it. At least I hope you will, because I really, really want to read it.
First off, and I really hope I’m not coming across as an insufferable sycophant here: yes, from the perspective of this one reader it’s very much worth it, and I deeply appreciate your writing. Maybe I’ve said this before, but what makes your perspective so valuable in my view is your rare combination of an academic and agrarian perspective, from someone who’s both enough of a “proper” scholar to have taught at a university and also has a very real “walking their talk” quality with an actual farm. There’s also a sort of “calm” in the way your writing comes across that I really appreciate, in the sense that it feels like you’re genuinely trying to find approaches to our problems that make sense rather than scoring cheap “gotcha” points.
Like Kathryn touches on above, I’m also one of those people who have fundamentally left-ish sympathies, but also find myself very disenchanted with much of the modern left and in some “strange bedfellows” situations politically. Over the last year or two I’ve been drawn a bit into what we might as well call the “alternative, anti-neoliberal right Substack-o-sphere”. Think Paul Kingsnorth et al. Regardless of how you feel about their actual policies, one thing that strikes me with many of these writers is a sort of aggressive, tough-guy war mentality and tone. Lots of talk about “our side”, “the enemy” and so on. While you always seem to approach things in…maybe we could call it a genuine spirit of inquiry, academic openness and diplomacy, if we want to be slightly pretentious about it. Or maybe just “good faith” will do to sum it up. A kind of level-headed, sensible quality to your writing I really like.
And like I also might have said before, you’re doing a very useful service as an agrarian mythbuster. It’s very handy to be able to point to your writings and go “well, actually…;)” when someone tries to trot out old ecomodernist tropes like “we need to produce more”, “only industrial farming can feel the world”, and so on. The fact that you’re both so sober in your approach and have impeccable mainstream credentials means people who might dismiss the likes of archdruids or fringe bloggers out of hand have a much harder time doing the same with SFF.
I guess all that is to say that I still think you’re one of the very best deep-green/alternative green/alternative agrarian/whatever you want to call it bloggers and thinkers on the internet, and most importantly, thank you for all you do. And I do read all of them, even if I don’t always comment, because I frankly often feel I don’t have the knowledge to contribute to the discussions here in any substantial way.
“Whereas the outpouring of absolute blame ignorance about the basic realities of food, farming and material life from otherwise thoughtful, well-educated and caring people I’ve seen around the IHT issue leaves little doubt about people’s true thoughts. It also leaves me somewhat despairing about how we’re going to pull through.”
Could be I’m just naive, but depressing as it is to see all this, my gut feeling is that this will more or less sort itself out as the decline really starts to bite. Ie., when people’s livest depend on knowing where their food and energy comes from in a very direct way, they’ll change their tune in a hurry. Of course, the obvious counter-argument that we’re wasting a lot of time right now where much could be done to soften the impact is very true.
Still, ignorance of the basic realities of material life is woven into the very soul of our civilization, isn’t it? The one that always baffles me is how a lot of people seem to genuinely think the industrial revolution just happened one day because we suddenly got so clever. That we can always think our way out of any shortage, like everything we do isn’t based on a massive energy surplus that’s slowly dwindling. If they don’t even get that, there’s no way they’ll be realistic about food and farming. Or: kudos again for your willingness to keep fighting that particular uphill battle to open people’s eyes.
“But there are so few farmers (part of the problem…) that it doesn’t really matter electorally.”
This made me think about how we still do have an agrarian party here in Norway, one that’s even in government at the moment. The problem is that they’re kind of split between sensible policies like increasing our national self-provisioning rate and the kind of industrial farming narratives you know all too well. Still, maybe we’re lucky to have an agrarian party at all, even if I wish their brand of it was closer to the SFF vision.
Anyway, I wish you and yours a very happy festive season and new year. Best of luck on the book as well, looking forward to getting my copy.
My comments (when I leave them) are always short, so here’s another short one: Merry Christmas, a good new year, and hang in there with the book!
Yes Chris, thanks again, and much appreciation for the work you do here at SFF. I won’t claim to have been thorough in my searching, but in my browser bookmark list, your site is unique. For all of the reasons listed by the commenters above, which I endorse, and repeat by reference herewith.
Also, I’ve noticed that the quality of a blog is reflected in its commentariat. I tend to stop reading sites where the commenters tend to be clueless and/or nasty. So a quick salute to all who comment here.
“a robust and respectful commenting space” indeed.
Yes, I’ve also had plenty of conversations with “…otherwise thoughtful, well-educated and caring people…” lately. They are my demographic. I was born into “the professional-managerial class”. My mother campaigned for Barry Goldwater in 1964, just like Hillary Clinton. Holding back the Communist Menace.
Though I will brag about mostly falling out of the very porous bottom of that class. I will also say in passing that the PMC is much more diverse than the perjorative users of the term suggest. For instance, there can be a big difference between professional careers and managerial ones. As for political views, maybe less diversity, but it’s also surprising what you might hear from people of the so-called ‘working class’.
But still, and I think you often acknowledge this, a community who looks to the future together is crucial. Clearly, a blog comment space doesn’t exactly fit the full definition of ‘community’, but for many of us, it’s the next best thing.
I’m often surprised or bemused by how few of my nice, well-intentioned friends will do what it takes to come together into anything that could be called a community. They’ll come out to the occasional community orchard work day or potluck party, but most of the people I know are so wrapped up in the daily business of keeping fed and housed and amused that there isn’t much left for any larger sense of a group. Except perhaps for our local Tango community, which is tiny and whose members are spread out geographically.
“…absurdly high land and housing prices…” Yes, that’s a large reason why I’m in Kansas instead of California. And even still the young people here are struggling against hopeless odds.
“limitless self-referential synthetic refashioning” What a great phrase! I have no idea what it means!
I’m happy that you are reading Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. I have lived in both of the main locations she uses in the book: Pasadena and Mendocino County California (and the freeways in between). And yes, she does stretch certain aspects to make her story, but the story rings true to me.
Well, I noticed that you measured your blog post success by the ratio of your word count vs. gross number of comments, not vs. comment word count. So I’ll stop rambling here and wish everyone the best possible year-end.
Please keep going Chris, your blog is most valuable, and as stated by others, the commentariat is also very active and knowledgeable. I wish all of you happy hollidays – if you have any.
On my side, I just set up a smaller sawmill (Woodmizer LT 15 Classic) in order to produce our own boards, rafts or whatever they are called in you language. Probably not a profitable thing to do, but enjoyable and possibly something that can build some community spirit among the neighbours. We have some 30 hectares of productive forest although I am not sure we want to harvest logs in all of it, sofar we have done nada in 12 hectares.
Regarding the general publics lack of understanding of the realities of farming, I can just concurr, it is even worse with the understanding of forestry…..The city of Stockholm is fully heated by wood biomass, still many of those living there seem to be totally against any kind of wood harvest, especially for fuel. Admittedly, it is more than problematic if we would replace all oil and gas in the world with wood, it is simply not possible, but that doesn’t mean that all wood burning is unsustainable. When you saw, around 50% of the wood will become wood for fuel, pulp or something else.
Regarding land prices, I believe this is really problematic. I guess that it has something to do with falling profits in most sectors of business, which is also the reason for why so many invest in clueless food tech ventures. The decoupling of finance and assets from the productive sector is one of the prominent features of today’s capitalism. It is also reflected in inflated housing prices.
Anyway, keep on rocking!
My immediate interpretation of “limitless self-referential synthetic refashioning” was something like “narcissistic fakes endlessly churning out content”, i.e., social media and its ilk, but I see from the context that it’s more like a description of how our modern society operates with its myopic individualistic detachments from the rest of nature.
Chris, I think there’s some irony in how, for a small farmer/writer advocating for localization, your writings have such contemporary worldwide visibility and import, with you often bringing the most eloquently reasoned reality checks to counter the well-funded big-ag and high-tech narratives. Thinking about the difference we might make with our lives and the benefits we might bring, your personal impact seems remarkably large, so please keep up the good work!
Regarding the counting of posts, comments, and words, I’d say that quality is definitely preferable to quantity (especially with comments that are open to all), so please keep up the good (high quality) work!
Good luck with the book, and a joyous festive season (and day off) to you!
Another perspective on the lack of support of farmers and that consumers have lost contact with the food production is that this unfortunately apply to many modern farmers as well: They don’t produce food, but commodities for the market, they know no more who is going to eat their products in the end than the consumers know where the products come from. I also find that many farmers are hypocritical in asking consumers to buy local or national while they themselves drive to town to buy their food in hypermarkets instead of buying local, and they buy the Chinese t-shirts and all other stuff like everybody else. Most shop spare parts on the net instead of buying from the local repair shop and buy their tractors from overseas etc, etc. I know that they in many cases are prisoners of the system – but so are consumers.
Thanks for this Gunnar – I think its really interesting and speaks to the Inheritance Tax debate that Chris has referred to.
Much of the heat in that debate has focused on ‘small family farms’ that will be hit by the change but whose farms don’t generate that much cash income relative to the asset value. This is undoubtedly a problem and I agree with Chris that even if in the short term some speculative money is removed from the land market the ultimate beneficiaries may well be large agribusiness companies who can buy the land these smaller farmers sell to pay the tax. This is the capitalism in which we swim – we’re sold the promise of free markets and end up with mostly monopolies.
As I said I think this change in taxation is undoubtedly a problem for these family farms but I have a few problems with how the debate is being framed around or centered upon this problem.
Firstly I fear these ‘small’ farmers may be playing the same role that ‘small fishing boats’ played in the Brexit debate – a sort of totem that allowed bigger interests to push for changes from which they benefited from but from which the inshore fishing fleet ultimately suffered from.
Secondly the description of these farms as small – small being a relative descriptor not a statement of absolute size. When I was growing up I had friends who’s families earned good livings from farms of maybe 150 acres. Many of the ‘county farms’, designed to provide an entryway into farming for those who weren’t going to inherit land were much smaller that that. A farm that size wouldn’t be viable now but at current land values wouldn’t be that far over the new tax threshold depending on whether the farmhouse was considered part of the farm business or not. But as you say a farm that size can’t compete producing commodity crops for global markets. Many of the ‘small family farms’ being spoken of in this debate are two or three times that size and would never have been considered small in the past. Right now we buy our milk from a small farm that runs a Guernsey herd that’s only milked once a day – all the milk is sold direct to local people via local shops – they seem to do ok. So maybe the tax and farm size aren’t where the problem lies?
We (and farmers more generally) may bemoan the lack of understanding that most of the population have of farming but in much of this debate I think farmers have shown a remarkable lack of understanding of most of the population. Many people are stuck with minimum wage jobs, live in shit housing in shit parts of shit cities for which they hand over 40% of their income with little sign of the downward slide slowing down. From that perspective someone complaining that they can’t afford to pay tax on their £3million+ asset is inexplicable. To me what’s happening to farmers is part of the onward march of neoliberal economics and I can’t remember farmers coming out with much solidarity or sympathy for other parts of the economy that have been rationalised/off-shored/deemed inefficient and whose erstwhile workers are now stuck with minimum wage jobs, live in shit housing in shit parts of shit cities for which they hand over 40% of their income with little sign of the downward slide slowing down.
You mention the hypocrisy of farmers wanting consumers to buy local food but not extending that thinking to much of their own consumption. I think that’s fair and mirrors what I just said. I recently watched ‘Brian May: The Badgers, The Farmers and Me’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0022710/brian-may-the-badgers-the-farmers-and-me . It was really interesting. Brian May had been a vocal opponent of culling badgers to control TB but came to the conclusion that in the end he’d have to work with farmers to find solutions acceptable to both sides – the results were remarkable but required a large change in mindset from both the farmer and from his erstwhile opponent. I guess in the farming/food debate small steps have been taken in this direction – farmers markets being an obvious example. I think this needs to extend much further and requires a change in mindset – somehow people are going to have to accept paying more for food but I also think farmers are going to have change how they understand what they do – farmers are keen to say they’re not just a business like any other but their thinking often doesn’t reflect that as far as I can tell.
Lastly the protests that farmers have mounted against the tax speak to the privileged position that farming still holds in our society – they’d held large demonstrations that have blocked roads, held up traffic etc with the media largely supportive and understanding and zero prosecutions for obstructing the highway etc. Climate protestors or pro Palestine activists behaving in a similar way would not have got such sympathetic treatment from either the media or the police.
I’m not sure I really have a point to my comments but reading back through it seems I sense that regardless of the position of particular farms (some will benefit and some won’t) relative to the changes in the Inheritance Tax I feel the response of farmers as a group has been aimed at maintaining their position in society as currently ordered – I’d like to see farmers more broadly taking on the role of creating a different sort of society – maybe a future centered on small farms and the communities they support* – I’m sure there’s a catchy way to phrase that but it escapes me.
*thinking about the farms around me here I can’t think of many that I would say actively support the local community but that’s a can of worms for another day
Happy Christmas to you all
Merry Christmas Chris to you and your family and to everyone else on this ” blog ” .May the new year bring sufficient to keep the wolf from the door !
Thanks very much for some warm & uplifting comments there – very much appreciated.
It’s good to get feedback that my writing has positive impact. In the aftermath of ‘Saying NO…’ feeling the power quite personally of complacent mainstream ecomodernist narratives to shut down and gaslight pro-nature and pro-people perspectives got me down a bit, but yes it’s important to keep on keeping on. Thanks for refuelling my fire!
In relation to a few specific points, ““limitless self-referential synthetic refashioning”. Ha, ha yes – that probably does need a bit more explaining. Something to look forward to next year.
Re Eric’s point about word length/comment no. vs word length/comment length, the truth is that it’s easy to calculate the first ratio and not the second. The wider lesson: people usually count what’s easy to quantify and discount what’s hard to quantify. Wherein lie many modern problems… I’m glad to have exemplified the point.
Re Gunnar’s sawmill – interesting to hear. Some of the trees we planted 20 years ago are now big enough to use for some basic constructional purposes. I bought an entry-level Logosol chainsaw milling jig which I’ve not yet used, but hoping to soon. I’m planning to fell a couple of sweet chestnuts to use for a bike shed. I guess the big kerf of the chainsaw makes it suboptimal for milling wood at any scale, but the smallholding life is all about jack-of-all-trades compromises. We can use the shavings on the compost toilets, at least.
Finally, re the IHT debate, interesting points from Gunnar and Bruce. It’s tempting to wade deep into the debate, but I’ll leave it for another time. Probably the key point for me in Bruce’s comment is that the IHT exemption removal is part of the onward march of neoliberal economics. Therefore, it’s something I oppose – however much farmers or the rest of us have been complicit in that march. In policy terms, the key point for debate is whether the policy will end up putting more land in more hands, or more land in fewer hands. I think probably the latter, whereas what I want to see is the former.
Does farming hold a privileged position in our society? That’s an interesting one for future debate, and it links to my professional-managerial class point. Anyway, I take Bruce’s point – UK farmers are not leading the transformation toward the kind of society that’s needed. And nor are Guardian journalists projecting farm-free futures! It’s a long, hard climb.
I think some of the problem is linguistic – talking about farmers is too broad – perhaps landowners better catches the privilege I’m getting at – although even small farmers are landowners and I would argue that owning land is a privilege but its a different sort of privilege than that of the Duke of Westminster or Paul Dacre and their ilk. I do think the analogy of the inshore fleet and Brexit is useful – a large number of small boats making a precarious living behind which hid a small number of very large fishing businesses, many of them based outside the UK (they continue to have access to European ports to land their catch) but who owned far more UK quota than all the inshore fleet combined.
Does farming hold a privileged position in our society?
No, but landowning does.
Landowning farmers are, therefore, privileged to be able to farm. But that’s a bit like I’m privileged to be able to have an allotment! It wouldn’t be a particular privilege if we did something (or did more) about the scarcity of access to land for growing food.
The thing about this type of privilege is that it’s no good to say that people who have it shouldn’t desire to be treated fairly or to have their work recognised. Undervaluing the labour of farmers — or the contributions of people like me who have an allotment, for that matter, or the people who have enough money and spare time that they can do quite substantial voluntary work in their communities — doesn’t actually do anything to level the playing field.
And if we’re going to start talking about privilege: I have the immense privilege of having a roof over my head, and not needing to worry about whether I will be able to make rent, or pay things like utility bills. It wasn’t always so for me and I know a number of people who are not in such a privileged position. But poking me in the eye because I have somewhere to live won’t get housing to the people who don’t have it. Pointing out that I am privileged to have somewhere to live doesn’t change the fact that the housing I do have access to is in an area with significant air and noise pollution which have substantial adverse health effects, and really quite a bit smaller for three adults than is ideal. Pointing out that I’m privileged to have somewhere to live still doesn’t provide housing to someone who doesn’t have it.
So, sure, landowning farmers have some privileges that non-landowners do not. Fine. We should fix that. We don’t have to fix it by messing around with inheritance tax. We could fix it some other way, if there were political will and even a tiny bit of creative thinking. We could limit landholdings to 100 acres per person, or forbid corporations from owning freehold, or some other thing. (These suggestions are probably too radical for neoliberalism, and I’m not claiming they would have good knock-on effects: just that they would do more to address the root causes of the relative privilege of landowning farmers. Corporations would still try and slither around them but that’s a whole other rant.)
Chris,
Wishing you and your family a belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
My immediate thoughts on the farmers protest is surely if you cant pay the inheritance Tax on the family farm – under much more favourable terms than other beneficiaries of a will then the problem is that either you are not making enough from the business OR the valuation of the land and cost of your ‘inputs’ – machinery, fertilizer etc is completely unrealistic.
Thats what the farming lobby either cant or wont get its head round.
Then of course what they seem to want is a very ‘Third Reich’ set up with farming being a hereditary occupation so nobody who wasnt born into landowning can join in, and obsessing that their sons – because as I understand it the usual set up is one child, usually a son gets the lot becomes a farmer as opposed to a Doctor, Engineer, Teacher etc etc – it seems very controlling.
As Guy Watson Singh of Riverford who has passed his business on to his staff quite rightly pointed out the land he bought in France cost about a third of what land in the UK costs one of the reasons being that there are controls on who can buy agricultural land – perhaps thats a route the UK needs to go down.
John, it’s only the second day of Christmas, your greeting is not at all belated!
One for the writers out there this winter – I thought this deserved a plug (excuse the pun):
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2024/12/how-to-build-an-electrically-heated-table/
Happy New Year!
Dear Chris,
It’s my first comment here as I usually prefer to read than to write. I have read your first book and it has left a deep impression on me, shaping my economic and political views. I read your blogposts as well, which has become easier not to miss since you share them on Substack.
I am trained as an economist/social scientist, and I particularly like in your work that it is backed by a strong foundation both in social sciences and in the material world of living ecosystems, including how humans interact with them. I think it is quite rare to find this combination, I often miss one or the other in other writers’ work.
About the ghost from the past: personally I was always less interested in your arguments against manufactured food. It seems unlikely that manufactured food ever becomes a realistic large-scale option, so I always considered it as science fiction. But I understand that all this might look different from a richer, more developed country with proportionally less arable land, like the UK. On the other hand, I liked reading about cities, energy economies and renewables – technologies that are already existing and are fueling the hope of saving modernity – civilization 2.0 as you called it in in one of your writing.
Looking forward to read more about your new book!
Greetings and happy new year from Budapest, Hungary!
Greetings MS, from Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén megye!
Happy Xmas to one and all.
Chris.
SFF was a “game changer” for me. So much so, I had to read it twice to digest all. (Not something I do with most books)
Though an uncomfortable read, it has shaped the way I see the future. For that, I thank you.
I really enjoy the debates that are generated by your blogs/posts. Sometimes dipping my toe in and sometimes sitting back and contemplating the thoughts/ideas of others.
I find it a valuable space. I contemplate and express ideas that I don’t really share with anyone in “the real world”. It’s good to know there are people out there who share a broad understanding of what’s coming. Even if we don’t always agree on the details.
I for one, hope that you keep at it.
With keeping going in mind, I would be interested in reading more on your thoughts about small privately owned farms.
How you see inheritance/land distribution/sale etc playing out.
Or how it is done in other parts of the world. (Commune farms in Tsarist Russia, springs to mind)
I have a strange feeling that things economic/geopolitical/ may be coming to a head in 2025. (But then again, I thought the same about 2024 🙂 )
Kunster ‘ s end of year round up is worth a read .
As with everything owning or renting land has to make a return ,if only to keep you fed and pay the inevitable taxes , many small holders around where I used to live worked off their land to make enough to live on , subsidising their farming efforts , most of that land stands idle now growing weeds and rabbits , the house and buildings sold to comuters , land farmed to a thousand years going back to scrub and as the drains and ditches fail peat bog . Government policy has made it impossible to use it accept for the rabbit hunters .
Taking the incentive out of farming in general causes real problems , you only have to look at Cuba which is now importing sugar , the state owns the land and pays the workers less than its worth to turn up to work they grow enough for their own family and to hell with the rest of you, the same thing happened in the Soviet union they went from grain exporters under the Tzars to grain importers under the Soviets and back to exporters under the federation .
Farmers have to have a stake in the land they work or they do not bother and we all go hungry .
Thanks for further comments & kind remarks. Good to hear your voice here MS – thank you.
A couple of brief comments. First, good point from Kathryn about privilege – the fact that you have some of it doesn’t mean you’re not entitled to ask for fair treatment. I get that imposing limited inheritance tax on land worth millions doesn’t sound unfair to a lot of people who don’t know much about farming. But it is. (Note: this tax won’t affect me).
John B writes
“if you cant pay the inheritance Tax on the family farm … the problem is that either you are not making enough from the business OR the valuation of the land and cost of your ‘inputs’ – machinery, fertilizer etc is completely unrealistic. Thats what the farming lobby either cant or wont get its head round.”
IMO yes those two things indeed are the problem. Most farmers can get their head around them perfectly well, whereas the government and the public seem to struggle. It’s true that the main problem farmers face is high input costs and low food prices, not IHT, but if you slap on IHT without doing anything about the other things, it’s hardly surprising it sparks protest.
The IHT changes will do nothing to lower entry barriers to farming. Yes, you can impose controls on who buys farmland and thereby lower land prices – but that doesn’t lower entry barriers either, because of the controls.
Other ways of lowering entry barriers to consider: prevent corporations from owning any land. At all. Impose a maximum area of, say, 100 (lowland) acres that any individual landholder can own solely. Break up grocery retailers with more than, say, 0.01% market share. Impose a no-exemption carbon tax of, say, £20 per litre of diesel. And only after all that, impose inheritance tax on all land and housing transactions.
I’ll wait by the phone for Rachel Reeves to call.
Happy new year everyone
Those sound like perfectly sensible reforms to me. They would, of course, have far-reaching effects, and would be hideously unpopular.
Do you think we should approach such changes gradually, or rip the bandage off and see what happens?
A moot point, perhaps, unless Rachel Reeves does get in touch. But the whole point of having a state make changes to the way the economy functions is that we can change at a point and in a way which is at least partly possible to predict, leading to the possibility of mitigation for the worst effects. If we do nothing, we’re still going to get off fossil fuels, but we’ll have almost no control over how or when.
Happy New Year to you as well sir…
I like the idea of the carbon tax… but I think the rate of 20 pounds per liter (ok, litre…) is too high to start. Perhaps a go at a scheduled implementation plan might serve? A litre is such a small amount to begin, but as a common unit I’ll stay with you. So, how about 25p per litre to start. At the same stroke a goal is set to raise the tax at twice the level of inflation (if inflation is 2%, the tax increases at 4%). The adjustment goes into effect on the one year anniversary of the implementation.
I’ve seen a stat suggesting current UK arable cropland uses 107 liters of diesel per hectare. At your 20 pound rate this comes close to 220 pounds per hectare. Ouch. I see tractors on the streets of London.
Next, what to do with all the tax funds the government should realize. Non carbon based transportation infrastructure? At 170K square kilometers of farmland, and roughly 75 liters diesel per hectare (arable is as the top of the chart for usage, so 75 is a better overall guess) – the government might realize some real money.
For me the point is not to blow up the world, but to make more folks work to improve where we are.
Non carbon based transportation infrastructure?
Yes! Bicycle-friendly urban and (in the UK) inter-urban roads would be a splendid transitional thing to do. Can be implemented straightaway, dirt-cheap compared to motorways, would improve public health (mental as well as physical), all the theoretical work has been done already, people have been shouting about it for ages.
Cars were *such* a mistake.
Sweden has legislation since more than 100 years that prevent corporations from buying land. Although, before the legislation huge companies had bought up a lot of forest so that a quarter of the forests are company owned in Sweden. Much less so for ag land. However, the legislation also prevent all other forms of legal persons buying land, which is a bit sad as it blocks cooperative ownership or other communal ownership. Happy new year Chris et al.
The problem with farming and extractive industries is that there is two economies operating at the same time one works in a finite world where you can only get so many potatoes from a hectare or pounds of copper per tonne of ore whereas the financial system is that if you need more currency you print it out of thin air , finite resources versus infinite ” money ” . printing money causes inflation . look at the us penny , in 1950 the scrap value of a penny was 0.05 of said penny , today the same penny has a scrap value of 3.15 pennies , ( today’s newly minted penny is made from such base metals it is actually worth 0.9 pennies ) printing devalues money until it becomes worthless . ( so ends all fiat currencies ) inflation could easily push up the ” value ” of land to the point that the average suburban garden would fall foul of the tax .
Hi Chris,
I usually just lurk on your blog (I’ve commented exactly once recommending the book Retrosuburbia for those interested in the fate of the suburbs in a descent scenario). I’d like to pass on my well wishes to you and family and let you know that I find your writing immensely interesting and thought provoking. I’m not as sure as you about the implausibility or unattractiveness of high-tech/land sparing, but I appreciate you prosecuting your case. I’m a fence-sitter really, but have taken some precautions, limited as I’m not a landholder and very much an urbanite. Please keep sharing your thoughts and perspectives in the new year.
Following up briefly on further comments –
Clem – yes, I’m happy in principle with graduated implementation plans & trying not to blow up the world … although the changes have to be quite fast & radical if the world’s not to blow up anyway. The goal is for farmers to earn a living income, consumers to be able to afford food & fossil fuel use to dwindle away. There are some entrenched aspects of the political economy obstructing that, which the farm IHT proposals here don’t address.
Do you have a source for the 107l/ha figure? I’d be interested to take a look.
Kathryn (& also Clem) – Kathryn writes “the whole point of having a state make changes to the way the economy functions is that we can change at a point and in a way which is at least partly possible to predict, leading to the possibility of mitigation for the worst effects” I guess that’s so in principle, but alas I’ve come to reject the notion that modern states are able or willing to do that in practice to even the minimal degree necessary. Which in effect means I’ve come to reject the idea of tax (though not in an individualist-libertarian way). Nevertheless, some taxes are still better than others.
Diogenes – yes, exactly so
Nathan – thank you, and thanks for the Retrosuburbia recommendation. It’s a good book/resource.
Nick’s comment here is worth a look – https://chrissmaje.com/2024/11/newsflash-no-3-lights-in-a-dark-age/#comment-265020
Sadly I am also rather disillusioned with the idea that states are able (or willing) to wade in and sort any of this out.
As for tax… I personally haven’t ever earned enough money to actually pay income tax. I can’t say I recommend this strategy, but it does mean I’m less concerned about how much of my money is funding weapons. (I do still pay VAT on some purchases.)
Are there any states that do successfully protect small-scale farmers from the competition of global markets? If so, how And how is that working out? Even a relatively miserable example might have a lot to teach the rest of us about how to proceed.
There’s this article about China….. https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202303/03/WS6401341aa31057c47ebb1daf.html#:~:text=WANG%20MENGJIAO/FOR%20CHINA%20DAILY,for%20stable%20growth%20and%20employment.
Interesting, thanks — and it’s good to see it acknowledged that smallholder farmers produce so much of the world’s food!
I do have questions though:
– is the increase in average income for smallholder farmers due to being protected from global markets, or due to being more integrated with and therefore exposed to them? Are these smallholder farmers merely producing more cash crops, and less food for their own use or direct trade with neighbours?
– are the technological improvements locking farmers into higher costs for inputs like seed, fertiliser and tools which would previously have been produced more locally? My feeling is that very often technological development of this kind leaves farmers better off on paper but more dependent on inputs they don’t control, leaving them open to price shocks later, which then opens the door to consolidation of smaller farms into larger ones.
– how much of this development and technology consists of things like drilling ever-deeper wells for irrigation or bringing into use previously “waste” ground? These improvements can seem like advances, and in some contexts they are, but deeper wells can also mean more severe water shortages for nearby farms that don’t have the ability to drill so far, and clearing fallow or waste land (that has been traditionally managed extensively but may look “wild”) in order to carry out intensive agriculture reduces wildlife habitat and lowers the ecological resilience of an area, as well as reducing the availability of wild and foraged foods to supplement local diets.
China is enormous with pretty diverse ecological characteristics, and I don’t have an in-depth knowledge of traditional agricultural practice — I’m sure it isn’t all the stereotypical rice paddies and tea plantations that spring to mind. The sheer size does make it difficult to write a single short article about agricultural changes that really gives any idea what’s happening at ground level. Things like micro drip irrigation and small scale solar can be game changers, but in the article these are mentioned with relation to IFAD’s involvement in Rwanda and Ethiopia, not China, which is perhaps interesting in and of itself. Setting up better communication networks for the purposes of studying and communicating best practices also sounds great but if those “best practices” are communicated in a top-down rather than horizontal manner, and happen to align with the interests of large corporations, I am, at best, skeptical. My own experience is that even a few miles can have profound microclimate effects, such that my timings and techniques for my back garden are different from those for the churchyard or my allotment, and calculated dates for first and last frosts are much less useful to me than observing local conditions alongside short-term weather forecasts to decide when to sow.
Based on this article, with its emphasis on growth measured in currency, I can’t really tell whether what’s going on is closer to support for small farms, or a form of stealth enclosure. All it really has going for it is that it doesn’t say that small farms are better consolidated into larger ones, and it doesn’t say that diversity is less productive than a narrow focus on cash crops. If those omissions reflect the reality on the ground, and if the development and assistance on offer is actually context sensitive, then perhaps China is mostly getting this right.
Kathryn asked, “Are there any states that do successfully protect small-scale farmers from the competition of global markets?”
Japan might be a good example, as a small-farm nation (with an average farm size of 3 hectares) and current policies aiming to increase the country’s food self-sufficiency.
In 1960, when Tokyo’s population was around 17 million, and Japan’s total population was 94 million, Japan was largely self-sufficient with its food production!
“In 1960, Japan covered most of its domestic consumption by itself – the rate was 102 percent for rice, 100 percent for fruits and vegetables, and 91 percent for meats.”
thediplomat dot com/2022/05/japans-food-self-sufficiency-debate-overlooks-the-core-problem/
(Japan’s population is now 123 million, but the population is currently decreasing by at least a half million per year.)
An interesting study from 2021 gives some data about urban farming in Tokyo, where there are 6,000 farmers and 14 farmers cooperatives. 63% of the farms in Tokyo are smaller than 0.5 hectare. More than half of the farms in the study were in areas of Tokyo having a population density at least as high as in Central London (around 11,000 people/km2 for Central London, while the average for London is less than 6,000 people/km2).
For the Tokyo farms in the sample, direct marketing was the most popular sales approach, with farm gate sales being the top approach (mostly *unmanned* sales), closely followed by farmers’ markets. (In Tokyo, there exists 1 farmer’s market for every 9 farmers, on average.) Other channels such as sales to school meals or sales to restaurants were common as a secondary option.
The study concluded that the most important resilience attributes were direct marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, and social networks.
More details are quoted below from the study, in my next comment.
Long-Term Development of Urban Agriculture: Resilience and Sustainability of Farmers Facing the Covid-19 Pandemic in Japan
by Shingo Yoshida and Hironori Yagi
Sustainability 2021, 13(8), 4316; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13084316
“…using data from a survey of 74 farms located in Tokyo… the [total] number of farmers in Tokyo is 6023. Although the sample size is relatively small, the answers cover farmers from 10 of the 14 farmers’ cooperatives in Tokyo.”
“…100% of public schools in Tokyo and 82% of private schools in Japan shut down during this [pandemic] period. Urban farmers seemed to suffer from the decreasing demand for school meals, because 95% of elementary schools and junior high schools in Tokyo were using local agricultural products for school meals.”
“…in the Tokyo metropolitan area, more than 50% of ploughed fields and rice paddies are located within 2 and 3 km from densely inhabited districts (DID), respectively.”
“Figure 4. Percentages of [Tokyo] farms by farmland size. Note: a (are) = 102 m2. “Tokyo” is a total farm population in Tokyo from the Census of Agriculture and Forestry in 2015.
less than 30a [0.3 ha] 16.3%
less than 50a [0.5 ha] 46.6%
less than 100a [1.0 ha] 80.6%
less than 200a [2.0 ha] 96.1%”
“Figure 5. Percentages of [Tokyo] farms by farm sales in 2019.
[converted to approximate round number of British pounds (GBP)]
No sales — 11%
100,000 GBP — 2%”
“Figure 6 shows the population density at which each [Tokyo sample] farm is located… the [average] population density of Tokyo is 6168 persons/km2…”
[For comparison, “London has a population density of 5,640 people per km2, which is 15 times higher than the rest of England. Central London has the highest density (11,144 people per km2), followed by East London (6,184 people per km2).” -Trust for London]
“Figure 6. Percentages of farms by population density.
Less than 2,000 persons/km2 — 11% of Tokyo farms in sample
2,000-5,000 persons/km2 — 11%
5,000-10,000 persons/km2 — 23%
10,000-15,000 persons/km2 — 30%
>15,000 persons/km2 — 26%”
“Figure 7 and Figure 8 show the rate of farms by the first largest marketing channel (1st channel) and the second largest marketing channel (2nd channel), respectively. Figure 7 illustrates that as the 1st channel, 28.4% of the samples choose farmers’ markets, and 32.5% choose farm gate sales (manned [12.2%] or unmanned [20.3%]). This means that direct marketing is the most popular diversification strategy for sample farms. Conversely, 24.4% sell their products to mass marketing channels (wholesale market and sales to retailers). As seen in Figure 8, although direct marketing channels are still popular, other diverse channels such as sales to school meals or sales to restaurants are common as the 2nd channel.”
“The Census of Agriculture and Forestry indicates that the rate of direct-marketing farms in Tokyo (55%) is much higher than that in Japan (17%); in addition, the average annual sales of the farmers’ market in Tokyo (2.86 million yen [approx. 15,000 GBP]) and the number of farmers’ market per farmer (0.11) ranks top in the nation.”
[0.11 farmers’ markets per farmer = 1 farmers’ market for every 9 farmers.]
“Conclusions… the most important resilience attributes were direct marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, and social networks.”
Some parts were missing from a quote above.
“Figure 5. Percentages of [Tokyo] farms by farm sales in 2019.
[converted to approximate round number of British pounds (GBP)]
No sales — 11%
less than 2,500 GBP — 23%
2,500-5,000 GBP — 16%
5,100-10,000 GBP — 16%
10,100-15,000 GBP — 10%
15,100-25,000 GBP — 10%
26,000-50,000 GBP — 9%
51,000-100,000 GBP — 3%
over 100,000 GBP — 2%”
Interesting, thanks!
Thanks Steve – I particularly like the idea (and success) of the unmanned farm gate sales.
Hello Chris,
I read widely on environment, history and alternative agriculture and I consider you my top author and recommend your writing to anyone who will listen. I chanced upon “A small farm” and found the whole thing brilliant, not actually what I was expecting (I think I was probably expecting a whole book on the content of chapter 11), but the whole thing so coherently put together. I disagreed with the line taken in much of “Regenesis” and then you wrote a book to match it. I’d never read a blog until I recently started reading yours (I’ve not read everything but I do look back at older essays when I have the time.) I always find your analysis and the comments of your regular readers incisive. I am looking forward to reading your next book.
Hope your having a great Christmas and Happy New Year. My family have been joking about a drinking game involving every time I mention A Small Farm future, so.
I agree with Kim and Kathryn and Steve L and many others here, the unique quality of your voice and the breadth of your research is unmatched, with dry west country humour to boot!
Just quickly, I can only see the enclosures going in one direction so we’re gonna have to be smart and a little bit sneaky. What are all the legal trust structures and shell companies for?
It is important to think through what will work, if and when an opportunity arises, and this is solid part of the SFF project.
For the managerial professional class – the symbolic capitalists ( – as the ‘we were never woke’ author has it) and though I feel a deep antipathy toward this class, possible proto fascists as they are, Inheritors of aristocratic values of apartheid they may be, changing that corrupted mind is a futile task. Better (we) thinks to make the real work to be done irresistibly fun, sexy and cool. We can swathe the path to a small farm future and the foundations of local agrarianism in the phantasmagoric, glittering robes of ecomodernism. I know, I am only half joking. Whatever the MPC rewilders say, there is always a regen farm involved, so let’s not fight the corner – let’s be the farm.
We don’t know why they are so crazy about it – we just want to farm well for the benefit of all. Is that not the shtick, to benefit all, feed the world?
You are making it look good, believe me. Keep on keeping on.
Hmm; entryism does have some potential as a strategy! I don’t think it can be the only one, though.
Happy New year to all and good luck with the book Chris.
If any SFF/CS fan club members are attending the Oxford Real Farming Conference and fancy a natter over a coffee or glass of local ale pls shout!
I didn’t read all the comments, because some go on for pages and much is on the UK situation and I’m in the US, but you asked for comments…I often comment when your stuff appears on Resilience (also reviewed your books there) but I don’t know whether you look at the comments there. The thing that drew my attention in this post is the how central is the astonishing ignorance about food providence. It seems a fair proportion of the public, even adults, think food comes from supermarkets. I once read a novel set in North Carolina after an EMP blast took down civilization for a year. The author’s intention was to get people worried about EMP so we would “harden” more things, but the two things in the story that struck me, in what was otherwise apparently well-informed depiction were that people ran around stinking because there was no electricity so they couldn’t heat water to bathe. First, you can build a wood fire, secondly, if you haven’t bathed in two or three weeks, you’d go for a cold water bath. The other was that about seven or eight months in, the people running the locality made a deal with the surrounding farms, to supply labor in exchange for guaranteed food. Really, other things are higher priorities than food for over half a year? But I think a lot of people think that way. If they imagine breakdown, they worry about how they’d charge their cellphone or dry their hair or get gas for their car, not how they’d get food. They also tend to look down on farmers if they ever think about farmers at all.
I’ve gotten a lot of good info from an outfit called Real Organic Project, which certified farms for an add-on organic label because USDA’s Organic Standards Board has become so corrupted by lobbyists–so now hydroponic fruits and CAFO animals can be labeled organic. They put out a video clip once a week from the conference they put on annually, and these are usually interesting and informative.
I’m still catching up,
first- to your question- it’s all worth it. You are one of the lights in a dark age. There are plenty of other sites that are discussing the collapse, ( where I undoubtedly spend too much time) and typically with gnashing of teeth and/or grand pronouncements of top down policy solutions, but you are a light shining at nitty gritty, practical responses, realistic pathways toward self reliance of self provisioning. Supercedure.
Oh, it’s happened in the past, dozens of empires have done the cycle, but this one will be a doozy.
second- The holidays have passed, 2024 is past, and here in the U.S., 2025 is even more bat sh*t crazy than last year. I won’t even go there. Point being, all signs indicate the system is broken and floundering. So it goes. Finish that book.
Taxes and policy are different here, but the same. Problematic access to land, policies forcing farms to get bigger in desperate attempts to survive, and the corrosive force of profit seeking without guardrails all play out similarly here. As the end of fossil energy slowly unwinds, the specifics are uncertain, but the general direction is ineluctable.
Butler’s parable- yes, every once in a while, a dark read like that is like a good slap in the face to remind me to not get too relaxed in my comfy farmstead. Plant more trees.
Other’s have mentioned your unique background of scholarly chops blended with grimy handed real world experience, which keeps your analysis mostly free of ivory tower syndrome. I appreciate your efforts to describe the needed blending of both the physical, biological realities of living on the land, and the human psychological/sociological challenge of organizing ourselves in ways that (in theory anyway) give us a chance for a least bad future.
BTW- some great comments here.
Chris,
Thanks for your work here, I truly appreciate it.
I know I’m late here, but winter always seems to force me into a gloomy and morbid sort of introspection, and only lately I have tried to emerge to do anything and reconnect.
I hope you can forgive for not contributing a tip at the moment. I am currently staring down the rather expensive prospective of trying to find a way to (legally) live on our farmland, preferably in a house if it can be helped. Housing prices even out here on the plains have basically doubled since 2020 and as a consequence so have construction costs (though of course feedback loops, the financial system and materials all come into play). On the one hand I feel like it’s not sustainable to really build anything new, on the other hand if we are to have a SFF someone has to build more widely distributed shelter. I did however buy SFF and will almost certainly reflexively buy your next book as I seem to be unable to reduce our budget for books and I hope that’s enough.
One thing I have been trying to do lately is try and distinguish between farmers and landlords. I despise the term hobby farm, because it’s still work even if you can’t make a living at it! But I think we could do with a framework to try and sort out farmers who own their land but still do the work of farming as opposed to the sorts of farmers who just own the land but aren’t connected to the production. I’m not sure this a doable proposition but I think it would help the public debate significantly. Even then though, a lot of “big boy” farmers who do own their own land are tied up in production contracts and equipment leases and still might as well be tenants of Cargil, et al which from my perspective is really how the corporate control comes into the food system without owning the land itself.
As for the managerial classes, well if you aren’t in them good luck getting paid enough to ever own even the tiniest scrap of land. Even if you are in them though it’s still almost impossible to acquire enough capital to farm though that’s partly a result of over inflated land prices. Basically, you’re just going to get paid to have nicer versions of the consumer toys then the rest of the working class. I would also like to highlight the distinction in white collar work between workers and the managers as another commenter pointed out. From my perspective on the engineering side, we would like to do work to make things better or at least be more creative and try things we find interesting regardless of results, but are often at odds with managers who don’t want change or just don’t have any ideas.