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I’ve been blogging about farming, ecology and politics since 2012. I welcome well-tempered discussion. Please note that if you’re a new commenter, or if you include a lot of links, your comment will go into the moderation queue before publication. I sometimes miss comments in the queue so feel free to nudge me via the Contact Form if your comment fails to appear.
Posted on September 2, 2025 | 23 Comments
With the publication of my new book Finding Lights in a Dark Age fast approaching but not yet arrived, I’m at that awkward stage in an author’s journey with a book where it’s too late to change anything in it, but it’s not yet left the nest and made its own way in the world. Already, I’m visited too often by an internal monologue along the lines of “should have included that, shouldn’t have said that, should have said that better”. Something I like about writing books rather than, say, blog posts is their fixed and tangible material presence in …
Continue readingPosted on August 15, 2025 | 49 Comments
The year moves through its seasons, and so does the farm over longer cycles. In recent days, I’ve been stepping off the veranda and plucking greengages, figs and apples from the surrounding trees for my breakfasts. I have my petty gripes, but I’ve got to admit that my life is about as close to Eden as any mortal sinner could reasonably expect. Meanwhile, in a part of the world closer to the setting of that biblical paradise, other people are going through something more like hell. My last post about my trip to the Glastonbury Festival left hanging some questions …
Continue readingPosted on August 4, 2025 | 19 Comments
I was invited to give a couple of talks at the Speaker’s Forum in the Glastonbury Festival in June, which I’ve just reprised at the Green Gathering this weekend. In this post, I’m going to tell some stories loosely about my trip to Glastonbury, focusing less on the talks and more on the trip. There’s a chapter in my forthcoming book in which a narrator living in a crisis-ridden fictional future walks from London to Glastonbury, so when it came to speaking at the festival I felt I had no option but to stick with that storyline and walk there. …
Continue readingPosted on July 28, 2025 | 57 Comments
I mentioned in my previous post the recent kerfuffle about animal agriculture and climate change associated with the work of Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop (see this podcast and this paper). I also mentioned that I’m kinda done with getting into the details of all these ‘here’s my one weird trick to save the world’ approaches. But various people have asked me to explain further why I find Wedderburn-Bisshop’s position problematic. So … oh well, here goes. See, this is exactly my problem. You’re not helping. (For those on the other hand who’ve already had their fill of this issue, do just skip …
Continue readingPosted on July 21, 2025 | 26 Comments
The end of June is usually an exciting time for me. Summer holidays approaching? No, it’s when the Energy Institute publishes its annual Statistical Review of World Energy. Who doesn’t love a big fat spreadsheet landing in their downloads folder to analyse to their heart’s content? The answer to that, of course, is a good many. And, in the case of the EI energy data, I have to confess I’m on a path to joining them, because I’ve found my excitement diminishing. The main reason is because the figures tell the same darned story year after year. Despite endless talk …
Continue readingPosted on July 12, 2025 | 13 Comments
Happy news if you’re bored of me trailing my new book – I’m shortly going to hand over to a much valued long-term commenter here at Small Farm Future, Eric Farnsworth, so that he can trail his instead. But, lest you fear my powers of self-promotion are waning, let me also draw your attention in passing to this TBLI podcast I recently did with Robert Rubinstein. Also, before we get to Eric’s book, I just want to thank commenters for the multiple discussions under my clown and two romances post. Apologies I didn’t have the time to respond much. Just …
Continue readingPosted on July 8, 2025 | 6 Comments
I’ve been putting the finishing touches to my book Finding Lights in a Dark Age with the help of the wonderful folks at Chelsea Green (sorry for the consequent silence here), and it’s now going into production. The book is available to preorder from Barnes and Noble here. Rewards members (it’s free to sign up online) get 25% discount and premium members get a further 10% off. Post-civilizational projections at a civilized price! Use PREORDER25 at checkout. Now all that’s out of the way, I’m hoping to find the time to get back to writing some new posts here soon. …
Continue readingPosted on June 23, 2025 | 58 Comments
A commenter under my last post wrote ‘all eyes on Gaza from now on’. I’m not sure exactly what he meant, but recent world events suggest that all eyes also need to be on Washington, DC as well as Tehran and Jerusalem. Probably Moscow, Kyiv, Beijing and the Straits of Hormuz as well. It’s hard to keep your eyes on all these places all at the same time. And, even if you do, there’s very little impact you can have on the decisions that are made in and about them. In fact, I’d argue that giving our attention to the …
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