Author of Finding Lights in a Dark Age, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future and A Small Farm Future
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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 August 7, 2023 | 82 Comments
I mentioned in my last post that I think we’re heading into new arenas of class conflict with the unfolding polycrisis, conflicts that threaten the chance of finding a way out via agrarian localism or a small farm future. I’m going to explore some of these arenas of class conflict in this and the next couple of posts. I should probably be blogging instead about my new book Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future, but I’ll get to it soon and ultimately I think this class dimension is relevant. Still, if you’re spoiling for a bit more action in the …
Continue readingPosted 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. …
Continue readingPosted on July 17, 2023 | 92 Comments
Before I wade into blogging about my new book Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future, I’d like to take a step back and try to characterize some of the broader political contours that have now put me in a different camp to George Monbiot, the main antagonist in my book, despite our similar starting point on what some people would no doubt characterize as the ‘far left’. One strand of that left-wing starting point emerges out of Marxism and the history of Marxist regimes, with a strong influence on the left beyond those who explicitly identify as Marxist. It emphasizes …
Continue readingPosted on July 10, 2023 | 39 Comments
I’ll be in discussion with Vandana Shiva about ‘The War on Farming’ at an event in London next Tuesday. Come along if you can. Should be an interesting conversation. There’s certainly plenty to talk about, because it does seem to me there’s quite a concerted media effort underway to point the finger at farmers and farming as the culprits for climate change and biodiversity loss. I’ll write something about the biodiversity side of it another time. Regarding climate, the issue of ruminant methane emissions sucks the air out of more important questions, such as transitioning to low-energy agrarian localism. When …
Continue readingPosted on July 6, 2023 | 24 Comments
I’m guessing that few people the world over will have failed to notice the big-ticket news items last week – most importantly, the official launch of my new book Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future at the Groundswell Festival in Hertfordshire, and secondly the release of the 2022 global energy figures by the unironically named Energy Institute. Okay, so I’m joking about the newsworthiness of my book. But last I looked it was riding high in the Amazon charts, at No.1 in its Soil Science category (?), No.2 in nanotechnology (??), and No.5 in distribution management, whatever that is. Vindication. …
Continue readingPosted on June 26, 2023 | 33 Comments
UK publication day is nigh for my new book Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future: The Case for an Ecological Food System and Against Manufactured Foods. I’ll be blogging about it here over the next couple of months and as ever welcome constructive debate. I’m unlikely to be debating it on Twitter, because I find it a terrible platform for meaningful discussion, so if you’re landing here from Twitter this post is where to place your comments about the book. Unless it’s about a specific issue that I’ll deal with in a later post, I’ll do my best to reply …
Continue readingPosted on June 17, 2023 | 14 Comments
Time for a quick update on climate protest from your correspondent somewhere quite a long way behind the frontline, but still closer than you’ll read in the average news report. Then I’m going to bring it all back home before relating it to the present concerns of this blog around my book Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future. So for starters, I’ve got to say that the British government has played a blinder in containing and derailing climate protest in these isles. If only it had displayed the same level of competence in, like, every single other area of …
Continue readingPosted on June 11, 2023 | 60 Comments
Mostly some news items and a bit of housekeeping in this post, rather than any substantive topic, before getting back to business next time. First, in relation to my poll about a possible trip to the USA, the crude data fell out this way – 1st place: Go, with qualifications 2nd place: Just go 3rd place: Just don’t go And the result, after some data smoothing and correction (including my instinctive tendency to favour the underdog) is that I’m not going to go. I won’t bore you with the details of my decision-making process, except to say that one factor …
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