{"id":3498842,"date":"2023-10-27T16:44:50","date_gmt":"2023-10-27T16:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3498842"},"modified":"2023-11-15T08:36:45","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T08:36:45","slug":"chris-smaje-vs-george-monbiot-and-the-debate-on-the-future-of-farming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2023-10-27\/chris-smaje-vs-george-monbiot-and-the-debate-on-the-future-of-farming\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Smaje Vs. George Monbiot and the Debate on the Future of Farming"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since 2015 <em>Resilience<\/em> has been publishing articles by Chris Smaje. Chris writes eloquently about a variety of sustainability-oriented topics, including critiques of what you might call \u201chigh-energy modernity\u201d and forays into political economy, but his specialty is the role of small organic farms in a future that is more energetically and materially constrained. The subtitle of his book, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chelseagreen.com\/product\/a-small-farm-future\/\"><em>A Small Farm Future<\/em><\/a>, sums up his aim quite well: \u201cMaking the case for a society built around local economies, self-provisioning agricultural diversity, and a shared Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In \u201cmaking the case,\u201d Chris has criticized George Monbiot\u2019s take on livestock farming and artificial meat. The debate first materialized in print six years ago when George wrote an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2017\/oct\/04\/livestock-farming-artificial-meat-industry-animals\">article that appeared in <em>The Guardian<\/em><\/a>, and Chris wrote a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2017-10-11\/saving-george-monbiot\/\">critical response<\/a> that appeared on his blog and in <em>Resilience<\/em>. In his article, George argued that the rise of cheap artificial meat should signal the end of all types of livestock farming, including that practiced by small organic farmers. In his response, Chris expressed surprise at George\u2019s conclusions and argued that there\u2019s a valid role for livestock to play on ecologically sound farms.<\/p>\n<p>Their debate has since expanded into a larger quarrel over how to feed a growing human population, at a time when we\u2019re experiencing worsening trends in soil depletion, chemical pollution, water scarcity, weather chaos, concentration of financial power, widening gaps between the rich and the poor, and other disconcerting environmental and social conditions. George wrote a book called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/645538\/regenesis-by-george-monbiot\/\"><em>Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet<\/em><\/a>, that came out in 2022 and calls for an overhaul of global farming, including investment in artificial meat to free up grazing land. Chris\u2019s book, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chelseagreen.com\/product\/saying-no-to-a-farm-free-future\/\"><em>Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future<\/em><\/a>, came out this summer and directly challenges George\u2019s proposals for the future of food. Following publication of his book, Chris wrote numerous articles that we have published in <em>Resilience<\/em> that continue to criticize high-tech industrially manufactured food while supporting low-input agrarian localism.<\/p>\n<p>On October 4<sup>th<\/sup>, George posted to his blog an article titled \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.monbiot.com\/2023\/10\/04\/the-cruel-fantasies-of-well-fed-people\/\">The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People<\/a>\u201d that pushed back, and he reached out to <em>Resilience<\/em> to ask us if we would publish it. Although <em>Resilience<\/em> does not claim to be an unbiased journal,* we are often willing to publish opposing points of view, and we support dialog and debate on critical issues. But in this case, the editorial team decided not to publish it because (1) we felt like George made too many leaps in ascribing beliefs to Chris that misrepresent his position, (2) we thought George crossed a line in attacking Chris, and (3) there\u2019s a power imbalance between these two writers; George has far more reach and influence. On October 23, Chris wrote a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2023-10-23\/new-worlds-to-build\/\">point-by-point response<\/a> in <em>Resilience<\/em> to George\u2019s \u201cCruel Fantasies\u201d article, and George asked us a second time to publish his. <em>The Ecologist<\/em> reposted George\u2019s article on October 6<sup>th<\/sup> and didn&#8217;t publish Chris\u2019s follow-up. <em>(Ed. note: The Ecologist has now published an alternative short response from Chris. You can find it <a href=\"https:\/\/theecologist.org\/2023\/nov\/13\/peasant-food-web\">here<\/a>.)<\/em> All this back and forth has led me to write the chronology and analysis you\u2019re reading now.<\/p>\n<p>Based on their bodies of writing, it appears that Chris and George share many underlying values, want many of the same things for people and nature, and would agree on premises such as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Everyone deserves access to adequate nutritious food.<\/li>\n<li>Agriculture, as it\u2019s widely practiced today, is unsustainable, polluting, and wreaking havoc on soil, waterways, and habitats.<\/li>\n<li>We need to find ways of feeding ourselves (and conducting all manner of other human affairs) that are congruent with nature\u2019s limits, avoid undermining the life-support systems of the planet, and allow other species to thrive.<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s better to prepare for tough times than to react after you\u2019re mired in them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A commenter (Joe Clarkson) on Chris\u2019s Oct 23<sup>rd<\/sup> article hit the nail on the head in characterizing the rift. It\u2019s not about why humanity is in a bind, and it\u2019s not about whether we need to make massive changes to get out of the bind\u2014it\u2019s about <em>how<\/em> we might be able to get out of the bind. Clarkson says about cities, \u201cThere will just not be enough energy to maintain them and to keep food and other resources going into them. This puts everyone who lives in a city, and many others too, at risk for starvation and death. Smaje offers re-ruralization as a risk-reducing step and Monbiot offers a hypothetical synthetic food system.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Like Clarkson, <em>Resilience<\/em> is more aligned with Chris\u2019s view. <em>Resilience<\/em> and Post Carbon Institute (my employer and the parent organization of <em>Resilience<\/em>) have become a hub for articles and reports that wrestle with how society can function in a pro-social, environmentally sound way after the fossil fuel bonanza subsides. Our take is that we will have to power down, derive most of our energy from daily flows of solar energy, and relocalize production, including in the food sector, which will mean a reversal of the modern trend of urbanization. A few years ago, we even produced, edited, and distributed Jason Bradford\u2019s report <a href=\"https:\/\/www.postcarbon.org\/publications\/the-future-is-rural\/\"><em>The Future Is Rural: Food System Adaptations to the Great Simplification<\/em><\/a>. We are hoping for a rapid transition of agriculture to small organic farms that employ lots of people who produce enough food for everyone to thrive, all while working with nature to support habitat and biodiversity. This vision seems more practical and likely to succeed than a system that relies on high-tech, high-energy manufacturing of synthetic food, and more consistent with what\u2019s required in other aspects of modern society.<\/p>\n<p>While I\u2019m addressing the issue of vision, as it applies to feeding people and the future of farming, I want to share something I recently learned from Elizabeth Sawin, the founder and director of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.multisolving.org\/\">Multisolving Institute<\/a>. Beth is an advisor to Post Carbon Institute, and we recently invited her to talk with our staff about the visioning practices she uses when working with students and other people confronting global warming and related environmental issues. She explained that people tend to develop their worldviews, behaviors, and actions based on simple rules. For example, if the simple rule in a corporate boardroom is \u201cwe must earn profits,\u201d then the executives who run that corporation will see profit-making as a good thing, and they will act accordingly to ensure that they cut costs and earn lots of revenues. Beth further explained that, regarding how people treat nature and one another, there\u2019s a battle between two worldviews, each based on simple rules. The first worldview, which is the one that put humanity in a precarious position of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.press.uillinois.edu\/books\/?id=p009884\">overshoot<\/a>, is based on the simple rules of extraction, gaining power over, and domination. The second, which is an ecological worldview, is based on the simple rules of mutuality, being part of, and webs of relationships. When considering a vision for the future, it\u2019s important to assess which of these two sets of simple rules that vision follows. I invite you to take a look at what George and Chris are proposing and see where you land.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, I want to report that this was the least fun article I\u2019ve written since, well, I can\u2019t remember. My problem is that I have great respect for both George Monbiot and Chris Smaje. I hate to see these two deeply concerned environmentalists attacking one another. Having read their latest articles, I understand that their main beef (livestock or synthetic \u2013 sorry, I couldn\u2019t resist) is with one another\u2019s ideas. But I also sensed hurt and defensiveness behind their words. We need constructive debates about food and farming so that we can find the best ideas for addressing the desperate business at hand: figuring out how to live healthily on a healthy planet.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>*It says right there on the website that \u201cResilience.org aims to support building community resilience in a world of multiple emerging challenges: the decline of cheap energy, the depletion of critical resources like water, complex environmental crises like climate change and biodiversity loss, and the social and economic issues which are linked to these.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We need constructive debates about food and farming so that we can find the best ideas for addressing the desperate business at hand: figuring out how to live healthily on a healthy planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3498866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79718,79719,213531],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3498842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-foodwater","category-food-water-featured"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3498842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3498842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3498842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3498866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3498842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3498842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3498842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}