Move over, Thanos. The genocidal monster of the Marvel Universe can’t
hold a candle to the likes of Old MacDonald, who had a farm. “Farming,” says
environmental activist George Monbiot, “is the most destructive human
activity ever to have blighted the Earth.”
In his latest book, Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the
Planet, Monbiot persuasively makes the case that land use, in particular the
way we farm, is the most important of all environmental questions, the issue
that will determine whether Earth systems survive or perish. “Farming is the
world’s greatest cause of habitat destruction, the greatest cause of the
global loss of wildlife, and the greatest cause of the global extinction
crisis.”
Strong stuff, but Monbiot backs up his stark warning with an impressive, if
not downright daunting, array of data. The farming quote above is supported
by no less than seven footnotes. So if you’re averse to citations, gird
yourself, though if you’re looking for fresh facts to win any argument about
the need to change the way we eat and the way the world makes food, this
deeply researched book is your meal ticket. Gardeners will especially enjoy
the opening chapter, an engrossing account of the ground underneath our
feet, the source of 99 percent of the calories we consume. “The soil might
be the most complex of all living systems. Yet we treat it like dirt,”
Monbiot writes. You know you’re making an important contribution to
ecological literature when Bill McKibben, the scholarly author of The End of
Nature, says “I learned something on every page.”
Thankfully, all is not dark in Monbiot’s worldview. After scaring the
E-I-E-I-O out of you in the first half of the book, in the second half he
presents a series of fascinating case studies about innovators who are
striving to find workable, equitable solutions to the overlapping problems
caused by modern agriculture.
In profiling the farmers and scientists who seek to transform food and how
we grow it, Monbiot admirably refrains from portraying any as providing the
ultimate solution. And to be fair, Monbiot does not see farmers as
supervillains but more like victims–of outmoded conventional wisdom, of
misguided government policies, of inhumane corporate interests.
Monbiot, the author of several bestselling books and creator of top TED
talks and viral videos (one, on natural climate solutions co-presented with
Greta Thunberg, has been viewed more than 60 million times), reserves his
harshest criticism for those who do see easy fixes where there are none. He
chides locavores for failing to recognize that it’s better all around to
grow some food, such as soy, far away and to ship it to where it’s needed,
for instance. He’s scornful of the pastoralists who promote an “escapist”
fantasy of livestock farming. “This will come as a shock to many: there
might be no more damaging farm product than organic, pasture-fed beef.”
Writing of the popular TV shows in his native UK, he says, “there’s probably
more money being made in this country by talking about sheep farming than
doing it.”
A vegan, Monbiot says it would be ideal if there was a planetary shift to a
diet based on beans, lentils and nuts, supplemented by locally grown fruit,
vegetables and herbs. But to feed 10 billion people without destroying the
planet, he cheers on the researchers developing perennial grains, the
farmers growing crops without fertilizers and pesticides and, most
crucially, the scientists creating entirely new, “farmfree” foods. Most
promising among them is a protein powder made by fermenting bacteria.
Monbiot makes a pancake from this microbial protein, and proclaims it “the
beginning of the end of most agriculture.”
It’s Monbiot’s hope that this “greener revolution” will end the livestock
farming and slaughterhouse industries, restore soil health and free up vast
tracts of land for climate-change mitigation and the rewilding of species
big and small on every continent. “The age of Extinction could be succeeded
by the age of Regenesis.”
That should be the hope of us all.
To allow human beings and the rest of life on Earth to flourish, we should:
George Monbiot is an author, Guardian columnist and environmental campaigner. His best-selling books include Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life and Heat: How To Stop the Planet Burning; Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis. George cowrote the concept album Breaking the Spell of Loneliness with musician Ewan McLennan, and has made a number of viral videos. One of them, adapted from his 2013 TED talk, How Wolves Change Rivers, has been viewed on YouTube over 40 million times. Another, on Natural Climate Solutions, which he co-presented with Greta Thunberg, has been watched over 60 million times.
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