ffinlo Costain talks to Chris Smaje about his new book, Saying NO to a farm-free future.
Smaje’s response to George Monbiot’s Regenesis is a well-mannered treatise that outlines coolly and specifically why the Guardian columnist’s prescription for the food system is just completely wrong.
Smaje, an academic, farmer and author of A Small Farm Future, is one of the few voices to publicly challenge Monbiot on the future of food and farming (and the restoration of nature). Responding to Monbiot’s portrayal of an urban, high-energy, industrially manufactured food future as the answer to our current crises, and its unchallenged acceptance within the environmental discourse, Smaje was compelled to challenge Monbiot’s evidence and conclusions. At the same time, Smaje presents his powerful counterargument – a low-carbon agrarian localism that puts power in the hands of local communities, not high-tech corporates.
Saying NO to a farm-free future is a defence of agroecological, small-scale farming and a robust critique of an industrialized future, and is released in the UK on the 28th of June.