Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future: The Case For an Ecological Food System and Against Manufactured Foods

by Chris Smaje, Sarah Langford (Foreword)

“ Everyone in the food business needs to read this book. . . . [A] lively and superbly written polemic.”―Joel Salatin, co-founder of Polyface Farm A defense of agroecological, small-scale farming and a robust critique of an industrialized future. One of the few voices to challenge The Guardian 's George Monbiot on the future of food and farming (and the restoration of nature) is academic, farmer and author of A Small Farm Future Chris Smaje. In Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future , Smaje presents his defense of small-scale farming and a robust critique of Monbiot’s vision for an urban and industrialized future. 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. In the ongoing fight for our food future, this book will help you to understand the difference between a congenial, ecological living and a dystopian, factory-centered existence. A must-read! "Chris Smaje has laid down an indictment – as unremitting as it is undeniable – that cuts through the jargon-filled, techno-worshipping agricultural futurists who promise silver-bullet fixes for having your cake and eating it too. This brilliant and compelling book is at once hopeful and persuasive about the future of food."―Dan Barber, chef at Blue Hill and author of  The Third Plate

Genres: Nonfiction, Food, Society, Agriculture

208 pages, Paperback

Published June 29, 2023

Reviews

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I appreciate that this book won't be for everyone, because it's not an introduction, it's a polemical pamphlet response (in the best sense) for people already involved in the discussion. Should everyone actually be involved in the discussion of humanity's survival? Yup. And yet...if this book appeals to you but you need more context, I strongly encourage you to pick up Chris Smaje's 2020 book, Small Farm Future (I reviewed it on here last year). That book is quite possibly the most 3-D discussion of what could we actually do now with what is actually available now, what might matter, what might be the social implications of respecting material limits, what could we retain or resuscitate from the past and what might we shrug off, what is life for? It is both material and philosophical, driven by humanity, history, experience, and data. It's awesome.

Chris Smaje is very nearly the only person I'm aware of, to the extent that I know him, who I feel represents me (as well as informs and inspires me) in public. I am personally living through a moment of extreme alienation from institutions and figures both with respect to war and with respect to "ecomodernist" or tech bro solutions to the intertwined crises we face. In the same way that it will not matter how many supposedly low-carbon energy sources we identify or how many COP galas we have, so long as we continue to drill and burn fossil fuels, we're fucked. Likewise, it will not matter how many "humanitarian pauses" or scant humanitarian aid deliveries happen in genocidal wars if the underlying issue of settler-colonialism of isn't meaningfully dealt with.

Keep it in the ground! and
End apartheid!

While I am ordinarily all for nuance, I have come to see how a false nuance promulgated by propaganda distracts people (because it's complicated! it's boring! it's intractable! it's hard! it's inevitable! etc) from the two truths above. I hope to update this review if I am ever able to think straight again. In the meantime, write on Chris.

[Brae · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just TERRIFIC.
So many previous disparate thoughts spoken to, connected, and expanded in one place.
A tight 150 pages that was very nourishing of both the mind and spirit.

Definitely a book I’ll be buying for, and pushing into the arms of, my friends into the future.

[Roger Morgan-Grenville · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rare 5 from me on this. It's quite specialised, but if you are interested in the reality of where your food comes from and the best land management options, and if you aren't convinced by the dash for vat-fermented food, then this is for you. Brave, well-argued and not too long!

[Emilie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A timely and important polemic against Monbiot’s Regenisis tackling both physical limitations of PV panels and intellectual oversights. Smaje asks why, with an emphasis on the detrimental effects of the Global Standard Diet and Global Standard Farm, there is no concept of Global Standard Consumer and its political construction. He is singularly critical of Monbiot’s proposed disjunction between man and land. “Cities,” he writes, “have become entropic black holes drawing in energy and matter from all over the ecosphere ( and returning all of it in degraded form back to the ecosphere ).” Yet, I’m not convinced of how well Smaje’s own vision exports to the rest of the world. It seems both texts, though diametrically opposed, will be critical in formulating the future of agriculture.

[Gavin · Rating 5 out of 5]

6/5 This book sums up what it's taken me decades to learn, having personally taken the long way through ecomodernism to come out on the other side.

It took me many years to learn what Smaje summarizes in this book. I went through the stage of believing the linear cultural paradigm of progress and development and solar-powered EVs and star trek. Gradually, I realized that indigenous voices matter, that the foundation of an equitable society is the involvement of everyone in providing for their family's basic needs starting with love and food, that we are all harmed by extractive capitalism, that people are not extricable from nature, that leaves and fire are much more impressive technologies than PV panels and microwaves, and much more.

[Duncan Hobbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favourite work of Smaje's out of the three I've read so far, it does an excellent job at:
- calling into question the viability of a precision-fermentation-based food system (not yet responded to by Monbiot, arguably the most central part of his land-sparing agenda in Regenesis)
- noting the complexity of the issues with the current food system, and in particular how its issues are driven by cheap fossil fuels and extremely powerful agribusinesses
- making the case for why agrarian localism seems like a more likely, and perhaps even more hopeful outcome. With the caveat that any meaningful deviation from our current course seems... unlikely

Monbiot's response[1] is worth reading, not least because of how poor a rebuttal it is to Smaje's attacks on his central claims around the potential for the food system to be reformed. After reading "Saying NO" in conversation with Monbiot's response, I can't help but feel that the cruel fantasy of well-fed people is in fact the idea that everyone can be fed a diet as varied as Monbiot's via the means he advocates, without destroying the world in the process.

Reading Regenesis, I came out focused on reducing meat consumption. Reading this, I have been reminded that we just have to stop fucking burning fossil fuels - and that our ability to meaningfully do this is dependent on our independence from the systems which force us to even when it goes against our values.

Agrarian localism, if it can be achieved, gives us a basis from which to demand change in the world with something that might begin to approach real leverage - because we have the option of opting out from the most destructive elements of the fossil-fueled world economy.

[1] https://www.monbiot.com/2023/10/04/th...

[J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent counter-pouch to the eco-modernist agenda that is promising to solve all our problems with a techno-utopian future. If you want a vision of a decentralized agrarian localism that can reshape our response to our ecological and social crises, this is worth sinking your teeth into.

[Elliot Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A valuable contribution to the agroecology / life sciences dichotomy raised by food studies scholars over the past two decades. I make reference to Lang & Heasman’s ‘Food Wars’ as base literature. This book decidedly airs on the side of the agroecologists, promoting a ‘new agrarian’ form of development, and heavily leans into the war framework.

The book is written in a critical and often argumentative tone, and covers topics such as precision fermentation, the urban rural divide, and the ‘global standard diet’.

It appears that the current progression of urbanisation globally, as well as dietary homogenisation and agricultural intensification, make the realisation of the agrarian future Smaje envisages increasingly remote and unlikely.