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A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity, and a Shared Earth
In a groundbreaking debut, farmer and social scientist Chris Smaje argues that organising society around small-scale farming offers the soundest, sanest and most reasonable response to climate change and other crises of civilisation--and will yield humanity's best chance at survival.
Drawing on a vast range of sources from across a multitude of disciplines, A Small Farm Future analyses the complex forces that make societal change inevitable; explains how low-carbon, locally self-reliant agrarian communities can empower us to successfully confront these changes head on; and explores the pathways for delivering this vision politically.
Challenging both conventional wisdom and utopian blueprints, A Small Farm Future offers rigorous original analysis of wicked problems and hidden opportunities in a way that illuminates the path toward functional local economies, effective self-provisioning, agricultural diversity and a shared earth.
Drawing on a vast range of sources from across a multitude of disciplines, A Small Farm Future analyses the complex forces that make societal change inevitable; explains how low-carbon, locally self-reliant agrarian communities can empower us to successfully confront these changes head on; and explores the pathways for delivering this vision politically.
Challenging both conventional wisdom and utopian blueprints, A Small Farm Future offers rigorous original analysis of wicked problems and hidden opportunities in a way that illuminates the path toward functional local economies, effective self-provisioning, agricultural diversity and a shared earth.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published June 26, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
January 2, 2021
Chris Smaje has a vision for the future.
That is not what makes his book “A Small Farm Future” remarkable. There are many of us with our visions for the future. What makes Smaje's vision and this book remarkable is that in addition to his academic training as a social scientist, he keeps his feet in the real world as a small-scale farmer.
While Smaje may be too polite to say it this way, it makes him an adept bullshit detector. Which is perhaps the most important skill when dealing with ideas about the future.
The book takes a stab at our ongoing and deepening predicament. Smaje labels ten crises, from Population, Climate and Energy, to Political Economy and Culture. That is in Part I of the book. Everyone who is paying attention is aware of the problems on some level, but it is good to have the facts laid out in front of us. It doesn't take Smaje long to identify capitalism as a major contributor to our predicament. But this is not a screed, he knows that it is complicated. Smaje writes:
“ … it's reasonable to say that the societies most of us live in today are capitalist societies, but it doesn't follow that everything those societies do is capitalist.”
An obvious example he cites is the role of government regulation for the benefit of public health.
Smaje is trying to get an honest measure of the problems we face, and search for what we can do in response. He has the maturity to recognize that 'solutions' are unlikely, but that there are strategies that can make our way forward less bad. But first we must have a realistic sense of where we are – where to start. Thus a discussion of Modernity, which could be roughly summarized as a narrative of the absence of limitation - the societal sense of progress and endless possibility. Though the Modernism story is largely about 'Freedom', what actually happens is that a modern society gets larger, more complicated, and individual people's daily work gets more specialized. So much that the resource consumption fueling the whole gets hidden, and progress looks simple, easy. The environmental and resource depletion costs get outsourced far enough that the 'Modern' people manage to ignore them. They enjoy that ignorance. But as a consequence we get:
“... large numbers of people with a lot of money in their pockets to draw down global resources but no capacity to restore the resource stocks they're depleting through their work, as – for example – farmers can.”
And so we begin our introduction to A Small Farm Future as a remedy for that alienation. It seems that one of the first responses to a small farm future is to declare that we don't want to go back to being peasants. Of course this mostly means that we don't want to work that hard. Smaje says that there are ways forward, and we don't need to go back. Which is good, because we can't go back. But that still leaves the problem of all the hard work somebody is going to need to do. So Smaje asks us to:
“... now imagine your own utopia … without … some subordinate category of human or machine labor to furnish you with the necessities of life like food and fibre.”
Good question. And it turns the tables to us to come up with something better than peasantry, if we can.
The trouble I see though, is that we have become so alienated from the actual work that provides for us that almost nobody has any idea what it takes to produce all the food and fiber that we need. Some of us make an effort to do some of our own provisioning, but nearly all of we Westerners retain the luxury of not needing to succeed at it. Most of our needs are met by the magic of money.
Mercifully, Smaje doesn't belabor this by detailing all the tasks that are currently performed by fossil fuel or underpaid overseas workers. That detailed list is left to us, and I hope some of us attempt it.
This brings us to the question at the core of the book:
“... can we build congenial modern societies on an ecologically sustainable local agrarian base?”
Clearly, Smaje think we can, but more than that, he goes on to discuss how we might go about it. And he is thorough, covering such topics as the carrying capacity of the land, politics small & large, small farm market economy, and the philosophical underpinnings that we can and must change in order to have a future.
Smaje is not putting forth a manifesto, or promoting some technological miracle. Nor is he claiming to have all the answers.
It is funny, but it seems easier to say what this book is not than what it is. I think this is because it is so incredibly rare to see an honest assessment of where we are in our current predicament together with a practical sense for how to get through it. Surely this is more of a comment on our present times than on “A Small Farm Future”.
This book will not make you slam down your laptop and run downtown to break some windows. Nor will it likely cause you to quit your job and move to the country. Not this week, anyway.
Those impulsive acts are probably not very helpful in the long term anyway. But Smaje's vision and narrative are strong enough that I am hoping they will help many of us free our imaginations from the dead-end system that we are now stuck in. Such that we turn toward the living world that provides for us, and to our neighbors with whom we can build a more human community.
This is the way forward, and Smaje has a lot to offer for the trek.
That is not what makes his book “A Small Farm Future” remarkable. There are many of us with our visions for the future. What makes Smaje's vision and this book remarkable is that in addition to his academic training as a social scientist, he keeps his feet in the real world as a small-scale farmer.
While Smaje may be too polite to say it this way, it makes him an adept bullshit detector. Which is perhaps the most important skill when dealing with ideas about the future.
The book takes a stab at our ongoing and deepening predicament. Smaje labels ten crises, from Population, Climate and Energy, to Political Economy and Culture. That is in Part I of the book. Everyone who is paying attention is aware of the problems on some level, but it is good to have the facts laid out in front of us. It doesn't take Smaje long to identify capitalism as a major contributor to our predicament. But this is not a screed, he knows that it is complicated. Smaje writes:
“ … it's reasonable to say that the societies most of us live in today are capitalist societies, but it doesn't follow that everything those societies do is capitalist.”
An obvious example he cites is the role of government regulation for the benefit of public health.
Smaje is trying to get an honest measure of the problems we face, and search for what we can do in response. He has the maturity to recognize that 'solutions' are unlikely, but that there are strategies that can make our way forward less bad. But first we must have a realistic sense of where we are – where to start. Thus a discussion of Modernity, which could be roughly summarized as a narrative of the absence of limitation - the societal sense of progress and endless possibility. Though the Modernism story is largely about 'Freedom', what actually happens is that a modern society gets larger, more complicated, and individual people's daily work gets more specialized. So much that the resource consumption fueling the whole gets hidden, and progress looks simple, easy. The environmental and resource depletion costs get outsourced far enough that the 'Modern' people manage to ignore them. They enjoy that ignorance. But as a consequence we get:
“... large numbers of people with a lot of money in their pockets to draw down global resources but no capacity to restore the resource stocks they're depleting through their work, as – for example – farmers can.”
And so we begin our introduction to A Small Farm Future as a remedy for that alienation. It seems that one of the first responses to a small farm future is to declare that we don't want to go back to being peasants. Of course this mostly means that we don't want to work that hard. Smaje says that there are ways forward, and we don't need to go back. Which is good, because we can't go back. But that still leaves the problem of all the hard work somebody is going to need to do. So Smaje asks us to:
“... now imagine your own utopia … without … some subordinate category of human or machine labor to furnish you with the necessities of life like food and fibre.”
Good question. And it turns the tables to us to come up with something better than peasantry, if we can.
The trouble I see though, is that we have become so alienated from the actual work that provides for us that almost nobody has any idea what it takes to produce all the food and fiber that we need. Some of us make an effort to do some of our own provisioning, but nearly all of we Westerners retain the luxury of not needing to succeed at it. Most of our needs are met by the magic of money.
Mercifully, Smaje doesn't belabor this by detailing all the tasks that are currently performed by fossil fuel or underpaid overseas workers. That detailed list is left to us, and I hope some of us attempt it.
This brings us to the question at the core of the book:
“... can we build congenial modern societies on an ecologically sustainable local agrarian base?”
Clearly, Smaje think we can, but more than that, he goes on to discuss how we might go about it. And he is thorough, covering such topics as the carrying capacity of the land, politics small & large, small farm market economy, and the philosophical underpinnings that we can and must change in order to have a future.
Smaje is not putting forth a manifesto, or promoting some technological miracle. Nor is he claiming to have all the answers.
It is funny, but it seems easier to say what this book is not than what it is. I think this is because it is so incredibly rare to see an honest assessment of where we are in our current predicament together with a practical sense for how to get through it. Surely this is more of a comment on our present times than on “A Small Farm Future”.
This book will not make you slam down your laptop and run downtown to break some windows. Nor will it likely cause you to quit your job and move to the country. Not this week, anyway.
Those impulsive acts are probably not very helpful in the long term anyway. But Smaje's vision and narrative are strong enough that I am hoping they will help many of us free our imaginations from the dead-end system that we are now stuck in. Such that we turn toward the living world that provides for us, and to our neighbors with whom we can build a more human community.
This is the way forward, and Smaje has a lot to offer for the trek.
October 27, 2020
This book is a brilliant contribution to the politics of environmentalism and political economy.
Smaje offers a compelling and realistic alternative to policy which is based off incrementalist change to the system that is directly causing the 10 crises he mentions in the start of the book.
He deconstructed the qualities between progress and primitive instead suggesting pragmatic as the way forward. Arguing that a carry on as normal approach to the climate and biodiversity crises but use technology to solve the problem is not realistic as technology has trade offs and much of the required technology hasn't been invented yet.
As someone who works in international development I will be recommending this book to my colleagues.
Smaje offers a compelling and realistic alternative to policy which is based off incrementalist change to the system that is directly causing the 10 crises he mentions in the start of the book.
He deconstructed the qualities between progress and primitive instead suggesting pragmatic as the way forward. Arguing that a carry on as normal approach to the climate and biodiversity crises but use technology to solve the problem is not realistic as technology has trade offs and much of the required technology hasn't been invented yet.
As someone who works in international development I will be recommending this book to my colleagues.
April 11, 2022
Definitely a game-changer! Chris Smaje not only points toward a future of increasing local resiliency and freeholder cultivation, but sketches out the nutritional breakdown of such a world too (relax, there is still room for hamburgers)! The first section of the book is a crash course in how such small farms operate, essential to understanding a world built upon such decentralized production. I found his treatment of livestock to be both fair and counterintuitive, at least to my modern ears: rather than being raised primarily for food en masse, livestock are used more efficiently in small numbers as farmhands, recycling nutrients and tapping food sources that would otherwise go unused. The hypothetical land use profile he creates for Britain is again as creative as it is inspiring, making space for all sorts of agricultural arrangements of varying geographic and labor intensity, from suburban backyard operations to traditional grazing pastureland. (Thankfully, he also accounts for rewilded lands too). Really can't say enough about this book and the cascade of thought-provoking premises it endorses, and on a personal note, the author graciously responded to my many questions within a day!
May 20, 2024
Chris outlines why and how a small farm future would work. Used the UK as a case study. Makes a compelling case that small farms are the future, where humanity spreads out and “skims” the earth’s cycles.
Will try to remember to add a few quotes in here later
Will try to remember to add a few quotes in here later
February 18, 2021
Ever wondered whether there is anyone asking seriously whether we need to look for alternatives to global capitalism? Not many dare to really consider with an open mind whether another way is possible as they are often dismissed as naive and unrealistic. In view of the multitude of seemingly insoluble problems humanity is currently facing (Climate Change, Biodiversity loss, etc etc), many linked to the rise of global capitalism, Chris Smaje asks whether the realistic path would be to start planning for fundamental system change, as change is coming anyway. He explores what challenges might lie in store if we were to move towards a world where small scale, labour intensive, productive and environmentally friendly farms were commonplace, supplying many of our essential needs as locally as possible. He doesn't claim to have the answers, but examines the challenges beautifully. The book is more about moving the debate forward than offering simple answers.
October 9, 2021
This book really surprised me. It's easy to believe it is only about farming, but no this book is so much more. Everything is interlinked. A Small Farm Future analyses the complex forces that make societal change inevitable; explains how low-carbon, locally self-reliant agrarian communities can empower us to successfully confront these changes head-on; and explores the pathways for delivering this vision politically. I had a very interesting conversation with Chris Smaje on my podcast Inside Ideas, you can find episode 136 here: https://youtu.be/yRap1GsfcT8
Or follow any of the links below:
https://www.innovatorsmag.com/is-this...
https://medium.com/inside-ideas/chris...
Or follow any of the links below:
https://www.innovatorsmag.com/is-this...
https://medium.com/inside-ideas/chris...
August 26, 2020
Wildly ... Imaginative... Reasoning, Close Yet Still Incorrect Conclusion. Most any math teacher (even former ones like myself) have stories of situations where when told to "show their work", a student somehow has so-incorrect-as-to-nearly-be-incomprehensible reasoning, but somehow still manages to wind up at an answer that is close but still not quite correct. Maybe a decimal point in the wrong position, but the right actual digits in the right sequence, for example. Another example relevant here would be a space mission to explore Jupiter's moon Europa that somehow launches when Jupiter is at its furthest point from Earth and launches away from Jupiter (or any reasonable path to the planet) to boot... and yet still manages to wind up on Callisto - another of the Galilean Moons of Jupiter with similar properties, though not the originally intended target and not as rich in desired attributes for the science aboard the mission.
This is effectively what Smaje has done here. More conservative readers may not make it even halfway into the first chapter, which is little more than a *very* thinly veiled anti-capitalist diatribe. Even more liberal/ progressive readers will have some tough pills to swallow with Smaje's ardent defense of at least some forms of private property as the chief means of achieving his goals. And at the end, Smaje does in fact manage to do at least some version of what he sets out to do - make some level of a case for A Small Farm Future. The case Smaje makes here is indeed intriguing, despite being so deeply flawed, and absolutely worthy of further examination and discussion. It seems that he is simply too blinded by his own political and philosophical backgrounds to truly make the case as it arguably should have been made. Recommended.
This is effectively what Smaje has done here. More conservative readers may not make it even halfway into the first chapter, which is little more than a *very* thinly veiled anti-capitalist diatribe. Even more liberal/ progressive readers will have some tough pills to swallow with Smaje's ardent defense of at least some forms of private property as the chief means of achieving his goals. And at the end, Smaje does in fact manage to do at least some version of what he sets out to do - make some level of a case for A Small Farm Future. The case Smaje makes here is indeed intriguing, despite being so deeply flawed, and absolutely worthy of further examination and discussion. It seems that he is simply too blinded by his own political and philosophical backgrounds to truly make the case as it arguably should have been made. Recommended.
February 16, 2021
Despite being heavy on the doom-and-gloom, Smaje gives a fair amount of hopeful flourishes, making this book a satisfying read. A Small Farm Future offers a surprising amount of optimism despite how much prevailing systems are not only showing their cracks—made more pronounced by the COVID pandemic—but showing strong signs of their potential collapse.
The book is dense, but Smaje offers a well-balanced accounting of what the book's subtitle suggests. He is neither utopian about the future, nor is he romantic about the past. He acknowledges the many trade-offs we face but presents a way forward as crises are likely to force our hand. Our current systems are geared against much of what A Small Farm Future values and proposes, which is why its realization hinges on the more than reasonable chance that the collapse of those systems will soon require us to foster more locally-based economies that are much closer to the earth.
The collapse of global systems as they're now constructed is not a guarantee. However, they are pushing the earth beyond its ecological and moral limits. Whether the type of collapse Smaje suggests actually arrives in the way he thinks it might, I sense that most people will be in a better position regardless if they shift toward a small-holding, land-owning future that is oriented around permacultural practices and local communities.
The book is dense, but Smaje offers a well-balanced accounting of what the book's subtitle suggests. He is neither utopian about the future, nor is he romantic about the past. He acknowledges the many trade-offs we face but presents a way forward as crises are likely to force our hand. Our current systems are geared against much of what A Small Farm Future values and proposes, which is why its realization hinges on the more than reasonable chance that the collapse of those systems will soon require us to foster more locally-based economies that are much closer to the earth.
The collapse of global systems as they're now constructed is not a guarantee. However, they are pushing the earth beyond its ecological and moral limits. Whether the type of collapse Smaje suggests actually arrives in the way he thinks it might, I sense that most people will be in a better position regardless if they shift toward a small-holding, land-owning future that is oriented around permacultural practices and local communities.
December 15, 2020
This is not just a book about farms and farming, although it does discuss those subjects. It is an attempt to provide a positive vision of a possible future society, and this is certainly something we desperately need. The sub-title makes clear the general outlines of what Smaje has in mind.
This is a lucidly-written, well-researched and cogently-argued book. Its subject-matter demands that it be wide-ranging, and it is; a brief review such as this can scarcely hope to do it justice. I rarely say this, but I would like it to have been longer. I’m thinking particularly of Chapter 16, “From Religion to Science (and Back)”, which could be a book in itself. If Smaje were to write it, I’d certainly want to read it.
On the back cover, Richard Heinberg is quoted as saying: “Every young person should read this book.” I would go further: everyone under the age of 100 should read this book. To put it another way, I would recommend it to anyone looking for an appealing and practicable vision of the future, at a time when most of those available are one but not the other. As he writes (p. 215): "Times of crisis and rapid change often call forth prophets to supply new stories." Smaje modestly disclaims this title. Read this, and judge for yourself.
This is a lucidly-written, well-researched and cogently-argued book. Its subject-matter demands that it be wide-ranging, and it is; a brief review such as this can scarcely hope to do it justice. I rarely say this, but I would like it to have been longer. I’m thinking particularly of Chapter 16, “From Religion to Science (and Back)”, which could be a book in itself. If Smaje were to write it, I’d certainly want to read it.
On the back cover, Richard Heinberg is quoted as saying: “Every young person should read this book.” I would go further: everyone under the age of 100 should read this book. To put it another way, I would recommend it to anyone looking for an appealing and practicable vision of the future, at a time when most of those available are one but not the other. As he writes (p. 215): "Times of crisis and rapid change often call forth prophets to supply new stories." Smaje modestly disclaims this title. Read this, and judge for yourself.
October 21, 2020
This book was a joy to read, both for the compelling vision it lays out and for the depth and incisiveness of its critiques of the present and the competing pathways to solving its crises.
As a politics and sustainability graduate with a master's in economics - and now a full-time market gardener - I was expecting to be fairly well-versed in the likely arguments made in the book. However Chris's ability to build up clear arguments across disciplines, to present thoroughly researched data and historical records, to anticipate questions and critiques in the text, and to frame issues and concepts in new and enlightening ways meant that I was learning, thinking and understanding more with each chapter.
For me his uniting of the compelling, practical, tangible and autonomous work on a small farm with the broader social, economic, political, climate and food crises is incredibly important - for everyone - offering new ways of seeing and responding in the face of the coming challenges.
As a politics and sustainability graduate with a master's in economics - and now a full-time market gardener - I was expecting to be fairly well-versed in the likely arguments made in the book. However Chris's ability to build up clear arguments across disciplines, to present thoroughly researched data and historical records, to anticipate questions and critiques in the text, and to frame issues and concepts in new and enlightening ways meant that I was learning, thinking and understanding more with each chapter.
For me his uniting of the compelling, practical, tangible and autonomous work on a small farm with the broader social, economic, political, climate and food crises is incredibly important - for everyone - offering new ways of seeing and responding in the face of the coming challenges.
May 30, 2021
As someone deeply interested in sustainable food systems and agriculture, I was really looking forward to this read. Unfortunately, it fell short of expectations. It was a chore to read. I’m not sure who Smaje wrote this book for—the writing style is so scholarly and filled with convoluted sentences (and not to mention typos) that it’s almost as if he only wanted his words to resonate with a very niche academic audience. Feels like a waste for a book with such revolutionary ideas. Probably enjoyable for professors or those who really like reading long research papers.
August 28, 2020
Great vision and something to consider in anyone’s approach to environmentalism moving forwards.
August 25, 2023
In parts very astute, describing the problems that face future agriculture and how free market capitalism has forced farmers into a fossil fuelled monoculture revolving around grain and meat, leading to poverty, food insecurity, global warming etc., all in the name of progress. In other parts somewhat under-argued with sweeping statements, especially regarding political organisations which might allow for the world he envisages to exist.
August 27, 2020
Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.
A Small Farm Future is an expository essay in several parts making a case for a fundamental paradigm shift toward self-sufficiency, local economy, and responsible resource allocation and use. Due out 21st Oct 2020 from Chelsea Green Publishing, it's 320 pages and will be available in paperback format.
This is a well written and thorough examination of the current paradigm for food production, resource use, transportation and global interdependency. The introduction includes some background and the genesis of the book along with a cautionary tale about the nature of consumerism told through the parable of the civet cat and the manufacture and trade in kopi luwak coffee.
The first section covers the problems challenging modern civilization: population, climate, energy, soil, water, land, health/nutrition, politics, and culture. The author writes persuasively and confidently, and I found myself nodding along at several places. The only problem is that much (most) of this book feels like "preaching to the choir". For the people who are liberal, compassionate, dreamers, and who want peace love life and prosperity for everyman, this is resounding truth, obvious and undeniable. For the people who are Ayn Rand economic darwinists (altruism = *bad*, unfettered self-interest = *good*) they'll either pop an aneurysm by page 23 or else throw away/burn the book and bury the ashes with a barrowload of garlic at a crossroads somewhere - they're not likely to be swayed from what they believe and they'll continue consuming at a breakneck pace until the inevitable collapse.
That being said, there is quite a lot of information here. There are templates and theoretical gardens for different uses and niches in the locally driven society. The author continues building the thought-picture with the ideas of how these local farms could entertwine to build up local communities which could better withstand the coming contraction from the unsustainable system we are living in currently.
In a number of ways, his writing reminds me of a whimsical cross between Thoreau and John Seymour. For people longing for a better way, this book does have the ring of truth. For people saying "we can't afford that"... they're not likely to be swayed. I think the ideas are important and anyone who is paying any kind of attention sees that as a species we're sailing directly for the rocks, and we have to do something, but I'm not sure how much practical application can be found in this book. It can start the important conversations though, and that's worthwhile.
Four stars. Recommended for self sufficiency readers, smallholders, politicians, sociology readers, and the like. The book includes copious notes and an extensive bibliography and will be a rich source to mine for further information. There's also a cross-referenced index.
Four stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
A Small Farm Future is an expository essay in several parts making a case for a fundamental paradigm shift toward self-sufficiency, local economy, and responsible resource allocation and use. Due out 21st Oct 2020 from Chelsea Green Publishing, it's 320 pages and will be available in paperback format.
This is a well written and thorough examination of the current paradigm for food production, resource use, transportation and global interdependency. The introduction includes some background and the genesis of the book along with a cautionary tale about the nature of consumerism told through the parable of the civet cat and the manufacture and trade in kopi luwak coffee.
The first section covers the problems challenging modern civilization: population, climate, energy, soil, water, land, health/nutrition, politics, and culture. The author writes persuasively and confidently, and I found myself nodding along at several places. The only problem is that much (most) of this book feels like "preaching to the choir". For the people who are liberal, compassionate, dreamers, and who want peace love life and prosperity for everyman, this is resounding truth, obvious and undeniable. For the people who are Ayn Rand economic darwinists (altruism = *bad*, unfettered self-interest = *good*) they'll either pop an aneurysm by page 23 or else throw away/burn the book and bury the ashes with a barrowload of garlic at a crossroads somewhere - they're not likely to be swayed from what they believe and they'll continue consuming at a breakneck pace until the inevitable collapse.
That being said, there is quite a lot of information here. There are templates and theoretical gardens for different uses and niches in the locally driven society. The author continues building the thought-picture with the ideas of how these local farms could entertwine to build up local communities which could better withstand the coming contraction from the unsustainable system we are living in currently.
In a number of ways, his writing reminds me of a whimsical cross between Thoreau and John Seymour. For people longing for a better way, this book does have the ring of truth. For people saying "we can't afford that"... they're not likely to be swayed. I think the ideas are important and anyone who is paying any kind of attention sees that as a species we're sailing directly for the rocks, and we have to do something, but I'm not sure how much practical application can be found in this book. It can start the important conversations though, and that's worthwhile.
Four stars. Recommended for self sufficiency readers, smallholders, politicians, sociology readers, and the like. The book includes copious notes and an extensive bibliography and will be a rich source to mine for further information. There's also a cross-referenced index.
Four stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
September 14, 2021
3.5 stars: Would’ve benefited from a ruthless editor (the phrase “small farm future” alone appears 127 times) and a deeper engagement with Marxist scholarship on agriculture and political solutions to the problems he deals with. I appreciate his skepticism, but he mostly presents caricatures or else the worst examples of people who have called themselves Marxist. I vibe with this book on many levels, though, and recommend it to anyone interested.
August 10, 2024
This book has a whole lot of interesting ideas and research and proposes a path or vision of the future. Although some of the arguments are specious and no real path to his future is given the amount of good information still makes this book worth the time and effort it takes to read it thoughtfully. In the end it doesn't seem likely that he current power base will turn over land and control to individuals or that a consensus of the public will make this happen. While politics should follow his reasoning, it clearly doesn't and isn't likely to change and relinquish control.
Want to read
November 7, 2020Excerpt:
Here.
The palm civet is a small omnivorous mammal of Indonesia and other parts of tropical Asia. Emerging from its forest home onto coffee plantations, it’s able to sense the finest coffee fruits of perfect ripeness. Eating them, it digests the pulp and excretes the beans, adding a musky scent to them from its anal glands.
In the 1990s, Indonesian kopi luwak – civet coffee, made from coffee beans that had passed through a civet’s digestive tract – became a new luxury commodity among wealthy coffee-lovers. Market dynamics being what they are, local producers cashed in on the demand by capturing and caging wild civets, force-feeding them coffee beans and selling the produce as cut-price kopi luwak. Though cheaper, the resulting coffee lacked the quality of the original conferred by the civet’s discerning nose, and came at the expense of ecological and animal welfare (1).
We live in a world of trade-offs. If you want genuine kopi luwak of good quality and low environmental impact you have to pay someone to comb through the forests looking for wild civet scat on your behalf. Humans can simulate the process and produce a similar product at lower cost, but it’s not the same.
It may sometimes be possible to find genuine trade-off free, win-win improvements. But with most things, including kopi luwak, and with agriculture in general, there are trade-offs. Improve on price and you lower animal welfare. Increase the yield and you also increase human labour, fossil fuels, or downstream pollution. And so on. Whether the cost of an improvement is worth its price is a value judgement that different people will weigh differently. But not everyone’s voice is heard, especially when the costs are offloaded onto the future.
In our bid to provide cheap food to our human multitudes, the trade-off is that a lot of people end up eating shit – figuratively and, as we’ve just seen, sometimes literally. But our culture is drawn to a narrative of constant progress – a narrative that compels us to avert our attention from this possibility raised by the economist Thomas Sowell: there are no ‘solutions,’ only trade-offs.
There are different ways of dealing with troublesome trade-offs or, in the words of futurologist Peter Frase, of ‘loving our monsters’. If human actions are driving pollinators to extinction, Frase suggests we ‘deepen our engagement with nature’ by developing robotic pseudo-bees to do the job instead. I won’t dwell here on how fanciful that is, but I will suggest a wholly different ‘monster’ we could choose to love if we so wished: an agriculture that doesn’t use poisons that kill bees, and instead favours more complex biological interventions, including more human labour. We could learn to love the immediate work in acting on the natural world as much as the mediated work of developing machines to do it. And we could also love the limits to action imposed by nature as much as we love to transcend them.
An obstacle to that kind of love is the narrative of progress I mentioned. Adopting low-tech, labour-intensive approaches to solving a problem or meeting a need, rather than high-tech, labour-substituting approaches is considered regressive, a nostalgic turning back of the clock, as if a historical ratchet prevents us from doing anything in the future that looks like things we did in the past. Actually, there is a ratchet that works like this – the capitalist political economy. The mistake we often make is to suppose that this ratchet is some implacable force of nature rather than just a particular way of organising society, itself with a history that may someday end.
These two monsters of overcoming versus restraint are becoming as significant a divide in contemporary politics as old schisms between right and left. Thomas Sowell distinguished between what he called ‘constrained’ and ‘unconstrained’ visions of human well-being, the former emphasising the optimisation of trade-offs within relatively immobile constraints, the latter emphasising perfectibility through the overcoming of constraints. The former is usually associated, like Sowell himself, with conservative thought. It encompasses a popular notion of capitalism as market exchange, the sum of innumerable transactions with no higher purpose or guiding hand emerging from the bounded rationality of people acting in their own immediate here and now. The unconstrained vision has usually been associated with the political left and its ideas of remoulding people to work collectively, achieving new goals and great things.
But these certainties are now dissolving. The neoliberal turn in global capitalism invests the hive mind of ‘the market’ itself with a kind of limit-busting, self-perfecting intelligence that brooks no opposition to any constraints human reason tries to put around it. And various strands of unconstrained leftism sign themselves up to this programme, becoming almost indistinguishable from the capitalism they supposedly reject. Witness books with titles like Fully Automated Luxury Communism or The People’s Republic of Walmart: How the World’s Biggest Corporations Are Laying the Foundation for Socialism.
In this emerging political landscape, conservatives inclined towards the constrained vision are discovering that there’s nothing especially constrained or conservative about corporate capitalism, while those on the left like me, unpersuaded by either corporate capitalism or attempts to tame it with glib left-wing versions of global industrialised plenty, are discovering a need to reappraise the idea of constraint and aspects of conservative politics informed by it. If we’re to bequeath a habitable and abundant planet to our descendants, a key part of that reappraisal involves rethinking the relevance of small farm or ‘peasant’ societies that are often dismissed for their ‘backwardness’ or buried under an unusable legacy of romanticism and nostalgia.
For these reasons, we need to consider some questions that modern political traditions have scarcely equipped us to answer with subtlety, or even to ask. What if the route out of widespread farming towards urban-industrial prosperity that today’s rich countries followed is no longer feasible for millions of poor people in ‘developing’ countries? What if that urban-industrial life in fact becomes increasingly unfeasible even in the rich countries in the face of various political, economic and ecological crises? How might the future of humanity then unfold?
Here.
November 15, 2023
“There are many ways to find fulfilment, but even in our modern commodified society, a lot of people are drawn to practical self-realisation”
“That moment involves impending food and political-economic crises, sharpening the relevance of bygone peasant assertions. What will you do when you can no longer rely on the centralised state that you’re familiar with to keep supplying you with eggs and other forms of welfare?”
A very interesting an comprehensive book that sets out an exciting future away from consumerism and the 'crises' society faces. Touched on topics I did not expect including defence and religion. The only limitation that makes it 4/5 is that it fails to be either a firm academic manifesto or a readable story. It could do with some editing and I would personally prefer if it went down a more personal route, as the author does a bit more in the final chapters. As he makes clear, it is not meant to be policies, so bringing more personal experience into it gives the book some extra insight and readability.
Nonetheless, this book sets out a convincing rationale to escape escape the trappings of modernity and embrace small farming for a more sustainable and autonomous future.
“That moment involves impending food and political-economic crises, sharpening the relevance of bygone peasant assertions. What will you do when you can no longer rely on the centralised state that you’re familiar with to keep supplying you with eggs and other forms of welfare?”
A very interesting an comprehensive book that sets out an exciting future away from consumerism and the 'crises' society faces. Touched on topics I did not expect including defence and religion. The only limitation that makes it 4/5 is that it fails to be either a firm academic manifesto or a readable story. It could do with some editing and I would personally prefer if it went down a more personal route, as the author does a bit more in the final chapters. As he makes clear, it is not meant to be policies, so bringing more personal experience into it gives the book some extra insight and readability.
Nonetheless, this book sets out a convincing rationale to escape escape the trappings of modernity and embrace small farming for a more sustainable and autonomous future.
April 16, 2025
I really wanted to buy into Smaje’s revolutionary idea for a “small farm future.” Ultimately, I felt there were too many holes in his plan for it to actually be a possibility, even amid climate disaster. Below are a couple of the ideas I specifically took issue with. If I am interpreting any of the following ideas incorrectly, I’d be happy to discuss further. This book was incredibly dense and academic, and I definitely couldn’t soak in every argument.
1. Women in the “small farm future”
Throughout the first two parts of the book, the author addresses that a “small farm future” may prove problematic for women, who have historically been oppressed in the household. I was looking forward to the author discussing this further, however, when I got to chapter 12, Households, Families and Beyond, I found it fell far too short of the actions needed to protect women in this future society. The author essentially (again, lmk if I’m interpreting this incorrectly) says we can prevent the oppression of women in this future by relying on the “public sphere” and “individual rights.” He then immediately writes that “There are no guarantees that a future turn to agrarianism won’t be accompanied by a turn to patriarchy and other forms of domination.”
He’s right, of course. How can we be certain women will be protected from future oppression? But relying on vague concepts like “individual rights” and “formal equality” is not good enough, especially considering the recent stripping away of women’s rights in the U.S. I just don’t buy the author’s argument that men will suddenly “gain consciousness” and respect women as equals. I think the “small farm future” the author envisions leaves women incredibly vulnerable to assuming the domestic life they were once subjected to years ago.
2. My other concern– how would people learn how to farm? I was shocked that this was left out of the book, especially because the author mentions many times how far removed our present day society is from the process of producing food. People don’t just know how to work the land. It’s not a natural instinct and it’s not for everyone. Would there be agriculture schools set up? Who would teach people how to farm? Would it be their neighbors, who also have their own farm to attend to? What happens when extreme temperatures due to climate change challenge even the most experienced farmers?
I have A LOT of questions after reading this book, which I guess means I engaged with it and enjoyed some of it. But there are far too many risks in this view of the future that I foresee as a young woman (and, admittedly, a city lover).
One more thing– the “small farm future” Smaje describes relies on farming with your “kin.” What happens to women who don’t want to have children? What happens to their land when they get older? Will this sort of future pressure women into bearing children, in a climate disaster, just for the sake of having more farmhands? Just…a lot of questions. Thanks for the interesting and challenging read.
1. Women in the “small farm future”
Throughout the first two parts of the book, the author addresses that a “small farm future” may prove problematic for women, who have historically been oppressed in the household. I was looking forward to the author discussing this further, however, when I got to chapter 12, Households, Families and Beyond, I found it fell far too short of the actions needed to protect women in this future society. The author essentially (again, lmk if I’m interpreting this incorrectly) says we can prevent the oppression of women in this future by relying on the “public sphere” and “individual rights.” He then immediately writes that “There are no guarantees that a future turn to agrarianism won’t be accompanied by a turn to patriarchy and other forms of domination.”
He’s right, of course. How can we be certain women will be protected from future oppression? But relying on vague concepts like “individual rights” and “formal equality” is not good enough, especially considering the recent stripping away of women’s rights in the U.S. I just don’t buy the author’s argument that men will suddenly “gain consciousness” and respect women as equals. I think the “small farm future” the author envisions leaves women incredibly vulnerable to assuming the domestic life they were once subjected to years ago.
2. My other concern– how would people learn how to farm? I was shocked that this was left out of the book, especially because the author mentions many times how far removed our present day society is from the process of producing food. People don’t just know how to work the land. It’s not a natural instinct and it’s not for everyone. Would there be agriculture schools set up? Who would teach people how to farm? Would it be their neighbors, who also have their own farm to attend to? What happens when extreme temperatures due to climate change challenge even the most experienced farmers?
I have A LOT of questions after reading this book, which I guess means I engaged with it and enjoyed some of it. But there are far too many risks in this view of the future that I foresee as a young woman (and, admittedly, a city lover).
One more thing– the “small farm future” Smaje describes relies on farming with your “kin.” What happens to women who don’t want to have children? What happens to their land when they get older? Will this sort of future pressure women into bearing children, in a climate disaster, just for the sake of having more farmhands? Just…a lot of questions. Thanks for the interesting and challenging read.
December 4, 2021
Excellent high-level analysis of the problems of modernity and the potential solutions to those problems, all revolving around a "return to the land" and how that might look on a large scale. It's not a "how-to" guide, and it stresses that there will be no easy solutions. It's anticapitalist, but wisely does not shackle itself to any particular ideology or theorist. It's subtle and well-researched, and refreshingly optimistic while still highlighting potential pitfalls.
One thing I wish he'd mentioned (even once!) is the need to maintain medical infrastructure and the rights of disabled people. Yes, he brings up the long-term, population-level health benefits of a small farm future. Yes, he mentions the potential for oppression of minorities and women, and how we might avoid that. Yes, he promotes the benefits of distributed, community-based support structures. But he does not seem to have considered a place in the small farm future for someone who needs cancer drugs or someone who was born with a disabling genetic condition.
I get that the nitty-gritty details of healthcare/infrastructure policy are kind of out of the scope of this book, but he does speculate that we might not have personal computers in the future, so it would have been worth speculating a little about how a small farm future could care for people who cannot farm and/or have complex medical needs.
Otherwise, this is a great kickoff to what I hope is a wider discussion about specific, localized, disability-inclusive small farm futures.
One thing I wish he'd mentioned (even once!) is the need to maintain medical infrastructure and the rights of disabled people. Yes, he brings up the long-term, population-level health benefits of a small farm future. Yes, he mentions the potential for oppression of minorities and women, and how we might avoid that. Yes, he promotes the benefits of distributed, community-based support structures. But he does not seem to have considered a place in the small farm future for someone who needs cancer drugs or someone who was born with a disabling genetic condition.
I get that the nitty-gritty details of healthcare/infrastructure policy are kind of out of the scope of this book, but he does speculate that we might not have personal computers in the future, so it would have been worth speculating a little about how a small farm future could care for people who cannot farm and/or have complex medical needs.
Otherwise, this is a great kickoff to what I hope is a wider discussion about specific, localized, disability-inclusive small farm futures.
April 28, 2023
An important and rare book. Chris Smaje (rhymes with rage) approaches the subject of our predicament from such a humble and grounded position it makes it really pleasant to follow along. He lays out 10 intertwined crises we face (without claiming completeness of that fact) and how an answer to those could be a small farm future. He has no big answers of how it will look. No grand vision of the road to get there. No promise of Utopia. Good. The path forward is not going to be that easy and will require local answers, made on the ground, with the people there. He does lay out many of the issues that might come up thinking about such a world. And does so clearly. And if you want to dive deeper into the topics than what the text provides, you can always navigate yourself to his blog where he's been writing about these topics for many years already and also spend the last two years extending the book with blog posts covering each of the chapters in the book.
In short, Smaje lays out a very good case for why many of the current answers to the different crises are lacking and the direction we could look for moving forward, without grandiosity, ego, or dogma. It's compelling.
In short, Smaje lays out a very good case for why many of the current answers to the different crises are lacking and the direction we could look for moving forward, without grandiosity, ego, or dogma. It's compelling.
July 27, 2022
In A Small Farm Future, Chris Smaje describes a future is one in which local economies are the key to supporting farmers and food production, self-provisioning is the norm, agricultural diversity is valued, and a shared earth is protected. This book makes the case for such a future, based on the belief that it is the only kind of future that can offer real security and prosperity.
Smaje offers a vision of an agriculture that is small-scale, sustainable, and humane, one that is based on local economies and the principles of self-sufficiency. He spends considerable time discussing the ten crises that are facing humanity, ranging from climate change to over-population. Agriculture is one element of a solution, but only within a broader shift away from a globalized financial system.
Clearly the small farm is not the only solution. But it is part of a development model that is self-generated and self-sustaining and involves creating local economies that are isolated from the global financial system and more likely to curb chronic hunger.
Smaje offers a vision of an agriculture that is small-scale, sustainable, and humane, one that is based on local economies and the principles of self-sufficiency. He spends considerable time discussing the ten crises that are facing humanity, ranging from climate change to over-population. Agriculture is one element of a solution, but only within a broader shift away from a globalized financial system.
Clearly the small farm is not the only solution. But it is part of a development model that is self-generated and self-sustaining and involves creating local economies that are isolated from the global financial system and more likely to curb chronic hunger.
September 8, 2024
3.5 stars. I was going to give 3 stars then saw I’d given Regenisis 4 stars and couldn’t bare to rate this one lower as I am far more on board with Smaje’s vision, I just think the delivery could be improved. I initially skipped through a lot of Part I because I wanted to get to the point of the book although I did come back to it and found some interesting points. Part II was the most interesting to me and probably the section I would recommend to others. It definitely provided some additional nuance beyond related things I’ve read before. Then after this the book became a bit more of a chore. There are bits of useful argument in the second half but it was all a bit meandering and convoluted. Overall, I love the vision of the book but I do feel like part of its appeal for me comes from my personal attraction to farming and I think that this may not work on the wider population. He frequently sites people who tend a garden to get away from the drudgery of their office jobs but I do wonder what % of the population this is actually true for
August 4, 2022
4/5 only because, while this book's subject oughta be for everyone, it's style isn't because it's pretty dry. But if you are genuinely in pursuit of a material and social culture than can survive the future, like I am, and you have an academic enough bent to handle the dry content, which I sometimes do, then go for it.
The most valuable contribution I say this book makes is the way it ties current and future material realities to social life. Do you ever feel, as you doomscroll, that futuristic speech is divided between Ma & Pa hobby farms & prepper advice on the one hand, and on the other, sedentary philosophers speaking in grandiose, inspecific terms about how we should think about the future? Interestingly, both camps' online presences seem overwhelmingly male. Is that because men have more leisure time to explore the future since women are, pardonnez-moi, busy as shit taking care of the present? Well evidently I think that, and this book bridges thought and practice in a way that seems fruitful to me. Chris Smaje was a sociology professor before he became a dirt farmer (high compliment!) and he explores the social questions we need to ask each other if we are to adopt a more agrarian lifestyle WITHOUT falling into patriarchal family structures and/or peonage. Who else is asking that in no uncertain terms? So important!
The most valuable contribution I say this book makes is the way it ties current and future material realities to social life. Do you ever feel, as you doomscroll, that futuristic speech is divided between Ma & Pa hobby farms & prepper advice on the one hand, and on the other, sedentary philosophers speaking in grandiose, inspecific terms about how we should think about the future? Interestingly, both camps' online presences seem overwhelmingly male. Is that because men have more leisure time to explore the future since women are, pardonnez-moi, busy as shit taking care of the present? Well evidently I think that, and this book bridges thought and practice in a way that seems fruitful to me. Chris Smaje was a sociology professor before he became a dirt farmer (high compliment!) and he explores the social questions we need to ask each other if we are to adopt a more agrarian lifestyle WITHOUT falling into patriarchal family structures and/or peonage. Who else is asking that in no uncertain terms? So important!
July 27, 2023
Definitely worth the read. It's pretty dry, but Smaje does a good job of presenting problems and solutions while maintaining his humility. There's a lot we can't predict about the future, and he's not afraid to qualify his claims where it's appropriate. I found myself often wishing that Smaje believed in Christianity. He's trying to find problems for the liberal-capitalist system by using another liberal system. In his framework, he can only analogously point to the common good and hope that people agree with him. I do agree, as far as I can, but in the end, virtue will make the difference.
October 1, 2024
Disaster Post-capitalism... Blew hot and cold on this, probably because it wasn't quite what I was expecting and, despite a frequently stated anti-utopianism, was a bit, um, utopian. Interesting stuff, but perhaps wore its learning a little heavily and deployed a barrage of quotations a bit like proof texts. Like I said, was probably hoping for a different kind of book, a bit more of a here-and-now rather than imagining a post-apocalyptic agrarian idyll(-ish).
December 16, 2023
This is a solid philosophical work but very academic. I would not call this an accessible read for the general public but is a deep thought experiment for anyone interested in the future of agriculture, economics, ecology, and society overall. Chris Smaje is a brilliant thinker but I liked his book 'Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future' much better.
April 24, 2022
This is going to come as a surprise, but I really liked it.
May 4, 2024
I better go get some chickens.
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