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Tag Archives: small farm future
The awkward class
The awkward class Time to talk about peasants, who I claim in Chapter 3 of my book A Small Farm Future will soon be returning to tend (or create) a small farm near you. Or may in fact include you or your descendants. This claim is at odds with most of what’s been written about rural trends […]
Turning the clock forward
Turning the clock forward The next stop in my tour through my book A Small Farm Future is Part I, which begins with a long chapter outlining ten crises that one way or another seem set in the coming years to thoroughly upend the world we’ve known. As I see it, these crises are such that for good […]
Both hands now – an introduction to ‘A Small Farm Future’
Both hands now – an introduction to ‘A Small Farm Future’ Today I’m going to begin my cycle of posts commenting on, expanding and perhaps occasionally qualifying the analyses in my book A Small Farm Future. You have bought your copy by now, right? Ah well … far be it from me to tell you what to do […]
The US election: perspectives from an ear of grain
The US election: perspectives from an ear of grain With an important election looming in the USA, let’s talk for a change about politics. But since this is primarily a farming blog, I thought I’d approach it obliquely from the agricultural angle of cereal breeding. It’s obvious when you think about it… Actually, before we […]
A Small Farm Future: Excerpt
A Small Farm Future: Excerpt Culture Crisis This is the crisis of modernist culture – the ability to create ourselves as individuals and protect ourselves from the vicissitudes of the non-symbolic world, set against the ability to alienate ourselves as individuals and offload the consequences of our self-creation onto other people (including future people) and […]
On the efficiency of my scythe
On the efficiency of my scythe The time is nearly upon us when the feature-length version of my musings here will be released upon an unsuspecting world – A Small Farm Future (the book) will be available from 15 October in the UK and 21 October in the US. Various launch events are in the offing, and […]
Beyond authenticity: the politics of agrarian localism, Part 1
Beyond authenticity: the politics of agrarian localism, Part 1 In this post and the next one I continue exploring the issue of protest, violence, class and the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement I raised in the last one. I engage with some of the responses to the previous post, including one from Peter Gelderloos on Twitter, but rather […]
Protest, violence, class
Protest, violence, class Another month, another Extinction Rebellion protest, another crop of articles excoriating XR for being too disruptive and anti-capitalist, or not disruptive and anti-capitalist enough, or for not laying the blame on China, or whatever. I don’t particularly feel the need to appoint myself to the defence, but I was interested in this ROAR […]
An alternative agriculturist’s guide to science
An alternative agriculturist’s guide to science To begin, just a heads up on a couple of new things on the site. First, I’ve posted on the My Book page advanced comments about my forthcoming book that have come in from a number of interesting thinkers. It’s nice to get such positive notices. Currently, I’m pretty busy gearing […]
Business-as-usual porn – or, We need to talk about collapse
Business-as-usual porn – or, We need to talk about collapse I think we need to talk openly and calmly about the possibility of societal or civilizational collapse arising from humanity’s present predicaments. And that’s mostly what I want to pursue in this post – not so much what the likelihood or the underlying mechanisms of […]
The population problem problem
The population problem problem A while ago I wrote a post probing critically at the idea that human population levels were at the root of our contemporary environmental problems. It prompted various critical responses in turn, including this one from Alan Ware and Dave Gardner of World Population Balance that’s only just come to my attention. They published it […]
What if we only ate food from local farms?
What if we only ate food from local farms? “We would die from starvation. It’s that simple.” Or so TV botanist James Wong recently tweeted in response to the title question, taken from a BBC feature. In this post I’m going to make the case that we wouldn’t, that it isn’t simple, and that in fact our chances […]
Extinction Rebellion: Four Criticisms (and why they’re unconvincing)
Extinction Rebellion: Four Criticisms (and why they’re unconvincing) The issue of climate change activism and the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement has caused me a good deal of intellectual and emotional soul-searching. A journey that began last year with a large helping of scepticism on my part took me last Friday to a cell in Sutton […]
Population wrapped up: a response to Jane O’Sullivan
Population wrapped up: a response to Jane O’Sullivan And so we come to Small Farm Future’s final blog post of 2018. Time for some seasonal goodwill and an offer of peace to all? Nah, time to settle old scores – in this case my debate with Jane O’Sullivan about population and poverty that’s been rumbling […]
No farm future, no growth future, no farmer future: a SFF bulletin
No farm future, no growth future, no farmer future: a SFF bulletin Let me offer you a brief news roundup from the Small Farm Future editorial chair. First up, this website’s favorite Guardian journalist George Monbiot has been unleashing his inner ecomodernist again with an article about producing protein for human consumption via bacteria that […]



