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N-wrecked
N-wrecked The way that humans have messed with the Earth’s carbon cycle rightly figures as planetary eco-problem No.1 in public debate, but the way we’ve messed with its nitrogen cycle probably ought to get more attention than it does. In the former case, farming often gets a bit too much of the blame in my […]
The Politics of Food | Chris Smaje
The Politics of Food | Chris Smaje Lab-grown food vs small farms What’s the future of food? Last year, two of my former podcast guests had a long and very public disagreement about the politics of food, locking horns over the utility of farming in a densely-populated world. Activist and writer George Monbiot has written […]
Among the ancestors
Among the ancestors Note to Substack readers. I replicate the essays that I publish on my chrissmaje.com site here on Substack. I’ve switched comments off here because I don’t want to juggle two parallel conversation threads, but if you’d like to discuss my essays feel free to join the conversation over on my website. Currently, all my […]
Open comment post: the AMOC shutdown and the future of agriculture
Open comment post: the AMOC shutdown and the future of agriculture It’s time to move on to pastures new from my Saying NO… book, as I mentioned in my last post. Seems like an opportune moment to try an ‘open comment’ post to signal the change of direction, an idea I trailed at the start of the […]
It takes an ecovillage…: some thoughts on ‘Going to Seed’
It takes an ecovillage…: some thoughts on ‘Going to Seed’ I enjoyed writing a book review for my last post so much that I’m going to write another one this time around. But whereas last time it was a long review of a very long book addressing itself to a large slice of human history, here I […]
Rural gentrification Part II: Of localists and homesteaders
Rural gentrification Part II: Of localists and homesteaders In this post, I discuss some issues about gentrification, localism and homesteading or neo-agrarianism, following on from my last post and the wider debate I referred to there. Let’s begin with a word on gentrification, which is usually applied to urban situations where richer people avail themselves of cheaper […]
Warre and peace: of gifts, government and men with guns
Warre and peace: of gifts, government and men with guns This is the last in a somewhat interrupted series of posts about property rights in small farm futures and small farm pasts, which started here, looked at the idea of work and self-ownership here, considered private property here and common property here. The missing piece in terms of standard definitions […]
Of grain and gulags: a note on work, labour and self-ownership
Of grain and gulags: a note on work, labour and self-ownership I’ll begin with a brief account of how our modern global grain trading system was invented in Chicago in the 19th century, which is maybe a bit of a jolt from the present focus of this blog cycle on the forms of property but hopefully […]
Property ownership in a small farm future
Property ownership in a small farm future And so we come to the thorny issue of landownership and property rights in a small farm future, which I discuss in Chapter 13 of my book. A lot of people I encounter profess complete disdain for the very idea of ‘owning’ land, usually along the lines of […]
Small Farm Future: Why some anticipated problems will not arise
Small Farm Future: Why some anticipated problems will not arise In his book Small Farm Future Chris Smaje worries about some problems that might arise in a society in which these kinds of farms meet most food demand. This area is also targeted by Alex Heffron and Kai Heron in their critique of the book, which their […]
Pig apples: or, why small farmsteads are efficient and effective
Pig apples: or, why small farmsteads are efficient and effective Nearly twenty years ago, we planted seven acres of woodland on our holding with help from a government grant that stipulated the trees must be native woodland varieties. Among the ones we chose were crab apples, which we planted along the rides and woodland edges […]
Our household farming future
Our household farming future Back to the blog cycle about my book A Small Farm Future with a little more about household-based farming. A couple of posts back Greg Reynolds suggested I might write some short declarative sentences about my case for household farming, which struck me as a good idea. So here’s my best shot at […]
Commons and households in a small farm future
Commons and households in a small farm future As I mentioned in my previous post, The Land Magazine recently published a lengthy article from me, ‘Commons and households in a small farm future’. In this post I’m simply going to reproduce the article. The version here is my original draft which is slightly, but not very, different […]
How I grew, and lost, a rainforest
How I grew, and lost, a rainforest And so I’ve come to the end of my posts concerning Part II of A Small Farm Future and I shall soon be moving onto Parts III and IV, which are the ones that have generated most of the discussions and disputations over the book. I include this post by […]
It isn’t nice to block the courtroom…
It isn’t nice to block the courtroom… A bit of news from the home front here at Small Farm Future, and a few reflections based around it. Today, my wife received a suspended prison sentence for disrupting a court as an act of protest against government inaction on climate change. Here is a short video she made […]
