In the 120 years since Wallace’s prescient warning, scientific knowledge and total wealth vastly increased, but so did the concentration of wealth and power in few hands, the number of poor, the incidence of diseases, damage to the land and to biodiversity, and the likely severity of climate change. Also, the links among these trends have become ever tighter. The structure of this tight mess of problems and threats needs to be understood so that an effort to solve one aspect of this untenable state is not causing a blockage elsewhere or is countered by short-term interests or privilege.

This book shows the need for a system change with uncommon breadth and detail, and describes ways toward a more sustainable and equitable state of the agriculture and food system. In an introduction and 20 independent but linked chapters the two editors and 22 invited authors document the prevailing capital- and profit-driven food and agriculture system.  They describe its several causes and structural drivers and its effects: the inequality, widespread hunger and food insecurity, and the severe cumulative damage to the natural environment with increasing likelihood of ecological, economic, social and human disaster. They contrast this with a more inclusive, agroecology-based world view, describing more benign agricultural production paradigms, already followed on parts of the agricultural land, and several ways of transformation to sustainable, more equitable food production, distribution and consumption systems.

The book advocates a rapid transformation of the food and agriculture system: changing from large-scale monocropping of mainly livestock feed –with high energy and chemical inputs– to smaller-scale, more diverse production of food and other crops in a biodiverse environment; and encouraging people away from current industrial high-meat, high-additives diets to more diverse, more plant-based diets. Several chapters include local or regional examples of successful transitions.

Chapter 1. After a brief 500-year history of science towards dominant reductionism, specialisms, materialism and a quantitative focus, the chapter describes the need for a more holistic approach, setting free innovation in agriculture and the policies guiding it. These should be based on science with traditional knowledge: locally adapted varieties, practices and experience; plant breeding recognizing the importance of mixed cropping, soil microbiomes, a focus beyond single genes; policies beyond just profits, considering qualitative aspects such as ecosystem health, land ownership and labour questions. Several ways of changing parts of the system are described at the end.

Chapter 2 describes on a broad canvas the millennial history of humans’ view of nature, including of our cousins and ancestors –the other animals–, the ongoing alienation of our species from all others and its harmful present consequences. Hunter-gatherers apparently considered animals other individuals within their joint environment. Ancient sedentary agriculturists started to domesticate (dominate) some of them as well as some plant species, narrowing their focus to the parts of their environment they had modified, and viewing some animals and plants as property and others as pests or threats. This worldview, justifying human exploitation and oppression of other animals, has shaped our history for some 10 millennia.

The large-scale industrial rearing and slaughter of the last half century with the ensuing still greater distance of consumers to their food animals has caused more severe mass suffering of the animals killed, and epidemics – jumping from animals to humans, or caused by the high-meat (and high-calorie) diets. While biological reality is the living world as a web of life comprising animals (including humans), plants, insects and micro-organisms, the human worldview has been ignoring that with long-term, continuing destructive effects, including those on the state and future of humanity.

Chapter 3, the political economy of the global food and agriculture system, describes three successive food regimes: British; American; and from 1980s, neoliberal. These government-capital economic alliances increasingly converted regions of small farmers into producers of food- or feed grains, first for cheap wage-foods for labourers in the new growing industries in home countries, later also in developing countries; still later for intensive mass-reared livestock producing lower-cost meat that changed diets– first in Europe and the US, then in middle-income countries. Effects of these processes include poverty and intermittent hunger in the source countries; different epidemic diseases by empty-calorie diets of the poor and by excess calorie and animal-origin diets of the middle class and rich; massive increase in greenhouse gas emissions; severe biodiversity losses; and increasing inequality with ever fewer people very to extremely rich and a majority losing income or resources. This neoliberal free-market system with its many unsustainable aspects has been championed by the development industry as well, focusing on merely quantitative changes within the system and ignoring its clear road to climate, environmental and social disaster. The final section summarises the many initiatives in several countries to build or convert to multifunctional, environment-sparing agriculture, often in the form of family farms producing a range of crops beyond the staples, needing less and different inputs.  It notes that policies are changing accordingly in several countries, with agribusiness interests aiming to block the changes.

Chapter 4 describes the same struggle between corporate short-term interests and the ecological, social and economic goals of the farmers, associations, local NGOs and several governments summarised in the final section of Ch. 3. It focuses on Africa and the example of the corporate-led New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (NAFSN).  In the context of UN’s sustainable Development Goal 2 on Zero Hunger, NAFSN speaks of sustainable development– that ecological, social and economic goals can be balanced through corporate-backed Alliance initiatives in Africa to bolster food supplies. These words are being translated into ‘development’ actions of land being taken from farming communities for large-scale high-input corporate agriculture: a neo-colonial variant of the neoliberal system, quietly embedded in flanking development assistance from donor countries. The chapter critically follows the words of NAFSN and the disproportionate impact of its actions for women in Africa. It concludes that NAFSN is effectively serving agribusiness interests and that its words and image have no relation to its activities.

Chapter 5 shows how FAO’s successive global food production models with their intensive, pesticide- and fertilizer-based crop and livestock production systems have ignored the large and widespread pollution and climate change by these systems, and their negative effects on biodiversity and small-scale, less intensive agriculture, as well as on livelihoods. The recent estimates of some 70 per cent more food production needed for the expected peak population are considered unrealistic. More integral analyses at national or regional scales indicate that other factors than productivity are central in food security, adequacy and access. These include avoidable food losses post-harvest, the proven high yields in diverse sustainable agriculture systems, and the relations of food prices and poverty. The chapter closes with the thought that international agribusiness in particular benefits from the quantitative production-focused models.

Chapter 6 discusses the ethics and moral aspects of animal agriculture and fisheries: the mass killing of sentient and possibly sentient animals under conditions of generally great suffering. After an extensive discussion of speciesism in the context of racism, nationalism, sexism, it concludes that it is doubtful whether systemic speciesism –knowingly ignoring mass suffering and killing of non-human animals– can be eliminated or rapidly undermined, adopting veganism while advocating consumer choice and effective activism may help moving from speciesism to global justice.

Chapter 7 summarises the main ways in which current food systems are unsustainable and the main factors driving them. It notes the several ways in which apparent food  costs are kept low – by ignoring damage to agricultural soils, loss of land under natural vegetation with its economic, biodiversity and climate-regulating values and by tax-funded subsidies to mainly large-scale high-input agriculture.  It exposes the narrative on current and future food shortage by noting the one-third of food lost between harvest and consumers, the global obesity epidemic, the policies to divert food production to fuel, and the high and increasing proportion of resource-intensive meat consumption versus plant-based proteins.

Chapters 8 and 9 argue the need to transform the agriculture and food system by a change in mindset: from a Green Revolution to an Agroecology paradigm. Summarising the concepts and arguments developed in older and recent literature, Chapter 8 shows the increased sense of urgency to start acting on the transformation from the conventional industrial model of the food system to the agroecological model. It describes the complexity of the food system, and how farmers and consumers have started  the transition, despite inaction at political level and the prevailing rigidly high-input agricultural production system with its hidden costs.

Chapter 9 summarises the quantitative successes of the science-based large-scale high-tech agriculture system, and its several downsides making it unsustainable, such as damaging its ecological base and maintaining a grossly unequal food supply– with a billion people hungry and another billion suffering affluence diet-caused diseases. This is contrasted with agroecological systems that are complex, skills-intensive and small to medium-sized, with little if any advantage of larger scale. These work best when farmers work cooperatively, sharing knowledge, activities and some machinery. Ideally, such a system would produce much less meat and more plant-based protein while the general diet would follow suit with positive effects on human health.

In Chapter 10 the two editors offer a revealing detailed historical account of the generally ignored or overlooked drivers of the rapid change to large-scale, profit-focused industrial agriculture. Aspects of the change include mechanization of agriculture, fertilizer and pesticide adoption, scale increase of holdings, industrialization of crop production and animal production and slaughter, and concentration of profit and power with displacement of small and larger family-size farms by large farm businesses. Those drivers include the stocks and excess production capacity of military vehicles and engines and of high-nitrogen and high-phosphorus products for explosives and toxins after the first and second world wars. These were repurposed to tractors and their engines, and to fertilizers and pesticides. Their promotion and initial surplus led farmers to more intensive cultivation, high fertilizer rates and concentration into larger holdings, managed uniformly at lower cost, producing standard variety bulk grains in quantity.

Selection and breeding of higher-yielding varieties needing high fertilizer applications reinforced the trend. The emerging grain excess was taken up by large enterprises feeding and slaughtering cattle or chickens en mass – leading to lower meat prices and a great increase in the proportion of meat in the diet, mainly in industrialised countries. The resulting gradual soil degradation, damage to the biodiversity also leading to greater need for pesticides, and the greatly increased suffering of livestock mass-handled as if unfeeling blocks of meat, the accumulation of toxins from growth hormones and antibiotics in the food chain, as well as the great increase in greenhouse gases by these changed modes of operation, were long ignored or hidden. Export of this newly developed large-scale profit-focused system to developing countries was eased by the Green Revolution: international efforts of selection and breeding  of high-yielding wheat, rice and maize varieties needing fertilizers, pesticides and dependable water from the expanding irrigation areas. While the industrialisation of agriculture was driven by industrial and financial interests, the research efforts toward the similarly high-input varieties for developing countries was initially focused on commercial farmers as well, before extending to the dominant crops and small farmers in the countries served.

The last section describes several multifunctional agroecology paradigms such as Organic Agriculture, Regenerative Agriculture and Conservation Agriculture, their longer-term perspective and more cooperative nature, and how natural land-based ecosystem processes are incorporated in them. It emphasizes zero tillage because tillage damages soil biodiversity and releases around 90% of CO2 released from crop fields, and discusses Conservation Agriculture in more detail, comparing it with other paradigms. The chapter closes with a discussion of political aspects of the needed change toward a food system that is inclusively responsible, sustainable, and just for all.

Chapter 11 focuses on soil health and the revolutionary potential of Conservation Agriculture. After a historical account of the ages of ploughing, soil erosion and loss, and the more severe effects under more intense and deeper cultivation with industrial machinery, it discusses the several interacting ways in which ploughing and nitrogen fertilizer damage the soil biota, reduce soil organic matter content and nutrient uptake by crops, waste fertilizer and acidify the soil. After discussing the processes occurring in a soil under Conservation Agriculture and their direct and longer-term effects, the chapter describes the successively more integral ways in which people have been seeing the soil.

The multi-author Chapter 12 describes the many kinds of cumulative damage from plough-based agriculture, such as to soil productivity and biodiversity, and its unsustainable level of CO2 emissions. These effects are compared with Conservation Agriculture, which reduces input costs (power, fertilizer, agrochemicals, water), yield variability and CO₂ emission, producing similar yields of a wider range of crops and improving biodiversity within and around the CA area. Conservation Agriculture mitigates climate change in several ways, including lower CO2 emissions and lower energy and other inputs and is better adapted to climate change by its greater resilience to drought and other stresses.  Conservation Agriculture is practised on a steadily growing part of the world’s cropland (106Mha in 2008-9, toward 180Mha – 12.5% of the total in 2015-16), on farms of all sizes. Lack of understanding the key principles of Conservation Agriculture causes poor results in some cases (and is one of the reasons why it is not expanding in some areas, RB).

Chapter 13 reports in well documented detail many negative unintended effects of the several genetic modification methods of plants and animals, which are often suppressed or ignored in the public discourse and in the regulation or licensing process. Also, the intended traits themselves, narrowly focused to arm plants against competition or predation, have negative effects on soil and insect biodiversity. The conventional agriculture system for which GM crops have been developed, with its food security aim through high yields, is based on high inputs. These have been increasing further with the need for herbicide spraying on herbicide-tolerant GM crops and for insecticide spraying against secondary pests on Bt GM crops containing a toxin against its main pest. The various biocides used have been spreading on and in non-crop plants, animals and soil organisms, harming earthworms, soil fungi, insects and birds that support and protect the crops. Sustainability is also impaired by many unintended genetic changes in different commercial GM crops, such as decreased yield, loss of pest or pathogen resistance. In contrast, sustainable agriculture systems are based on a varied complex of practices such as complex cover crops, intercropping, multiyear multi-crop rotations, integrated pest management, no-till and continuous soil cover. The traits selected for use in such biodiverse systems vary among crops and farming systems, and tend to promote complementarity rather than competition between crops.

Chapter 14 explains the value of agricultural biodiversity and heterogeneous seeds, and calls for sustaining these to avoid disaster risks from plagues or disease by widespread use of a narrow set of extremely selected varieties, hybrids or genetically modified crops. It shows how these form the basis for resilience, sustainability, food sovereignty. Three coalitions are identified that are contesting control over agricultural biodiversity and seed systems. Currently the most powerful is the Agribusiness coalition, promoting capital-intensive proprietary technologies and large-scale industrial commodity technologies, supported by restrictive legislation and private and public research systems, harming biodiversity, particularly agricultural. The Green Revolution coalition, many international institutions and governmental and private donors with in effect similar outcomes, emphasizing packaging of science and technology (homogeneous seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, equipment) for delivery to smallholders – who become dependent on a system controlled by others, losing resilience and other benefits of biodiversity. The third is the diffuse Ecological Food Provision coalition, social and political movements of farmers and other small-scale food producers in biodiverse agroecological production systems. With growing support from civil society these groups aim for transition of all food systems to become more resilient, sustainable, and equitable.

Chapter 15 shows how healthy diets should guide responsible food systems. It summarises the gradual change from mainly local whole foods to widely sourced processed foods, many of those with excess sugars and deficient nutrient contents in industrial and middle-income countries, and the consequent increasing rates of diet-related diseases and of death or disability. The mainly medical and pharmaceutical response to the diseases epidemic is extremely costly and palliative rather than curative.  The continued good health and longer life expectancy of smaller groups or populations in several of the same countries that have a more whole-food diet with less or no meat show a clear association of diet with health and longevity. Large studies have identified animal-derived and processed foods, particularly processed meat and red meat, as major risk factors for several diseases, including cancer.

The most recent multi-country analysis of what constitutes a healthy diet recommends predominantly whole plant foods, emphasizing fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds, with less than 15% of daily calories from animal-derived foods: these are not essential in a healthy diet. Several studies have shown that a low-fat, plant-based diet lowered high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, reduced obesity and diabetes, and successfully treated cardiovascular diseases. While several governments have actively promoted such diets, industry influence has weakened and in some cases eliminated explicit statements about the negative health effects of meat, or prevented its removal from the list of essential diet elements.  Plant-based diets could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than half, while animal agriculture is a major factor in climate change.

Chapter 16 is a crucial part of the book for those wishing to combine rethinking with changing. It reflects on the dominant family of knowledge systems, rational in the western scientific tradition, considered objective but laden with values underpinning the current dominant food and agriculture systems. This is contrasted with inclusively responsible knowledge systems with a far wider range of values such as biocultural diversity, equity and social justice, and the health, well-being, sovereignty and rights of humans, as well as nonhuman animals and the natural world. The great variety of local knowledge systems of farmers, relevant to local contexts, is evolving and updated through experience and adaptation of new knowledge from elsewhere, including from scientific research. This process gradually evolved from top-down through participatory technology development to on-farm, with-farmer and by-farmer research, also benefitting scientific research. However, the current dominant knowledge system resists revolutionary (paradigm) change by its widespread power and links with major vested interests. It gives examples of the resulting ignorance, error, myths and bias delaying change in agriculture, and overcome or bypassed by overwhelming concrete evidence. These include examples of powerful knowledge systems to produce, support and promote narratives aligned with interests of dominant powers, ignoring realities on the ground and the interests of the many. Lessons from the examples: Narratives and evidence for inclusively responsible food and agriculture systems should serve the true needs of the many and the needs of the natural world with its ecosystem functions, taking account of the complexity and diversity of grounded realities; and power relations need to be reversed putting first the good of farmers, their communities and the natural resource base.

The complexity of a knowledge system underpinning practical efforts at change can be managed by a set of principles for inclusive rigour:

• eclectic and mixed methods; diversity and balance; improvisation and innovation;
• adaptive iteration; triangulation; inclusive participation and plural perspectives;
• optimal ignorance and appropriate imprecision; interactive and experiential ground truthing.

These principles are supported by rigour from participation; reflexivity; and responsible relevance. The final pages summarise practical aspects of action and short-term and long-term change.

Chapter 17, Social movements in the transformation of food and agriculture systems, leads from ‘A corporate food system for the few’ to ‘The way forward: Growing a veganic food system’. It enumerates the many problems attached to the current, profit-driven corporate system such as malnutrition and obesity, environmental toxicity, farmers’ debt and insecurity, loss of farmers’ seed sovereignty; and refutes their commonly held but ineffective solutions, such as focusing on the example of milk against hunger and malnutrition. The roots of these problems are usurpation and oppression within the system, and are related to the misleading narrow production-based notion of food scarcity.  Solutions to these problems are found in grassroots social movements, linking a transition to agroecology to food sovereignty, agrarian reform, mass mobilization to human rights, and political advocacy. The example of Seed the Commons is described: A small grassroots organization including farmers and consumers working toward agroecological farming without commodified domesticated animals.  The chapter disproves the notion that animal-based agriculture would be the only alternative to industrial farming and exposes the misleading use of the term regenerative grazing for continued large-scale rotation grazing, providing an account of grazing from colonial times. The final sections describe the way forward to a veganic food system, which can take many forms, including fully following the principles of agroecology.

Chapter 18 systematically describes steps toward system transformation from the current global food regime toward ‘economics of happiness’ by discussing the root and costs of globalization and the needed shift to localization, focusing on local food, trade treaties, subsidies, taxation and health and safety regulations. Globalization, with the freedom of multinational businesses and banks to select among national economies for cheap labour and resources, low taxes and lax environmental and social protection, is described as the current shape of a historical 5-centuries sequence of conquest and colonial exploitation, with different identities of the actors. Vast costs of globalization are listed such as in livelihoods; displacement of people from rural communities to urban slums; environmental breakdown by a capital-driven resource-intensive, growth-based consumer economy; increased CO2 emissions; a growing gap between rich and poor; loss of food security. Localization, economic decentralization enables communities, regions and nations to take more control over their own affairs, where citizens, through a democratic process, determine the rules for business – instead of business determining rules for society. Localized food systems are more diverse, resilient, lower-input, and adapted to local conditions.  Since the structure of the current economic and political system favours globalization, its transformation depends on policy changes, including trade treaties prioritizing healthy local and national economies rather than increase corporate profits and GDP. Preparing for this, some countries are starting to shift direct and indirect subsidies favouring the large and global (fossil fuel, motorways, hypermarkets, …) to decentralized renewable energy and local economic activities. Low taxation of labour and higher effective tax rates on capital- and energy-intensive technologies, and particularly on fossil fuels would result in healthy diversification of the economy and more regional production. Many small-scale, grassroots initiatives in different countries have shown the feasibility and benefits of localization even within the current policy environment.

Chapter 19 describes two world views, one the industrial agriculture ‘path of death’, with repurposing of military toxin production facilities to fertilizers and biocides for agriculture and livestock production, which has led to monocultures, pollution of air, soil and water, and biodiversity reduction. The other, the ‘path of life’, with the principles of diversity, the law of return —maintaining ecological cycles—, and sharing nature’s gifts in the commons, practised by the several types of ecological agriculture. Linking the two is a historical section on rediscovering the living soil.

In the final chapter –short, and best read in full– the editors briefly explain seven aspects of inclusive responsibility: toward holistic paradigms; a narrative of abundance; ecological and multifunctional paradigms of agriculture; decentralizing power in the food and economic systems; diets promoting human and planetary health; powerful social movements and civil society; and an ethical framework for inclusive responsibility that brings together the key areas of future needs that invites everyone to become seriously involved in addressing our interconnected global crises.

The core of the book looks to me like the struggles between a tyrant and the populace: the few extremely rich persons and the small number of tightly connected very large corporations actively, often under the radar, trying to block any changes toward the many, often small- or medium-scale, more long-term oriented, more ecologically and socially operating systems that might reduce their wealth, power or dominance.

Specific controversial topics such as genetically modified organisms or the dangers of resistance against antibiotics are discussed in detail. Proposals are given for how the systems could be transformed to achieve overall sustainability, starting from sustainable productions systems such as Conservation Agriculture and ending with sustainable diets based on natural food from plant origin with a focus on local production.

All the topics are discussed with scientific facts and arguments, which makes the book a valuable source of information about many of the discussed topics. Each topic is well researched with abundant references. As the book is discussing controversial issues and questioning many of our actual paradigms, it might appear in some parts radical. However, if we are serious about fighting the problems, which mankind has created with the actual food and agricultural systems, starting with the degradation of soils and ecosystems, the global pollution and loss of biodiversity, ending with climate change and the actual SARS-COV2 pandemic, we need radical change, which will also have to include a rethinking of our actual economic systems, built on endless growth, economies of scale and globalized agro-industrial food systems. Not every detail of the book will be agreeable to everyone, such as the proposal for strictly vegan nutrition; however, even meat lovers have to admit, that the actual developments of meat consumptions are not sustainable from perspectives of environment, climatic change, food security, nutrition, health and ethics.

But in all these issues the book raises interesting questions which need urgent answers. It triggers our thinking, shows new views out of the box, needed to find solutions for the actual global problems. The book does not only question the actual systems showing its problems. It offers solutions, which are all feasible and realistic, although they might involve radical change and sometimes sacrifice.

As such the book should be read by any thinking human being as it concerns all of us. It should be read especially by professionals in development and politics, scientists and everyone involved in the actual food and agriculture systems. It is an absolute must read for policy makers and those who decide the future of countries and the planet.

The book argues for systemic and radical change in food systems and agriculture space but also in policy/decision-making processes. It set the pillars for a new nature and ecology-based direction and explores an integrated and inclusive vision for promoting innovative food systems that can fill the sustainability gaps left by conventional “modern” agriculture while spurring progressive benefits and synergies for society and economy.

The book is highly inspirational, debating and discussing wide-ranging thoughts, landmark experiences and innovative ideas and solutions to drive forward to the future of agriculture and food systems. Progress toward sustainable food systems has been addressed in all aspects and considering major priorities.

The book is a rallying call to accelerate the transition to regenerative agriculture. The book insists on new business models that may bend with traditional knowledge to stimulate increased sustainability and stronger development and economy. It discusses the dilemma between ecology, capitalism, and new agricultural economy. The authors have given plenty of space for discussing political, ethics, financial investments and values around modern/industrialized agriculture and its development as they also addressed issues related to controversial roles of international organizations in affecting policies and social contexts (and relations) of production, consumption, and regulation of food.

The authors have also discussed and analysed food systems and regimes and their changes and transformation over time and contexts and special attention was given to ethics, sustainability and efficiencies of animal agriculture and animal-based diets. The book asks and sheds light on important changes that are happening and forecasted in the global food system and scenarios for achieving and improving sustainability and resilience.

The book is presented in inspiring but persuading ways to launch debate and spark discussion on transition to food system models that are just, ecological, durable, and regenerative. In fact, the food systems should be considered as solutions rather than problems (or drawbacks) to global changes. The book is presenting real farming (mainly based on agroecology and Conservation Agriculture) as opposed to intensive or factory agriculture as feasible options that can support and propel such models (and solutions) within planetary boundaries while dealing with the root causes of unsustainability and vulnerability of agricultural/food systems.

The book makes a special emphasis on Conservation Agriculture, also called the fifth revolution, due its revolutionary impacts on soil health build-up and climate change adaptation and mitigation. The book also underlines the importance of localization (as opposed to globalization), biodiversity, local seeds and plant-based diet patterns for responsive health and nutrition security. An intense examination and discussion is given on industrial Green Revolution impacts (achievements and failures) and capacities of real farming to satisfy food security and its pillars and defeat climate and environmental change. The book examines knowledge systems and the changes in mindsets, behaviours, believes and reflexivity of farmers (and stakeholders) but also their heresies as they shift in paradigms and practices.

The book is highly recommended for academicians, researchers and writers in agricultural sciences and food studies and agri-food economy and policies but also to policy and opinion makers and advisers.

The book outlines how the multiple health, climate and biodiversity crises we are facing are deeply interconnected and that these interconnections need to be better understood for meaningful system-wide transformation to be possible. In order to understand these interconnections the book explores the different stages in the food system from farm to retail and the different participants in the food system including farmers and their communities, civil society groups, social movements, development experts, scientists, and other food system actors who have been raising awareness of these issues and implementing more sustainable and just food system solutions.

The book also undertakes a deep exploration of the underlying beliefs, values, ethics and motivations, which drive the global capitalist economic system including the food system.  The authors comment that, “injustice toward and suffering of humans, other animals, and nature is ultimately an issue of values and ethics. Responsible food and agriculture systems must be shaped by ethics, equity, quality of life, and informed engagement of civil society that is connected both locally and internationally.“  The concluding chapter distills some of the key themes and ways forward explored in the preceding chapters.  It uses these themes to inform the concept of “inclusive responsibility” which embodies a vision of a healthy food and agriculture system.

“An inclusively responsible food and agriculture system would encourage society to focus on agroecological sustainability as an integral part of overall ecosystem sustainability based on planetary boundaries.  Such a system would place importance on quality of life, pluralism, equity, and justice for all.  It would emphasize the health, wellbeing, sovereignty, dignity, and rights of farmers, consumers, and all other stakeholders, as well as of nonhuman animals and the natural world.  The concept of “inclusive responsibility” is ultimately based on an understanding of the interconnectedness of nature and the place and responsibility of human society within it.“

The authors have created a website, which shares extracts from each of the chapters.  You can read a brief summary of the chapters here and you can also ask your library to order a copy here.

This review was originally published here as part of the Creative Commons.

In the 1950s there were ever increasing concerns expressed by the West about food insecurity arising from the global collapse of colonialism and struggle for independence as well as the West’s concern about the spread of Russian ‘red’ communist revolution. This led to the adoption of the term Green Revolution by the West, aimed initially at raising yield of couple of major cereal crops such as wheat and rice by increasing harvest index, and allowing yield responses to inputs of agricultural chemicals. The book challenges the Green Revolution narrative around increases in yield and production and highlights the many adverse consequences that began to unfold from Green Revolution practices, further alienating agriculture from nature. The book documents how corporate agriculture began to replace smallholder agriculture in both industrialized and low-income countries. This caused resource poor farmers to become dependent on purchase of seed and chemicals and at the mercy of global markets, monocropping to the detriment of soil health and pest and disease management, depletion of water resources through irrigation, unhealthy human diets, factory farming and a host of other problems for both rich and poor.

In many parts of the world, current agricultural practices are threatening the very natural resource base on which they ultimately depend. Soils are being depleted of organic carbon and essential elements, biodiversity is being lost, new forms of pests and diseases are evolving, and surface and underground water resources are being depleted. And superimposed on this is accelerating climate change, disrupting traditional weather patterns and the cropping and grazing systems evolved under them. Although climate change is predominantly driven by the burning of fossil fuels, agriculture contributes about 30% of greenhouse gas emissions, through deforestation, depletion of soil carbon, release of nitrous oxide and enteric fermentation.

We currently have some 7.8 billion human mouths to feed, but the point is made in several chapters that the ability to produce enough food is not the problem, and indeed it never was the main problem except perhaps for the immediate post World War 2 years. The problem is the type of food produced in relation to human nutritional needs and access among humanity. For a start, in industrialised countries huge quantities of food go to waste, due to distant transport and storage requirements, imperfect market chains and rigorous selection for visual quality, food processing and eating habits. There are still large numbers of the poor who simply cannot get enough calories, and both rich and poor increasingly suffer from various nutrient deficiencies and obesity along with many other noncommunicable diseases directly related to unhealthful Western dietary patterns.

Research and development efforts in agriculture have been increasingly oriented towards improving corporate agriculture – new chemicals, hybrid and genetically modified seeds, mechanization, factory farming, etc. Like in other aspects of the economy a trickle-down of benefits to poor farmers is assumed, but rarely eventuates. Several chapters emphasize that if the rural poor are to be benefitted by technical knowhow then a bottom-up approach is the only option. This involves understanding the culture and local economy of the target population, detailed diagnosis of the environmental, economic and societal constraints, and directly involving farming families in any experimentation and development activity entered into. For example, participatory plant breeding is a superior option to traditional research station based varietal improvement or purchase of hybrid or GM seed from corporations. The book also highlights how apolitical technical approaches are not enough to reverse the impacts of industrial agriculture on the planet and its human and non-human inhabitants, and the corporate food regime which is driving it. It argues for the urgent need for grassroots led structural change towards food sovereignty, localisation, land and seed justice.

As for climate change, viable solutions are available to realistically increase the sustainability of agriculture, globally. The book outlines various alternative pathways for agriculture more conducive to nutrient recycling and longer-term sustainability. These include various permutations of Organic Agriculture, Agroecology, Regenerative Agriculture and Conservation Agriculture, showing how they are all works in progress. The authors give emphasis to Conservation Agriculture – involving no or minimum soil disturbance, soil mulch cover, diversified cropping – which is finding widespread acceptance in highly mechanized large-scale as well as smallholder farming, and ultimately put forward a vision of a paradigm based on organic or biological Conservation Agriculture that challenges the corporate model.

The book promotes a move to increasingly whole food plant-based diets, due to the inefficiencies of food conversion in animals (ten times more land needed for livestock production to produce equivalent protein than from cereal/pulses cropping), inevitable animal cruelty, adverse health consequences of consumption of animal products and ecosystem degradation and greenhouse gas emissions due to animal agriculture (clearing land for grazing or feed crops and methane emissions). It suggests there is much more public education required to increase awareness of healthy diets and how they can be adequately obtained through a diversified whole food plant-based diet. Such education is required to create public demand from agricultural production that better fulfils those needs.

However, to really set food and agriculture on a more sustainable pathway a gross rethink of ethics and values is required, towards ‘inclusive responsibility’ in meeting human food needs without further damaging the life support systems of this planet and all other life with whom we share this planet. The capitalist economic system, which assumes that exploitation of natural resources can continue indefinitely without adverse consequence, now dominates the food and agriculture regime. This is a similar problem to the climate emergency we are now facing and any solution to both will rely on greater realization of the need to stay within the ecological boundaries of this planet, several of which have already been exceeded.

A particular need elaborated in the book is a move to a more holistic paradigm, linking food and agriculture and human nutrition with culture, socio-economics, health, planetary boundaries and indeed most other human experiences. Currently our paradigms are too compartmentalized. And we must move from concepts of ‘food security’, as promoted by the research and development establishment and corporate agriculture, to ‘food sovereignty’, people’s rights ‘to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through biologically and ecologically sustainable methods’ while also respecting and protecting the rights of all sentient beings, both human and nonhuman, and of nature.

Although there have been many wondrous scientific advances in the understanding of processes relevant to agriculture, such as in molecular biology, they have really not made much headway in balancing food production with human developmental and nutritional needs in an environmentally sustainable manner. This book lays out what has gone wrong and provides suggestions of how to retrieve the situation. It thus offers a comprehensive framework of ‘inclusive responsibility’ to underpin the design of food and agricultural research and development paradigms and of economic and governance systems required to lead us into a sustainable future in an inclusive manner, which will necessarily be at odds with the predominant capitalist and corporate paradigms followed over the last 70 years.         

The framework of ‘inclusive responsibility’ highlights the responsibility of everyone to get involved in changing the current crisis ridden situation and work towards a goal of a sustainable and just food and agriculture system. The editors propose an ‘inclusively responsible’ system based on a paradigm which combines Conservation Agriculture with Veganic Agroecology. This combination of sustainable land use and diet, along with a movement away from the dominant corporate neoliberal economic model, is offered as a vision of a possible way forward and a rallying cry to all who want to build a more sustainable and just world.

Knowing that everything is connected to everything else and appreciating the place and responsibility of Society, the editors draw upon keen observation of the operations of agriculture in the field and upon social and environmental justice movements to elaborate the concept of inclusive responsibility as a philosophical foundation for a better food system. Their concept encompasses agro-ecological sustainability based on planetary boundaries; valuing quality of life, biocultural diversity, equity and social justice; and the health, well- being, sovereignty, dignity and rights of farmers, consumers and other stakeholders, as well as of nonhuman animals and the natural world.

The first three chapters examine the historical and philosophical roots of our present predicament. In Setting innovation free in agriculture, Rupert Sheldrake criticises the prodi- gious investment in molecular biology but his real target is reductionist or Newtonian science. It has the advantage of being amenable to observation, measurement and testing but Sheldrake argues for the alternative, holistic approach which recognises complex, self- organising systems like mixed farming, crop rotation, intercropping and multiple-variety sowing – let alone zero tillage that allows soil biodiversity to get on with what it does best.

In Agriculture planted the seeds of alienation from Nature, Jim Mason and Laila Kassam explain Society’s mindset (dominionism and misothery) not so much through agriculture as in the domestication of animals, the military prowess of herder societies and in the élites that dominate politics. In Political economy of the global food and agriculture system, Philip McMichael recounts the exploitation of the colonial era; the disappearance of the peasantry; the takeover of the international food trade by multinational corporates; and the diversion of surplus production into meat, dairy and biofuels. The social and environmental costs are transferred to Society with the acquiescence of governments of all stripes. We must look to governments for a course correction.

Chapters 4 and 5 examine some narratives from mainstream development institutions that are commonly accepted uncritically. The myth of a food crisis by Jonathan Latham exposes the most persuasive gambit of international agribusiness: that only modern industrialised agri- culture can feed the world.

Access the full review here

“Educating ourselves about the role that human supremacy and speciesism play in biodiversity loss and the destruction of planetary life while raising awareness and forcing the issue into the public consciousness with an end to shifting public opinion through strategic nonviolent direct action is also required (Crist, 2019; Engler & Engler, 2016 ). Yet, as I hope to have made clear, we do not suffer from a lack of knowledge, or a kind of epistemological blindness. Rather, we suffer from moral bad faith. Transforming and rethinking animal agriculture does not require better science, innovative research methodologies, or conceptual arguments. That enterprise requires a kind of moral transcendence, a clear-eyed forsaking of our moral bad faith and the hubris of our unfounded human supremacy.” 

Who we eat—products of global food and industrial agricultural systems—is one of the main causes, if not the main cause, for the unprecedented and rampant ecological devastation of Earth’s diverse ecosystems. NYU professor Dale Jamieson correctly notes: “The addiction to beef that is characteristic of people in the industrialised countries is not only a moral atrocity for animals but also causes health problems for consumers, reduces grain supplies for the poor, precipitates social divisions in developing countries, contributes to climate change, leads to the conversion of forests to pasture lands, is a causal factor in overgrazing, and is implicated in the destruction of native plants and animals. If there is one issue on which animal liberationists and environmentalists should speak with a single voice it is on this issue.” —Morality’s Progress, p. 46. 

Fortunately, the Kassam’s introduction is available online and clearly shows why our meal plans are destroying Earth’s biodiversity. Here are some snippets from their introduction to whet your appetite for more (references can be found in the essay itself).

—Never before have we faced such significant threats to our own and other species’ existence. These threats are of our own making. Since 1970, human activities have wiped out 60% of wildlife populations (Barrett et al., 2018). 

—Our destruction of nature takes many interrelated forms. We have lost half of the topsoil on the planet in the last 150 years (WWF, n.d.-a) and are losing 24 billion tonnes every year (UNCCD, 2017). 

—Forests are also disappearing at an alarming rate. It is estimated that we have cut down 46% of trees since the start of human civilization (Crowther et al., 2015).

—We kill an ever-increasing number of land animals for food and other products such as wool, fur, and leather. In 1961, we slaughtered around 7 billion land animals for food, and we are currently killing approximately 70 billion land animals per year (not including male chicks killed in the egg industry) (Sanders, 2018). We also kill around 80 billion farmed fish every year (Mood & Brooke, 2010).

—Life in the sea is also being destroyed by human activities through ocean acidification and fishing. We kill between 1 and 3 trillion wild aquatic animals every year for food (Mood & Brooke, 2010). It is estimated that if we keep fishing at the current pace the oceans will be empty of fish by 2048 (Worm et al., 2006).

—Given humans’ disproportionate impact on the Earth and all her inhabitants, this period in history (or new geological epoch) is increasingly being described as the “Anthropocene.” Others call it the “Capitalocene” to highlight the driving force of capital accumulation based on the creation of “cheap nature.”³

The Kassams’ essay contains much more information including a detailed outline of the content of each chapter. They also note that because of space limitations, they and their contributors have focussed on land-based food and agriculture production. They conclude, “It is not, however, agricultural land use change alone that has been driving the destruction of nature, particularly since WWII. These changes, along with the industrial agriculture production systems that have developed with them, are servicing consumer demand for food products and diets that are leading not only to environmental destruction but to negative health impacts such as increased obesity, noncommunicable diseases such as cancer, heart diseases, diabetes, and general ill-health.”

We must pay attention to what science is telling us

Rethinking Food and Agriculture book could well become a game-changer as it reaches a broad global audience. It is that important because the transdisciplinary essays clearly lay out how we have decimated a wide variety of ecosystems for long periods of time. Professor Jones rightly notes that we’ve known for a long time not only about animal sentience and the rich emotional lives of a vast array of nonhumans, but so too about how our choices in food are devastating not only the lives of countless nonhumans but also their and our own homes. It’s difficult to imagine the boundless and global extent of the damage and my learning curve was vertical. 

It’s essential to pay close attention to solid science and the wide array of facts that clearly show that we must change our ways. The numbers are truly staggering. We can’t continue denying the huge role we play in the rampant global destruction for which we are responsible in an era I call “The Rage of Inhumanity” rather than “The Age of Humanity” (aka the Anthropocene).

Our meal plans, lifestyles, and relationships we have with other animals surely are not sustainable and future generations will pay a huge price for our indiscretions. Indeed, we and other animals are suffering from how we live and who we choose to eat right now, and time isn’t on our side.

References

Notes

1) The book’s description reads: Given the central role of the food and agriculture system in driving so many of the connected ecological, social and economic threats and challenges we currently face, Rethinking Food and Agriculture reviews, reassesses and reimagines the current food and agriculture system and the narrow paradigm in which it operates. 

Rethinking Food and Agriculture explores and uncovers some of the key historical, ethical, economic, social, cultural, political, and structural drivers and root causes of unsustainability, degradation of the agricultural environment, destruction of nature, short-comings in science and knowledge systems, inequality, hunger and food insecurity, and disharmony. It reviews efforts towards ‘sustainable development’, and reassesses whether these efforts have been implemented with adequate responsibility, acceptable societal and environmental costs and optimal engagement to secure sustainability, equity and justice. The book highlights the many ways that farmers and their communities, civil society groups, social movements, development experts, scientists and others have been raising awareness of these issues, implementing solutions and forging ‘new ways forward’, for example towards paradigms of agriculture, natural resource management and human nutrition which are more sustainable and just. 

Rethinking Food and Agriculture proposes ways to move beyond the current limited view of agro-ecological sustainability towards overall sustainability of the food and agriculture system based on the principle of ‘inclusive responsibility’. Inclusive responsibility encourages ecosystem sustainability based on agro-ecological and planetary limits to sustainable resource use for production and livelihoods. Inclusive responsibility also places importance on quality of life, pluralism, equity and justice for all and emphasises the health, well-being, sovereignty, dignity and rights of producers, consumers and other stakeholders, as well as of nonhuman animals and the natural world.

2) Dr. Amir Kassam, OBE, FRSB, is visiting professor in the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development at the University of Reading in the UK. Dr. Laila Kassam is a developmental economist and co-founder of Animal Think Tank. 

3) For more on the huge influence of capitalism on how we interact with, use, and abuse other animals see “Listening to the Voices of Animals Who Resist Exploitation” for an interview with Sarat Colling’s about her recent book Animal Resistance in the Global Capitalist Era.

Bekoff, Marc. Sustanimalism: A Unique View on Human-Nonhuman Relationships. 

_____. The Psychology of Denying Science, Common Sense, and Reality. 

_____. Green Criminology: Widespread Caring Means Justice for All. (Green criminology, One Health, and compassionate conservation have common goals.)

_____. Psychological and Environmental Aspects of Who We Eat. (A new book explores how our meal plans are ruining earth and remedies for change.)

_____. On World Day for Farmed Animals, Let’s Honor Who They Are. (The amount of pain and suffering these animals endure is incalculable.)

—–. Food Justice and Personal Rewilding as Social Movements.

_____. Who we eat is moral question: Vegans have nothing to defend.

This review was originally published in Psychology Today

But, as this book and its admirable website explain, this is a hollow victory. It is now abundantly clear that the ways in which most food is being produced and consumed are destroying the world’s finite natural resources and are damaging human health.

The very rapid rise in food production has caused huge damage to nature – especially to forest cover, soil quality, water quality, biological diversity and the environment, with farming also becoming a major contributor to the process of climate change.

There may be plenty of food in the world, but over half of us suffer and may die early from hunger and other forms of malnutrition while many others become chronically ill and face premature death because they over-consume food. A lot of the available food is completely wasted: some ends up in biofuels.

People working in food production, processing and distribution tend to be poorly paid and often exploited. And the growing demand for meat, apart from requiring the slaughter of our animal kin (both domesticated and wild) on a vast scale, is causing massive damage to natural resources, especially pristine tropical forests, cleared for grazing or animal feed production.

Amir and Laila Kassam have assembled a remarkable group of authors, all of whom are deeply concerned about the multiple harms caused by our mainstream food production and consumption systems and their non-sustainability.  They would all subscribe to the book’s claim that “Our agrarian worldview is destroying the living world under our noses”.

Indeed, it has taken us far too long to wake up to the realisation that the combination of the spread of intensive farming methods, underpinned by “scientific dogmatism”, and the “take-over of commodity agriculture by financial interests decoupled from the food system” continues to be “the gravest cause of damage to the web of life on which we all depend.”

Most of the authors acknowledge the need to make a clean break from the alliances which have emerged between science, corporate power and many governments in setting the dominant agenda for agricultural development and food consumption patterns, based on the seriously mistaken claim that this is the only way to assure adequate food supplies for the future.

Many of the authors refer to encouraging precedents for the paradigm changes that need to happen within their own specialised fields of interest and give cause for optimism. They point particularly to the successful precedents being set by agro-ecological approaches to making farming more sustainable and driven by farmers rather than by scientists. And they also highlight the momentum that is being gathered towards food consumption habits that eliminate or greatly reduce meat consumption while improving human health.

Food systems are enormously complex because they involve so many different players, each of whose livelihoods and vested interests may be affected one way or another by shifts in policies and strategies. So, even when problems are acknowledged, there is a widespread perception that change can only come slowly and so proposals for radical adjustments tend to be greeted with disbelief.

This book and its website have no such inhibitions. The Editors propose that farmers should move quickly to sustainable production systems, centred around stopping all forms of inversion tillage while linking this to the application of organic farming principles. Simultaneously, they argue that consumers should cut back drastically on consumption of meat and other animal products with the ultimate goal of adopting vegan diets.

Although I was convinced that these two main directions of change, if widely applied, would address most of the problems faced by current food production and consumption systems, I have to admit that my first reaction was to consider them unattainable. I envisaged the need to set in motion a negotiating process that would have brought together all affected parties to arrive at a consensus on a way forward, but history shows that this would have been well-intended but futile.

It then struck me that the two proposed directions of change were both so much in the common interests of food producers and consumers that, whether scientists or corporations liked them or not, they would, if paired as suggested by the Editors, gather an irresistible momentum of their own. 

Although this has gone largely unheralded, there has already been a massive shift towards agro-ecological farming systems across the world. The area of organic farming has grown by over 500% over the past 20 years: it involves 2.9 million producers, and consumer demand for organic food is expanding very rapidly. Similarly, conservation agriculture has swept aside conventional tillage of crops, with the area growing by 10 times in the past 25 years, to a total of over 200 million ha now: the pace of change is such that it is already applied to 60% of cropped land in South America and all indications are that its spread will continue apace. These changes have been driven not by governments or by research institutes, but largely by farmers – both small and large-scale – who invest in the new technologies and encourage others to take them up because they are convinced by their multiple advantages.

Ultimately most of what farmers produce is determined by what consumers choose to buy. While prices are bound to remain a major influence on the demand for food, consumers’ choices  are becoming increasingly shaped by their knowledge of the negative environmental impact of certain food production systems (forest destruction to produce palm oil or for livestock grazing); the prevalence of harsh  labour conditions in the food chain (fair trade, human rights); adverse nutritional and health impacts (pesticide and hormone residues, excess carbohydrates including sugar and fats, excess red meat consumption); and animal welfare. There is growing respect for the moral concept of kinship between humans and animals and hence for vegan diets which is reflected in a growth in the number of people adhering to the celebration of ‘Veganuary’ to over 500,000 this year.

This book provides ample evidence that changes in these directions are gathering pace, driven mainly by farmers and consumers acting in their own interest while also creating important public benefits – for instance through reducing the pace of climate change through raising levels of carbon storage in farmed soils, and by improving the quality of the human diet, thereby reducing the pressure imposed by nutrition-related illnesses on public sector health services. If taken seriously by the governments that all subscribe to them, the Sustainable Development Goals provide an admirable framework for embarking on policies that would greatly accelerate these largely spontaneous processes of desirable change. But, as the Kassam’s argue, this will only come about through a decentralisation of power in food systems management that puts producers and consumers, rather than corporate interests, in the driving seat.

The editors conclude by bringing together these ways forward, along with others suggested in the book, in the framework of ‘inclusive responsibility’. This framework summarises the paradigm shift that is needed for a just and sustainable food and agriculture system. They suggest Conservation Agriculture based Veganic Agroecology as one example of an alternative, inclusively responsible, food and agriculture paradigm.

Just as the Conservation Agriculture Community of Practice (CA-CoP) which is moderated by Amir Kassam, has done much to promote CA around the world by sharing knowledge and relevant information between CA practitioners and supportive institutions, perhaps the ‘inclusive responsibility’ website that underpins this book could serve as a foundation on which to construct the emergence of a movement for nudging forward the processes of change towards a truly sustainable global food system.

Agriculture is at the root of multiple crises facing humanity today. Environmentally, it is responsible for habitat destruction, topsoil loss, aquifer depletion, pesticide and fertilizer pollution, ocean dead zones, dubious genetic experimentation, and a tremendous amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Socially, its practice depends on a permanent underclass of slave-like labor controlled by monopolistic corporate forces with pernicious political influence. Philosophically, it reduces non-human life—plants, animals, fungus, etc.—to objects to be controlled and manipulated rather than relations with whom to live in reciprocity; this “dominionism” (as enshrined by the Abrahamic religious tradition) is the toxic foundation of contemporary capitalism (and which, I must add, is too often ignored by socialist theory).

We have to eat, of course, so what are we to do?

“Rethinking Food & Agriculture: New Ways Forward,” an anthology edited by Amir Kassam and Laila Kassam, takes a deep dive into these ecological and cultural concerns, from the Neolithic Revolution to the present day, and explores sustainable solutions.

Over the course of twenty copiously referenced essays and 400+ pages, this substantial tome delivers an exhaustive examination of contemporary farming and food systems. A reader with no familiarity with the subject matter will receive a detailed education and an over-arching perspective. For me, a former organic farmer who has studied these topics for nearly two decades, there were many facts that were new to me, and many ideas that were newly connected or contextualized. In terms of style and reading level, this is a scholarly collection, so it requires attention, but each author begins with the basics of their chosen topic.

The volume does not shrink from controversial subjects and wades right in with its opening article, “Setting innovation free in agriculture,” in which biologist Rupert Sheldrake critiques materialism, “the scientific priesthood,” and biotechnology, and calls for a re-emphasis on traditional agricultural practices. Traditional practices include intercropping, the use of night soil, and small-scale holdings. Science has demonstrated that these techniques are all beneficial, but research usually does not focus on them. Sheldrake calls for scientific research to reorient to cover the practical questions of farmers and gardeners rather than technological projects such as gene-editing and agrochemical development, which are pursued for their profit potential, not successful food production per se.

Sheldrake writes: “Science and economics are not theory-neutral. They are expressions of worldviews, and we need to be aware of the prevailing worldview, or else we will follow it through blind faith.” This is not to throw science out the window; it is just to dispense with the notion that science is—or even can be—approached without drawing on cultural values. Such values affect what is studied, who funds it, and which results are reported widely, and which are suppressed. Thus, the dialogue around any issue—including agriculture—is invisibly circumscribed by notions of what’s considered appropriate; what’s “fit to print,” as the NY Times puts it. A conversation without such limits, and that was truly free of preconceptions, would not shrink away from the marginal or lionize the popular, as is currently the case, but would cover the whole story.

It’s appropriate that the book opens with these concepts, as it clearly intends to tell a wider narrative with fewer of the usual constrictions. As Laila Kassam put it in our discussion:

“I really wanted to be able to uncover some of these beliefs that we have internalized without knowing it… our society is set up to keep us in this state of being unconscious of all of these things. I myself have gone through a journey that is never-ending, trying to unlearn so much of this stuff. To me, this is our unconsciousness around how we view our relationship to other animals… [which] seems to me to be one of the root causes of so many of the issues we are facing today.”

In “Agriculture planted the seeds of alienation from nature,” Jim Mason & Laila Kassam delve into the history of the Agricultural Revolution, with a focus on how human relationships to animals were altered to the detriment of both animals and humans. Mason & Kassam address well-established facts of the transition to agriculture—such as the overall decline in human health, the increase in labor as a proportion of time spent, and the escalation in social inequality—and also point out how much we gave up in terms of our metaphysical connections to the world, something that has only worsened over time. As we integrated the abuse of animals into our means of survival, we deadened ourselves and our sensitivity to the natural world, with the result that our species now stands at the precipice of extinction and seems reluctant to step back.

The thesis of “agriculture as wrong turn” is not new, but Mason & Kassam’s attention to the animal aspect is less common. They describe the central role of animal exploitation in enabling and promoting widespread violence, war, and colonialism and also make explicit the link between animal oppression and the development of capitalism.

The widespread cruelty of the contemporary animal agriculture industry is a theme running throughout the volume and is touched upon by several of the authors. Robert C. Jones writes about the intersection of foodieism and meat and describes the contradictions involved with “locavore” animal consumption and slaughter.

“An increased awareness of the destructive nature of industrialized animal agriculture and fishing, including environmental degradation, individual and public health threats, and the atrocious conditions under which animals are raised, has led to a shift in attitudes toward meat and meat production. This acknowledgment, coupled with a sentimental nostalgia for a time when a majority of Europeans and Americans were farmers and craftspersons, has led to a booming alternative food movement… Yet, despite this supposed concern for the animals’ lives and deaths, relatively little public attention has been paid to the experiences of their short lives or the brutality of their slaughter.

“In truth, an overwhelming majority of animals raised on “local” farms are sent to industrial slaughterhouses, butchered alongside their kin raised in factory farms. Animals raised in “humane” conditions routinely suffer branding, dehorning, forced impregnation, tail docking (without anesthesia), overcrowding, beak trimming, castration, tooth filing, ear notching, and nose ring piercing.”

Currently, about three quarters of agricultural resources worldwide are devoted to raising animals or food for animals, for both meat and dairy production, so the topic is vitally important but is generally ignored, at least in conventional discussions. Even in environmental or politically leftist circles, there is at least a hesitancy and often a hostility to discussing the ecological effects of animal agriculture. This is a societal phenomena, reinforced not just by media, but by religion and other cultural factors. “Rethinking Food & Agriculture” takes the subject head on, returning to it repeatedly throughout. This might be distasteful or uncomfortable for some readers, but the planetary issues of animal agriculture are real in a material environmental sense—setting aside ethical considerations—so we’ve really got to move past the insolent and ultimately juvenile conversation stopper, “But I like bacon.”

In “Political economy of the global food and agriculture system,” Philip McMichael draws a line from European colonialism to our current phase of “free trade” globalization. Land and labor in the global south are exploited for export crops to such a degree that local populations suffer starvation. Traditional, community-based methodologies and structures based on subsistence and local conditions are replaced by corporate powers that seek maximum production no matter the cost. The result is the loss of local sustainability for international trade, and with it, both human self-reliance and natural biodiversity. When the media talks about issues of “trade” what is actually at stake is culture and ecology, and this chapter illustrates this well. In addition to the global north extracting from the global south, the north has forced upon the south such curses as pesticide use, monocropping, and harmful diets that benefit no one but the capitalist ownership class.

Running counter to all this are peasant-led food-sovereignty movements. That such movements are sometimes connected to explicitly anti-capitalist and pro-socialist perspectives is another layer of reality that is ignored or misrepresented by the corporate media. The huge farmer-led demonstrations that recently took place in India barely made a blip in the news in the US, though they were significant both numerically and historically.

“Neocolonialism and the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition: A gendered analysis of the development consequences for Africa” by Mark Langan and Sophia Price provides details of how corporate players like Syngenta, Monsanto & Unilever are expanding their markets—and western hegemony—under the cover of “sustainable development.” The “modernization” that is supposedly being brought to Africa by NGOs and ‘philanthro-capitalist’ organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is resulting in land grabs, the replacement of local agriculture with export agriculture, and more hardship for locals, specifically women.

In “Will gene-edited and other GM crops fail sustainable food systems?,” Allison K. Wilson describes the technical aspects of genetic modification and describes what kinds of modifications have been made so far in this rapidly growing field of research and development. She answers the question posed by her title with a conditional, “yes,” given that the motives behind GM so far has been profit and market expansion, not crop varieties that are higher yielding, in spite of what is continually promised.

The most common genetic modifications to date have been for herbicide resistance and pesticide production. In the first case, a variety is manufactured that can survive applications of glyphosate; over the last two decades, these “Round-up Ready” crops have led to increasing use of the Monsanto-invented herbicide since a) the crop can tolerate it, and b) weeds are themselves becoming resistant, which then requires heavier doses of Round-up, and additionally, of other, stronger herbicides. In the second case, a plant is modified to produce its own pesticide so that an insect pest eating it is killed. Bt corn is the primary example of this, and the amount of pesticide produced by a field of such crops exceeds the amount that would have been applied otherwise. In neither case was the trait of “higher yields” sought or delivered.

Increasing agricultural pesticide use has been implicated in the sharp drop in insect populations and in various mutations in aquatic animals, among many other problems. The Monarch butterfly’s crash over the last twenty years is at least partially attributed to the fact that their host food, Milkweed, is far less common due to increased herbicide use. Yes, Monsanto is killing the Monarch.

The book focuses as much on possible solutions as it does on the problems, which is both refreshing and practical.

At the halfway point, Amir Kassam & Laila Kassam offer the chapter, “Paradigms of agriculture.” After a discussion of the so-called Green Revolution (which, despite its name, was heavily dependent on chemical inputs), they discuss the benefits and blind spots of the most common alternative paradigms to conventional agriculture. What follows is a highly abbreviated summary; there is much more to say about all of these, and indeed, the book does so. But here’s a flavor, so to speak:

• Organic Agriculture
  Initially based on building soil health, organic agriculture shuns the use of chemicals and generally utilizes composts and animal manure. After over half a century as a farmer-led movement, “organic” is now legally defined by government-based certifying rules that are, like such regulations too often end up being, subject to being diluted by industry. While organic certainly produces food that is less toxic, favored methods such as tilling degrade soil over time, and other factors—like wise water use and labor conditions—do not need to be considered at all for certification. Also, the dichotomy often presented by organic proponents of chemical inputs vs. animal inputs is considered a false choice by some.
• Regenerative Agriculture
  This term has been appearing in the media more frequently lately, often in the context of “holistic grazing.” As a paradigm, it seeks to be a “holistic land management practice” that focuses on, among other things, soil building, water issues, biodiversity, and carbon capture. The last aspect, of pulling greenhouse gases (GHG) out of the atmosphere, has been especially highlighted in the press, and claims have been made that a cattle operation following its principles can go from being GHG emitting to GHG capturing. This claim is controversial and despite the strident insistence of some of its advocates, is hardly proven or a consensus. However, regenerative systems that are veganic also exist, so grazing is not a requirement of this paradigm.
• Conservation Agriculture
  This paradigm originates with the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and aims to conserve soil. Methodology includes no-tilling (or the minimum possible soil disturbance), permanent soil coverage (cover crops or crop stubble), and diversification of cropping (such as rotation and associations with annuals and perennials including legumes). Conservation Agriculture is not the same as no-till systems that can be heavily dependent on herbicides for weed suppression. The Conservation Agriculture paradigm offers many advantages including less erosion, less agrochemicals, reduced machinery, and rehabilitation of degraded lands. It is also practiced organically or with minimum inputs from agrochemicals and does not require any animal inputs such as manure. This system is based on three universal principles and can be used to describe a wide variety of annual and perennial systems around the world, despite its origination in the US.
• Agroecology
  Developed first in Latin America, this so far loosely defined approach goes beyond organic in its effort to produce “sustainable agro-ecosystems.” Though it utilizes many of the same methods, such intensive tillage, cover cropping, intercropping, companion planting and mulching, it goes further and “seeks to challenge the power of the corporate food regime.” The ultimate goal of Agroecology is “to build a new global food system, based on equity, participation, democracy, and justice, which is not only sustainable but helps restore and protects Earth’s life support systems.”

Crucially, write Kassam & Kassam:

“Agroecology is the only paradigm that actively seeks to challenge the structural root causes of the environmental and social crisis of industrial agriculture, i.e., capitalism. It does this by questioning capitalist relations of production and allying itself with agrarian peasant social movements, which are resisting the advancement of the corporate food system, industrial agriculture, and neoliberal policies. This political dimension of Agroecology is slowing its spread in the industrialized world… Insofar as paradigms such as Organic, Regenerative, and Conservation Agriculture are based on practices that increase the efficiency of input use or substitute organic inputs for agrochemicals, but that do not challenge monoculture and reliance on external inputs or address the sociopolitical dimensions and context, they cannot transform the food and agricultural system at the local and global levels.”

These paradigms can overlap, and indeed, given varying circumstances around the world, such as climate, soil type, local history, cultural considerations and availability of resources, a sustainable system in a given location could practically combine factors from each. When it comes to what physically happens on the ground, there is no “one size fits all” model that can be applied.

That being said, there are dangers that are universal. Kassam & Kassam warn:

“In a neoliberal capitalist economic system, any paradigm that does not work to explicitly challenge the power relations within the food and agriculture system and actively reject the corporate influence and control of the food system is vulnerable to co-option by vested interests, be they corporate, international organization or philanthropic actors.”

That is, in discussing our agricultural systems and deciding how to move forward into a more sustainable future, we cannot afford to limit our scope to merely considering different farming methods—till or no-till, mulch or no mulch, animal-based or veganic, etc.—but we must also completely overhaul the entire food production and distribution system as it currently exists under capitalism. As long as corporate profit is the driving motivation and top-down control is the dominant model, we are on the wrong path: one that leads to planetary disaster. We need new systems based on addressing needs—both human and ecological—that are locally-based and community-organized. Fortunately, people are already working on these, and the book offers many examples.

In the final chapter, “Toward inclusive responsibility,” Kassam & Kassam attempt to pull together all the threads. They present six key themes, unranked, that they hope will offer “guidance, hope, and inspiration” to those working toward the transformation of farming. These themes (which Laila & I discussed one-by-one on my podcast) are:

• Toward holistic paradigms
• Toward a narrative of abundance
• Toward ecological and multifunctional paradigms of agriculture
• Toward decentralizing power in the food and economic systems
• Toward diets that promote human and planetary health
• Toward powerful social movements and civil society

These six themes inform what the editors call an ‘inclusively responsible’ paradigm of food and agriculture which is truly sustainable and just.

Note that these themes go way beyond mere technique. The project of “rethinking food and agriculture” goes to the root of civilization itself. Which is to say, we need “radical” change in a very literal sense; the word “radical” comes from the Latin, “radix,” which means “root”—and from which we also get “radish!”

In the book’s penultimate chapter, Vandana Shiva, writes:

What we eat, how we grow the food we eat, how we distribute it, will determine whether humanity survives or pushes itself and other species to extinction.

A paradigm and worldview based on recognition that we are part of the Earth and members of the Earth family leads to cocreativity. It allows us to provide healthy food for all humans while protecting the diversity of species that weave the food web as the web of life.

A paradigm based on war creates instruments of war, exterminating species, and threatening the lives of human beings through hunger and life-threatening chronic diseases.

If we continue on the destructive path laid by the Poison Cartel, we close our future.

When we farm with real knowledge of how to care for the Earth and her biodiversity, when we eat real food that nourishes the biodiversity of the Earth, of our cultures, in our gut microbiome, when we participate in living economies that regenerate the well-being of all, we sow the seeds of our future.

“Rethinking Food & Agriculture: New Ways Forward” is published by the academic press, Elsevier, and so it has an excessive price tag. Aware that this puts it out of the reach of most people, but wanting to disseminate their message anyway, the editors put together an accompanying website that presents much of the information and many of the ideas. Found at inclusiveresponsibility.earth, the site features excerpts from each chapter and presents the key themes of the book.

My podcast interview with Laila Kassam about “Rethinking Food & Agriculture: New Ways Forward” is available here.

This review was originally published by Macska Moksha Press and then republished by CounterPunch and The Greanville Post.

Professor Johan Rockström
Professor of Earth System Science at University of Potsdam, and Director Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research