*This review originally appeared in ITI SHEA Network Green Gazette Newsletter 05 (October 2023)
Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet by George Monbiot
Journalist and environmental campaigner George Monbiot’s latest book takes a critical look at the global food system and agriculture. He examines how the way we feed ourselves is destroying the world we live in. He explains how the complex food systems has converged towards a ‘Global Standard Diet’ produced by the ‘Global Standard Farm’ for the sake of efficiency and losing resilience as a result. He shows the damage this is causing to the soil, water and climate, and offers a few suggestions – including some radical propositions – as to how we might be able to change course. Solutions offered include horticulture that works with the soil ecosystem and use of perennial cereal crops, but most pages of the book are devoted to one particular aspect of food production: animals.
When this book came out last year, it ruffled quite a few feathers among the sustainable farming community. No wonder; at the heart of Regenesis is a call for the end of livestock farming altogether. Of course, the harms of intensive livestock farming are for all to see, with massive areas of Amazon and other rainforests around the world being cleared to make way for cattle and fields of soy to feed the cattle, destroying vital carbon sinks and biodiversity in the process. But Monbiot does not see intensity as the only problem. He argues that organic farming can inflict even more damage to the environment as it requires more land and produces just as much greenhouse gas emissions and nitrogen pollution as conventional farming. He dismisses Allan Savory’s idea of carbon sequestration through animal grazing (depicted in the film Kiss the Ground), sees land use as “the most important of all environmental questions” and wants pastures reforested and rewilded.
Perhaps the most controversial idea in this book is the use of precision fermentation to replace animal proteins. He visits a company called Solar Foods in Finland, which makes protein-rich powder by growing a specific type of soil bacteria that draws energy from hydrogen and feeds on CO2 in the air. It’s food literally made out of thin air, requiring only air, water, solar panels and an electrolyser (to make green hydrogen) and space to put the fermentation tanks. It’s space-age stuff, and the technology actually has its roots in research carried out by NASA decades ago. It could certainly solve the problem of producing food in space, but could it also be the answer to the livestock problem? Maybe, but some disagree. Me? I’m not sure.
This book is well-researched, thought-provoking, inspiring and at times challenging. It’s certainly a good starting point for thinking about the future of food and food growing, and is well worth a read.