Forget jokes about crossing the road. New research identifies chickens as a vivid symbol of the transformation of the biosphere in our time
Metabolic rift
Archive | Food and Farming
Healthy people, healthy planet
Defining a safe operating space for food systems in the Anthropocene
A food system revolution is urgently needed, to provide healthy diets for all while preventing irreversible damage to the Earth System.
Reading matters
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, February 2019
Six new books expose environmentalism’s false friends, analyse the idea of ‘environment’, explain renewable energy, trace the history of oceans, expose Monsanto’s Round-Up, and examine UK science denial
Book Review
What’s the alternative to factory farms?
‘Farming, Food and Nature’ offers a powerful critique of industrial livestock production, but fails to challenge the profit-system that drives it.
Book review
‘Dust Bowls of Empire’ exposes capital’s global assault on the land
The 1930s Dust Bowl presaged today’s global ecological crises. Hannah Holleman’s brilliant new book shows how and why capital destroys the soil that all life depends on.
Reading matters
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, December 2018
Five important new books for reds and greens. Dust Bowls of Empire. Oil, Power and War. The Big Muddy. Never Home Alone. The Neoliberal Diet.
Chemical killers
Herbicides undermine antibiotics, threaten medical care
Study says bacteria develop antibiotic resistance up to 100,000 times faster when exposed to the world’s most widely used herbicides, Roundup and Kamba
Red & Green Reads
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, November 2018
A bumper crop! Eight new books on biofuels, nutrition fraud, imperialism, post-capitalism, indigenous sovereignty, coral reefs, moral economists, and chicken
Book Review
The Omega Principle: A vicious circle of fish, cattle and capitalism
How a giant industry that plunders the seas for tiny fish is reinforcing unsustainable industrial agriculture
Climate and hunger
Warmer climate = more hungry insects = less food
New research: Each one degree rise in global temperature will increase insect-driven losses to rice, corn and wheat crops by 10 to 25 percent
Book Review
Degrowth considered
The ecological insights of degrowth theory are undermined by blindspots about renewability, agriculture, unalienated labor, and the power of our enemies
Dry Deniers
Australia: Worst drought ever, but don’t mention climate change!
“At the federal level there is a climate information vacuum of truth and at the state level there is no action.”
Pseudo-Solutions
An engineer, an economist, and an ecomodernist walk into a bar and order a free lunch . . .
Stan Cox says ecomodernists are far better at inventing technological fantasies than at finding ways to solve environmental crises
Book Review
‘Kill All the Gentlemen’ — seven centuries of class struggle in rural England
In his insightful history of rural rebellion, Martin Empson shows how farmers and farm-workers across England have repeatedly risen against the rich and powerful
Ending hunger
To feed the world, support small farms and restore healthy soil
Exposing three myths that hinder the agricultural revolution that can restore degraded soils and feed the world using fewer agrochemicals.
Book Excerpt
Why the food movement needs to understand capitalism
To fully appreciate the challenges we face in transforming our food system we need to explore the economic and political context in which food is grown, sold and consumed in the world today
Not beach books, but ...
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, July 2018
Essential summer reading for green-lefts and left-greens. Ecosocialist essays on metabolic rifts. James Connolly Reader. A Nation Unmade by War. Formerly Known as Food. Nourished Planet.
Book Review
Beginning to end hunger: Belo Horizonte shows the way
A Brazilian city’s food program feeds the hungry and supports local farmers. It succeeds by empowering communities and challenging inequality.
Sustainable farming needs livestock
Why avoiding meat and dairy won’t save the planet
Anti-meat campaigns ignore the essential role that grazing animals play in genuinely sustainable agriculture. Livestock production must be reformed, but eliminating it would do more harm than good.
Agroecology and the fight against deadly capitalist agriculture
Agroecology can free farmers from dependency, manipulated commodity markets, unfair subsidies and inherent food insecurity. It is resisted by giant corporations that profit from the status quo.