Saying No to a Farm-Free Future: The Case for an Ecological Food System and Against Manufactured Foods. This item is unavailable.Saying No to a Farm-Free Future: The Case for an Ecological Food System and Against Manufactured Foods

“Everyone in the food business needs to read this book. . . . [A] lively and superbly written polemic.”—Joel Salatin, co-founder of Polyface Farm

Named the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Awards "Best Books of 2023"

A defense of agroecological, small-scale farming and a robust critique of an industrialized future.

One of the few voices to challenge The Guardian's George Monbiot on the future of food and farming (and the restoration of nature) is academic, farmer and author of A Small Farm Future Chris Smaje. In Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future, Smaje presents his defense of small-scale farming and a robust critique of Monbiot’s vision for an urban and industrialized future.
Responding to Monbiot’s portrayal of an urban, high-energy, industrially manufactured food future as the answer to our current crises, and its unchallenged acceptance within the environmental discourse, Smaje was compelled to challenge Monbiot’s evidence and conclusions. At the same time, Smaje presents his powerful counterargument – a low-carbon agrarian localism that puts power in the hands of local communities, not high-tech corporates.

In the ongoing fight for our food future, this book will help you to understand the difference between a congenial, ecological living and a dystopian, factory-centered existence. A must-read!

"Chris Smaje has laid down an indictment – as unremitting as it is undeniable – that cuts through the jargon-filled, techno-worshipping agricultural futurists who promise silver-bullet fixes for having your cake and eating it too. This brilliant and compelling book is at once hopeful and persuasive about the future of food."—Dan Barber, chef at Blue Hill and author of The Third Plate

Chris Smaje has coworked a small farm in Somerset, southwest England, for the last twenty years. Previously, he was a university-based social scientist, working in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey and the Department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths College. Since switching focus to the practice and politics of agroecology, he’s written for publications such as The Land, Dark Mountain, Permaculture magazine and Statistics Views, as well as academic journals such as Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems and the Journal of Consumer Culture. Chris is the author of A Small Farm Future, writes the blog at www.smallfarmfuture.org.uk and is a featured author at resilience.org.

Sarah Langford is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller In Your Defence. For ten years, she worked in criminal and family law in London. In 2017 she moved to Suffolk and, together with her husband, took on the management of his small family farm, an experience she wrote about in her book Rooted: Stories of Life, Land and a Farming Revolution. She now lives between Southwest London and Suffolk.