As someone who has read both "The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People" and "Regenesis", I was quite astounded to listen to why you both (?) think that Monbiot is wrong about what a sustainable food system looks like without either one of you mentioning meat, dairy, and eggs for the entire episode. At no point have I read anything about Monbiot wanting plant-based food for humans to be grown in labs. He is also very specifically warning about big industry control in food production - you insinuated he's promoting this. Monbiot proposes a system of organic/agroecological plant-food production which maximises the natural functioning of the soil and all its organisms with the help of compost etc, and which minimises the use of chemical fertilisers and manure. A world of 8 billion people eating current levels of meat, dairy, and eggs is totally unsustainable from the perspective of most planetary boundaries (climate, biodiversity, land use, eutrophication/nitrogen pollution, freshwater use). A world of 8 billion people eating a primarily plant-based diet would allow for enormous land areas to be re-forested and re-wilded, would prevent huge amounts of methane and nitrus oxide from ending up in the atmosphere and could be kept within essentially all planetary boundaries. Monbiot is proposing that the ANIMAL AGRICULTURE part of our food production can be first and foremost minimised and whatever is left to be precision fermentation to replace eggs/dairy for instance and some other technologies. Monbiot has specifically said that lab-grown meat - as in meat cells grown into actual meat - is not a realistic option. Something which you also insinuated.
As a climate journalist, I should hope that you know all this, Rachel? And if you want your listeners to come out of an episode with better understanding of an issue, details matter.
Hi Josefina, thanks for your insights. Perhaps I should have spent the episode weeding out the differences, with Chris, about plant-based, dairy and meat farming. As you'll know from listening, I instead went down the route of enquiring as to the corporate takeover of our food systems, which I think is a deeply relevant point given we can trace a lot of the polycrisis back to the deregulation of the 80s and the corporate capture of the majority of industries. Unfortunately, I only had an hour with Chris, but will keep your observations in mind for future episodes on food.
I think this enquiry follows the same technique as George by collapsing the political realities that force 'these' people to eat 'that'. There are material historical realities that have lead to this. I have read Regenesis and 'Cruel fantasies', I've also read 'Small Farm Future' and 'Say No to a Farm Free Future'. In 'Farm Free Future' we get to understand that 'precision fermentation' is also not 'a realistic option'.
It's good to test hypotheses, and I think it is important that everyone tries growing vegetables and pulses and cereals to understand how that really works, using that knowledge to inform their thoughts about this fundamental part of our existence.
Well said Josefina. I first came to a plant based diet through ethics, then to it’s overwhelming human health benefits and then to planetary ones. Win, win, win hands down. https://jowaller.substack.com/p/whats-the-best-diet
It is both sad and oddly fascinating watching this conflict between George and Chris and I can't help feeling that this is as much about personality as ideas. Not unconnected with this was your brilliant swerve into the left/right framing discussion. I am increasingly feeling that nobody has THE answer. There are no sure-fire solutions and certainly none coming from any of the polarised positions which, however passionately felt, seem more concerned with being right than being helpful. Plurality and diversity are the bedrock of the natural world, an imperative that all of nature follows and one which - if not interfered with - produces millenia of abundant renewable resources.
Us humans, however, have developed this pesky ability to think and dream and create which has not appeared to have any limits - until now. Now, we are faced with the existential threat from the very world we have created and we have little time to rethink this long history of human supremacy.
What we need is a plural and diverse approach. This is not necessarily tied to our economic and political structures but it would be a hell of a lot more effective if those structures were also plural and diverse. Let us have a curiosity about difference and the unknown rather than fear. Technology is a tool and a spade can be just as useful as microchip.
What differentiates us humans from the rest of the natural world is our creative ability that can be self directed rather than just following primeval urges. This is perhaps the 'original sin'. The price we pay for losing the 'innocence' of being an unthinking part of the natural world. We have departed from the basic need to survive and ensure succession for our species and become fragmented into a series of competing groups and, more recently, competing individuals that value winning over surviving.
As we teeter on the brink of the chasm will we argue about which of us is right as the ground crumbles beneath our feet or will we join hands to find a way back from the edge and find what we have in common.
I may have misread Regenesis, but I thought most of the book was about working with nature to produce food without Monsanto like chemicals. And about ways to improve people’s health by having plant rich diets. He visits agroforestry farms and farms that have a plant based nutrient cycle. These are all good small local farms which he wholeheartedly supports.
I hopefully most people believe that we should get rid of the inhumane vast chicken sheds and factory farmed pigs, beef and dairy. To replace this we would need to be careful not to cover all land with, say, beef farms that would produce double the methane of factory farms per head of cattle (as your interview with the organic beef farmer explained).
So there is a protein gap to fill while at the same time we need to rewild more land.
I thought the point of the precision fermentation was one way to produce protein for people who want to have meat like foods, but with fewer ingredients that bind together current meat substitutes. Other meat like products such as Quorn have been around for years and haven’t received such criticism. There are dangers but it doesn’t need to be an industrial monopoly controlling the patents. Governments can step in to stop that.
The UK used to grow lots of beans and pulses. This is another option to get sufficient food with low emissions and keep local farming.
The human race has a really bad record for the treatment of farm animals. Without a huge shift in respect, reverence and care for our fellow species, which probably needs some spiritual awakening (that I think we are all desperate for), I don’t think we should have huge amounts of farm animals for animal welfare reasons as well as the methane emission issues.
Congratulations on the interview. I was concerned with the title as GM does not support lab grown meat, but that aside you gave a fair voice to CS and backed off when needed. The concerns with precision fermentation (PF) are political (who owns the process) and energetic. There are many PF processes that don't use hydrogen as an input, and other ways to obtain hydrogen than electrolysis. See Sunhydrogen and torrefaction as examples of the latter. Thanks for your mahi. Alistair Newbould
Disappointing for me, as George Monbiot's views have been misrepresented. As Josefina Bergsten has already commented, the precision fermentation technology that GM puts forward would only be to replace the animal proteins/fats that impose such a heavy climate. ecological and health burden on the world, whilst also acting as a safety option, as threats to agricultural production keep increasing. And, so far, this technology does show much promise (see for instance https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/factory-01-solar-foods-air-protein-solein-commercial-facility/).
Chris says that George has been only "vaguely positive" about agroecology but George praises it several times in Regenesis and mentions it in his manifesto, which says this:
Become food-numerate
Change the stories we tell ourselves
Limit the land area we use to feed the world
(...) Map the world's soils
Enhance fertility with the smallest possible organic interventions
Research and develop high-yield agroecology
Stop farming animals
Replace the protein and fat from animals with precision fermentation
Break global corporations' grip on the food chain
Diversify the global food system
Use our understanding of complex systems to trigger cascading change
This looks sensible and I agree with most of it. My understanding of precision fermentation is that is not economically and energetically viable, so good to think around that. The document put together with Corbyn's Labour is a great prospect, and ownership and distribution of our food provisioning to as local a level as possible should be the focus of our action around food systems.
You really need to read Chris's book I think you would enjoy it. It's a sober, good humoured and systematic view of the data. George's hatchet job is an egregious misrepresentation of a good book for anyone who wants to inform themselves properly about our food system and the true viability of this technology.
For me I just don't see how the infra structure of medical grade huge steel tanks, the buildings to house them, the distribution system and fields of solar panels, that will have to be junked and remade every 25 years or so is gonna fit in to a low energy future. Just the thought of the land fill every 25 years gives me the ick. I won't have too see it, cos I live in the global north with my fellow Guardian readers, still.
I'm a little surprised to see your optimism about corporate and governmental transparency here, as a brief listen on the pod casts gives a corruscating critique of the blatant corruption of both.
As I said, I am interested in the distributed ownership of food systems, this fits into centralised corporate ownership of the kind that is currently creating so much havoc with our ecosystem.
I am doing my best to learn land skills and volunteering on farming and forestry projects, putting on workshops in my local community. Through this process I'm trying to get a local and deep knowledge to inform my thoughts about these matters. I would recommend these activities as a good antidote to the Internet and modelled data.
I bought and tried hard to read "A small farm future" by Chris but gave up. His writing style doesn't work well for me, though I have read various shorter articles (and followed his debate with George on social media).
The huge steel tanks you mention are already common place in most meat and dairy processing plants (cf my tweet https://twitter.com/AnnieLeymarie/status/1786881648652403191) and there are the slaughterhouses, the incinerators for carcasses, the large cold rooms, the cold room containers for transport, etc.
The corporate stronghold is already predominant in the food industries. Precision fermentation would remove the need for synthetic fertilisers (which currently require much fossil fuels), for manure/slurry and effluents from large biodigesters, for pesticides like glyphosate, for insecticides, etc.
'No to a farm free future' is a better more concise book and it will give you a clearer perspective on this topic. I think we are both in a agreement that industrial production of meat and dairy is abhorrent and unsustainable. We still have the problem of scalability, ownership and electricity. At the moment this technology is not viable, it cannot produce at scale, it is extremely sensitive to go wrong - as in any contamination destroys the batch. This was dreamt up in the 70s and is having a boost now from tech entrepreneurs with the 'dematerialise everything!' Mantra. If and when it does work, it is an uneadable stuff, with its own slurry, that requires further processing to make it palatable. Even then it does not contain the further nutrients required for a healthy diet.
Even within the industry they have turned to the black eyed pea, in an attempt to GM (genetically modify) it, to patent it, as feed stuff for the further processing, because the food from air is non starter - or costlier than they thought. So they will be using GM chemically fertilised crops on agribusiness super farms making a highly processed material to sell to you from the supermarket and brand it as vegan.
And we didn't even think about the solar panel fields and e -waste.
Let's not be naive, ownership and profit are at the root of this whole endeavour. Distribute the land and everyone take part in the responsibility of growing and producing food (and fibre, which we have not even mentioned). We need to stop industrially farming food, eating so much meat and dairy, and as another commenter said, wasting so much food.
The fossil fuels are running out, see Rachel's other pod cast. We will need to all take part in the labour of growing food, and I think some animals will be included in that, in the most healthy and respectful way. We need to work together to find ways to bring land into trust for good farming and rewilding and commoning, outside of corporate and government control and capture, I feel like you'll be good at that.
This "unviable" technology is currently used in practically all cheeses for sale in the UK (via rennet). About one in ten UK men has diabetes and insulin therapy, based on precision fermentation, is used by hundreds of millions worldwide. I understand your concerns but following through your neophobia and cancelling precision fermentation would right now condemn a large population.
Profit plays a big part in much of food industry (and money is power, viz currently the US farmers, appointed to regulate farming, not allowing the CDC - 'Centers for Disease Control and Prevention' - to test dairy workers for bird flu despite so many dairy cows having the disease, as one example among so much else). Do you really think that George's interest in the technology is motivated by profit? I'm currently reading 'Possible - ways to net zero' by Chris Goodall, and he rates the technology as one of the most promising there are.
I'll continue listening to a whole range of voices, preferably without vested interests, and I cannot have the level of certainty you're displaying.
So you asked about me (in a different comment). My life is not relevant to the bigger picture and systems thinking we so urgently need to consider but briefly: I come from a French livestock farming family (basically landless peasants keeping cows and other farm animals and working as butchers). I left home and went vegetarian in the late 1960s. By the early 1980s I'd gone back to eating some meat/fish (social pressures) and found myself working for the International Livestock Centre for Africa in Ethiopia, during a major drought contributing to a famine and war.
Two colleagues and I decided to adopt a plant-based diet because eating lowest on the food chain already made so much sense for environmental and health reasons and seemed the best way to help a country - and a planet - struggling. 40 odd years later I'm still vegan (it makes even more sense with knowledge of the climate crisis and much else), I don't have kids nor pets, I produce far more energy than I consume in my smallish home. I had stopped flying years ago but moved to London a few years ago to further shrink my footprint: here I don't need to drive. Previously I had lived in Devon (and Somerset), growing much food and co-creating a number of forest gardens in public spaces as well as orchards, etc. I am very active within Extinction Rebellion and others.
I need to stop this conversation now but you're welcome to continue perhaps on Twitter/X or Bluesky, where I am under my name: Annie Leymarie. Thanks for the debate and best wishes for everything!
On the question of whether the future looks like a hybrid / diverse mix of traditional farming and lab grown food - I don't understand why the issue of food waste doesn't come up more. Why are we looking into increasing the means of production before fixing the gross inefficiency of our current systems, such as by implementing strict legislation that makes food wastage (both pre and post consumer) impossible? When the World Economic Forum estimates that 931 MILLION TONNES of perfectly edible food is wasted globally each year, and that waste is responsible for a whopping 8-10% of our global carbon emissions, why aren't we looking more into legislative solutions / incentives to curb this? This isn't just about households, this is pre-consumer too - in Australia at least around ONE THIRD of all the food produced is wasted, most of this waste comes from households (34% of total waste) but several tonnes of food are discarded and left to rot every day before they make it to the market (31% of waste is pre-consumer) because of stringent beauty standards for how straight a carrot out to be or how big or small our fruit should be. These standards are not just shamefully wasteful drivers of food insecurity, they contribute to carbon emissions and should be criminal. (Source: CSIRO, The challenge of ending food waste and food insecurity in Australia, 17 Nov 2023)
"We need to confront a politics of access to land." Indeed. How do we do this? What are the actual solutions? Not everyone who currently lives in a city can have access to a small farm. We are surely going to need a range of options. George Monbiot proposes a mixtures of solutions including "local job rich agroecology" which Chris seems to support. Fair enough that some people don't like precision fermentation proposed by GM but people seem to have an emotional reaction to this and stop engaging with the facts of what GM is saying and the realities of feeding everyone. As Josefina has said above, GM confronts the issue of big industry control. Chris says you can't have it both ways but in fact as Rachel points out we need a diverse range of solutions, not just both ways but many and diverse ways. Why is this one issue with GM's proposed solutions clouding the debate? People criticise this and stop looking at what else he is saying and it seems to me that many people criticise without proposing practical solutions to feeding 8 billion people most of whom live in cities.
Chris is a reserved and humble guy, whose demeanor belies his deep knowledge and experience. As a small holder himself, he also lives the hands on reality of actually growing food and what that really means. I think the discussion with George Monbiot, (celebrity activist/journalist and Guardian columnist and, as another commenter pointed out, some time supporter of agroecology) was deliberately collapsed by Monbiot with his 'cruel fantasies' essay. I think this is more to do with George's class and the vagaries of fame, coupled with a debilitating fear of the polycrisis and what that will mean for him, his family and his professional class.
There is a misconception here that places the growing of food as some kind of design problem, that you can just cut and paste a bit of this and a bit of that and just 'no this' and 'only that' and, ah, everything is perfect and fluffy.
For thousands of years people have a grown food with a diverse mix of plants and animals, mimicking the ecologies that exist, that we are a part of. This is why animals are a fundamental part of any agroecolgical farming system, whether you eat them or not. We need to keep an eye on the energetics because it is not just food, it is our clothes, our houses, our transport, our tools.
Pluralities can exist but they must exist with parameters, otherwise they are not equal, energetically or politically and we know what happens then. The technology of the city is not in a plurality or even dichotomy with the technologies of the land, it is directly feeding off it. It creates false equivalences which are the basis of our present trouble.
What a great journey to be on, to find the land again, to find community and language. It is truly exciting (and daunting!) It is heartening to hear some one so intelligent, articulate and brave as yourself coming to these conclusions and exploring this space.
What you call GM's "debilitating fear of the polycrisis" I'd call knowledge and lucidity. When I asked Chris, twice, what he had in mind to feed populations in the increasingly large regions where food production has become impossible because of droughts, floods, overgrazing, desertification, fires, rising water levels, high temperatures, pollution, diseases and/or conflicts linked to many of these, he could not answer.
I think the first thing is to read Chris's work, both books are great. I agree with your comment below, on the face of it there should not be any disagreement. There is something here in the framing, which is something that Chris is keenly aware of in his writing about local agrarianism. We have to be careful about how we look at the world, as if it is a game of risk and we just have to make the right government rules and it wil all be alright. This is a modernist perspective that tends to universalise and create global solutions. The world to me is a complex weave of cultures and geographies each with there own bioregionally unique characteristics. I also think you have the feeding problem the wrong way up, that it is the conflict caused by capitalist modernism that is responsible for the list of whoes we face. The starvation in Gaza and Sudan will not be helped by not farming animals, rewilding and and so called precision fermentation. Both have fertile soils and ancient traditional ways of stewarding their soil and land that have been destroyed by the World Bank and various other global institutions and colonists, each with their own manifesto.
I think it is perhaps more creative to discuss, what are you doing to make you and your family and community and bioregion more resilient to the shocks we are inevitably going to face? Because that is what populations are, you and me and our families, friends and communities.
I've heard great things from La Via Campasina, the largest peasant organisation in the world of how there network has responded in natural disasters because of the very local nature of their plant knowledge and the ability of smaller local food producers to adapt.
There is no easy answer, which does not fit the perspective of World Kings (Boris Johnsons famous aspiration).
I would say that it is precisely a shortcoming of Chris's analysis to not sufficiently think in terms of systems!
Not farming animals, if achievable globally, would free over 75% of land used for farming. And: "A global phaseout of animal agriculture over 15 years would unlock “negative emissions” sufficient to bring about an urgently needed 30-year window of “net-zero” greenhouse gas emissions – even if all other emissions continued on their current trajectory. Such a phaseout would offset more than two-thirds of all projected carbon dioxide emissions over the next 80 years, and provide more than half of the net emissions reductions required to keep global temperatures from exceeding 2C above pre-industrial levels" (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/02/cattle-trees-climate-change-solution).
The huge overall positive impacts of going significantly in that direction, in terms of climate, biodiversity, land and water use, air and water pollution and public health (including pandemics and antibiotic resistance), would help tremendously in helping to address all the other on-going crises!
This is brilliant you've worked it all out. Who owns this process, who drives it, how does it happen? What laws will be enacted and how will they be enforced?
My brain reels at the mighty computer modelling, data crunching and figuring of the figures.
What does this even look like in the real world? Are we all living on Ian Tolhurst like organic farms? Cos sign me up!
I'm intrigued about the essential struggle between modernity and agrarianism that Chris implies. I would love to have you interview Vanessa Andreotti whose book "Hospicing Modernity" turned my world inside out. She is currently dean of education at the University of Victoria in British Columbia and her personal story is as remarkable as her pedagogy. Another contributor to the extreme steepness of my learning curve over the past 18 months is Joe Brewer's "Design School for Regenerating Earth" and the rapidly evolving bioregional learning centres around the world.
As for lab produced protein, I could quite happily promote the lab production of salmon and tuna meat to replace the horrible mining of the oceans for our sushi, or the terribly destructive practice of salmon farming.
George Monbiot is also completely unimaginative and unrealistic regarding our overpopulation problem. He persists in pretending that 8 billion can be sustainable on a planet that only offers about 12 billion global hectares, when scientists suggest that 2.4 gha are needed for a fulfilled life. See research by Lucia Tamburino, summarised in this article: https://overpopulation-project.com/reconciling-human-demands-with-planetary-boundaries/
Eating plant based would not only provide plenty of food for 8 billion and more, it would also allow for the majority of land currently used for agriculture to be reforested and no one need be unfulfilled.
When GDP and eduction of women increases, as it is in the 'developing' world, the population naturally declines, as we see in China. The issues are then to build economies around degrowth and no one need feel 'over'.
None of us have a future as things stand. We are in an ecological nosedive, we teach incentives that accelerate the destruction of ecosystems. We are in a negative sum game, where everyone loses in the longer term, which is now the near term. https://investingelixir.com/2024/04/the-anti-moloch-mindset/
I'm not interested in listening to this false dichotomy. Humans don't need lab grown meat not the flesh of other animals. Small farms would be totally unsustainable for the present amount of flesh eaten. We need to eat much less of it and ideally none.
Clearly the future of food is the healthiest for humans, the planet and other animals. Patently it is whole food vegan.
Enough to of this greenwashing by animal ag and pussy footing around.
I had a read through of your post, that is a seriously technical and indepth analysis! I am interested in a small farm system that can distribute the responsibility of growing food, that will allow people and communitues access to land to provision themselves and be informed by the day to day reality of what that means. To the best of my understanding animals are an integral part of any ecosystem, wild or otherwise, and will be needed as part of a process of fertilisation for our beloved vegetables, pulses and cereals, fruits and nuts. We need to take the land and our access to food back from capitalist (colonial) extractive structures. Presently all food, vegan or otherwise is produced in that structure. It is a tall order but we must strong!
Animals are obviously part of any ecosystem. In fact Ian Tolhurst, whose farm GM describes at length in Regenesis, as it has produced fruits and vegs very well for several decades without any external animal inputs (nor any form of chemical inputs), often jokes that he farms earthworms (and pollinating insects, etc) as they are so crucial! When we use livestock's manure (made from plants) to fertilise, whilst extracting the livestock, we actually impoverish ecosystems more than we would do using plants directly to fertilise. Just as it is more efficient to feed ourselves lower on the food chain, so it is too to fertilise. This is explained for instance in the long report "Grazed and Confused": "There is a sense that via their manure ruminants create something out of nothing, that it not only fertilises the soil, stimulating plant growth and supplying the animals themselves with their sustenance, but in so doing, it fosters the process of soil carbon sequestration. But there is of course no magic. Animals do not bring new nitrogen into the system – they just move it about, and if we continue to eat them and their products, there is ultimately a net loss of nitrogen from the farming system. Ultimately, the nitrogen contained in the manure and urine is less than what the land originally started with". https://tabledebates.org/sites/default/files/2020-10/fcrn_gnc_report.pdf
I think we share a deep care for our environment and the way that we provision our livelihood. I see myself as another land animal and try to view the world from that perspective.
Here's Chris's review of Regenesis that discusses 'Tolly':
George has not convincingly addressed the central critique of Chris's book that it is energetically way more costly to grow protein in steel vats than it is to use sunlight. It is not consumate with a low energy future.
We can feed the current population of the UK on just over a third of the present agricultural land. Let's call it half, then rewild the other half (of the agricultural land), great!
I'm working with a forester who has to control the populations of wild deer (there are more deer now than have ever been on this island). They are destructive to woodand and certain crops. I am curious at what point cohabiting the land with fellow animals becomes farming them? The industrial farming of all animals and plants (and perhaps even bacteria?) Is abhorrent, that needs to end.
Again, I think we share a sense of ecological care, it's been nice replying with you, please don't judge Chris's work on my own ramblings. He is a good writer! And really, best wishes.
George and others have explained that it is not "energetically more costly to grow protein in steel vats than using sunlight" when one considers animal protein (the type that so badly needs replacing) and take into account everything else required to produce meat, dairy & eggs (in particular land, so badly needed for carbon capture and biodiversity).
All the relevant papers explain that the energy cost will vastly decrease with 1) scaling up of the technology 2) shifts to cheaper renewables.
And, once again, Chris never responded when I asked what he suggested for regions that cannot produce food anymore. And what do you suggest? I am personally quite happy with the plant-based diet that I first adopted more than 4 decades ago and have not desire, for now, for alt meat, but even in the UK this year is showing how fragile food production is becoming with climate chaos (as well as pollution, loss of pollinators and other elements of the polycrisis).
Precision fermentation and possibly other novel technologies can do this - and more: "The expansion and normalisation of microbial foods will increase production volumes, decreasing costs and optimising the efficiency of the technology. Reduced costs can then aid the development of microbial processes in less developed areas of the planet, which often need to improve nutrition. Looking at the future, engineered microbes are expected to play a role in delivering food where traditionally inaccessible, such as in disaster relief, deserts or even in space. In conclusion, if there is continued innovation and microbial foods are designed with sustainability and ethics in mind, they have the potential to revolutionise current food systems. This microbial food revolution could be key in designing future-proof strategies to face the health and environmental challenges of the future." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-37891-1
I’ve got a lot of time for both Chris Smaje and George Monbiot. The food systems we’re going to need down the road will depend on what’s left of the biosphere and how stable or otherwise the climate will be. I don’t feel too confident about either of those variables. I think that Chris’s concerns about the industrialisation and concentration of wealth are valid. One thing that keeps coming up in these podcasts is the separation of humans from the rest of the living world and precision fermentation plants seems to me to lead further down that path. However, maybe we’ll need it…as part of the mix at least.
As someone who has read both "The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People" and "Regenesis", I was quite astounded to listen to why you both (?) think that Monbiot is wrong about what a sustainable food system looks like without either one of you mentioning meat, dairy, and eggs for the entire episode. At no point have I read anything about Monbiot wanting plant-based food for humans to be grown in labs. He is also very specifically warning about big industry control in food production - you insinuated he's promoting this. Monbiot proposes a system of organic/agroecological plant-food production which maximises the natural functioning of the soil and all its organisms with the help of compost etc, and which minimises the use of chemical fertilisers and manure. A world of 8 billion people eating current levels of meat, dairy, and eggs is totally unsustainable from the perspective of most planetary boundaries (climate, biodiversity, land use, eutrophication/nitrogen pollution, freshwater use). A world of 8 billion people eating a primarily plant-based diet would allow for enormous land areas to be re-forested and re-wilded, would prevent huge amounts of methane and nitrus oxide from ending up in the atmosphere and could be kept within essentially all planetary boundaries. Monbiot is proposing that the ANIMAL AGRICULTURE part of our food production can be first and foremost minimised and whatever is left to be precision fermentation to replace eggs/dairy for instance and some other technologies. Monbiot has specifically said that lab-grown meat - as in meat cells grown into actual meat - is not a realistic option. Something which you also insinuated.
As a climate journalist, I should hope that you know all this, Rachel? And if you want your listeners to come out of an episode with better understanding of an issue, details matter.
Hi Josefina, thanks for your insights. Perhaps I should have spent the episode weeding out the differences, with Chris, about plant-based, dairy and meat farming. As you'll know from listening, I instead went down the route of enquiring as to the corporate takeover of our food systems, which I think is a deeply relevant point given we can trace a lot of the polycrisis back to the deregulation of the 80s and the corporate capture of the majority of industries. Unfortunately, I only had an hour with Chris, but will keep your observations in mind for future episodes on food.
I think this enquiry follows the same technique as George by collapsing the political realities that force 'these' people to eat 'that'. There are material historical realities that have lead to this. I have read Regenesis and 'Cruel fantasies', I've also read 'Small Farm Future' and 'Say No to a Farm Free Future'. In 'Farm Free Future' we get to understand that 'precision fermentation' is also not 'a realistic option'.
It's good to test hypotheses, and I think it is important that everyone tries growing vegetables and pulses and cereals to understand how that really works, using that knowledge to inform their thoughts about this fundamental part of our existence.
Well said Josefina. I first came to a plant based diet through ethics, then to it’s overwhelming human health benefits and then to planetary ones. Win, win, win hands down. https://jowaller.substack.com/p/whats-the-best-diet
It is both sad and oddly fascinating watching this conflict between George and Chris and I can't help feeling that this is as much about personality as ideas. Not unconnected with this was your brilliant swerve into the left/right framing discussion. I am increasingly feeling that nobody has THE answer. There are no sure-fire solutions and certainly none coming from any of the polarised positions which, however passionately felt, seem more concerned with being right than being helpful. Plurality and diversity are the bedrock of the natural world, an imperative that all of nature follows and one which - if not interfered with - produces millenia of abundant renewable resources.
Us humans, however, have developed this pesky ability to think and dream and create which has not appeared to have any limits - until now. Now, we are faced with the existential threat from the very world we have created and we have little time to rethink this long history of human supremacy.
What we need is a plural and diverse approach. This is not necessarily tied to our economic and political structures but it would be a hell of a lot more effective if those structures were also plural and diverse. Let us have a curiosity about difference and the unknown rather than fear. Technology is a tool and a spade can be just as useful as microchip.
What differentiates us humans from the rest of the natural world is our creative ability that can be self directed rather than just following primeval urges. This is perhaps the 'original sin'. The price we pay for losing the 'innocence' of being an unthinking part of the natural world. We have departed from the basic need to survive and ensure succession for our species and become fragmented into a series of competing groups and, more recently, competing individuals that value winning over surviving.
As we teeter on the brink of the chasm will we argue about which of us is right as the ground crumbles beneath our feet or will we join hands to find a way back from the edge and find what we have in common.
I may have misread Regenesis, but I thought most of the book was about working with nature to produce food without Monsanto like chemicals. And about ways to improve people’s health by having plant rich diets. He visits agroforestry farms and farms that have a plant based nutrient cycle. These are all good small local farms which he wholeheartedly supports.
I hopefully most people believe that we should get rid of the inhumane vast chicken sheds and factory farmed pigs, beef and dairy. To replace this we would need to be careful not to cover all land with, say, beef farms that would produce double the methane of factory farms per head of cattle (as your interview with the organic beef farmer explained).
So there is a protein gap to fill while at the same time we need to rewild more land.
I thought the point of the precision fermentation was one way to produce protein for people who want to have meat like foods, but with fewer ingredients that bind together current meat substitutes. Other meat like products such as Quorn have been around for years and haven’t received such criticism. There are dangers but it doesn’t need to be an industrial monopoly controlling the patents. Governments can step in to stop that.
The UK used to grow lots of beans and pulses. This is another option to get sufficient food with low emissions and keep local farming.
The human race has a really bad record for the treatment of farm animals. Without a huge shift in respect, reverence and care for our fellow species, which probably needs some spiritual awakening (that I think we are all desperate for), I don’t think we should have huge amounts of farm animals for animal welfare reasons as well as the methane emission issues.
Congratulations on the interview. I was concerned with the title as GM does not support lab grown meat, but that aside you gave a fair voice to CS and backed off when needed. The concerns with precision fermentation (PF) are political (who owns the process) and energetic. There are many PF processes that don't use hydrogen as an input, and other ways to obtain hydrogen than electrolysis. See Sunhydrogen and torrefaction as examples of the latter. Thanks for your mahi. Alistair Newbould
Disappointing for me, as George Monbiot's views have been misrepresented. As Josefina Bergsten has already commented, the precision fermentation technology that GM puts forward would only be to replace the animal proteins/fats that impose such a heavy climate. ecological and health burden on the world, whilst also acting as a safety option, as threats to agricultural production keep increasing. And, so far, this technology does show much promise (see for instance https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/factory-01-solar-foods-air-protein-solein-commercial-facility/).
Chris says that George has been only "vaguely positive" about agroecology but George praises it several times in Regenesis and mentions it in his manifesto, which says this:
Become food-numerate
Change the stories we tell ourselves
Limit the land area we use to feed the world
(...) Map the world's soils
Enhance fertility with the smallest possible organic interventions
Research and develop high-yield agroecology
Stop farming animals
Replace the protein and fat from animals with precision fermentation
Break global corporations' grip on the food chain
Diversify the global food system
Use our understanding of complex systems to trigger cascading change
Rewild the land released from farming.
Elsewhere GM has often argued for community land ownership, the right for most/all to grow food , etc (e.g. https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/12081_19-Land-for-the-Many.pdf).
This looks sensible and I agree with most of it. My understanding of precision fermentation is that is not economically and energetically viable, so good to think around that. The document put together with Corbyn's Labour is a great prospect, and ownership and distribution of our food provisioning to as local a level as possible should be the focus of our action around food systems.
It would be good to see the information on which you base your understanding that "precision fermentation is not economically and energetically viable"! I keep reading that as the energy cost keeps coming down, with adoption of renewables, so will the cost of PF. For instance https://www.rethinkx.com/faq-and-mythbusting/how-much-will-the-energy-for-precision-fermentation-and-cellular-agriculture-cost (and I already posted https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/factory-01-solar-foods-air-protein-solein-commercial-facility/, etc)
You really need to read Chris's book I think you would enjoy it. It's a sober, good humoured and systematic view of the data. George's hatchet job is an egregious misrepresentation of a good book for anyone who wants to inform themselves properly about our food system and the true viability of this technology.
For me I just don't see how the infra structure of medical grade huge steel tanks, the buildings to house them, the distribution system and fields of solar panels, that will have to be junked and remade every 25 years or so is gonna fit in to a low energy future. Just the thought of the land fill every 25 years gives me the ick. I won't have too see it, cos I live in the global north with my fellow Guardian readers, still.
I'm a little surprised to see your optimism about corporate and governmental transparency here, as a brief listen on the pod casts gives a corruscating critique of the blatant corruption of both.
As I said, I am interested in the distributed ownership of food systems, this fits into centralised corporate ownership of the kind that is currently creating so much havoc with our ecosystem.
I am doing my best to learn land skills and volunteering on farming and forestry projects, putting on workshops in my local community. Through this process I'm trying to get a local and deep knowledge to inform my thoughts about these matters. I would recommend these activities as a good antidote to the Internet and modelled data.
I bought and tried hard to read "A small farm future" by Chris but gave up. His writing style doesn't work well for me, though I have read various shorter articles (and followed his debate with George on social media).
The huge steel tanks you mention are already common place in most meat and dairy processing plants (cf my tweet https://twitter.com/AnnieLeymarie/status/1786881648652403191) and there are the slaughterhouses, the incinerators for carcasses, the large cold rooms, the cold room containers for transport, etc.
The corporate stronghold is already predominant in the food industries. Precision fermentation would remove the need for synthetic fertilisers (which currently require much fossil fuels), for manure/slurry and effluents from large biodigesters, for pesticides like glyphosate, for insecticides, etc.
'No to a farm free future' is a better more concise book and it will give you a clearer perspective on this topic. I think we are both in a agreement that industrial production of meat and dairy is abhorrent and unsustainable. We still have the problem of scalability, ownership and electricity. At the moment this technology is not viable, it cannot produce at scale, it is extremely sensitive to go wrong - as in any contamination destroys the batch. This was dreamt up in the 70s and is having a boost now from tech entrepreneurs with the 'dematerialise everything!' Mantra. If and when it does work, it is an uneadable stuff, with its own slurry, that requires further processing to make it palatable. Even then it does not contain the further nutrients required for a healthy diet.
Even within the industry they have turned to the black eyed pea, in an attempt to GM (genetically modify) it, to patent it, as feed stuff for the further processing, because the food from air is non starter - or costlier than they thought. So they will be using GM chemically fertilised crops on agribusiness super farms making a highly processed material to sell to you from the supermarket and brand it as vegan.
And we didn't even think about the solar panel fields and e -waste.
Let's not be naive, ownership and profit are at the root of this whole endeavour. Distribute the land and everyone take part in the responsibility of growing and producing food (and fibre, which we have not even mentioned). We need to stop industrially farming food, eating so much meat and dairy, and as another commenter said, wasting so much food.
The fossil fuels are running out, see Rachel's other pod cast. We will need to all take part in the labour of growing food, and I think some animals will be included in that, in the most healthy and respectful way. We need to work together to find ways to bring land into trust for good farming and rewilding and commoning, outside of corporate and government control and capture, I feel like you'll be good at that.
This "unviable" technology is currently used in practically all cheeses for sale in the UK (via rennet). About one in ten UK men has diabetes and insulin therapy, based on precision fermentation, is used by hundreds of millions worldwide. I understand your concerns but following through your neophobia and cancelling precision fermentation would right now condemn a large population.
Profit plays a big part in much of food industry (and money is power, viz currently the US farmers, appointed to regulate farming, not allowing the CDC - 'Centers for Disease Control and Prevention' - to test dairy workers for bird flu despite so many dairy cows having the disease, as one example among so much else). Do you really think that George's interest in the technology is motivated by profit? I'm currently reading 'Possible - ways to net zero' by Chris Goodall, and he rates the technology as one of the most promising there are.
I'll continue listening to a whole range of voices, preferably without vested interests, and I cannot have the level of certainty you're displaying.
I've asked Chris twice, and you once, what you have in mind for the ever-increasing populations unable to produce food, or sufficient food, because of the environmental (and social) crises, and have had no response. Instead, you've asked me where I live, as if that was relevant. I read news like this every day: https://www.rescue.org/press-release/food-insecurity-all-time-high-west-and-central-africa-millions-people-face-hunger-if.
So you asked about me (in a different comment). My life is not relevant to the bigger picture and systems thinking we so urgently need to consider but briefly: I come from a French livestock farming family (basically landless peasants keeping cows and other farm animals and working as butchers). I left home and went vegetarian in the late 1960s. By the early 1980s I'd gone back to eating some meat/fish (social pressures) and found myself working for the International Livestock Centre for Africa in Ethiopia, during a major drought contributing to a famine and war.
Two colleagues and I decided to adopt a plant-based diet because eating lowest on the food chain already made so much sense for environmental and health reasons and seemed the best way to help a country - and a planet - struggling. 40 odd years later I'm still vegan (it makes even more sense with knowledge of the climate crisis and much else), I don't have kids nor pets, I produce far more energy than I consume in my smallish home. I had stopped flying years ago but moved to London a few years ago to further shrink my footprint: here I don't need to drive. Previously I had lived in Devon (and Somerset), growing much food and co-creating a number of forest gardens in public spaces as well as orchards, etc. I am very active within Extinction Rebellion and others.
I need to stop this conversation now but you're welcome to continue perhaps on Twitter/X or Bluesky, where I am under my name: Annie Leymarie. Thanks for the debate and best wishes for everything!
On the question of whether the future looks like a hybrid / diverse mix of traditional farming and lab grown food - I don't understand why the issue of food waste doesn't come up more. Why are we looking into increasing the means of production before fixing the gross inefficiency of our current systems, such as by implementing strict legislation that makes food wastage (both pre and post consumer) impossible? When the World Economic Forum estimates that 931 MILLION TONNES of perfectly edible food is wasted globally each year, and that waste is responsible for a whopping 8-10% of our global carbon emissions, why aren't we looking more into legislative solutions / incentives to curb this? This isn't just about households, this is pre-consumer too - in Australia at least around ONE THIRD of all the food produced is wasted, most of this waste comes from households (34% of total waste) but several tonnes of food are discarded and left to rot every day before they make it to the market (31% of waste is pre-consumer) because of stringent beauty standards for how straight a carrot out to be or how big or small our fruit should be. These standards are not just shamefully wasteful drivers of food insecurity, they contribute to carbon emissions and should be criminal. (Source: CSIRO, The challenge of ending food waste and food insecurity in Australia, 17 Nov 2023)
"We need to confront a politics of access to land." Indeed. How do we do this? What are the actual solutions? Not everyone who currently lives in a city can have access to a small farm. We are surely going to need a range of options. George Monbiot proposes a mixtures of solutions including "local job rich agroecology" which Chris seems to support. Fair enough that some people don't like precision fermentation proposed by GM but people seem to have an emotional reaction to this and stop engaging with the facts of what GM is saying and the realities of feeding everyone. As Josefina has said above, GM confronts the issue of big industry control. Chris says you can't have it both ways but in fact as Rachel points out we need a diverse range of solutions, not just both ways but many and diverse ways. Why is this one issue with GM's proposed solutions clouding the debate? People criticise this and stop looking at what else he is saying and it seems to me that many people criticise without proposing practical solutions to feeding 8 billion people most of whom live in cities.
Chris is a reserved and humble guy, whose demeanor belies his deep knowledge and experience. As a small holder himself, he also lives the hands on reality of actually growing food and what that really means. I think the discussion with George Monbiot, (celebrity activist/journalist and Guardian columnist and, as another commenter pointed out, some time supporter of agroecology) was deliberately collapsed by Monbiot with his 'cruel fantasies' essay. I think this is more to do with George's class and the vagaries of fame, coupled with a debilitating fear of the polycrisis and what that will mean for him, his family and his professional class.
There is a misconception here that places the growing of food as some kind of design problem, that you can just cut and paste a bit of this and a bit of that and just 'no this' and 'only that' and, ah, everything is perfect and fluffy.
For thousands of years people have a grown food with a diverse mix of plants and animals, mimicking the ecologies that exist, that we are a part of. This is why animals are a fundamental part of any agroecolgical farming system, whether you eat them or not. We need to keep an eye on the energetics because it is not just food, it is our clothes, our houses, our transport, our tools.
Pluralities can exist but they must exist with parameters, otherwise they are not equal, energetically or politically and we know what happens then. The technology of the city is not in a plurality or even dichotomy with the technologies of the land, it is directly feeding off it. It creates false equivalences which are the basis of our present trouble.
What a great journey to be on, to find the land again, to find community and language. It is truly exciting (and daunting!) It is heartening to hear some one so intelligent, articulate and brave as yourself coming to these conclusions and exploring this space.
What you call GM's "debilitating fear of the polycrisis" I'd call knowledge and lucidity. When I asked Chris, twice, what he had in mind to feed populations in the increasingly large regions where food production has become impossible because of droughts, floods, overgrazing, desertification, fires, rising water levels, high temperatures, pollution, diseases and/or conflicts linked to many of these, he could not answer.
I think the first thing is to read Chris's work, both books are great. I agree with your comment below, on the face of it there should not be any disagreement. There is something here in the framing, which is something that Chris is keenly aware of in his writing about local agrarianism. We have to be careful about how we look at the world, as if it is a game of risk and we just have to make the right government rules and it wil all be alright. This is a modernist perspective that tends to universalise and create global solutions. The world to me is a complex weave of cultures and geographies each with there own bioregionally unique characteristics. I also think you have the feeding problem the wrong way up, that it is the conflict caused by capitalist modernism that is responsible for the list of whoes we face. The starvation in Gaza and Sudan will not be helped by not farming animals, rewilding and and so called precision fermentation. Both have fertile soils and ancient traditional ways of stewarding their soil and land that have been destroyed by the World Bank and various other global institutions and colonists, each with their own manifesto.
I think it is perhaps more creative to discuss, what are you doing to make you and your family and community and bioregion more resilient to the shocks we are inevitably going to face? Because that is what populations are, you and me and our families, friends and communities.
I've heard great things from La Via Campasina, the largest peasant organisation in the world of how there network has responded in natural disasters because of the very local nature of their plant knowledge and the ability of smaller local food producers to adapt.
There is no easy answer, which does not fit the perspective of World Kings (Boris Johnsons famous aspiration).
I would say that it is precisely a shortcoming of Chris's analysis to not sufficiently think in terms of systems!
Not farming animals, if achievable globally, would free over 75% of land used for farming. And: "A global phaseout of animal agriculture over 15 years would unlock “negative emissions” sufficient to bring about an urgently needed 30-year window of “net-zero” greenhouse gas emissions – even if all other emissions continued on their current trajectory. Such a phaseout would offset more than two-thirds of all projected carbon dioxide emissions over the next 80 years, and provide more than half of the net emissions reductions required to keep global temperatures from exceeding 2C above pre-industrial levels" (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/02/cattle-trees-climate-change-solution).
The huge overall positive impacts of going significantly in that direction, in terms of climate, biodiversity, land and water use, air and water pollution and public health (including pandemics and antibiotic resistance), would help tremendously in helping to address all the other on-going crises!
This is brilliant you've worked it all out. Who owns this process, who drives it, how does it happen? What laws will be enacted and how will they be enforced?
My brain reels at the mighty computer modelling, data crunching and figuring of the figures.
What does this even look like in the real world? Are we all living on Ian Tolhurst like organic farms? Cos sign me up!
I'm intrigued about the essential struggle between modernity and agrarianism that Chris implies. I would love to have you interview Vanessa Andreotti whose book "Hospicing Modernity" turned my world inside out. She is currently dean of education at the University of Victoria in British Columbia and her personal story is as remarkable as her pedagogy. Another contributor to the extreme steepness of my learning curve over the past 18 months is Joe Brewer's "Design School for Regenerating Earth" and the rapidly evolving bioregional learning centres around the world.
As for lab produced protein, I could quite happily promote the lab production of salmon and tuna meat to replace the horrible mining of the oceans for our sushi, or the terribly destructive practice of salmon farming.
George Monbiot is also completely unimaginative and unrealistic regarding our overpopulation problem. He persists in pretending that 8 billion can be sustainable on a planet that only offers about 12 billion global hectares, when scientists suggest that 2.4 gha are needed for a fulfilled life. See research by Lucia Tamburino, summarised in this article: https://overpopulation-project.com/reconciling-human-demands-with-planetary-boundaries/
It is referenced in the proposed UN Charter for Ecological Justice: https://www.change.org/p/antonio-guterres-un-secretary-general-ask-the-un-to-ratify-a-charter-for-ecological-justice-to-inspire-an-altruistic-anthropocene
Overpopulation? Who is 'over'? You?
Eating plant based would not only provide plenty of food for 8 billion and more, it would also allow for the majority of land currently used for agriculture to be reforested and no one need be unfulfilled.
When GDP and eduction of women increases, as it is in the 'developing' world, the population naturally declines, as we see in China. The issues are then to build economies around degrowth and no one need feel 'over'.
None of us have a future as things stand. We are in an ecological nosedive, we teach incentives that accelerate the destruction of ecosystems. We are in a negative sum game, where everyone loses in the longer term, which is now the near term. https://investingelixir.com/2024/04/the-anti-moloch-mindset/
I agree. On that topic I find his stand extremely disappointing and frustrating.
Please consider criminalizing capitalism... Godspeed.
https://youtu.be/vDwMFRr-OTw?si=A96vrWqMH31ygEnr
A great review of the greenwashing being employed by the small farm regenetative grass fed etc animal ag industry by Nicholas Carter and Tushar Mehta https://jowaller.substack.com/p/yet-another-unsuccessful-attempt?utm_source=publication-search
I'm not interested in listening to this false dichotomy. Humans don't need lab grown meat not the flesh of other animals. Small farms would be totally unsustainable for the present amount of flesh eaten. We need to eat much less of it and ideally none.
Clearly the future of food is the healthiest for humans, the planet and other animals. Patently it is whole food vegan.
Enough to of this greenwashing by animal ag and pussy footing around.
I had a read through of your post, that is a seriously technical and indepth analysis! I am interested in a small farm system that can distribute the responsibility of growing food, that will allow people and communitues access to land to provision themselves and be informed by the day to day reality of what that means. To the best of my understanding animals are an integral part of any ecosystem, wild or otherwise, and will be needed as part of a process of fertilisation for our beloved vegetables, pulses and cereals, fruits and nuts. We need to take the land and our access to food back from capitalist (colonial) extractive structures. Presently all food, vegan or otherwise is produced in that structure. It is a tall order but we must strong!
Animals are obviously part of any ecosystem. In fact Ian Tolhurst, whose farm GM describes at length in Regenesis, as it has produced fruits and vegs very well for several decades without any external animal inputs (nor any form of chemical inputs), often jokes that he farms earthworms (and pollinating insects, etc) as they are so crucial! When we use livestock's manure (made from plants) to fertilise, whilst extracting the livestock, we actually impoverish ecosystems more than we would do using plants directly to fertilise. Just as it is more efficient to feed ourselves lower on the food chain, so it is too to fertilise. This is explained for instance in the long report "Grazed and Confused": "There is a sense that via their manure ruminants create something out of nothing, that it not only fertilises the soil, stimulating plant growth and supplying the animals themselves with their sustenance, but in so doing, it fosters the process of soil carbon sequestration. But there is of course no magic. Animals do not bring new nitrogen into the system – they just move it about, and if we continue to eat them and their products, there is ultimately a net loss of nitrogen from the farming system. Ultimately, the nitrogen contained in the manure and urine is less than what the land originally started with". https://tabledebates.org/sites/default/files/2020-10/fcrn_gnc_report.pdf
I think we share a deep care for our environment and the way that we provision our livelihood. I see myself as another land animal and try to view the world from that perspective.
Here's Chris's review of Regenesis that discusses 'Tolly':
https://chrissmaje.com/2022/07/from-regenesis-to-re-exodus-of-george-monbiot-mathematical-modernism-and-the-case-for-agrarian-localism/
As Chris (and Rachel) explain in the interview, he actually wrote a whole book as a critique of Regenesis! And George in turn has replied on several occasions, including https://www.monbiot.com/2023/10/04/the-cruel-fantasies-of-well-fed-people/
George has not convincingly addressed the central critique of Chris's book that it is energetically way more costly to grow protein in steel vats than it is to use sunlight. It is not consumate with a low energy future.
We can feed the current population of the UK on just over a third of the present agricultural land. Let's call it half, then rewild the other half (of the agricultural land), great!
I'm working with a forester who has to control the populations of wild deer (there are more deer now than have ever been on this island). They are destructive to woodand and certain crops. I am curious at what point cohabiting the land with fellow animals becomes farming them? The industrial farming of all animals and plants (and perhaps even bacteria?) Is abhorrent, that needs to end.
Again, I think we share a sense of ecological care, it's been nice replying with you, please don't judge Chris's work on my own ramblings. He is a good writer! And really, best wishes.
George and others have explained that it is not "energetically more costly to grow protein in steel vats than using sunlight" when one considers animal protein (the type that so badly needs replacing) and take into account everything else required to produce meat, dairy & eggs (in particular land, so badly needed for carbon capture and biodiversity).
All the relevant papers explain that the energy cost will vastly decrease with 1) scaling up of the technology 2) shifts to cheaper renewables.
And, once again, Chris never responded when I asked what he suggested for regions that cannot produce food anymore. And what do you suggest? I am personally quite happy with the plant-based diet that I first adopted more than 4 decades ago and have not desire, for now, for alt meat, but even in the UK this year is showing how fragile food production is becoming with climate chaos (as well as pollution, loss of pollinators and other elements of the polycrisis).
Precision fermentation and possibly other novel technologies can do this - and more: "The expansion and normalisation of microbial foods will increase production volumes, decreasing costs and optimising the efficiency of the technology. Reduced costs can then aid the development of microbial processes in less developed areas of the planet, which often need to improve nutrition. Looking at the future, engineered microbes are expected to play a role in delivering food where traditionally inaccessible, such as in disaster relief, deserts or even in space. In conclusion, if there is continued innovation and microbial foods are designed with sustainability and ethics in mind, they have the potential to revolutionise current food systems. This microbial food revolution could be key in designing future-proof strategies to face the health and environmental challenges of the future." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-37891-1
I’ve got a lot of time for both Chris Smaje and George Monbiot. The food systems we’re going to need down the road will depend on what’s left of the biosphere and how stable or otherwise the climate will be. I don’t feel too confident about either of those variables. I think that Chris’s concerns about the industrialisation and concentration of wealth are valid. One thing that keeps coming up in these podcasts is the separation of humans from the rest of the living world and precision fermentation plants seems to me to lead further down that path. However, maybe we’ll need it…as part of the mix at least.