Saving the world from bad ideas: the continuing failure of food ecomodernism

This week sees a more personal anniversary for me than the Brexit celebrations/recriminations last time: it’s three years since I published my book Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future. In it, I criticised the idea that factory-produced bacterial food could be a realistic and significant ‘farm free’ alternative to food from agricultural land, as touted by George Monbiot in his book about the food system, Regenesis. I also criticised various other aspects of George’s takes on the food system, and briefly set out an agrarian localist alternative – not, for the most part, a vision I especially want to see, but one that I think will probably be necessary as a least-bad way of extricating ourselves from the present meta-crisis. There’ve been a few developments in the factory-food sector since Saying NO… was published, so an anniversary update on these details seems apposite. Meanwhile, George hasn’t taken kindly to my book, making various derogatory comments about me – most recently in this…