Review of Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet

Well known journalist George Monbiot needs little introduction. Many know him from his regular Guardian column and those familiar with his work understand that he is an activist with an agenda. This statement isn't a condemnation, merely an observation: I have an agenda also and I hope everyone reading this has one too. I began reading Regenisis with the knowledge that Monbiot’s vision of the future is profoundly at odds with mine, but nevertheless with a commitment to keep an open mind and read with as little bias as possible.

The first chapter was more than a pleasant surprise. In fact it's a brilliant and highly enjoyable explanation of what is often a dull topic: soil. Monbiot employs his wordsmithing skills and anecdotal style to maximum effect, using a soil sample from his orchard to illustrate the fascinating and complex ecology found therein.

Chapter two only gets better. With images of healthy soil as a beautifully functioning and highly complex system still fresh in the reader’s mind, Monbiot launches into an explication of another complex system, the global industrial food system. The contrast is jarring, as the author describes a dysfunctional and destructive behemoth that produces continually worsening outcomes for most people and natural systems on the planet. He does a solid job of explaining how complex systems work, and why the system that provides much of the world’s food is heading for catastrophic tipping points.

Monbiot has called chapter three, “Agricultural Sprawl,” as if to conflate it in readers' minds with the strip malls and bedroom communities of the burbs. In it he explores the many real problems associated with industrial agriculture such as antibiotic resistance, algal blooms in manure-contaminated waterways, the ubiquitous presence of microplastics and forever chemicals in soil, the buildup of toxins from biocides, and the decimation of ecosystems in South America and elsewhere. While the problems he discusses are dire and deserving of serious attention, woven through these descriptions are portrayals of farmers as bumblers who inexplicably spread expensive nitrogen fertilizers on their fields in winter, locally powerful strongmen “with mafia-like power” conspiring with county councils, and freeloaders on the government teat, collecting subsidies but producing little. In Monbiot’s story so far, farmers are the bad guys.

Not far into this chapter Monbiot veers into a raison d'etre of the book, presenting a case for ending animal agriculture. He peppers readers with statistics supporting his case, as if firing them from a shotgun. Lacking a team of research assistants, it's far beyond my capability to counter these figures, but I'd like to mention one in particular. Monbiot cites a paper by (fellow anti-meat crusader) Tara Garnett when he claims that “meat and milk from animals fed entirely by grazing provide just 1 percent of the world's protein.” Considering the vast amount of land he goes on to describe as taken up by animal agriculture, this paltry figure seems to support ending the practice of grazing. Seeking support for this statistic, I turned to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) which states on its website:

About 60 percent of the world's agricultural land is grazing land, supporting about 360 million cattle and over 600 million sheep and goats. Grazing animals supply about 10 percent of the world's production of beef and about 30 percent of the world's production of sheep and goat meat. For an estimated 100 million people in arid areas, and probably a similar number in other zones, grazing livestock is the only possible source of livelihood.

How did you feel when you read this paragraph versus Monbiot’s statistic above? Monbiot’s figure made me angry about inefficiency and wasted land, while the FAO quote induced respect — for graziers who continue to produce a significant portion of the world's food while keeping the animals on pasture rather than in CAFO's. But more importantly it made me feel empathy for the 200 million people dependent on such agricultural. How do they figure in Monbiot’s plan? So far in the book, not at all.

Chapter 3 is chock full of statistics, wielded by Monbiot to shore up his case against animal agriculture. Each one could be examined and no doubt put into question by alternative figures. Statistics can be palpated and prodded to support any number of opposing positions, and it's up to the reader to remain critical and vigilant as Monbiot careens wildly from one atrocity to another. At one point he reports on USDA Wildlife Service agents clubbing wolf cubs at the behest of ranchers. A pattern, and a strategy, is beginning to emerge: Mixed with the statistics purporting to expose the destruction wrought by animal agriculture are the worst farming-related abuses he could find to keep outrage up and critical thinking down. The problem with these peripheral horrors is not that they are untrue, but that they could easily be dealt with by legislative solutions. Likewise the corruption, cronyism, and general disregard for environmental rules that Monbiot complains about at length have solutions far short of ending animal agriculture which he is not interested in exploring. In chapter 2 his scrutiny of global industrial ag got my hopes up for political analysis of why regulations aren't enforced, but he disappointingly falls back on the story of the uncontrollable and greedy farmer.

Refreshingly in chapter 4, Monbiot returns to the engaging style of his first two chapters, and introduces us to Ian Tolhurst and his innovative style of veganic farming. Finally, here's a farmer Monbiot approves of! Lush descriptions of vegetables and endearing personal details of the man himself fill the pages. Monbiot takes the opportunity to tuck in some criticism of sparsely regulated spreading of manure on organic farms in the U.K. Again, the issues presented are real and pressing, but have legislative solutions given the political will; they are not compelling reasons to end animal agriculture. Shockingly, he makes the claim that, contrary to what graziers believe, applying large amounts of manure to pasture does not constitute working with nature. His evidence to support this claim? The vast herds of pre-conquest Africa and the Americas were unnatural because indigenous peoples had killed off predators, making herbivore numbers rise disproportionately, raising the amount of poop deposited to unnatural levels.

Be assured, I'm not making this up. It's on page 115, second full paragraph. Many metaphors came to mind as I read it, but I will refrain from sharing them here. Despite Monbiot’s apparent desire to embody the phrases “grasping at straws" and “wrong on so many levels,” I pressed on to chapter 5.

In this chapter Monbiot goes to a food bank and shares anecdotes of the visit to make a point: If the price of food reflected its real cost, ordinary people wouldn't be able to afford it. You can tell that he approves of the food bank and charities that work to lessen food waste because he writes about the people he encounters with great compassion, fleshing out their stories with personal details.

Chapter 6 introduces two U.K. farmers experimenting with non-conventional farming methods, plus discusses kernza, the perennial grain developed by the Land Institute in Kansas. Readers interested in alternative agricultural models but lacking background information on what's being tested will find this chapter illuminating. Upon reaching chapter 7, however, you might wonder why Monbiot bothers to profile these inventive and dedicated folks, when he reveals that his true aim: bringing an end to not only animal agriculture but farming in general. He spends the first part of the chapter sketching out his vision for culturing the bulk of humanity's food from bacteria, air, and water in factory/labs. Even though I knew this was coming, it's still a shock as he presents the ecomodernist fantasy of meeting the dietary needs of humans independent of nature. He gushes, “For the first time in human history we will have a staple food that did not arise from photosynthesis.”

As I stated earlier I do not share Monbiot’s vision of the future. The environmental movement has split to follow two radically diverging paths of which ecomodernism is one. These techno-optimists pursue a decoupling not only of food production, but entire economies from nature, freeing up huge swaths which would be allowed to revert to a natural state. Humans would visit and perhaps live in these areas, but not use them to provide for material needs. Monbiot has become one of the movement's most powerful advocates.

On the flip side (where I am firmly embedded) are those who seek to reintegrate humans with nature, acknowledging that we are nature, and can be a positive force in restoring what our fellow humans have destroyed. This side speaks for engaging the natural world with humility, learning from indigenous and peasant cultures that have retained sustainable relationships with their land, and believes decoupling to be an impossible and undesirable fantasy.

After presenting his utopian (or dystopian, depending on your perspective) vision, the author exhibits his usual habit of grasping for the worst aspects of the current system in order to denigrate it. He tests readers’ credulity by criticizing the current system in which people actually prepare food from fresh ingredients because it has in certain places and times depended on “women’s servitude.” (YCMTSU) He takes a potshot at Michael Pollan, throws in a quote from Machiavelli, and acknowledges the problem of keeping the studge (author Simon Fairlie’s nickname for lab-produced bacteria-based flour) technology accessible and out of the hands of “big business.” This should have readers scratching their heads considering Monbiot is proposing to take food production entirely out of the hands of people and place in under the control of whomever controls the technology! What could possibly go wrong? To his credit he argues that the tech should be open source and widely diffused in order to promote local control over production and distribution. He's spent much of the book describing legislative failure to regulate agriculture, but apparently once farms are done away with, laws will suddenly work, corruption will disappear, regulatory agencies will do their jobs, and no one anywhere will try to control the food supply for the purpose of becoming powerful and enriching themselves.

Monbiot returns to his favorite pastime of farmer bashing in chapter 8, using American cattle rancher and notorious scofflaw Cliven Bundy to cement farmers in the reader’s mind as powerful and mythic figures operating beyond government control. He also opens the Pandora's box of subsidies, a topic that deserves much more attention that he is able to give it. His main point that agricultural subsidies directly contribute to environmental degradation is spot on and incontestable. Subsidy programs need massive reform if we are to reduce damaging agricultural practices, and there are powerful political forces at work (not Cliven Bundy) keeping them in place. Monbiot offers no analysis of these forces. Why waste the time? The problem will solve itself once farms are eliminated and there is nothing left to subsidize.

In a (mercifully) final bit of advice, Monbiot argues for global cooperation on precise mapping of soils to allow inputs to be minutely controlled and limited to exactly what is needed for crops. (Apparently some farmers will be allowed to remain on their land.) Interestingly several pages previously Monbiot depicted Paul Kingsnorth as his archnemesis, painting him as a hopeless romantic blinded by poetry and probably not very good at math. (The author has done a great service here by introducing Kingsnorth to readers who may not have previously heard of him.) Monbiot’s vision of precisely mapped soils for the purpose of total management stands in stark contrast to the resistance to quantification and control that Kingsnorth embodies. Monbiot assures us he himself is not taken in by powerful myths that blind others to the truth. He believes in math and science.

While mapping soils precisely using high tech machines isn't inherently a bad idea, I have a better idea. Why not simply ask the farmers working the land? They no doubt have vast knowledge of their land and soil and understand it in a way that a machine cannot. According to FAO figures, small farms (defined as 5 acres or less) occupy about 12% of agricultural land and produce roughly a third of the world's food. This is a staggeringly important statistic that I don't remember Monbiot mentioning. While he pays lip service to protecting small farmers and mentions helping them transition to other employment through retraining, they have remained primarily faceless masses in faraway and less developed countries. In Monbiot’s world, they need only wait until planet saviors swoop in from the West and North with world-saving studge technology for free distribution, leaving the peasants to free to migrate to cosmopolitan centers for retraining. The land meanwhile, with the help of the lucky few hired on to help with restoration and cater to the hordes of cash-clutching tourists soon to arrive, can revert to its previous natural state. Does this scenario seems strangely familiar, and make you slightly uncomfortable? I certainly hope so.

A few pages remain, on which Monbiot bemoans that fact that the unenlightened masses refuse to heed his words, but assures as that he remains hopeful the world is reaching a tipping point and a seismic shift is eminent.

I admit a weak point of this review is that I haven't argued against Monbiot’s fundamental premise presented in chapter 3 that animal agriculture is inherently unsustainable, a major and inevitable driver of climate change, and a main cause of environmental degradation worldwide. Doing so would have made this piece impossibly long, and is better outsourced to the true experts, who are seasoned soldiers in the battle against Monbiot’s idiocies. For further reading and an alternative story I recommend:

Dr. Frank Mitloehner of UC Davis

Dr. Frederic Leroy of Vrije Universiteit Brussels

Diana Rodgers, author of Sacred Cow

Nicolette Hahn Niman, author of Defending Beef

Seth Itzkan and Karl Thideman, founders of Soil4Climate and tireless crusaders for soil-based climate solutions