George Monbiot
Guardian columnist and author of Regenesis, Feral and Heat. Argues that feeding eight billion people at a tolerable environmental cost means higher yields, less land under farming and food grown in factories rather than fields, and has spent a decade arguing about it with the small-farm and agroecology movement.
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Their wordsThis story, wrapped in romantic cottagecore, is now the most active and seductive frontier of climate-science denial.
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Their wordsIn reality, beef and lamb are the most land-hungry and climate-damaging of all farm products.
- 19 months earlier
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Their wordsIn 2023, a world of 8.1 billion people suffers far less hunger and famine than the world of 3.2 billion did in 1963, the year of my birth.
↗The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed Peoplemonbiot.com 1st of 6 in this piece
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Our reading
Raising yields on land already farmed is what keeps farming from taking more of the wild world.
Their wordsIt was achieved almost entirely through higher crop yields per hectare.
↗The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed Peoplemonbiot.com 2nd of 6 in this piece
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Our reading
Long-distance food transport is what stops a local harvest failure from becoming a famine.
Their wordsBut without long-distance transport, many more would starve.
↗The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed Peoplemonbiot.com 3rd of 6 in this piece
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Their wordsUsing this definition, 3 billion people – over one-third of the global population – cannot afford a healthy diet.
↗The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed Peoplemonbiot.com 4th of 6 in this piece
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Their wordsBut while I have seen no evidence (and Chris provides none) that higher food prices alleviate global hunger, there is a wealth of evidence that they exacerbate it.
↗The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed Peoplemonbiot.com 5th of 6 in this piece
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Their wordsThey show that, while agrarian localism might be great as far as it goes, it simply cannot, by itself, meet the challenge of feeding the world.
↗The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed Peoplemonbiot.com 6th of 6 in this piece
- 4 months earlier
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Their wordsTheir solutions, such as pasture-fed meat, with its massive land demand , are impossible to scale without destroying remaining wild ecosystems: there is simply not enough planet.
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Their wordsBut it leads, if enacted, to hunger, ecological destruction or both, on a vast scale. Our arcadian fantasies devour the planet.
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Their wordsWidespread meat-eating in the 19th century became possible only through the colonisation and clearance of Australia and the Americas
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Their wordsThe answer is not more fields, which means destroying even more wild ecosystems. It is partly better, more compact, cruelty-free and pollution-free factories.
- 9 years earlier
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Their wordsWasteful and destructive as feeding grain to livestock is, ranching appears to be even worse.