Note to readers: My apologies that this is a considerably longer essay than I usually write on this substack. I guess I had a lot to say on this one. I will try to get back to shorter pieces next time! Folks from the UK (and activists from beyond) have likely heard of
Fascinating and brilliantly written, thank you. My former life (MSc Environmental Management and environmental consultant) crosses with my current life (food writer and smallholder) in exactly this area - such tricky navigation of what might be at least part of the way forward, of what the avenues are to pursue, and I very much agree with the spirit of the coda - we need all the bright minds we can get, disagreeing and testing things constructively. Thanks again
Hi Gunnar - thanks for your article. I agree with most of it. As you point out ETC never said that small farms "produce 70% of the world's food" - only that 70% of the world depend upon food from the peasant food web - it was Ricciardi et al who misrepresented our original statistic. The original claim ETC made was that around 50% of food came from small farms and in fact if you take Ricciardi et al's figures for farms over 5ha then thats almost close to what they find (they say 44%-48%). If you consider that the Ricciardi et al paper was grossly biased towards Europe and instead use their methodology on a data set more representative of the tropics (they did this in teh Ricciardi paper with the samberg et al dataset) then you find over 78% of food grown on farms smaller than 5 ha. So even Ricciardi if you read it te right way supports teh idea taht around 2/3rds of food in teh chain is produced on 'small farms'. But the point about 'depends on' as you pick up is important. From a food security angle what matters is where will people turn when they are hungry. At ETC after reviewing again and again the evidence we felt very confident that it is the peasant food web that most people fall back upon and 'depend upon' first - even if some of their food is also sourced from the commercial industrial food chain from time to time - and so that is the system (the web) that we need to strengthen and protect. I think you are also right to say that theres no clear line between 'the web' and 'the chain'. Smallholders feed themselves and also sell into local and territorial markets But until we start making visible the role of informal, subsistence and other forms of food gathering and that gets acknowledged by people like George we are really working with very partial data but pretending otherwise.
Great piece. I really appreciate following the thread of GM's vision of the food system to various root causes. The attention to the "who feeds the world?" debate is as important as ever and clearly intersects with values over different forms of knowledge production. GM's claim to authority in questions of the food system has always been irksome and I think your exploration of these question reaffirms the need for humility. I don't think GM is alone. The type of food system-as-spreadsheet appears increasing seductive for a subsection of environmentalists. Unfortunately, I worry this over simplified approach to land use in an era of climate pressure also draws political allies. I wrote about this here: https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/can-agriculture-and-biodiversity-coexist/ and here: https://adamcalo.substack.com/p/land-sparers-feel-their-oats
"I recall a newsletter writer in Oxford who used to regularly refer to George as ‘the Greatest Living Englishman’ . He may well be right - Personally I quite like the guy." Actually, he is wrong. Mr Monbiot is Jewish.
Fascinating and brilliantly written, thank you. My former life (MSc Environmental Management and environmental consultant) crosses with my current life (food writer and smallholder) in exactly this area - such tricky navigation of what might be at least part of the way forward, of what the avenues are to pursue, and I very much agree with the spirit of the coda - we need all the bright minds we can get, disagreeing and testing things constructively. Thanks again
Thanks for article. I do believe that the 70% claim is exaggerated. I elaborate on it here: https://gardenearth.substack.com/p/small-farms-dont-produce-70-of-the
Hi Gunnar - thanks for your article. I agree with most of it. As you point out ETC never said that small farms "produce 70% of the world's food" - only that 70% of the world depend upon food from the peasant food web - it was Ricciardi et al who misrepresented our original statistic. The original claim ETC made was that around 50% of food came from small farms and in fact if you take Ricciardi et al's figures for farms over 5ha then thats almost close to what they find (they say 44%-48%). If you consider that the Ricciardi et al paper was grossly biased towards Europe and instead use their methodology on a data set more representative of the tropics (they did this in teh Ricciardi paper with the samberg et al dataset) then you find over 78% of food grown on farms smaller than 5 ha. So even Ricciardi if you read it te right way supports teh idea taht around 2/3rds of food in teh chain is produced on 'small farms'. But the point about 'depends on' as you pick up is important. From a food security angle what matters is where will people turn when they are hungry. At ETC after reviewing again and again the evidence we felt very confident that it is the peasant food web that most people fall back upon and 'depend upon' first - even if some of their food is also sourced from the commercial industrial food chain from time to time - and so that is the system (the web) that we need to strengthen and protect. I think you are also right to say that theres no clear line between 'the web' and 'the chain'. Smallholders feed themselves and also sell into local and territorial markets But until we start making visible the role of informal, subsistence and other forms of food gathering and that gets acknowledged by people like George we are really working with very partial data but pretending otherwise.
Great piece. I really appreciate following the thread of GM's vision of the food system to various root causes. The attention to the "who feeds the world?" debate is as important as ever and clearly intersects with values over different forms of knowledge production. GM's claim to authority in questions of the food system has always been irksome and I think your exploration of these question reaffirms the need for humility. I don't think GM is alone. The type of food system-as-spreadsheet appears increasing seductive for a subsection of environmentalists. Unfortunately, I worry this over simplified approach to land use in an era of climate pressure also draws political allies. I wrote about this here: https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/can-agriculture-and-biodiversity-coexist/ and here: https://adamcalo.substack.com/p/land-sparers-feel-their-oats
"I recall a newsletter writer in Oxford who used to regularly refer to George as ‘the Greatest Living Englishman’ . He may well be right - Personally I quite like the guy." Actually, he is wrong. Mr Monbiot is Jewish.