On the efficiency of my scythe
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
Small farm does equal more labour per unit area and per unit product (which is why most rich countries import a large proportion of their horticultural produce … and why modern diets involve too much refined carbs and oils, and not enough fruit and veg). The challenge is to show that this (along with less energy, less carbon, less water, less soil loss, more product and more fun per unit area) is precisely what makes small farming the wave of the future.
Beyond authenticity: the politics of agrarian localism
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
I’m thinking of these present two posts more as a kind of position statement on the politics underlying my forthcoming book, A Small Farm Future, and its arguments for renewable agrarianism, using the debate about XR as my foil.
Protest, violence, class
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
The tactics of ‘get off our land’ and ‘hey, we have a collective civilizational problem that needs greater action’ are not the same, even if they’re part of the same larger story.
An alternative agriculturist’s guide to science
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
SCIENCE is a political claim that the human world should be organized in a particular way on the basis of ‘scientific principles’ or what ‘the science’ tells us to do, or other formulations of that sort (some people call this scientism).
Outside the Hive
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
The collective intelligence of humanity is that of the social ape, not the hive insect. Maybe the life history that most fits us to thrive is creating our livelihoods as competent, generalist individuals working within small collectivities – families, bands, settlements.
A Small Farm Future
By Chris Smaje, A Small Farm Future
My book A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity, and a Shared Earth is now hurtling on its final trajectory to land on Planet Earth mid-October.
Collapse: a Helpful Guide for the Perplexed
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
Archaeologist Joseph Tainter, whose book The Collapse of Complex Societies I mentioned in my previous post, uses this working definition: “A society has collapsed when it displays a rapid, significant loss of an established level of sociopolitical complexity”.
Business-as-Usual Porn – or, We Need to Talk about Collapse
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
I think we need to talk openly and calmly about the possibility of societal or civilizational collapse arising from humanity’s present predicaments.