Chris Smaje

After studying then teaching and researching in social science and policy, I became a small-scale commercial veg grower in 2007. Nowadays, when I’m not writing about the need to design low-impact local food systems before they’re foisted on us by default, I spend my time as an aspiring woodsman, stockman, gardener and peasant on the small farm I help to run in Somerset, southwest England

Though smallholding, small-scale farming, peasant farming, agrarianism – call it what you will – has had many epitaphs written for it over the years, I think it’s the most likely way for humanity to see itself through the numerous crises we currently face in both the Global North and South. In my writing and blogging I attempt to explain why. The posts are sometimes practical but mostly political, as I try to wrestle with how to make the world a more welcoming place for the smallholder.

Chris is the author of A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity, and a Shared Earth, and most recently, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future: The Case for an Ecological Food System and Against Manufactured Foods.

light in the dark

Newsflash No.3 – Lights in a Dark Age

Anyway, as I’ve often said here, I don’t think renewal is going to come from the centre. So while I genuinely mourn the misery to come for people who, unlike me, are going to be in the frontline, I guess I’m finding it hard to get invested in the politics of the centre.

November 18, 2024

old Ford tractor

Tractor Man Speaks

So… now that I’ve earned a little carbon credibility by passing up the opportunity to fly to North America for a book tour, it’s time for a confession – we have a tractor and a mini digger on our holding.

November 4, 2024

book cover

Taking stock

But for sure we’ve got to do something different to avert the present suicidal and ecocidal course of our food system. I’ve made the case in my two recent books for agrarian localism as the best something different option.

September 23, 2024

book cover

Urban futures, rural futures

Claims that existing (or augmented) patterns of urbanism are more pro-social and pro-nature than rural alternatives appeal to people’s contrarian nature. And since most people live in urban areas, especially in the rich countries, it also tells them what they want to hear…

September 16, 2024

bookcover

Newsflash No.2: manufactured food update

Given the basically non-existent ‘transition’ into clean energy outlined in my previous post which is failing to meet even existing needs for energy, the vast increase in renewable electricity generation that would be required to fund the additional energy demands of manufactured food if it’s to play any major part in a sustainable future makes this technology a non-starter as a mass food approach.

August 29, 2024

BP charging station

Off-grid: further thoughts on the failing renewables transition

There’s nothing wrong with propounding for renewables. What’s problematic is propounding for a like-for-like transition of the existing fossil-based global growth economy to a future renewables-based one. A renewables-based transition to a lower-energy, more equitable, local and agrarian economy could be a wonderful thing.

August 13, 2024

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