A Review of Chris Smaje’s A Small Farm Future
So, what kind of a future does this book envision, and how does it differ from the past and the present?
small farm future
Automation and a small farm future
One way to address the impasse of the present global political economy may be to embrace the possibility of creating a labour-intensive, semi-autonomous livelihood through farming, homesteading or gardening largely on one’s own account, within a wider society which is collectively oriented to enabling people to live that way.
How capitalism started, and why it still matters
In fact, capitalism isn’t particularly about markets or selling things. This needs stressing over and over, because powerful narratives to the contrary repeatedly fool us into supposing otherwise.
The sheep sacrifice
With a no deal Brexit looming and the Government’s farm subsidy regimen shifting towards payments only for delivering ‘public goods’, it looks like hard times may lie ahead for many commercial farmers in the UK, none more so than for upland livestock farmers.
No easy answers: a response to Alex Heffron and Kai Heron
There are no easy answers to the dilemmas of creating just and renewable post-capitalist societies.
Turning the clock forward
The next stop in my tour through my book A Small Farm Future is Part I, which begins with a long chapter outlining ten crises that one way or another seem set in the coming years to thoroughly upend the world we’ve known.
History deep, prospect wide
On page 7 I write “Throughout the world, there are long and complex histories by which people have been both yoked unwillingly to the land and divested unwillingly from it”.
Arguing for a small farm future
In the future, employment opportunities will probably cluster in low-carbon, labour-intensive sectors – among which farming will loom large.
A Small Farm Future: Could it happen in Wales?
We have here the ambitious groundwork, global in scale, for exactly the case for a small farm future that Smaje set out to write.
A Small Farm Future: Review
It likely improves the odds if we discuss and prepare for a small farm future; and reading this book can help. I envision study groups passing around a copy and then discussing it.
Both hands now – an introduction to ‘A Small Farm Future’
Well … don’t get me wrong … honestly, I’m with the left, and I’m with the agrarian renegades. But on just a few significant points I’m also with the mainstream economists and the sceptics of cornucopia.
The US election: perspectives from an ear of grain
The story of trying to hold the existing political centre will be a story of fascism, Caesarism, bread and circuses. Whereas the non-fascist story will be one of trying to create livelihoods as convivially as possible, mostly from the local resources – human and non-human – to hand.