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but given the change in actual levels of food production at Knepp this is not a way to mass produce food.
Not read Monbiot, but does he offer a better option for producing enough food for everyone to live off? The move from hunter/gatherer systems to agrarian ones is basically the reason we’ve been able to sustain such huge population growth for so long. It’s hard (for me at least) to imagine a way to genuine sustainability without quite a lot of people going hungry/dying.
Tonts
greentricky
My wife works in this field - her business does direct soil carbon measurement. So farmers can measure a baseline for current soil carbon and then adjust methods (eg move toward regenerative farming methods) and then measure again to see how much more carbon is being sequestered back into the soil.
She recently met Monbiot and to paraphrase her account he is not convinced that regenerative methods can quickly produce enough food for the general population, but does believe it is a better method than current farming.
I remember reading the Rewilding book and thinking it’s really nice and worthy, but given the change in actual levels of food production at Knepp this is not a way to mass produce food. I stayed there and the produce is fantastic but for such a large area the food produced is limited and they are much more an eco tourism venture than a productive farm these days.
There is so much junk science and sponsored research from agri business akin to the climate change deniers who were funded by fossil fuel companies. I think Monbiot is careful to use independent sources for his information.
Generally I think Monbiot is sound but is also having to raise alarm bells just to try and get people to act before it is too late.