Regenerative Farming and Sustainable Diets

A rich, diverse and hopeful book, which posits that with thoughtful, collaborative action, more regenerative outcomes are possible. ...

All living things on earth require nourishment in some form and at its heart, this book is about how we can ensure nourishment for all, whilst securing human, animal and planetary health in perpetuity.

The book was born out of the Compassion in World Farming 2023 conference, Extinction or Regeneration: Transforming Food Systems for Human, Animal and Planetary Health, giving the editors the opportunity to bring together a wide range of voices from across the food system to starkly outline the challenges we have and propose possible and plausible routes forward.  With different authors for each of the 34 chapters the editors offer up data informed insight and opinion as well as stories of action and ways of thinking drawn from more intuitive and emotional places of wanting to be fed by food produced and sold in just, life giving and regenerative ways. 

The different perspectives share the sheer insanity and perversity of a food system that ‘grows’ sufficient calories to feed everyone on the planet but instead, across much of the world, uses multiple calories of energy to produce one calorie of food, and feeds ever increasing amounts of human-grade food to farmed livestock and fish, which now make up 20 times the weight of all wild vertebrates and birds1.  There is no escaping how the ‘need to feed’ narrative has led to a system that profits the few and cannot be sustained. 

In her chapter, Dr. Lyla June Johnston, indigenous musician, scholar and community organiser, reflects on the word ‘food’ and how indigenous cultures look to feed all the life around them, to  “spread the nourishment and energy of food evenly in all directions to all life” whilst societies that look to feed only themselves, “will resemble a leech to the system, slowly sucking all nourishment and energy into their own mouths…, depriving the whole”2.  Our requirement to think differently as we make changes is also echoed in Vandana Shiva’s chapter which reminds us that all beings are sentient, self-organising, and connected.

The compelling stories of potential futures offered up are those where change is already underway and invariably these involve collaborative action, courage, and persistence.  At a farm level, sharing of ideas by farmers from different countries allowed David Finlay to find ways for his dairy farm to be organic and keep mothers and calves together.  At a grander scale there are examples from the Netherlands and Denmark of wider collaborative working by farmers and NGOs to speed up change and be beacons of hope. 

The ‘papers’ format does mean that there is a degree of duplication and re-presenting of very similar data, but be wary of skipping this as nestled within the data even the most food systems savvy reader will find new insight or thoughts being provoked.  Perhaps it is the combination and range of viewpoints that is its strength, as whilst none can be exhaustively explored, it emphasises that there is hope and that with thoughtful, collaborative action, more regenerative outcomes are possible. 

1 p216, 2p271 

Regenerative Farming and Sustainable Diets edited by Joyce D’Silva and Carol McKenna. Review by Alice Lewthwaite.

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