Regenesis

By George Monbiot

Penguin Books (2022)

Book Review

The main premise of this book is that farming “is the most destructive force ever to be unleashed on humans.” As I understand Monbiot’s argument, the only way to save the planet is to force people who refused to eat a plant-based diet (like him), to eat fake meat. In his final chapters, he makes a strong case for restoring the planet by replacing farms with factory produced meat from plants and genetically engineered bacteria.

Setting aside Monbiot’s climate alarmism,* the early chapters of his book are quite promising, especially his summary of revolutionary discoveries in soil science over the last two decades. He details, in easy-to-understand language, the complex relationship between plants and soil fungus and bacteria that assist plants in accessing nutrients. In fact, he compares it to mammals’ complex relationship with gut microbes. He also emphasizes the crucial point that plowing (loosening the soil prior to planting), the most important technology to come of of the 10,000 year old agricultural revolution, systematically destroys these complex networks. This, in turn has a devastating effect on both plant nutrition and disease resistance.

After providing detailed descriptions of the farming practices of two organic farmers, one practicing “horticulture,” and the other no-till farming, he somehow leaps to the conclusion that organic farming is more harmful than industrial agriculture because it supposedly requires more land to provide comparable yields. Yet he does so with no mention of the international permaculture movement (started in 1978 in Australia by Bill Mollisson), biointensive farming (which is at least 200 years old) or Navdanya’s biodiversity organic movement founded in India in 1987 by internationally renowned anti-globalist Vendana Shiva.

His failure to acknowledge the body of scientific knowledge accumulated by these existing movements results in two important misstatements of fact:

1. Land use for farming is decreasing, not increasing (see The Shrinking Land Challenge)
2. Yields are actually higher (in terms of total calories produced) with biointensive polycropping than with Industrial monoculture farming – owing to improved soil fertility.

The fact that farming is the worst catastrophe impacting human survival is just plain silly. Surely most people on this planet would view unrestrained military aggression by the US and NATO, which threatens to provoke a nuclear holocaust, as a far bigger bigger threat. Likewise the illegal US biological warfare program that operates 330 bioloabs worldwide (see The Mystery of 336 US Bio-Labs Worldwide). The ubiquitous presence of 100+ toxic forever chemicals (and microplastics) in human blood is a close third.

Unlike Monbiot, I agree totally with the ban in most states on plant- and bacteria-based meats until the technology is thoroughly researched for its effect on human health. 100% plant-based diets simply aren’t an option for a large proportion of humankind, owing to  mitochondrial stress stemming from from high PUFA (polyunsaturated fatty acid) vegetable fats.**

*Thanks to growing awareness of the politicization of scientific research (triggered by the recent Covid vaccine debacle), dissenting physicists and meteorologists are gaining wider public recognition for research questioning the cimate agenda promoted by the WEF, The UN 2030 Sustainability Development Goals, the World Bank and other corporate-controlled institutions Several present convincing evidence that planetary warming actually represents ongoing recovery from the last Little Ice Age (which ended in 1900) and that the Earth is actually starting to cool (see Climate: The Movie). Where I live on the west coast of New Zealand. our growing season has shortened by a month over the last 17 years. I’m in contact with gardeners in the southern US who are also experiencing shorter growing seasons.

**See The Science Behind Low PUFA Diets