George Monbiot - Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet

George Monbiot is one of the most fearless and important voices in the global climate movement today.

Greta Thunberg, activist and author of No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference

Brilliant, mesmerizing, vital... a whole new way of thinking about our agriculture and our diets, our climate and our future.

David Wallace-Wells, New York Times bestselling author of The Uninhabitable Earth

This remarkable book, staring curiously down at the soil beneath our feet, points us convincingly in one of the directions we must travel. I learned something on every page.

Bill McKibben, author of Falter and The End of Nature

A world-making, world-changing book... It rings and sings throughout with Monbiots extraordinary combination of passion, generosity, and justice.

Robert Macfarlane, New York Times bestselling author of Underland

Regenesis is a lively and deeply researched enquiry that confronts our dilemmas head on.... Transformation is urgently needed, and this book shows how it is possible.

Merlin Sheldrake, international bestselling author of Entangled Life

Monbiot shatters the shibboleths of farming and shows that the thin layer on which all terrestrial ecosystems stand is alive with organisms as diverse, fascinating, and mysterious as any found above ground.

David Suzuki, founder of the David Suzuki Foundation

This is an important book and a gripping read.

Henry Dimbleby, cofounder of Leon Restaurants and the Sustainable Restaurant Association

Monbiot writes with all the imaginative sympathy of a great storyteller as well as the overarching understanding of a moral visionary. This is a fine and necessary book.

Philip Pullman, New York Times bestselling author of the His Dark Materials trilogy

People from all walks of life should read this remarkable book. It is in my view one of the two or three most important books to appear this century.

Professor Sir David King, former chief scientific advisor to the UK government

Regenesis speaks to us like a poem.... It offers a magnificent political economy of global food production and concludes with a hopeful vision of a techno-ethical equilibrium between Humanity and Nature. It must be read.

Yanis Varoufakis, author of Another Now

Regenesis calls for nothing less than a revolution in the future of foodone that will literally transform the face of the Earth.... This is Monbiots masterpiece.

Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut Economics

Regenesis is rigorous and restive, but also witty, original, and humane.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, author of The River Cottage Cookbook

Valuable... Extraordinary... I never cease to be surprised by the unexpected perspectives Monbiot brings to bear, leading me through problems I never envisaged and solutions I never imagined.

Brian Eno

A fascinating and ultimately positive book... A harmonic vision of how changing our relationship to land use, farming, and the food that we eat could transform our lives.

Thom Yorke

A visionary, fearless, essential book.

Lucy Jones, author of The Big Ones and Losing Eden

Inspiring and compelling... A transformative vision of a new food future with the potential to both restore nature and feed the world.

Caroline Lucas, MP and former leader of the Green Party of England and Wales

A genuinely brilliant, inspirational book.

Sir Tim Smit, founder of the Eden Project

Monbiot has applied his razor-sharp intellect, bountiful curiosity, and love for the land to the complex and fundamental issue of what we eat.

Lily Cole, activist and author of Who Cares Wins

Monbiot reaches for new ideas that might ignite the collective consciousness in a push to protect, rather than tragically destroy, the biosphere.

ANOHNI

Essential reading... This deeply researched book provides a blueprint for the future.

Rosie Boycott, journalist and activist

The writing, observation, and devotion is infectiously compelling. The learning is deep and immense.

Mark Rylance, actor

Regenesis gives us an inspiring vision of the future.... Monbiot has combined his gifts as an investigator, interviewer, and witty storyteller to create an exhilarating epic!

Robert Newman

This passionate, extraordinary book opens up a compelling and vital new dimension: food and the way the world farms.

Will Hutton, columnist for The Observer and author of The Writing on the Wall

allen lane

an imprint of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

Canada USA UK Ireland Australia New Zealand India South Africa China

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Random House UK

Published in Allen Lane paperback by Penguin Canada, 2022

Simultaneously published in the United States by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

Copyright 2022 by George Monbiot

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

library and archives canada cataloguing in publication

Title: Regenesis : feeding the world without devouring the planet / George Monbiot.

Names: Monbiot, George, 1963- author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210226498 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210226706 | ISBN 9780735240391 (softcover) | ISBN 9780735240407 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Food supplyEnvironmental aspects. | LCSH: Sustainable agriculture. | LCSH: Food securityEnvironmental aspects. | LCSH: Food industry and tradeEnvironmental aspects. | LCSH: DietEnvironmental aspects.

Classification: LCC HD9000.5 .M66 2022 | DDC 338.1/9dc23

Cover design by Isabelle De Cat

Cover images: (landscape) The Air of Home, 1895 (oil on canvas) by Frantisek Kavan Bridgeman Images; (cow) detail from The Lincolnshire Ox, c.1790 (oil on canvas) by George Stubbs National Museums Liverpool / Bridgeman Images

pid_prh_6.0_140667116_c0_r2

To my brilliant assistant, Fi, without whom it would all have been impossible