I mentioned that I was going to reproduce my article in The Land 37 here. Well, it’s coming right up below (it was published in The Land with the title ‘Rentiers Redux’). The article is essentially a ...

Discover the hidden costs of our food supply chains. Join experts and hosts to uncover the social and environmental impacts of global food imperialism.

Following my obituary for The Land magazine in my previous post I’d intended to publish in this next one my article on landlordism that appeared in the final issue. Instead, it turns out that another ...

Just a short post to mark the passing of the great Land magazine, which has shut up shop with its 37th issue this summer. What can I say about it?  For almost as many years as I’ve been following a mo...

A few further thoughts in this post on the matter of the state – what it is, what its past and future involves, and what does it mean to live within the jurisdiction of a singular state (‘the state I’...

Apologies for my slow turnover of blog posts here, which is likely to be ongoing. I’d planned to do a blog cycle about my book Finding Lights in a Dark Age: Sharing Land, Work and Craft, published by ...

Every year I take a look at the annual energy data published toward the end of June by the Energy Institute in order to ask the big question: Has the energy transition that everyone keeps talking abou...

This week sees a more personal anniversary for me than the Brexit celebrations/recriminations last time: it’s three years since I published my book Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future. In it, I criticised...

There are a few anniversaries in the air at the moment. The one that looms in British politics is the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum, which was held on 23 June 2016. I daresay the media wi...

In this post I reflect on the main things I think will be necessary for ‘surviving the future’, to channel David Fleming. The post was prompted by comments under my last one, especially ones by Kathry...

Chris Smaje visits Crazy Town for some farmer-to-farmer straight talk. We cover Viking raids to agrarian populism, from societal collapse to the practicalities of making your way in a failed state. An...

Diverting briefly from my blog cycle about my recent book Finding Lights in a Dark Age, here I’m going to continue my polite discussion with Tom Murphy about the human condition past, present and futu...

Continuing my stately progress through my book Finding Lights in a Dark Age, we come next to the Introduction, entitled ‘An Arc of Future Earth’. But first a couple of quick housekeeping notices. Apol...

I welcome Chris Smaje to Lifepod, to discuss his book Finding Lights in a Dark Age, an exploration of what he sees as the need for a transition from mostly urban to mostly rural “sustainable liveli...

It’s about time I wrote some posts about my recently published book Finding Lights in a Dark Age. There are twelve chapters in the book plus a preface, introduction and afterward, so my intention is t...

Part of me thinks I should be writing about the US government and its current dramas. Venezuela. Greenland. Minneapolis. But instead I’ll hold off from the hot takes and go to the other end of the spe...

Happy new(ish) year. As hinted by the second part of my title, this post isn’t a two-part retrospective on the Beatles, with a follow-up on John and Ringo. Instead, it’s mostly a sort-of review of Pau...

I said my next post would cover my discussions with Tom Murphy, but I’m afraid time has caught up with me and I’m going to sign off for the year with this more general offering involving snippets from...

Ah well, the urgency of staving off as best I can the disaster capitalism that Philip Loring mentions keeps me going, even if it feels like a dispiriting and unequal battle sometimes. Cheers!

Presenting this year's trove of food-system books: memoirs, investigations, scientific works, cookbooks, and much more.

Highly cited paper was used as evidence that the widely used herbicide Roundup is safe

I’ve been having an interesting offline debate recently with physicist Tom Murphy, author of the excellent Do the Math blog. I’ll write about it in my next post. In essence, Tom is more certain than I...

Who's going to grow your food when our complex supply chains fail? Chris Smaje, academic turned small-hold farmer, is an advocate for hyper-local agrarianism—because that's going to be our future whe...

Podcast Episode · Farm Gate · 11/25/2025 · 1h 15m

YouTube video by Doomer Optimism

To coincide with the US publication today of my new book Finding Lights in a Dark Age, I think it’s time to start writing some blog posts about it. I have a bit of unfinished business in relation to o...

A brief note here on a topic that’s been in the news lately – namely, the news. Or, more specifically, the so-called ‘legacy media’ such as national newspapers and television. And, alongside that, dec...

My new book Finding Lights in a Dark Age is being published in the UK in October 2025 and the US in November 2025. Global society is unquestionably heading into a period of grave crisis, when the mode...

I’ve shared platforms with Westminster parliamentarians twice in the last few months, and more than that in the last few years, who’ve been dismissive in one way or another of my case for agrarian loc...

What might the world look like if capitalist growth and carbon emissions continue, and modern civilization collapses? Chris Smaje, a small farmer and writer in England, extrapolates from existing tren...

It’s time for me to break my silence here – thanks for keeping the discussion going in my absence. Among other reasons for the pause was a long trip away, at least by my standards – mostly recreationa...

Romanticism, modernism and the meta-crisis

In this months episode we chat with Chris Smaje; he is an aspiring woodsman, stockman, gardener, and peasant in Somerset, southwest England. Chris is also an author who writes urgently about the need ...

With the publication of my new book Finding Lights in a Dark Age fast approaching but not yet arrived, I’m at that awkward stage in an author’s journey with a book where it’s too late to change anythi...

The year moves through its seasons, and so does the farm over longer cycles. In recent days, I’ve been stepping off the veranda and plucking greengages, figs and apples from the surrounding trees for ...

I was invited to give a couple of talks at the Speaker’s Forum in the Glastonbury Festival in June, which I’ve just reprised at the Green Gathering this weekend. In this post, I’m going to tell some s...

I mentioned in my previous post the recent kerfuffle about animal agriculture and climate change associated with the work of Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop (see this podcast and this paper). I also mention...

The end of June is usually an exciting time for me. Summer holidays approaching? No, it’s when the Energy Institute publishes its annual Statistical Review of World Energy. Who doesn’t love a big fat ...

Happy news if you’re bored of me trailing my new book – I’m shortly going to hand over to a much valued long-term commenter here at Small Farm Future, Eric Farnsworth, so that he can trail his instead...

How we can meet the challenges of our age by moving away from the political and economic philosophies of both the left and right to a more equitable re-organization of society, economy, land and food ...

Radical Truth · Episode