
Saying No to a Farm-Free Future
The Case for an Ecological Food System and Against Manufactured Foods
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $16.02
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Chris Smaje
-
By:
-
Chris Smaje
About this listen
A defense of agroecological, small-scale farming and a robust critique of an industrialized future.
As a breakdown of the climate, state power and globalized markets pushes us toward an epochal transition, Chris Smaje offers us a hopeful vision of a relocalized, self-sufficient world.—David Bollier
One of the few voices to challenge The Guardian's George Monbiot on the future of food and farming (and the restoration of nature) is academic, farmer and author of A Small Farm Future Chris Smaje. In Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future, Smaje presents his defense of small-scale farming and a robust critique of Monbiot’s vision for an urban and industrialized future.
Responding to Monbiot’s portrayal of an urban, high-energy, industrially manufactured food future as the answer to our current crises, and its unchallenged acceptance within the environmental discourse, Smaje was compelled to challenge Monbiot’s evidence and conclusions. At the same time, Smaje presents his powerful counterargument–a low-carbon agrarian localism that puts power in the hands of local communities, not high-tech corporates.
In the ongoing fight for our food future, this book will help you to understand the difference between a congenial, ecological living and a dystopian, factory-centered existence. A must-hear!
©2023 Chris Smaje (P)2023 Chelsea Green PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
-
A Bold Return to Giving a Damn
- One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food
- By: Will Harris
- Narrated by: Will Harris
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Raised as a fourth-generation farmer, when Will Harris inherited White Oak Pastures he was a full-time commodity cowboy who played hard and fast with every tool the system offered–chemicals, antibiotics, steroids, and more. His ancestors had built a highly profitable, conventionally run machine, but over time he found himself disgusted with the excess, cruelty, and smalltown devastation this system entailed. So he bet the farm on forging a different way of doing things. One that works with nature not against it, and bridges the quickly widening delta between consumers and their food.
-
-
Lie after lie. Complete NARCISSIST!!! Don’t waste your time
- By Roni Crone on 11-24-23
By: Will Harris
-
Dirt to Soil
- One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture
- By: Gabe Brown
- Narrated by: Gabe Brown
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Dirt to Soil, Gabe Brown tells the story of his ranch's amazing journey and offers a wealth of innovative solutions to our most pressing and complex contemporary agricultural challenge - restoring the soil. The Brown’s Ranch model, developed over 20 years of experimentation and refinement, focuses on regenerating resources by continuously enhancing the living biology in the soil.
-
-
loved it.
- By Amazon Customer on 01-29-19
By: Gabe Brown
-
Ultra-Processed People
- Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food
- By: Chris van Tulleken
- Narrated by: Chris van Tulleken, Dr. Xand van Tulleken
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How much of our daily caloric intake comes from ingesting substances that, technically speaking, do not meet traditional definitions of “food”? Chances are, if you’re eating something that came wrapped in plastic and contains a funky ingredient you don’t have in your kitchen, it's most likely—almost definitely—ultra-processed food, or UPF.
-
-
ridiculously biased take on data
- By Brit_TV_fan on 11-25-23
-
The Need to Be Whole
- By: Wendell Berry
- Narrated by: Nick Offerman
- Length: 19 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wendell Berry has never been afraid to speak up for the dispossessed. The Need to Be Whole continues the work he began in The Hidden Wound (1970) and The Unsettling of America (1977), demanding a careful exploration of this hard, shared truth: The wealth of the mighty few governing this nation has been built on the unpaid labor of others.
-
-
Necessary Reading for These Troubled Times
- By Jane Vandenburgh on 11-05-22
By: Wendell Berry
-
Food
- What the Heck Should I Eat
- By: Dr. Mark Hyman MD
- Narrated by: Dr. Mark Hyman MD
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Did you know that oatmeal actually isn't a healthy way to start the day? That milk doesn't build bones, and eggs aren't the devil? In Food: What the Heck Should I Eat?, Dr. Hyman looks at every food group and explains what we've gotten wrong, revealing which foods nurture our health and which pose threats. He also explains food's crucial role in functional medicine and how food systems and policies affect our environmental and personal health.
-
-
Objective, backed by science, full of sage advice
- By TigerXtreme on 03-06-18
-
The Nutmeg's Curse
- Parables for a Planet in Crisis
- By: Amitav Ghosh
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A powerful work of history, essay, testimony, and polemic, The Nutmeg’s Curse argues that the dynamics of climate change today are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. At the center of Ghosh’s narrative is the now-ubiquitous spice nutmeg. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation—of both human life and the natural environment. In Ghosh’s hands, the story of the nutmeg becomes a parable for our environmental crisis.
-
-
performance....
- By Bonnie on 11-15-22
By: Amitav Ghosh
-
A Bold Return to Giving a Damn
- One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food
- By: Will Harris
- Narrated by: Will Harris
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Raised as a fourth-generation farmer, when Will Harris inherited White Oak Pastures he was a full-time commodity cowboy who played hard and fast with every tool the system offered–chemicals, antibiotics, steroids, and more. His ancestors had built a highly profitable, conventionally run machine, but over time he found himself disgusted with the excess, cruelty, and smalltown devastation this system entailed. So he bet the farm on forging a different way of doing things. One that works with nature not against it, and bridges the quickly widening delta between consumers and their food.
-
-
Lie after lie. Complete NARCISSIST!!! Don’t waste your time
- By Roni Crone on 11-24-23
By: Will Harris
-
Dirt to Soil
- One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture
- By: Gabe Brown
- Narrated by: Gabe Brown
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Dirt to Soil, Gabe Brown tells the story of his ranch's amazing journey and offers a wealth of innovative solutions to our most pressing and complex contemporary agricultural challenge - restoring the soil. The Brown’s Ranch model, developed over 20 years of experimentation and refinement, focuses on regenerating resources by continuously enhancing the living biology in the soil.
-
-
loved it.
- By Amazon Customer on 01-29-19
By: Gabe Brown
-
Ultra-Processed People
- Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food
- By: Chris van Tulleken
- Narrated by: Chris van Tulleken, Dr. Xand van Tulleken
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How much of our daily caloric intake comes from ingesting substances that, technically speaking, do not meet traditional definitions of “food”? Chances are, if you’re eating something that came wrapped in plastic and contains a funky ingredient you don’t have in your kitchen, it's most likely—almost definitely—ultra-processed food, or UPF.
-
-
ridiculously biased take on data
- By Brit_TV_fan on 11-25-23
-
The Need to Be Whole
- By: Wendell Berry
- Narrated by: Nick Offerman
- Length: 19 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wendell Berry has never been afraid to speak up for the dispossessed. The Need to Be Whole continues the work he began in The Hidden Wound (1970) and The Unsettling of America (1977), demanding a careful exploration of this hard, shared truth: The wealth of the mighty few governing this nation has been built on the unpaid labor of others.
-
-
Necessary Reading for These Troubled Times
- By Jane Vandenburgh on 11-05-22
By: Wendell Berry
-
Food
- What the Heck Should I Eat
- By: Dr. Mark Hyman MD
- Narrated by: Dr. Mark Hyman MD
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Did you know that oatmeal actually isn't a healthy way to start the day? That milk doesn't build bones, and eggs aren't the devil? In Food: What the Heck Should I Eat?, Dr. Hyman looks at every food group and explains what we've gotten wrong, revealing which foods nurture our health and which pose threats. He also explains food's crucial role in functional medicine and how food systems and policies affect our environmental and personal health.
-
-
Objective, backed by science, full of sage advice
- By TigerXtreme on 03-06-18
-
The Nutmeg's Curse
- Parables for a Planet in Crisis
- By: Amitav Ghosh
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A powerful work of history, essay, testimony, and polemic, The Nutmeg’s Curse argues that the dynamics of climate change today are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. At the center of Ghosh’s narrative is the now-ubiquitous spice nutmeg. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation—of both human life and the natural environment. In Ghosh’s hands, the story of the nutmeg becomes a parable for our environmental crisis.
-
-
performance....
- By Bonnie on 11-15-22
By: Amitav Ghosh
-
Metabolical
- The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine
- By: Robert H. Lustig
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The New York Times best-selling author of Fat Chance explains the eight pathologies that underlie all chronic disease, documents how processed food has impacted them to ruin our health, economy, and environment over the past 50 years, and proposes an urgent manifesto and strategy to cure both us and the planet.
-
-
painfully political
- By jonathan blake on 06-06-21
By: Robert H. Lustig
-
Healing Grounds
- Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming
- By: Liz Carlisle
- Narrated by: Liz Carlisle
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Healing Grounds, Liz Carlisle tells the stories of Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian American farmers who are reviving their ancestors' methods of growing food—techniques long suppressed by the industrial food system. These farmers are restoring native prairies, nurturing beneficial fungi, and enriching soil health. While feeding their communities and revitalizing cultural ties to land, they are steadily stitching ecosystems back together and repairing the natural carbon cycle.
-
-
Science and stories
- By Jenelle on 10-30-24
By: Liz Carlisle
-
The Earth Transformed
- An Untold History
- By: Peter Frankopan
- Narrated by: Peter Frankopan
- Length: 29 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Global warming is one of the greatest dangers mankind faces today. Even as temperatures increase, sea levels rise, and natural disasters escalate, our current environmental crisis feels difficult to predict and understand. But climate change and its effects on us are not new. In a bold narrative that spans centuries and continents, Peter Frankopan argues that nature has always played a fundamental role in the writing of history.
-
-
A Thoughtful History of A Complex Phenomenon
- By Lucy A. Pithecus on 04-21-23
By: Peter Frankopan
-
Oneness vs. the 1%
- Shattering Illusions, Seeding Freedom
- By: Vandana Shiva, Kartikey Shiva
- Narrated by: Tia Rider
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Oneness vs. the 1%, Vandana Shiva takes on the billionaires club of Gates, Buffet, and Zuckerberg, as well as other modern empires whose blindness to the rights of people, and to the destructive impact of their construct of linear progress, have wrought havoc across the world. Their single-minded pursuit of profit has undemocratically enforced uniformity and monocultures, division and separation, monopolies and external control - over finance, food, energy, information, health care, and even relationships.
-
-
Bombshell
- By Anonymous User on 02-24-21
By: Vandana Shiva, and others
-
Holistic Management: A Commonsense Revolution to Restore Our Environment
- Third Edition
- By: Jody Butterfield, Allan Savory
- Narrated by: Paul W. Griffiths
- Length: 17 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fossil fuels and livestock grazing are often targeted as major culprits behind climate change and desertification. But Allan Savory, cofounder of the Savory Institute, begs to differ. The bigger problem, he warns, is our mismanagement of resources. Livestock grazing is not the problem; it's how we graze livestock. If we don't change the way we approach land management, irreparable harm from climate change could continue long after we replace fossil fuels.
-
-
Ideas To Save the the World, Told Poorly
- By Shawn Oueinsteen on 10-28-18
By: Jody Butterfield, and others
-
Against the Grain
- A Deep History of the Earliest States
- By: James C. Scott
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative.
-
-
World without Women
- By Paul Richards on 04-28-18
By: James C. Scott
-
Apocalypse Never
- Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All
- By: Michael Shellenberger
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world’s last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today’s Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions. But in 2019, as some claimed "billions of people are going to die", contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that he needed to speak out to separate science from fiction.
-
-
Environmentalist with integrity!
- By Wayne on 07-01-20
-
Charles Dowding’s No Dig Gardening: Course 1
- From Weeds to Vegetables Easily and Quickly
- By: Charles Dowding
- Narrated by: Charles Dowding
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Compared to Charles' other books, this is more about no dig, eliminating weeds, garden layout, compost making, and using compost. There is also a history of no-dig vegetable gardening in the last 100 years. I want listeners to understand the context and the reasons why no dig has not been much valued until recently, and why it is now. This audiobook has 18 sections, covering the key methods and wonderful results of no dig, from starting with weeds to sowing and planting straightaway, and cropping soon after.
-
-
Probably the only gardening book you'll ever need!
- By Melissa Nixon on 04-23-23
By: Charles Dowding
-
Ways of Being
- Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence
- By: James Bridle
- Narrated by: James Bridle
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Artist, technologist, and philosopher James Bridle’s Ways of Being is a brilliant, searching exploration of different kinds of intelligence—plant, animal, human, artificial—and how they transform our understanding of humans’ place in the cosmos. What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans, or shared with other beings—beings of flesh, wood, stone, and silicon? The last few years have seen rapid advances in “artificial” intelligence.
-
-
Ahh, I don’t know
- By Anonymous User on 12-14-22
By: James Bridle
-
The Ecotechnic Future
- Envisioning a Post-Peak World
- By: John Michael Greer
- Narrated by: Tony Craine
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The industrial age made possible by fossil fuels will surely decline as these fuels run out. In The Ecotechnic Future John Michael Greer alerts the listener to possible changes future generations may face as these dwindling fuel supplies lead first to a deindustrial age, then to a society which salvages the remnants of our current plenty, and eventually to a time in which people may learn to live in balance with the environment: an ecotechnic society.
-
-
A possible future?
- By me on 04-08-10
-
False Alarm
- How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet
- By: Bjorn Lomborg
- Narrated by: Jim Seybert
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
False Alarm will convince you that everything you think about climate change is wrong. It points the way toward making the world a vastly better, if slightly warmer, place for us all.
-
-
Stop climate change panic!
- By Wayne on 07-16-20
By: Bjorn Lomborg
-
Fossil Future
- Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less
- By: Alex Epstein
- Narrated by: Alex Epstein
- Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For over a decade, philosopher and energy expert Alex Epstein has predicted that any negative impacts of fossil fuel use on our climate will be outweighed by the unique benefits of fossil fuels to human flourishing--including their unrivaled ability to provide low-cost, reliable energy to billions of people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people. And contrary to what we hear from media “experts” about today’s “renewable revolution” and “climate emergency,” reality has proven Epstein right.
-
-
Strongly Recommend
- By Kevin on 06-14-22
By: Alex Epstein