Skip to main content

The Future of Agriculture - Sarah Bearchell ****

Popular science topics are fairly evenly divided between those that are of pure intellectual interest, such as astronomy or relativity, and those with a direct impact on our lives - such as climate change or quantum physics. There's often a danger with the 'direct impact' that they can be a little worthy and try too hard to be deeply meaningful. For some reason this often seems to be the case with anything food related. But thankfully agriculture is a topic that is both rarely examined and has the potential for plenty of interesting science (and history thereof).

Inevitably climate change does come into the mix, both in terms of its impact on our ability to grow crops and in the greenhouse gas emissions from cow burps, fertiliser and more. To make things more complex, with a growing world population and some parts of the world chronically short of food, we need ways to grow more without impacting the climate in a negative fashion.

It's purely coincidental that I'm reviewing this book soon after covering We Are Eating the Earth, as they have, to some degree, very different approaches to similar problem areas. Both, I think, would agree on the dubious nature of biofuels (though it's not something Bearchell addresses directly), but where Michael Grunwald in We Are Eating reluctantly admits to the environmental benefits of properly managed intensive farming, Sarah Bearchall is much more likely to be supportive of concepts like regenerative agriculture. 

However, Bearchell also gives us a range of useful mechanisms to think about changing the way we interact with food and farming whether it be eating bugs, reducing waste, precision plants or automated animal rearing. This is the kind of book where you don't want lengthy expositions and Bearchell packs a lot into a slim volume.

I found the viewpoint here more challenging than I did Grunwald's - while I'm convinced of the threat of climate change, I think there is no point in preaching an ideal picture. We need pragmatic solutions that work with what people will actually do and that make best use of science like genetic modification. While not coming out as explicitly anti-GM, Bearchell can feel wary about this, and occasionally, comes across as an idealist. But being challenged in your views is not a bad thing, and it's an excellent book to read alongside Grunwald's.

Paperback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership:
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Who Invented the Computer? – Ian Watson

Ian Watson is the author of  The Universal Machine  and featured in a recent  Four Way Interview . Saturday June 23 2012 was the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, the troubled genius who invented the modern computer. Why though do so few people recognize his name and his great achievements? In 1936 English mathematician Alan Turing, published a paper,  On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem . This became the foundation of computing. In it Turing presented a theoretical machine that could solve any problem that could be described by instructions encoded on a paper tape. A Turing Machine could calculate square roots, whilst another might solve Sudoku puzzles. Turing demonstrated you could construct a single  Universal Machine  that could simulate any Turing Machine. One machine solving any problem for which a program could be written – sound familiar? He’d invented the computer. Then,  computers  were peop...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ignorance: How it drives science – Stuart Firestein *****

This is a delightful little book that really gets you thinking. I stress the ‘little’ part not as a negative, but as a good thing. There is nothing worse than fat, bloated popular science books where the author feels they have to get 120,000 words to be taken seriously. This is the sort of book that can be read in a couple of hours – but you will get so much more out of it than one of those tedious doorstops. The premise underlying the book is in once sense extremely simple, yet is fundamental to an understanding of what science is and what scientists do. And it is an understanding that is totally at odds with the typical way science is portrayed both in university lectures and popular science books. As Stuart Firestein points out, what is important is not the facts, but rather the area of ignorance. The interesting part and the fundamental heart of science is not about what we know, but about what we don’t know and where we want to look next. Take this lovely quote: ‘Working ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Star Book – Peter Grego ****

This attractive landscape format book combines an excellent introduction to the stars and basic astronomy with a set of star maps, plus in depth looks at some of the stars featured, with a  bonus section on the solar system. Amazon says it’s a hardback, but in fact it’s a paperback with a rather ingenious cover – you can’t tell from the photo, but the words ‘The Star Book’ are punched through as a series of holes that show the white paper of the next page beneath. Like many astronomy/space books, the cover lacks shelf appeal because it is mostly black, but at least there is some original thought here. Unlike many books in this format which tend to concentrate on the pictures, there is a good deal of excellent text by Peter Grego, so there was no feeling that you were only getting the star maps and star ‘biographies’, something these days much more suited to an iPad or smartphone app. Instead, the opening 30 or so pages give a very good introduction that would be valuable to ...
Post a Comment
Read more