1st Edition
Regenerative Farming and Sustainable Diets Human, Animal and Planetary Health
This book makes the case for an urgent move away from industrial agriculture towards regenerative farming and the promotion of plant-based diets.
How we produce, distribute and consume food are critical issues for the health and well-being of humans, animals and the environment. In order to develop a sustainable food system, this book argues for a radical change in farming and food consumption. Containing contributions from world renowned experts, the book promotes regenerative farming as the means to preserve planetary health, establish sustainable, healthy and secure diets and safeguard the welfare of animals. Chapters discuss broad ranging issues from climate change and biodiversity conservation to animal sentience and intensive farming, and the role of financial markets and food businesses. The book concludes with chapters discussing the routes in policy and practice to transforming the food system and achieving real-world change.
This book is a must read for students, scholars and policymakers interested in establishing sustainable farming and food systems, for human health, animal welfare and environmental protection.
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
List of figures
Introduction: Extinction or Regeneration? Humanity has the choice - Joyce D’Silva and Carol McKenna
Part 1: The Urgency of Food Systems Change
1. Why our Children’s Future Depends on a Global Agreement on Food, Climate, and Animal Welfare - Philip Lymbery
2. Addressing Power and Poverty in a Crisis-Prone Food System - Olivier De Schutter, Chantal Wei-Ying Clément and Nick Jacobs
3. Accelerating the SDGs: The Opportunity of Agrifood Systems Transformation - Stefanos Fotiou and Rathana Peou Norbert-Munns
4. Food Systems Futures and How to Achieve Them - Tim Benton
5. Preventing and Preparing for Pandemics: Why Food Systems Must Transform - Melissa Leach
Part 2: Planetary Health
6. The Global Food System Can and Must Be Transformed to Respect Planetary Boundaries - Katherine Richardson and Jakob Fritzbøger Christensen
7. Regenerative Management of Agroecosystem Soils to Minimise Extinction Risks and for Climate and Food Security - Rattan Lal
Part 3: Human Health and Sustainable Diets
8. Eating Plant-Based for Better Health - Shireen Kassam
9. Intensive Farming and the Antibiotic-Resistance Crisis - Cóilín Nunan
10. Transforming Chinese Agrifood Systems to Achieve Sustainable Healthy Diets - Shenggen Fan and Xiaolong Feng
11. The Environmental Benefits of Vegan Pet Food - Andrew Knight
Part 4: Animal Health and Welfare
12. One Biology, Sustainable and Regenerative Farming: A Role for Pig and Poultry production? - Don Broom
13. Understanding Sentient Minds, Darwin, Humpty Dumpty and the Buddha - John Webster
14. Culture in Sentient Beings - Purpose, Evolution, Conservation - Carl Safina
Part 5: Regenerative Farming and Agroecology – the Future of Farming
15. Compassion - the Foundation of Regenerative Farming - Vandana Shiva
16. Regenerating Agriculture Ecosystems and Climate - André Leu
17. Achieving a Peaceful and Verdant Future - a Farmer’s Perspective - Seth Watkins
18. How Agroecology is Mitigating the Worst Effects of Climate Change in Tanzania - Janet Maro
19. Can Dairy Farming be Part of the Solution? - David Finlay
20. Poultry-Centred Regenerative Agriculture - Tree- range® Chicken Farming - Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin
21. Regenerative farming without farmed animals - Amir Kassam and Laila Kassam
22. Aquaculture must be part of the shift towards regenerative farming - Natasha Boyland and Elena Lara
Part 6: Routes to Food Systems Transformation
Changing the financial architecture
23. Countering Corporate and Financial Concentration in the Global Food System - Jennifer Clapp
24. Global Economic Benefits of Eating Better - Steven Lord, Benjamin Bodirsky, Debbora Leip, Hermann Lotze-Campen and Michael Crawford
25. Shifting Bank Funding away from Factory Farming - Peter Stevenson
Changing food business
26. Putting Sentience into Food Policy - Henry Dimbleby
27. The Role of Business in a Food System Fit for the Future - Tracey Jones and Laura Strangeway
28. Food as the Problem, Food as the Solution - James Bailey
29. Holistic Frameworks for Sustainability in Food and Farming - Lesley Mitchell, Fabia Bromovsky, Richard Kipling and Emily Lewis-Brown
Changing Minds to Change Policies
30. What is Needed for Transformation? - Molly Anderson
31. The Earth will Tell us - Ruud Zanders
32. How to Achieve National Plant-Based Policies – the Case of Denmark - Rune-Christoffer Dragsdahl
33. The Conscious Food Systems Alliance - Inner Capacities for Regenerative Food Systems - Thomas Legrand and Noemi Altobelli
34. Native American Regenerative Food and Land Management Systems - Lyla June Johnston
Conclusion: Moving from extinction to securing regeneration: the mission of a movement - Joyce D’Silva and Carol McKenna
Index
Biography
Joyce D’Silva is Ambassador Emeritus for Compassion in World Farming and its former CEO. She has Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Keele and Winchester. She is author of Animal Welfare in World Religion: Teaching and Practice (Routledge 2023), rated a “powerful book” (Christiana Figueres) and “profoundly thought-provoking” (Joanna Lumley).
Carol McKenna is Special Advisor to Compassion in World Farming’s Global CEO. Carol organised the Extinction and Regeneration Conference on which this book is based (www.extinctionconference.com) and is Trustee of the Eating Better Alliance (www.eating-better.org) and co-editor of Farming Food and Nature: Respecting Animals, People and the Environment (Routledge 2018).
“This must read book emphasises the importance of regenerative farming, agroforestry and permaculture. These methods of farming work with rather than against nature, restore biodiversity, help to and slow down climate change. They can become truly sustainable and feed us for generations to come.”
Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, Founder - the Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace
“This inspiring book cuts through so much of today's wretched jargon about regenerative farming, and tells it as it is: it's impossible to regenerate agriculture today without significantly reducing meat consumption”
Jonathon Porritt, Campaigner and Author.
“If Earth is to have a future, humans will need to live differently within the web of life that feeds us. This future will like a liberation, if only we can unlock it. The keys to tomorrow’s plates are in this wide-ranging, challenging, surprising, and ultimately hopeful collection of some of the planet’s finest thinkers on the future of food.”
Raj Patel, author, film-maker and academic.
