A Farm-Free Future?
What if the project of regeneration fails?
This is a Collapse scenario, one of four archetypal scenarios described in IFTF’s ‘Alternative Future Scenarios’ toolkit. It explores a dark, disrupted future of economic crises, political instability, environmental catastrophes, or technological failures, resulting in a breakdown of social, economic, and political structures. Communities struggle to meet basic needs, and there is a loss of trust in institutions. In time, new systems and approaches may emerge from the ashes of collapse.
Polycrisis
By 2040, the UK is in a constant state of crisis.
Annual summer heat waves, where temperatures now consistently top 40°C, severely impact domestic food production. Droughts are commonplace. Global supply chain disruption means food imports couldn’t be relied upon to the same extent anymore.
Mass migration caused by climate change has displaced hundreds of millions of people, largely from the so-called Global South. This has caused global political and economic destabilisation, triggering the rise of populist, anti-immigration governments in the UK and across much of Europe. The UK is a hostile environment increasingly reminiscent of ‘The Children of Men’.1
The COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t the last. In the late 2020s, a ‘Superbug’ caused by antimicrobial resistance (AMR) linked to factory farming of poultry in the Wye Valley caused over a hundred of thousand deaths in the UK.2 This pandemic catalysed efforts in the UK to heavily regulate or even outright ban factory farming as an urgent public health matter. Similar pandemics occurred in the USA, China and other countries. Between the early 2020s to 2040, tens of millions died globally from AMR-derived ‘Superbugs’.
Back in the early 2020s, the average age of British farmers in the UK was about 60 years old.3 Fewer and fewer of their children wanted to take over the family business, and land prices excluded most willing new entrants. Agriculture - vital yet thankless work with increasingly harsh economic realities - was marred with links to climate change and now a devastating pandemic. The demographic bubble finally burst in the late 2020s to early 2030s, as a critical mass of these elderly farmers retired and died. Few people were willing or able to replace them.
AI and automation further compounded the polycrisis, causing many people to lose their jobs, with an insufficient coordinated policy response to prevent long-term mass unemployment. Inequality and poverty are rife, and many people struggle to make ends meet.
This perfect storm made food shortages a genuine threat.
Degeneration
The flourishing regenerative agriculture movement held so much promise in the early 2020s. It provided hope for a more equitable and just food system that was a solution to the ecological crisis.
But by 2040, the polycrisis and competing interests have catastrophically diverted attention and resources from creating a regenerative food system. Politicians and powerful food system actors viewed the joined-up thinking required to do so as too long-term, too complex, and too many silos to join together. Investors became less willing to bet on long-term strategies in an era of turmoil.
Farmers struggled to implement regenerative agriculture while working within a system of policy frameworks, finance, and agricultural subsidies that first favoured more extractive methods and later alternative production methods. They found it difficult to bear the financial burden of transitioning themselves. A lack of accessible training, research, and extension services further hindered widespread adoption. Challenges in accessing mainstream markets - favouring industrial agricultural products - and a lack of consumer demand or willingness to pay for regenerative products further limited farmers' financial viability.
The industrial agriculture lobby argued that further intensifying agriculture (e.g. using high-yielding GMO crop varieties and more efficient use of inputs) was the only ‘sensible’ way to avoid food shortages.
In an era of rampant misinformation, regenerative agriculture couldn’t shake the false tag of being an expensive luxury that couldn’t ‘feed the world’.
The project of regeneration failed.
A farm-free future?
New forms of food production
The polycrisis presented an opportunity for companies in the rapidly developing alternative food production space. In this increasingly farm-free future4, new forms of food production boomed, including
Cell-cultured meat, or lab-grown meat, cultivates animal cells within a nutrient-rich medium to produce ‘real’ meat without slaughtering animals.
Precision fermentation is a process that uses microorganisms like yeast and bacteria to produce proteins with plant-based feedstock to produce alternatives to milk and eggs.
Insect-derived protein is produced by farming insects such as crickets, mealworms, and black soldier fly larvae indoors, using agricultural by-products or food waste as feedstock. They are processed and incorporated as ingredients into food products.
Plant-based proteins derived from soy, peas, lentils and other sources are processed and used to make plant-based ‘meats’, alternative milk and other products.
Vertical farming involves growing crops without soil in a controlled indoor environment using artificial lighting, heat and hydroponics, or aeroponics. Crops are vertically stacked to maximise space efficiency. Many fruits, herbs, salads and vegetables are now produced indoors in this way.
Proponents of these production methods argued that compared to conventional agriculture, they were more resource efficient, used a much lower land footprint, and were more resilient to climate shocks since food production occurs indoors. Companies marketed these food products as 'clean' - a safer alternative with no risk of causing future pandemics.
By 2040, much of the food, including almost all of the protein eaten in the UK, comes from these non-traditional sources.
Private finance flowed into these alternative production methods. Hundreds of start-ups from the early 2020s have matured greatly.5 Significant progress in R&D has revolutionised the types of products available to buy, which are increasingly indistinguishable from ‘real’ meat - tasty, nutritious and more affordable.
Alternative-alternative production
After the ‘Superbug’ pandemic, many people boycotted factory-farmed meat; this demand crash was a significant factor in its eventual collapse. With time, many consumers began to accept the new alternative products. A new category of dietary preference arose - ‘Alt-arians’ - people who eat any food product not derived from slaughtering or exploiting sentient animals, meaning lab-grown meat and insects were on the menu.6
Over time, new anti-corporate conceptions of alternative production methods arose as the technology matured. One particularly prominent example was ‘craft-microcarneries ‘- the craft brewery equivalent of the cell-cultured meat world. They produced artisanal cultured meats at a smaller-scale favouring flavour, heritage breeds, or even using exotic animals as cell sources.7
Proponents of regenerative agriculture tried to show how it could complement these new technologies rather than be in direct competition. They argued that regenerative agriculture could produce raw ingredients for plant-based alternative proteins, feedstocks for precision fermentation, or even supply biopsied cells from high-welfare animals integrated into regenerative agroecosystems for cell-cultured meat. Some early collaborations with micro-carneries showed great promise, though they didn’t become commonplace due to the impacts of the polycrisis.
A changing rural landscape
Whilst much food production now occurs indoors, agriculture still occurs outside - mostly growing cereals and other staple crops that could not be easily grown indoors. Most arable farmers switched to genetically modified (GMO) versions of these crops. GMO varieties were more resilient to extreme summer temperatures and climate variability that caused conventional varieties to fail. However, these GMO varieties rely heavily on proprietary inputs like chemical fertilisers and pesticides, further entrenching corporate control over the food system with intellectual property rights.
Early proponents of alternative food production technologies frequently talked about how these techniques allowed food to be produced on a much smaller land footprint, freeing up lots of land for ecosystem restoration.8 However, this never materialised, as no one wanted to pay for ecosystem restoration on the so-called spared land.
Instead, so-called spared land was allocated to controversial bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) projects, an unproven technology for carbon removal.9 Several million hectares were converted to growing monoculture plantations of willow and other fast-growing sources of woody biomass, turning huge areas of Britain into a veritable desert for biodiversity. A new form of enclosure, pushing people and communities off the land in the name of carbon drawdown.
Food as a culture war battleground
Overall, many people accepted these new foods. Most people just wanted access to affordable food, and in an era of struggle, provenance was a secondary issue to many people.
However, a new fault line emerged in society, and a very vocal proportion rejected these new types of food.
In the early 2020s, many people ate cheap factory-farmed meat daily for lunch and dinner. They considered it their right to do so. After the ‘Superbug’ pandemic, when alternative foods began to replace conventional meat, these groups saw this as challenging long-standing cultural identities, traditions and values.
A toxic media environment helped spread ideas entangling alternative foods with conspiracy theories. Public discourse became mired in baseless accusations and fear-mongering, building on conspiracies about ‘The Great Reset’ and 15-minute cities in the early 2020s.10 Cell-cultured meat was branded as unnatural, ‘playing God’ or ‘Franken-food’.11 Insect protein was part of a conspiracy of control to get people to ‘eat bugs and live in a pod’.12 Climate activists were unfairly blamed for releasing the ‘Superbug’ and the ensuing pandemic.
The failure to transition to a regenerative food system - and subsequent loss of rural heritage and agrobiodiversity was mourned by many as a tragic missed opportunity. Other groups branded regenerative agriculture as ‘woke’, and its demise was perversely celebrated.
Replacing conventional farming with alternative food production methods dealt a serious blow to rural economies. New production methods required fewer people than ever to work in food production, and those jobs it did provide tended to be more highly educated, technical positions. This led to widespread job losses in rural areas and a loss of identity. Since so much rural heritage had already been lost in the 20th and early 21st Centuries, and relatively few people worked in agriculture anymore anyway, this was more like a dying ember being finally extinguished. Still, rural people felt alienated, blaming ‘urban elites’ for losing jobs, identities and heritage. Urban populations blamed rural populations for being backward and resistant to change.
Society fractured as extremist groups emerged on different sides.
Some groups tried to prevent the regulation or shutdown of factory farms, whilst others tried to expedite it. Industrial farming facilities became subject to targeted attacks, as did key figures associated with the agricultural industry; and politicians and other public figures trying to ban factory farming. Later, alternative protein production facilities became the focal points of protests and violence.
A sustained campaign of domestic terrorism in a heavily surveilled and increasingly draconian Britain.
A likely future?
We stand to lose so much if the project of regeneration fails.
How would it make you feel if this were to happen?
This scenario was intentionally provocative. Alternative food production methods likely have an important role to play in a regenerative food system if they are designed in a way to help agroecosystems thrive and if they adequately account for complex existing food cultures.
If you think this scenario is unrealistic, consider the following questions:
Do you think things will remain predictable in an era of ecological collapse, AI and other global trends? Would your 2019 self have predicted that a global pandemic killing nearly 7 million people or a war in Europe would occur in the next few years? As Jim Dator says: “any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous.”
What if regenerative agriculture fails to live up to its potential due to an unsupportive commercial, policy and financial landscape? What might we stand to lose if this happens? What other types of food production might instead take precedence?
What could happen if the problem of ageing farmer demographic change is not adequately addressed? What happens to domestic food production and land ownership?
How might consumers react to the widespread availability of alternative proteins, especially if they largely replace conventional meat? How might a more sensitive approach to understanding food cultures allow these types of products to succeed?
How might the so-called culture war cause fractures in society, and how might it play out with food, which will always be evocative and is such a key part of many people’s identities? How might people react if their preferred diets were restricted?
Would ecosystem restoration actually occur on so-called ‘spared land’ if farming’s footprint was minimised, as is often claimed? Who would pay for it? How to factor in private ownership? See Jevons Paradox.
How might other uses for productive land, like growing crops for biofuel production and BECCS, shape changing land use patterns in future?
No fertility crisis is portrayed in this scenario, but I fear that ‘Children of Men’ will be remembered as one of the most scarily portentous sci-fi films and books ever.
This is based on extrapolating some of the worrying evidence documented in ‘Life-threatening superbugs: how factory farm pollution risks human health’ (Sustain). Link.
The name of this scenario pays homage to Chris Smaje’s book ‘Saying No to a Farm-Free Future’ which, at the time of writing this scenario, has yet to be released. His book was written partially in response to George Monbiot’s controversial ‘Regenesis’, which proposed the replacement of agriculture with precision fermentation and other alternative food production methods covered in this scenario. Both would be great places to read more about these possible types of futures.
Some interesting articles that debate the ethics surrounding alternative food production methods include: ‘Edible Insects as Food–Insect Welfare and Ethical Aspects from a Consumer Perspective’ (Delvendahl et al 2022) Link. & ‘The Ethics of Producing In Vitro Meat’ (Schaefer and Savulescu 2014) Link.