Table Talk

“Monbiot has that most aggravating of gifts, the ability lucidly to point out things that people desperately do not want to be true." That's a quote from Henry Dimbleby, the man who proposed the UK's new national food strategy. He is, of course, talking about journalist, author and activist George Monbiot. In this episode of the Food Matters Live podcast, George joins Stefan Gates to discuss the future of food production both in the UK and around the world. "We are looking at the possibility of systemic environmental collapse," George says. "We tell ourselves we put our survival above everything else. I see no evidence of that at all." He raises many concerns about the current food system in his new book “Regenesis: feeding the world without devouring the planet”. But the most pressing concerns centre around soil and the use of land for agriculture. He says the book came about through his newfound "obsession with soil", something he describes as being "the most complex ecosystem on Earth.