The Good Farmers

Overview

Modern agriculture feeds billions, but it is also degrading soils, accelerating climate change and leaving farmers dangerously exposed to drought, heat and volatile markets. Reporting from Brazil, India, Kenya and beyond, Christopher de Bellaigue shows that a quieter agricultural revolution is already under way. Farmers are finding ways to produce more while restoring the land: abandoning the plough, rebuilding soil, reducing chemicals and adapting old knowledge to new extremes.

Yet these successes expose a deeper problem. The greatest obstacle is not scientific but economic: an agricultural system that rewards short-term yield while transferring its true costs to farmers, societies and the planet. The hope lies in the farmers already proving that feeding the world and restoring the earth need not be opposing goals.

Read CGR Director Nicholas Lemann’s Letter to the Reader