George Monbiot says farming should be ABOLISHED to save the planet

George Monbiot says farming should be ABOLISHED to save the planet. 

Environmental campaigner George Monbiot has claimed farming should be abolished because meat can be replaced with food made out of lab-grown bacteria.

Writing in his latest book, the Guardian columnist said the world must do away with meat and dairy production because it is a ‘phenomenally profligate’ way to produce food.

When George Monbiot, the author, Guardian columnist, and environmental campaigner published his latest book, he was ready for people to have a guttural reaction. 

In Regenesis: How to feed the world without devouring the planet, he argues for a radical shake-up of how we feed ourselves, proposing that precision fermentation – where the cells of dead microbes are used to create specific ingredients – is going to be a revolutionary technology, and the death knell of livestock farming. He suggests that the world should look at newer methods, including creating industrial quantities of protein powder using bacteria which can be used to make food such as ‘protein pancakes’ instead.

But farming groups have today hit out at Mr Monbiot’s claims, accusing the Guardian writer of an ‘anti-rural agenda’.

Farmers have also criticised the idea of ditching farming as the type of scheme popular with ‘oat milk-drinking’ city-dwellers who ‘do not understand’ the country.

Among those to criticise Mr Monbiot’s latest book, Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet, were campaign group the Countryside Alliance.

Chief executive, Tim Bonner, told MailOnline: ‘Despite the hugely inaccurate description of the countryside painted by those with extreme, anti-rural agendas, the reality is that it’s admired globally because of, not in spite of, generations of farming.

The Finnish scientists hope to use a type of bacteria found in soil to create or enhance food to make it rich with protein.

The process involves obtaining microbial protein (also referred to as single cell protein) obtained by growing proprietary bacteria harvested from nature.

That bacteria will be be fed hydrogen, which in itself will be split from water (H20) by electricity.

It is hoped that if the electricity comes from solar or wind power, the bacteria can be grown with near-zero greenhouse gas emissions – also helping to tackle global warming.

The end product will be a protein flour – named Solein after its makers Solar Foods.

This will be used to reinforce foods such as pies, ice cream, biscuits, pasta, noodles, sauces or bread. 

The protein flour could also nourish cattle to save them eating soya raised on rainforest land.

In 2020, Solar received 5.5million Euros in investment to expand its business. This technology, he argues, will allow huge numbers of people to be fed while using just a fraction of the land that is currently used in the UK and across the world for farming – including less intensive and more organic forms of agriculture, which are often promoted as more environmentally friendly.

The world faces many problems, and it’s going to need land to fix them. More renewable energy sources to combat climate change will require more land, bringing the natural world back from what many are already calling a dangerous tipping point will require more land, and continuing to keep a growing population fed, through livestock farming and seasonal plants, already consumes a vast majority of our land.