For the last twenty odd years, Chris Smaje has been a small-scale vegetable grower in Somerset in South West England. Prior to that, he was a researcher and teacher in political science and policy. Chris has authored two books: 2020’s A Small Farm Future and 2023’s Saying No to a Farm Free Future.
You can also listen to this episode of Yeoman on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Books mentioned
The Story of the Welsh Landscape by Carwyn Graves
“Live by the side of the road and be a friend to man” poem
Steven Stoll’s book on Appalachia
Timestamps
0:00 – periodical.ink
2:01 – intro
3:05 – how Chris started his career and got into farming
5:39 – Chris’s farm, getting it started from scratch
7:52 – zoning in the UK, community side of the farm
11:00 – the term “peasantry”, secure tenure on the land, historical connotations
15:13 – the golden age of the English yeoman, independent proprietors of the 17th century
21:36 – what modernity means, corporatism, claims on the future, definitions of capitalism, abstracted markets
30:39 – financialization, impact of socializing costs and privatizing profits on local economies
35:25 – chemical fertilizers, agriculture and war history, reducing labor inputs
42:15 – problems of scale, uncontrolled impacts, an inevitable small farm future
43:57 – underemployment in cities, Graeber’s bullshit jobs, an ever expanding state
49:41 – the complexity and opacity of the modern world, simple solutions, ambition
54:10 – saying no to a farm free future, political realignments, further monopolies, sustainability
1:01:25 – Akiva Silver, humanity embedding itself into ecosystems, role of farming
1:05:40 – Monbiot’s book, vision for rural populations, eco-modernism, manufactured food
1:13:08 – problems with bioreactors, technofix mindset
1:16:00 – narrative of progress, learning from the past, borrowing off the future
1:19:01 – Geoff’s optimism about the dialogue on American agriculture, a return to human-scale work, corporate and government pushes
1:21:44 – conclusion and where you can find Chris
Yeoman 