Food, People and Soil | A Mindful Sceptics Guide
Why Abundant Supermarket Shelves Hide The Most Dangerous Environmental Crisis No One's Talking About
Food prices have dropped 1% annually for 120 years. Supermarkets overflow with year-round abundance. Agricultural economists celebrate efficiency gains. Politicians promise technological solutions to food security.
But what if this apparent food security success story obscures a catastrophic reality?
What if 20% of global soils are already degraded—and full supermarket shelves in wealthy countries won't save the billion people heading toward starvation?
What if soil degradation represents the true environmental crisis, whilst everyone argues about carbon emissions?
About this Guide
In Food, People and Soil, John Mark Dangerfield and Christopher M Scott make the quietly radical claim that the health of our civilisation depends on what’s happening beneath our feet. Soil is not inert. It’s alive, finite, and under threat. This guide draws a clear line from degraded soils to rising food prices, collapsing ecosystems, and the fragility of global food chains.
The authors connect the dots between agricultural industrialisation, global population trends, and the slow crisis of soil exhaustion. Drawing on history, systems thinking, and grounded scientific evidence, they reveal how the very systems that feed us are degrading the source of that food.
And yet, the solutions are available in rediscovering old truths and challenging deeply held assumptions.
Why read this book?
You’ll understand how food, people, and soil form an unspoken triangle of global risk
You’ll see how soil degradation underpins multiple crises, from climate change to biodiversity loss
You’ll gain language and clarity to discuss food security with rigour and depth
You’ll sharpen your critical thinking about environmental narratives and what they often miss
Why This Matters Now
With global population increasing by 8,000 people per hour and soil degradation affecting 40% of agricultural lands, we face an unprecedented challenge in feeding humanity while maintaining the ecological processes that make food production possible. The conventional focus on rare species conservation and protected areas has diverted attention from the more crucial issue of maintaining soil health and biodiversity in agricultural landscapes.
The solutions lie not in choosing between food production and environmental protection, but in understanding how they're inextricably linked through soil health. This guide reveals why current approaches to conservation and agriculture must change to meet the challenges of feeding everyone well without destroying the ecological foundations that make it possible.
A Taste From The Inside
“More than half of Earth’s land is too dry, too cold, or too steep to grow much of anything. The rest we’re pushing hard.”
“Soil is not the factory floor of agriculture. It is the worker. And it’s tired.”
Who This Guide Is For
This guide is for:
Environmental professionals, policy thinkers, and intellectually curious readers
Retired scientists, ESG consultants, and emerging contrarians seeking rigorous insight
Readers who value systems thinking, empirical nuance, and sceptical inquiry
It’s not for:
Those seeking simple solutions or optimistic gloss
Readers unwilling to reconsider foundational assumptions
About the Authors
Dr Mark Dangerfield and Christopher M Scott are independent environmental thinkers with a taste for evidence over ideology. They write for curious minds that don’t mind a little discomfort on the road to clarity. This book is part of their ongoing mission to equip thoughtful readers with better questions, not just better answers.
"I've spent years studying what happens when soils degrade. Most Western consumers are blissfully unaware because supermarket shelves stay full. But soil scientist Dr Rattan Lal warns us: 25% of global soils are degraded. That should terrify you." Mark Dangerfield
Take the next step
Start thinking like the soil scientist you already are and buy this book.
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