Recently, I overheard a commercial television promotion for some current affairs or lifestyle program on Australian farming. ‘Of course,’ the gruff male voiceover intoned, at pains to ward off any idea the reportage might be unpatriotically negative, ‘Aussie farmers are doing a bang up job!’

To suggest otherwise is, of course, tantamount to sacrilege in a country steeped in the mythology of The Good Farmer: rugged and hard-working, in tune with the natural world, and heroically resistant to both the vicissitudes of the weather and the enfeebling effects of city living. So pervasive are idealised depictions of ‘life on the land’ in this country that we rarely pause to consider what they might be masking. This includes the reality that farming is the world’s greatest cause of environmental destruction, and is responsible for more habitat destruction and loss of wildlife than any other factor.

This is British environmentalist and writer George Monbiot’s overarching theme in his important new book, Regenesis. While focusing primarily on his native Britain, Monbiot uses a wealth of research – there are almost one hundred pages of notes, and he claims to have read more than 5,000 papers and ‘a shelf of books’ – to argue that the global food production system is in a parlous state. Without comprehensive reform, Monbiot warns, we risk nothing less than the survival of our species.