Whole Earth Farming - Smallholders and the Great Regenerative Transformation - Paperback

"It's been an honor to work with and learn from smallholder farmers around the world, and to see up close the ways they restore their land, sustain their communities, and build a better future for us all. Hugh Locke's efforts with the Smallholder Farmers Alliance have been nothing short of extraordinary - and in Whole Earth Farming, he shares the lessons he's learned with both rigorous evidence and genuine humanity". - President Bill Clinton

"Every food crisis I have seen, from Haiti to Ukraine to Gaza, has taught me the same lesson: the people who hold communities together are the ones who feed them. Hugh's book builds on that truth with a clear and urgent call to action. Farmers, as the bridge between people and the land we inhabit, have the power not only to produce food, but to strengthen local economies and nourish our shared future. I have seen enough to know this is not just an idea. It is already happening. Read this book. Then do something." - José Andrés, Chef, Humanitarian, and Founder of the Global Food Institute at George Washington University

In his groundbreaking book Whole Earth Farming, Hugh Locke introduces us to the one quarter of humanity who have been hidden in plain sight for generations. He takes us to the fields, the neighborhoods and the communities where 475 million smallholder farming families have been quietly feeding the world for generations while remaining almost entirely invisible.

Their story is extraordinary, their potential transformative, and the moment for both has finally arrived. At the heart of that moment is the power of big ideas. Just as two concepts from 18th-century England converged in the 1960s to catalyze the Green Revolution that transformed global food production, Hugh argues that a new convergence of ideas is now underway, one with the potential to be even more transformative. He makes the audacious case that half of the world's smallholder farmers, working just twelve percent of global arable land, could produce all the additional food the world will need by 2050 while actively combating climate change.

Yes, Whole Earth Farming is fundamentally about agriculture, and specifically about smallholders transitioning to regenerative practices as a way to transform not just food production but our approach to planetary challenges. But getting there involves a fascinating journey that winds its way from Johnny Carson and The Tonight Show through to fractal geometry, from Buckingham Palace to rubber farms in Thailand, from ancient traditional wisdom to artificial intelligence. Drawing on decades of work at the nexus of global affairs and grassroots agriculture, from chairing meetings of heads of state at the United Nations to sitting with farmers in the fields of Haiti, Hugh weaves together traditional Indigenous wisdom, contemporary ecological science, and spiritual principles drawn from the Bahá'í Faith into a vision of regenerative agriculture with the transformative power of a second Green Revolution.