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We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate
From the author of New York Times bestseller The New New Deal, a groundbreaking piece of reportage from the trenches of the next climate the fight to fix our food system.
Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our carbon emissions. By 2050, we’re going to need a lot more calories to fill nearly 10 billion bellies, but we can’t feed the world without frying it if we keep tearing down an acre of rainforest every six seconds. We are eating the earth, an ingenious phrase coined by Michael Grunwald, and the greatest challenge facing our species will be to slow our relentless expansion of farmland into nature. Even if we quit fossil fuels, we’ll keep hurtling towards climate chaos if we don’t solve our food and land problems.
In this rollicking, shocking narrative, Grunwald shows how the world, after decades of ignoring the climate problem at the center of our plates, has pivoted to making it worse, embracing solutions that sound sustainable but could make it even harder to grow more food with less land. But he also tells the stories of the dynamic scientists and entrepreneurs pursuing real solutions, from a jungle-tough miracle crop called pongamia to genetically-edited cattle embryos, from Impossible Whoppers to a non-polluting pesticide that uses the technology behind the COVID vaccines to constipate beetles to death. It’s an often infuriating saga of lobbyists, politicians, and even the scientific establishment making terrible choices for humanity, but it’s also a hopeful account of the people figuring out what needs to be done—and trying to do it.
Michael Grunwald, bestselling author of The Swamp and The New New Deal, builds his narrative around a brilliant, relentless, unforgettable food and land expert named Tim Searchinger. He chronicles Searchinger’s uphill battles against bad science and bad politics, both driven by the overwhelming influence of agricultural interests. And he illuminates a path that could save our planetary home for ourselves and future generations—through better policy, technology, and behavior, as well as a new land ethic recognizing that every acre matters.
Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our carbon emissions. By 2050, we’re going to need a lot more calories to fill nearly 10 billion bellies, but we can’t feed the world without frying it if we keep tearing down an acre of rainforest every six seconds. We are eating the earth, an ingenious phrase coined by Michael Grunwald, and the greatest challenge facing our species will be to slow our relentless expansion of farmland into nature. Even if we quit fossil fuels, we’ll keep hurtling towards climate chaos if we don’t solve our food and land problems.
In this rollicking, shocking narrative, Grunwald shows how the world, after decades of ignoring the climate problem at the center of our plates, has pivoted to making it worse, embracing solutions that sound sustainable but could make it even harder to grow more food with less land. But he also tells the stories of the dynamic scientists and entrepreneurs pursuing real solutions, from a jungle-tough miracle crop called pongamia to genetically-edited cattle embryos, from Impossible Whoppers to a non-polluting pesticide that uses the technology behind the COVID vaccines to constipate beetles to death. It’s an often infuriating saga of lobbyists, politicians, and even the scientific establishment making terrible choices for humanity, but it’s also a hopeful account of the people figuring out what needs to be done—and trying to do it.
Michael Grunwald, bestselling author of The Swamp and The New New Deal, builds his narrative around a brilliant, relentless, unforgettable food and land expert named Tim Searchinger. He chronicles Searchinger’s uphill battles against bad science and bad politics, both driven by the overwhelming influence of agricultural interests. And he illuminates a path that could save our planetary home for ourselves and future generations—through better policy, technology, and behavior, as well as a new land ethic recognizing that every acre matters.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2025
106 people are currently reading
1196 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
July 27, 2025
Thank you to LibraryThing and Michael Grunwald for sending me this book in exchange for an honest review.
Every few years something causes me to stop eating meat. Sometimes it's a book, sometimes a movie, sometimes a conversation with a friend. Sometimes it's because of animal cruelty, sometimes health, and sometimes it's for the sake of the planet we live on. I've always gone back to it after a fairly short amount of time, only to be reminded again of why it's not such a good idea. Halfway through We Are Eating the Earth I knew I was about to embark on a non-meat diet again. The book also helped me broaden my views of climate change. I've always thought of emissions as the main contributor and thing to focus on, but the way Grunwald presents land issues caused me to expand my mind.
Most of what I've read on climate change has been about cars, planes, etc, and the planet-destroying fumes they release. I remember when the biofuel boom happened and how exciting it was that we could run combustion engines on corn, releasing much less emissions. What I don't remember ever hearing about back then is how, if we dedicate a bunch of corn that was previously used to feed people and cattle, to fuel, we would need to replace that amount of corn. This means clearing new land and then all the heavy equipment and runoff that's involved with growing more food. Looking at it from that point of view (the same amount of grain is required to fill the tank of a Ford Explorer and to feed a human being for a year), it's hard not to change your mind.
Grunwald does a great job of presenting the issues; he's a journalist and is adept at writing about complex topics in an easy to understand way, backed up by a ton of facts. However, his solutions all seem to rely on capitalism and the ruling class. The only to get people to stop eating so much meat is to present them with an alternative that tastes good and is affordable. The only way to do the research quickly and proficiently enough (or to get anyone to help you) is to rely on corporations and the government handing out enough money. Then, not only are you in debt to these evil bastards, but you need to turn a profit really quick. The only way to turn a profit with these types of things is to keep increasing the scale, so that the prices drop to affordable and you sell enough to make a profit, which requires even more money, and the cooperation of distributors, retailers, the meat industry, law makers, and more. This has prevented any kind of alternative meat from taking a hold, and Grunwald doesn't offer any other solutions that think outside of the box.
He also tells the story of biofuels, fake meat, etc, through the biographies of a few men. This not only makes average people feel like they can't make a difference, but it also encourages us to wait for a hero to solve all our problems. This solution feels similar to another he offers: tax airplanes that continue to use fuel and tax meat. If that happens, the corporations will pass the tax onto the customer and the only people who will be able to afford to fly or eat meat will be the people who are already contributing to the destruction of humankind the most. The only way we're going to be able to make this huge shift is through community and the destruction of capitalism.
Maybe the biggest issue I had was when he was talking about meeting with a senator from the great state of New Jersey. Grunwald uses the term “no corn New Jersey.” No corn in New Jersey? That is probably the most ingorant line in the whole book, and it's not just because I'm from there. It's the garden state for fuck's sake.
But, we agree on his main point—the way humanity eats meat is not sustainable or ok. It's cruel and inefficient, and doesn't seem like it's going to change any time soon. People won't stop eating meat until they are presented with a reasonable alternative; kind of how people are buying less gas vehicles and making the switch to electric. In fact, when I rented a car recently, electric options were significantly cheaper than regular old gas and diesel.
Eat the Earth did was it was supposed to do though—it made me think deeply and make an important change in my life, and it gave me a bit more knowledge with which to change other people's minds. I also agree that what we're doing isn't working, I believe that if all we're doing is making things more expensive for poor people, we're doing it wrong. We are indeed eating this planet and a real solutions is going to require more than biofuels, billionaires, and bullshit.
Every few years something causes me to stop eating meat. Sometimes it's a book, sometimes a movie, sometimes a conversation with a friend. Sometimes it's because of animal cruelty, sometimes health, and sometimes it's for the sake of the planet we live on. I've always gone back to it after a fairly short amount of time, only to be reminded again of why it's not such a good idea. Halfway through We Are Eating the Earth I knew I was about to embark on a non-meat diet again. The book also helped me broaden my views of climate change. I've always thought of emissions as the main contributor and thing to focus on, but the way Grunwald presents land issues caused me to expand my mind.
Most of what I've read on climate change has been about cars, planes, etc, and the planet-destroying fumes they release. I remember when the biofuel boom happened and how exciting it was that we could run combustion engines on corn, releasing much less emissions. What I don't remember ever hearing about back then is how, if we dedicate a bunch of corn that was previously used to feed people and cattle, to fuel, we would need to replace that amount of corn. This means clearing new land and then all the heavy equipment and runoff that's involved with growing more food. Looking at it from that point of view (the same amount of grain is required to fill the tank of a Ford Explorer and to feed a human being for a year), it's hard not to change your mind.
Grunwald does a great job of presenting the issues; he's a journalist and is adept at writing about complex topics in an easy to understand way, backed up by a ton of facts. However, his solutions all seem to rely on capitalism and the ruling class. The only to get people to stop eating so much meat is to present them with an alternative that tastes good and is affordable. The only way to do the research quickly and proficiently enough (or to get anyone to help you) is to rely on corporations and the government handing out enough money. Then, not only are you in debt to these evil bastards, but you need to turn a profit really quick. The only way to turn a profit with these types of things is to keep increasing the scale, so that the prices drop to affordable and you sell enough to make a profit, which requires even more money, and the cooperation of distributors, retailers, the meat industry, law makers, and more. This has prevented any kind of alternative meat from taking a hold, and Grunwald doesn't offer any other solutions that think outside of the box.
He also tells the story of biofuels, fake meat, etc, through the biographies of a few men. This not only makes average people feel like they can't make a difference, but it also encourages us to wait for a hero to solve all our problems. This solution feels similar to another he offers: tax airplanes that continue to use fuel and tax meat. If that happens, the corporations will pass the tax onto the customer and the only people who will be able to afford to fly or eat meat will be the people who are already contributing to the destruction of humankind the most. The only way we're going to be able to make this huge shift is through community and the destruction of capitalism.
Maybe the biggest issue I had was when he was talking about meeting with a senator from the great state of New Jersey. Grunwald uses the term “no corn New Jersey.” No corn in New Jersey? That is probably the most ingorant line in the whole book, and it's not just because I'm from there. It's the garden state for fuck's sake.
But, we agree on his main point—the way humanity eats meat is not sustainable or ok. It's cruel and inefficient, and doesn't seem like it's going to change any time soon. People won't stop eating meat until they are presented with a reasonable alternative; kind of how people are buying less gas vehicles and making the switch to electric. In fact, when I rented a car recently, electric options were significantly cheaper than regular old gas and diesel.
Eat the Earth did was it was supposed to do though—it made me think deeply and make an important change in my life, and it gave me a bit more knowledge with which to change other people's minds. I also agree that what we're doing isn't working, I believe that if all we're doing is making things more expensive for poor people, we're doing it wrong. We are indeed eating this planet and a real solutions is going to require more than biofuels, billionaires, and bullshit.
Read
September 5, 2025Yeah once again just kind of like… if you care about the environment and climate change and the degradation of our natural systems in any way or form… grow up and stop eating meat… or eat way less of it… (not the main takeaway from this book and I knowwwww focusing blame on individual actions is just corporate diversion but as long as factory farms and industrial ag form the cornerstone of our food systems my point still stands).
But anyway- refreshing to read a “green” book that actually has a mostly correct take on biofuels (IMO). Also feeling a little snarky and frustrated that this type of book (usually) can only identify and propose solutions in a capitalist vacuum / echo chamber, as if that isn’t the reason we have ended up here in the first place. This is the type of thing I just have to let myself care less about because it is all-consuming otherwise. Sigh
But anyway- refreshing to read a “green” book that actually has a mostly correct take on biofuels (IMO). Also feeling a little snarky and frustrated that this type of book (usually) can only identify and propose solutions in a capitalist vacuum / echo chamber, as if that isn’t the reason we have ended up here in the first place. This is the type of thing I just have to let myself care less about because it is all-consuming otherwise. Sigh
August 8, 2025
Climate change is caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Two thirds of the problem is from burning fossil fuels and one third is from land use and our food system. This book is about the problem of land use. A blurb inside the cover of the book says “…the world, after decades of ignoring the climate problem at the center of our plates, has pivoted to make it worse, embracing solutions that sound sustainable but could make it even harder to grow more food with less land.” Here are some of what the author discusses.
Corn Ethanol and biofuels are a climate disaster: Gas and diesel emit LESS carbon emissions that corn ethanol or other biofuels. Why? Because each acre used for ethanol means one less acre for food. That raises the price of corn and causes people to clear more forests, wetland and grasslands to grow corn. Those natural areas are the best way to absorb carbon and they are destroyed to create agricultural land. Using ethanol is mandated by our government, unfortunately, and supported by both Democratic and Republican politicians who want to please farmers. Many Republican counties are now restricting the use of farmland for solar and wind projects, but corn ethanol is 100 times more land-intensive than solar.
The message of the book is that land is not free – this is called the “carbon opportunity cost of using land.” This is an economic term the says that carbon storage is lost when land is used for agriculture instead of allowing it to revert to forests or grasslands or peat lands which can absorb more cardon dioxide. In the case of ethanol, people thought ethanol was green. We were just getting energy from the sun and putting it in our cars. But the cost is that food was no longer grown on that land and more land had to be cleared for food.
Meat: Eating beef is bad for the climate because it clears so much forest, wetlands and prairie for pastureland, as more beef is eaten each year. Much of the row crops we grow are fed to animals before we eat the animals to get the nutrients. Scientists have been trying to find various meat substitutes, made from plant materials or by growing meat in a lab, and skipping the long process of raising animals. These meats may be appreciated by vegans or vegetarians, but until meat substitutes taste as good as meat and are cheaper, the meat-eating public will not switch, especially those people who are coming out of poverty and finally able to afford meat. Eating less beef will help, but we need more than that for those meat eaters who love it. The author mentions research that chicken and pork production has less emissions.
A ranch in Brazil uses a combination of regenerative practices and industrial practices and has a yield seven times higher than many other ranches. They have healthy soil and feed more beef on less land. That keeps more of the Amazon from being cut down. Ranchers who just let their cattle wander all summer have more degraded lands and low yields, causing more forests or grasslands to be converted to pasture, as their own pasture is worn out. There was a story about a huge industrial finishing lot in Colorado. I have always seen these portrayed as bad factory farms, but since all the nearby ranchers bring their cattle to this lot for finishing, the large lot has more money to take better care of the animals, keep the manure cleared away each day and monitor the health of each head of beef. I like grass fed beef, but if the yield per acre is low, then even if the soil and biodiversity is healthier, there may be a financial incentive to clear more natural land for bigger profits.
Soil and carbon farming: I have been a fan of regenerative agriculture, which boost life in dead soils, and that boosts biodiversity around farms and pastures. However, what is good for the soil, may not actually do much for the climate of the planet. According to this book, not much carbon is added to the soil by no-till farming or cover crops because the soil can only absorb so much carbon without extra nitrogen fertilizer being added. The way we add extra nitrogen is to leave buffers of native plants along the edges of fields or next to streams, and letting trees and shrubs grow in unproductive areas of the farm. So, what is actually adding carbon to the farm soil is Not farming the land. We need to get the same yield as industrial farming or more land will be cleared to get the same yield. The author mentions a product called Proven. It is reengineered nitrogen fixing soil microbes that can be spoon fed to crops during the growing season. Even if fertilizer is washed away in rains storms these microbes keep feeding nitrogen to the plants. This product is starting to be used by farmers with positive yields.
We need to produce more food on less land and reduce our demand for new farmland. We can reduce our demand by eating less beef, wasting less food, using less bioenergy, and making more food on existing farmland.
Politics and Financing: The author mentions many scientists who are researching all kinds of solutions to try to make our farmlands more productive and deal with droughts and other issues farmers face. Very little of the financing for solving the climate crises has gone to food research, while much has gone to energy innovations. Most farmers do not want to stop growing corn for ethanol and they have a strong political lobby. Politics creates incentives, like crop insurance that pays people to plant crops in unproductive areas of the farm that are too wet, for example. An incentive to pay for farmers to produce more food with less land is a possibility.
Yes, we want corporations to take responsibilities for the problems they are creating, but we still need to urge corporations and politicians to do the right things. Eating less beef and asking our politicians to not subsidize ethanol may not seem like we are doing much, but thousands and tens of thousands of us taking action will be noticed.
Corn Ethanol and biofuels are a climate disaster: Gas and diesel emit LESS carbon emissions that corn ethanol or other biofuels. Why? Because each acre used for ethanol means one less acre for food. That raises the price of corn and causes people to clear more forests, wetland and grasslands to grow corn. Those natural areas are the best way to absorb carbon and they are destroyed to create agricultural land. Using ethanol is mandated by our government, unfortunately, and supported by both Democratic and Republican politicians who want to please farmers. Many Republican counties are now restricting the use of farmland for solar and wind projects, but corn ethanol is 100 times more land-intensive than solar.
The message of the book is that land is not free – this is called the “carbon opportunity cost of using land.” This is an economic term the says that carbon storage is lost when land is used for agriculture instead of allowing it to revert to forests or grasslands or peat lands which can absorb more cardon dioxide. In the case of ethanol, people thought ethanol was green. We were just getting energy from the sun and putting it in our cars. But the cost is that food was no longer grown on that land and more land had to be cleared for food.
Meat: Eating beef is bad for the climate because it clears so much forest, wetlands and prairie for pastureland, as more beef is eaten each year. Much of the row crops we grow are fed to animals before we eat the animals to get the nutrients. Scientists have been trying to find various meat substitutes, made from plant materials or by growing meat in a lab, and skipping the long process of raising animals. These meats may be appreciated by vegans or vegetarians, but until meat substitutes taste as good as meat and are cheaper, the meat-eating public will not switch, especially those people who are coming out of poverty and finally able to afford meat. Eating less beef will help, but we need more than that for those meat eaters who love it. The author mentions research that chicken and pork production has less emissions.
A ranch in Brazil uses a combination of regenerative practices and industrial practices and has a yield seven times higher than many other ranches. They have healthy soil and feed more beef on less land. That keeps more of the Amazon from being cut down. Ranchers who just let their cattle wander all summer have more degraded lands and low yields, causing more forests or grasslands to be converted to pasture, as their own pasture is worn out. There was a story about a huge industrial finishing lot in Colorado. I have always seen these portrayed as bad factory farms, but since all the nearby ranchers bring their cattle to this lot for finishing, the large lot has more money to take better care of the animals, keep the manure cleared away each day and monitor the health of each head of beef. I like grass fed beef, but if the yield per acre is low, then even if the soil and biodiversity is healthier, there may be a financial incentive to clear more natural land for bigger profits.
Soil and carbon farming: I have been a fan of regenerative agriculture, which boost life in dead soils, and that boosts biodiversity around farms and pastures. However, what is good for the soil, may not actually do much for the climate of the planet. According to this book, not much carbon is added to the soil by no-till farming or cover crops because the soil can only absorb so much carbon without extra nitrogen fertilizer being added. The way we add extra nitrogen is to leave buffers of native plants along the edges of fields or next to streams, and letting trees and shrubs grow in unproductive areas of the farm. So, what is actually adding carbon to the farm soil is Not farming the land. We need to get the same yield as industrial farming or more land will be cleared to get the same yield. The author mentions a product called Proven. It is reengineered nitrogen fixing soil microbes that can be spoon fed to crops during the growing season. Even if fertilizer is washed away in rains storms these microbes keep feeding nitrogen to the plants. This product is starting to be used by farmers with positive yields.
We need to produce more food on less land and reduce our demand for new farmland. We can reduce our demand by eating less beef, wasting less food, using less bioenergy, and making more food on existing farmland.
Politics and Financing: The author mentions many scientists who are researching all kinds of solutions to try to make our farmlands more productive and deal with droughts and other issues farmers face. Very little of the financing for solving the climate crises has gone to food research, while much has gone to energy innovations. Most farmers do not want to stop growing corn for ethanol and they have a strong political lobby. Politics creates incentives, like crop insurance that pays people to plant crops in unproductive areas of the farm that are too wet, for example. An incentive to pay for farmers to produce more food with less land is a possibility.
Yes, we want corporations to take responsibilities for the problems they are creating, but we still need to urge corporations and politicians to do the right things. Eating less beef and asking our politicians to not subsidize ethanol may not seem like we are doing much, but thousands and tens of thousands of us taking action will be noticed.
September 2, 2025
This was an important and very informative read. I have long heard about the incredible climate impact that food has on the planet but have never really bothered to dig into what it actually looked like and how it fit into the bigger picture. This book does a great job at hammering home its central points about the crisis we face and how we’re blowing it with our response right now. I liked getting to dig into all of the various technologies and movements which are underway today (the section on cultivated meat was especially interesting). I found the first quarter of the book on biofuels to be a slog when I was reading it, but I can see in hindsight how important it was structurally to understanding the common themes and failures which stretch across the sector.
It is understandable, but nevertheless frustrating, to see how misguided so many attempts to address the climate ag problem are today. The way we think about food is shaped by aesthetics and the value we put in the vision of folksy, salt of the earth farmers, regardless of the facts about inefficiency compared to high tech big ag. Trying to persuade people of this point is incredibly challenging, but also of the utmost importance and urgency given the situation we face.
I really appreciated the point made during the epilogue about the relationship between individual agency, responsibility, and political persuasion. It’s easy to throw our hands up and accept the argument that we are doomed, with nothing to do as individuals to reverse the course. But change is possible, and making the right arguments politically and choices scientifically give us the best fighting chance to put ourselves on a better path.
It is understandable, but nevertheless frustrating, to see how misguided so many attempts to address the climate ag problem are today. The way we think about food is shaped by aesthetics and the value we put in the vision of folksy, salt of the earth farmers, regardless of the facts about inefficiency compared to high tech big ag. Trying to persuade people of this point is incredibly challenging, but also of the utmost importance and urgency given the situation we face.
I really appreciated the point made during the epilogue about the relationship between individual agency, responsibility, and political persuasion. It’s easy to throw our hands up and accept the argument that we are doomed, with nothing to do as individuals to reverse the course. But change is possible, and making the right arguments politically and choices scientifically give us the best fighting chance to put ourselves on a better path.
July 18, 2025
Searchinger is one of the coolest names that a gallivanting lawyer who picks losing battles could have
Land is not free. The georgists have got to love this guy. And they’re right to do it
Land is not free. The georgists have got to love this guy. And they’re right to do it
June 8, 2025
Book Review: We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate by Michael Grunwald - A Public Health Practitioner’s Perspective
Michael Grunwald’s We Are Eating the Earth is a galvanizing exposé that left me equal parts horrified and hopeful—horrified by the food system’s staggering contributions to climate collapse and public health crises, yet hopeful at the grassroots and policy innovations fighting back. As a public health professional, I found myself scribbling furious margin notes, alternating between despair at systemic failures and exhilaration at solutions hiding in plain sight.
Emotional Impact: From Soil to Soul
Grunwald’s visceral storytelling—linking deforestation for cattle ranches to zoonotic pandemics, or nitrogen runoff to dead zones in vulnerable communities—triggered memories of pediatric asthma cases near factory farms and diabetic patients trapped in food deserts. The chapter on industrial agriculture’s antibiotic overuse (a ticking time bomb for antimicrobial resistance) filled me with professional shame: Why aren’t we treating Big Ag like Big Tobacco? Yet his profiles of regenerative farmers and urban growers reignited my conviction that food justice is health justice.
Key Public Health Insights
-Food Systems as Determinants: Grunwald masterfully connects dots between monoculture crops, soil depletion, and malnutrition—framing industrial agriculture as a vector for chronic disease.
-Climate-Health Nexus: The book’s global perspective (e.g., Sub-Saharan Africa’s climate-vulnerable food systems) underscores how food insecurity and infectious diseases will explode without systemic change.
-Policy Levers: From subsidy reforms to “soil-to-school” programs, Grunwald spotlights interventions public health should champion alongside clinical care.
Constructive Criticism
-Missing Voices: While Grunwald critiques corporate power brilliantly, the book could center more Indigenous and Global South perspectives on agroecology.
-From Farm to Clinic: A chapter translating food system solutions into healthcare actions (e.g., prescribing produce partnerships) would bridge gaps for practitioners.
Final Thoughts
This book is a defibrillator for public health’s climate complacency. It left me convinced that until we treat soil like a vital organ and food as medicine, we’re merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Rating: ★★★★☆ (4.5/5) – A rousing, research-packed call to action.
Gratitude: Thank you to the publisher and Edelweiss for the review copy. In a field obsessed with “lifestyle interventions,” Grunwald forces us to confront the systems making healthy choices impossible.
Michael Grunwald’s We Are Eating the Earth is a galvanizing exposé that left me equal parts horrified and hopeful—horrified by the food system’s staggering contributions to climate collapse and public health crises, yet hopeful at the grassroots and policy innovations fighting back. As a public health professional, I found myself scribbling furious margin notes, alternating between despair at systemic failures and exhilaration at solutions hiding in plain sight.
Emotional Impact: From Soil to Soul
Grunwald’s visceral storytelling—linking deforestation for cattle ranches to zoonotic pandemics, or nitrogen runoff to dead zones in vulnerable communities—triggered memories of pediatric asthma cases near factory farms and diabetic patients trapped in food deserts. The chapter on industrial agriculture’s antibiotic overuse (a ticking time bomb for antimicrobial resistance) filled me with professional shame: Why aren’t we treating Big Ag like Big Tobacco? Yet his profiles of regenerative farmers and urban growers reignited my conviction that food justice is health justice.
Key Public Health Insights
-Food Systems as Determinants: Grunwald masterfully connects dots between monoculture crops, soil depletion, and malnutrition—framing industrial agriculture as a vector for chronic disease.
-Climate-Health Nexus: The book’s global perspective (e.g., Sub-Saharan Africa’s climate-vulnerable food systems) underscores how food insecurity and infectious diseases will explode without systemic change.
-Policy Levers: From subsidy reforms to “soil-to-school” programs, Grunwald spotlights interventions public health should champion alongside clinical care.
Constructive Criticism
-Missing Voices: While Grunwald critiques corporate power brilliantly, the book could center more Indigenous and Global South perspectives on agroecology.
-From Farm to Clinic: A chapter translating food system solutions into healthcare actions (e.g., prescribing produce partnerships) would bridge gaps for practitioners.
Final Thoughts
This book is a defibrillator for public health’s climate complacency. It left me convinced that until we treat soil like a vital organ and food as medicine, we’re merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Rating: ★★★★☆ (4.5/5) – A rousing, research-packed call to action.
Gratitude: Thank you to the publisher and Edelweiss for the review copy. In a field obsessed with “lifestyle interventions,” Grunwald forces us to confront the systems making healthy choices impossible.
July 24, 2025
If I'm honest, I assumed this would be another 'oh dear, we're horrible people who are terrible to the environment', worthily dull title - so I was surprised to be gripped from early on. The subject of the first chunk of the book is one man, Tim Searchinger's fight to take on the bizarrely unscientific assumption that held sway that making ethanol from corn, or burning wood chips instead of coal, was good for the environment.
The problem with this fallacy, which seemed to have taken in the US governments, the EU, the UK and more was the assumption that (apart from carbon emitted in production) using these 'grown' fuels was carbon neutral, because the carbon came out of the air. The trouble is, this totally ignores that using land to grow fuel means either displacing land used to grow food, or displacing land that had trees, grass or other growing stuff on it. The outcome is that when we use 'E10' petrol (with 10% ethanol), or electricity produced by burning wood chips, we are pumping extra carbon into the atmosphere - in fact more so that simply using petrol or coal.
This environmental economics error was pointed out by an unlikely figure Tim Searchinger, who was originally a lawyer. But he was also obsessive about going into detail and was able to present clear argued logic against the use of biofuels... only to have governments repeatedly ignore him. Admittedly this was in part because he seems to have been something of a pain. But it's no excuse.
There's an irony here that the country least likely to give any consideration to the environment (drill baby, drill) is the one where much of this story plays out in the book - although the US is not alone in making use of biofuels it was here that the corn farmers held sway (in the UK, for instance, it's more about beet), and it was here that the scientists and economists seemed to first totally lose the plot in assuming this approach was environmentally friendly, followed enthusiastically by the EU.
After the biofuels section we get onto another beef (as it were) - food production. Michael Grunwald presents well the really difficult balance between animal welfare and the environment, pointing out, for instance, that intensive factory farming may be distasteful... but it is usually better at limiting carbon emissions. Inevitably, then, the focus moves to taking the meat out of the system, which (particularly with cattle and sheep) is an incredibly inefficient way to produce protein. However, Grunwald is no vegan bore - he makes it clear most of are going to want to go on eating something that is at least meat-like so looks at both substitutes and lab-grown (apparently labelled 'cultivated meat' after the meat business objected to the term 'clean meat'). This part lacked some of the cohesion of the previous one as, rather than focussing on a single figure like Searchinger, we get the stories of a whole host of enthusiasts and wannabe food entrepreneurs. Even so, the story of the over-hyping and bursting of the bubble is powerful, with ultra-processed fake meat products disappearing from the shelves post-Covid. There's still the potential to provide some workable solutions here: but, as Grunwald makes clear, the first wave was disastrous.
Although Searchinger is mostly in the background during the meat-substitute section, he's back more openly for the final section on regenerative farming, which has been pushed on the assumption (with little scientific measurement to back it up) that this will result in carbon being sequestered in the soil, so much so that it is promised it will counter global warming. Suddenly, cows, for example, are not the bad guys: with regenerative farming they're an important part of the system. But once again Searchinger is the voice crying in the wilderness, pointing out the lack of evidence that there is any significant climate benefit. In fact, as soon as you take into account decreased yield it inevitably is more of a problem than a solution.
Grunwald gives us all this with enough storytelling expertise to keep us interested. The only criticism I have is that he does tend to go into too much detail. After I while, in various sections, I was thinking 'Okay, I get the point, move on,' while he went into yet another startup or attempt to persuade governments. That doesn't stop this being an impressive book, though. Recommended.
The problem with this fallacy, which seemed to have taken in the US governments, the EU, the UK and more was the assumption that (apart from carbon emitted in production) using these 'grown' fuels was carbon neutral, because the carbon came out of the air. The trouble is, this totally ignores that using land to grow fuel means either displacing land used to grow food, or displacing land that had trees, grass or other growing stuff on it. The outcome is that when we use 'E10' petrol (with 10% ethanol), or electricity produced by burning wood chips, we are pumping extra carbon into the atmosphere - in fact more so that simply using petrol or coal.
This environmental economics error was pointed out by an unlikely figure Tim Searchinger, who was originally a lawyer. But he was also obsessive about going into detail and was able to present clear argued logic against the use of biofuels... only to have governments repeatedly ignore him. Admittedly this was in part because he seems to have been something of a pain. But it's no excuse.
There's an irony here that the country least likely to give any consideration to the environment (drill baby, drill) is the one where much of this story plays out in the book - although the US is not alone in making use of biofuels it was here that the corn farmers held sway (in the UK, for instance, it's more about beet), and it was here that the scientists and economists seemed to first totally lose the plot in assuming this approach was environmentally friendly, followed enthusiastically by the EU.
After the biofuels section we get onto another beef (as it were) - food production. Michael Grunwald presents well the really difficult balance between animal welfare and the environment, pointing out, for instance, that intensive factory farming may be distasteful... but it is usually better at limiting carbon emissions. Inevitably, then, the focus moves to taking the meat out of the system, which (particularly with cattle and sheep) is an incredibly inefficient way to produce protein. However, Grunwald is no vegan bore - he makes it clear most of are going to want to go on eating something that is at least meat-like so looks at both substitutes and lab-grown (apparently labelled 'cultivated meat' after the meat business objected to the term 'clean meat'). This part lacked some of the cohesion of the previous one as, rather than focussing on a single figure like Searchinger, we get the stories of a whole host of enthusiasts and wannabe food entrepreneurs. Even so, the story of the over-hyping and bursting of the bubble is powerful, with ultra-processed fake meat products disappearing from the shelves post-Covid. There's still the potential to provide some workable solutions here: but, as Grunwald makes clear, the first wave was disastrous.
Although Searchinger is mostly in the background during the meat-substitute section, he's back more openly for the final section on regenerative farming, which has been pushed on the assumption (with little scientific measurement to back it up) that this will result in carbon being sequestered in the soil, so much so that it is promised it will counter global warming. Suddenly, cows, for example, are not the bad guys: with regenerative farming they're an important part of the system. But once again Searchinger is the voice crying in the wilderness, pointing out the lack of evidence that there is any significant climate benefit. In fact, as soon as you take into account decreased yield it inevitably is more of a problem than a solution.
Grunwald gives us all this with enough storytelling expertise to keep us interested. The only criticism I have is that he does tend to go into too much detail. After I while, in various sections, I was thinking 'Okay, I get the point, move on,' while he went into yet another startup or attempt to persuade governments. That doesn't stop this being an impressive book, though. Recommended.
July 1, 2025
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: From the author of New York Times bestseller The New New Deal, a groundbreaking piece of reportage from the trenches of the next climate the fight to fix our food system.
Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our carbon emissions. By 2050, we’re going to need a lot more calories to fill nearly 10 billion bellies, but we can’t feed the world without frying it if we keep tearing down an acre of rainforest every six seconds. We are eating the earth, an ingenious phrase coined by Michael Grunwald, and the greatest challenge facing our species will be to slow our relentless expansion of farmland into nature. Even if we quit fossil fuels, we’ll keep hurtling towards climate chaos if we don’t solve our food and land problems.
In this rollicking, shocking narrative, Grunwald shows how the world, after decades of ignoring the climate problem at the center of our plates, has pivoted to making it worse, embracing solutions that sound sustainable but could make it even harder to grow more food with less land. But he also tells the stories of the dynamic scientists and entrepreneurs pursuing real solutions, from a jungle-tough miracle crop called pongamia to genetically-edited cattle embryos, from Impossible Whoppers to a non-polluting pesticide that uses the technology behind the COVID vaccines to constipate beetles to death. It’s an often infuriating saga of lobbyists, politicians, and even the scientific establishment making terrible choices for humanity, but it’s also a hopeful account of the people figuring out what needs to be done—and trying to do it.
Michael Grunwald, bestselling author of The Swamp and The New New Deal, builds his narrative around a brilliant, relentless, unforgettable food and land expert named Tim Searchinger. He chronicles Searchinger’s uphill battles against bad science and bad politics, both driven by the overwhelming influence of agricultural interests. And he illuminates a path that could save our planetary home for ourselves and future generations—through better policy, technology, and behavior, as well as a new land ethic recognizing that every acre matters.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: If one emerges from this read an ardent capitalist, political "conservative", and a climate-change skeptic, one is defective intellectually and morally.
Honestly I could end the review there because anything else I say will only be repetition of these statements with embellishments.
We are at a crossroads in many areas of our existence as a species. We have access to immense mountains of information and have little training to contextualize and interpret it. We are, for the first time ever, able to see with our own eyes, the entire Earth as it appears from space...a literal god's-eye view...and have done nothing to make that unique in humankind's entire history as a species awareness part of our worldview. We act as though problems are local, or localizable, and have just one cause so need only one solution.
Nothing in Nature supports this delusion. It is debunked in immense bodies of data collected, analyzed, and tested over generations now. Bad-faith arguments made by profit-seeking entities have ruined, to an extent I naïvely thought was actually impossible, the very idea of the data we already have being usable to start patching up the mess we have before us.
Books like this one walk you through the way we know what we know...briskly, but with integrity and expertise balanced by enthusiasm...and what we can in fact do now to make a positive impact on the course we're taking. I could wish for more viewpoints drawn from our Global Southern neighbors, and the women who outside the West perform the vast majority of food growth and harvest. I could wish for a less preaching-to-the-choir bent to the narrative.
But I can't fault Author Grunwald's data sources or synthesis. I can't fault his palpable sense of urgency. I can't help but wish more of y'all would get the message he's putting out: Action is the need and it's an urgent one.
The Publisher Says: From the author of New York Times bestseller The New New Deal, a groundbreaking piece of reportage from the trenches of the next climate the fight to fix our food system.
Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our carbon emissions. By 2050, we’re going to need a lot more calories to fill nearly 10 billion bellies, but we can’t feed the world without frying it if we keep tearing down an acre of rainforest every six seconds. We are eating the earth, an ingenious phrase coined by Michael Grunwald, and the greatest challenge facing our species will be to slow our relentless expansion of farmland into nature. Even if we quit fossil fuels, we’ll keep hurtling towards climate chaos if we don’t solve our food and land problems.
In this rollicking, shocking narrative, Grunwald shows how the world, after decades of ignoring the climate problem at the center of our plates, has pivoted to making it worse, embracing solutions that sound sustainable but could make it even harder to grow more food with less land. But he also tells the stories of the dynamic scientists and entrepreneurs pursuing real solutions, from a jungle-tough miracle crop called pongamia to genetically-edited cattle embryos, from Impossible Whoppers to a non-polluting pesticide that uses the technology behind the COVID vaccines to constipate beetles to death. It’s an often infuriating saga of lobbyists, politicians, and even the scientific establishment making terrible choices for humanity, but it’s also a hopeful account of the people figuring out what needs to be done—and trying to do it.
Michael Grunwald, bestselling author of The Swamp and The New New Deal, builds his narrative around a brilliant, relentless, unforgettable food and land expert named Tim Searchinger. He chronicles Searchinger’s uphill battles against bad science and bad politics, both driven by the overwhelming influence of agricultural interests. And he illuminates a path that could save our planetary home for ourselves and future generations—through better policy, technology, and behavior, as well as a new land ethic recognizing that every acre matters.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: If one emerges from this read an ardent capitalist, political "conservative", and a climate-change skeptic, one is defective intellectually and morally.
Honestly I could end the review there because anything else I say will only be repetition of these statements with embellishments.
We are at a crossroads in many areas of our existence as a species. We have access to immense mountains of information and have little training to contextualize and interpret it. We are, for the first time ever, able to see with our own eyes, the entire Earth as it appears from space...a literal god's-eye view...and have done nothing to make that unique in humankind's entire history as a species awareness part of our worldview. We act as though problems are local, or localizable, and have just one cause so need only one solution.
Nothing in Nature supports this delusion. It is debunked in immense bodies of data collected, analyzed, and tested over generations now. Bad-faith arguments made by profit-seeking entities have ruined, to an extent I naïvely thought was actually impossible, the very idea of the data we already have being usable to start patching up the mess we have before us.
Books like this one walk you through the way we know what we know...briskly, but with integrity and expertise balanced by enthusiasm...and what we can in fact do now to make a positive impact on the course we're taking. I could wish for more viewpoints drawn from our Global Southern neighbors, and the women who outside the West perform the vast majority of food growth and harvest. I could wish for a less preaching-to-the-choir bent to the narrative.
But I can't fault Author Grunwald's data sources or synthesis. I can't fault his palpable sense of urgency. I can't help but wish more of y'all would get the message he's putting out: Action is the need and it's an urgent one.
August 8, 2025
We Are Eating the Earth
Most of the book follows the career of Tim Searchinger, a lawyer that has worked on environmental issues for 40 years. The first 150 pages tell the story of how biofuels started in America and world wide and the efforts of Searchinger to convince people that they are a bad idea. It is the typical story of big Aariculture or big Lumber money winning government favors and implementing bad policy.
The author tells the many of stories in the book start with brief profiles of the people working on the issue. This is a common way reporters tend to tell stories about issues, but I wish they would try other ways. If there are a lot of different people each working on a different issue, does a thumbnail sketch of the person really help the book? Do I really care about how a researcher looks or talks, what his office looks like, etc? Some characters have such interesting back stories that it can be useful to expose them, but most do not.
The saga of cultivated meat and meat substitutes boom and bust showed more promise than I realized. It seems that with a lot more money invested we could make significant progress in replacing a lot of meat consumption.
He covers Regenerative ranching quickly, because even though it is very popular with climate activists, it doesn’t seem to work in capturing significant amounts of carbon.
The first 390 pages of the book can be summarized by the following quote:
“Biofuels and biomass power, supposedly climate saviors, are climate disasters. Carbon farming and vertical farming are wildly overhyped. Plant-based meat has floundered in the market, while cultivated meat hasn’t really made it to market. Genetically modified and edited crops and livestock still face all kinds of political and cultural obstacles. And a slew of other promising solutions—methane-suppressing feed additives, nitrogen-controlling biofertilizers, high-tech fish farms, high-yield pongamia—are struggling to scale. The eating-the-earth problem is getting worse”
Another quote summarizes the end of the book:
“The key, as always, will be to get the incentives right—so farmers can make more money by making more food with less land; forests are worth more standing and storing carbon than logged and burned; and nations and corporations that want to shrink their carbon footprints get rewarded for shrinking the eating-the-earth problem. None of that will happen without better funding and better policy. But it also won’t happen as long as land is considered free.”
The author knew he was telling a story that is largely depressing, since so little progress has been made and is being made in dealing with agriculture’s impact on global warming. He ends with a plea not to stop trying. The book is important and I hope it has an impact on policy. I learned which areas show promise and which efforts appear to be valuable but are not. However, I did find the book depressing and overly long.
Most of the book follows the career of Tim Searchinger, a lawyer that has worked on environmental issues for 40 years. The first 150 pages tell the story of how biofuels started in America and world wide and the efforts of Searchinger to convince people that they are a bad idea. It is the typical story of big Aariculture or big Lumber money winning government favors and implementing bad policy.
The author tells the many of stories in the book start with brief profiles of the people working on the issue. This is a common way reporters tend to tell stories about issues, but I wish they would try other ways. If there are a lot of different people each working on a different issue, does a thumbnail sketch of the person really help the book? Do I really care about how a researcher looks or talks, what his office looks like, etc? Some characters have such interesting back stories that it can be useful to expose them, but most do not.
The saga of cultivated meat and meat substitutes boom and bust showed more promise than I realized. It seems that with a lot more money invested we could make significant progress in replacing a lot of meat consumption.
He covers Regenerative ranching quickly, because even though it is very popular with climate activists, it doesn’t seem to work in capturing significant amounts of carbon.
The first 390 pages of the book can be summarized by the following quote:
“Biofuels and biomass power, supposedly climate saviors, are climate disasters. Carbon farming and vertical farming are wildly overhyped. Plant-based meat has floundered in the market, while cultivated meat hasn’t really made it to market. Genetically modified and edited crops and livestock still face all kinds of political and cultural obstacles. And a slew of other promising solutions—methane-suppressing feed additives, nitrogen-controlling biofertilizers, high-tech fish farms, high-yield pongamia—are struggling to scale. The eating-the-earth problem is getting worse”
Another quote summarizes the end of the book:
“The key, as always, will be to get the incentives right—so farmers can make more money by making more food with less land; forests are worth more standing and storing carbon than logged and burned; and nations and corporations that want to shrink their carbon footprints get rewarded for shrinking the eating-the-earth problem. None of that will happen without better funding and better policy. But it also won’t happen as long as land is considered free.”
The author knew he was telling a story that is largely depressing, since so little progress has been made and is being made in dealing with agriculture’s impact on global warming. He ends with a plea not to stop trying. The book is important and I hope it has an impact on policy. I learned which areas show promise and which efforts appear to be valuable but are not. However, I did find the book depressing and overly long.
August 24, 2025
***.5
While this is an incredibly important topic and the content is generally excellent, as a book it's not great. The first half follow the career of a single person, a lawyer turned environmental science activist. In fact, the first few chapters are only about him, and I almost gave up completely as I really don't care about this dude even a little bit. After a couple of hours Grunwald finally gets around to the point, which is that adding corn-derived ethanol to gasoline is a terrible idea and worse for the environment and the climate than just burning straight gasoline. Which could have been explained in a few pages, but is stretched out over multiple chapters, with various tirades excoriating the Bush, Obama, and trump administrations, a bunch of environmental groups, and various other governments and organizations for continuing to push an inherently flawed policy. It was super frustrating, and made worse by the smug I-know-better-than-everyone attitude, which is grating even when correct.
The second half of the book is a bit better, as he eventually moves on from biofuels to cover other topics such as vegan meat substitutes and regenerative agriculture. He dives deep into the divide between animal rights activists, environmental conservationists, and climate scientists, and how it has influenced government policies and popular opinion. But he keeps coming back to talking about the specific people involved, rather than deal with the issues themselves. If you are interested in the sartorial predilections of the various alternate meal executives, this is the book for you. But if you want to understand the difficulties involved in scaling up a single serving of lab-grown meat to mass production, you just need to accept his statement that it's difficult.
Although climate change is obviously a global problem, and a large part of his thesis is that local choices have global implications, aside from a few paragraphs here and there about Brazil and a mention of rain-forest loss in Asia to grow palm oil, 90% of the content is squarely focused on the US government. He goes deep into the policy decisions of the two main political parties, various legislation, programs, and of course the people involved. Because it is apparently very important to know the names of all of the presidential advisors from 20-30 years ago. And not so important to get a broader view of how different countries have handled the crisis and balanced the competing interests.
Despite really hating the writing and the misguided focus, this is still an important book as our agricultural system remains one of the largest contributors to fossil fuel emissions and land use tends to not receive the attention it deserves. And the point of the book, that what we eat matters, is often glossed over completely by otherwise smart and responsible people.
While this is an incredibly important topic and the content is generally excellent, as a book it's not great. The first half follow the career of a single person, a lawyer turned environmental science activist. In fact, the first few chapters are only about him, and I almost gave up completely as I really don't care about this dude even a little bit. After a couple of hours Grunwald finally gets around to the point, which is that adding corn-derived ethanol to gasoline is a terrible idea and worse for the environment and the climate than just burning straight gasoline. Which could have been explained in a few pages, but is stretched out over multiple chapters, with various tirades excoriating the Bush, Obama, and trump administrations, a bunch of environmental groups, and various other governments and organizations for continuing to push an inherently flawed policy. It was super frustrating, and made worse by the smug I-know-better-than-everyone attitude, which is grating even when correct.
The second half of the book is a bit better, as he eventually moves on from biofuels to cover other topics such as vegan meat substitutes and regenerative agriculture. He dives deep into the divide between animal rights activists, environmental conservationists, and climate scientists, and how it has influenced government policies and popular opinion. But he keeps coming back to talking about the specific people involved, rather than deal with the issues themselves. If you are interested in the sartorial predilections of the various alternate meal executives, this is the book for you. But if you want to understand the difficulties involved in scaling up a single serving of lab-grown meat to mass production, you just need to accept his statement that it's difficult.
Although climate change is obviously a global problem, and a large part of his thesis is that local choices have global implications, aside from a few paragraphs here and there about Brazil and a mention of rain-forest loss in Asia to grow palm oil, 90% of the content is squarely focused on the US government. He goes deep into the policy decisions of the two main political parties, various legislation, programs, and of course the people involved. Because it is apparently very important to know the names of all of the presidential advisors from 20-30 years ago. And not so important to get a broader view of how different countries have handled the crisis and balanced the competing interests.
Despite really hating the writing and the misguided focus, this is still an important book as our agricultural system remains one of the largest contributors to fossil fuel emissions and land use tends to not receive the attention it deserves. And the point of the book, that what we eat matters, is often glossed over completely by otherwise smart and responsible people.
July 5, 2025
The most illuminating book about the climate crisis that I have read in a long time.
I was surprised by the scope of the author’s investigation. I expected just one more analysis of the flaws of modern agriculture. Instead, the first parts of the book are devoted to biofuels and biomass, topics that I had no idea were so controversial and important. It speaks to the author’s skill — after all, he is an accomplished journalist — that he also made these topics feel so fascinating. His great storytelling is supported by his choice of main character: You may not have heard of Tim Searchinger before, but I assure you that you will start to follow his career after reading about his life. Here is just one example of his insights:
“Searchinger pointed out that a European country could level the Amazon, import the wood, burn it for electricity, and count the entire process as a national emissions reduction. It was an honest mistake, and when he explained it to Sir Robert Watson, the British climate scientist and former IPCC head, Watson gasped: ‘We did that?’”
In the latter part of the book, the author focuses on food production itself, offering a deeply nuanced and surprising perspective once again. As he writes in the introduction:
“The inconvenient truth is that it’s complicated. Michael Pollan writes beautifully about rustic farmsteads that honor the rhythms of nature, but organic, local, and grass-fed are often worse for the climate than conventional, imported, and feedlot-finished. Fertilizer is a climate killer, because it’s made of natural gas and generates twice as many emissions as Germany, but also a climate savior, because it helps farmers grow more food per acre. The efficiency of hated agribusinesses like Cargill, Tyson, and Archer Daniels Midland cuts emissions, while their recent embrace of beloved regenerative practices may increase emissions. Forest protections can be pointless if they shift deforestation to unprotected areas, while boycotts of deforestation-linked commodities like soy and palm oil can backfire if they induce farmers to plant less efficient crops. Even ‘Paper or plastic?’ is a complicated climate question, because paper uses land.”
So prepare for a lot of "wow" moments, and be sure to read this unexpected page-turner!
Thanks to the publisher, Simon & Schuster, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
I was surprised by the scope of the author’s investigation. I expected just one more analysis of the flaws of modern agriculture. Instead, the first parts of the book are devoted to biofuels and biomass, topics that I had no idea were so controversial and important. It speaks to the author’s skill — after all, he is an accomplished journalist — that he also made these topics feel so fascinating. His great storytelling is supported by his choice of main character: You may not have heard of Tim Searchinger before, but I assure you that you will start to follow his career after reading about his life. Here is just one example of his insights:
“Searchinger pointed out that a European country could level the Amazon, import the wood, burn it for electricity, and count the entire process as a national emissions reduction. It was an honest mistake, and when he explained it to Sir Robert Watson, the British climate scientist and former IPCC head, Watson gasped: ‘We did that?’”
In the latter part of the book, the author focuses on food production itself, offering a deeply nuanced and surprising perspective once again. As he writes in the introduction:
“The inconvenient truth is that it’s complicated. Michael Pollan writes beautifully about rustic farmsteads that honor the rhythms of nature, but organic, local, and grass-fed are often worse for the climate than conventional, imported, and feedlot-finished. Fertilizer is a climate killer, because it’s made of natural gas and generates twice as many emissions as Germany, but also a climate savior, because it helps farmers grow more food per acre. The efficiency of hated agribusinesses like Cargill, Tyson, and Archer Daniels Midland cuts emissions, while their recent embrace of beloved regenerative practices may increase emissions. Forest protections can be pointless if they shift deforestation to unprotected areas, while boycotts of deforestation-linked commodities like soy and palm oil can backfire if they induce farmers to plant less efficient crops. Even ‘Paper or plastic?’ is a complicated climate question, because paper uses land.”
So prepare for a lot of "wow" moments, and be sure to read this unexpected page-turner!
Thanks to the publisher, Simon & Schuster, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
August 16, 2025
Normally, I like when journalists turn to the longer form of a book to explore complex ideas and give detailed analysis of important issues. Unfortunately, this book (and Grunwald’s writing) does not play to those strengths. Instead, we explore complex ideas here with … exhaustingly detailed, biographies of individuals, companies, and Silicon Valley venture capital investment fads. Do we really need to learn about the vicissitude of every plant-based meat start up in the last 10 to 15 years to understand how little progress we’ve made in weaning ourselves off of an animal-based diet? Do I really need to learn about the boyhood travels, college career, and document-reading habits of Tim Searchinger to understand his contributions to the legal framework (and, now, of environmental science) of land use and biofuels? Why cover such things in paragraphs, Grunwald seems to decide in this book, when pages and pages will do?
In addition to being overloaded with trivia and marginally useful details (that frequently drown out the larger issues at hand for pages at a time), the author brings a glib “magazine writer” style to this book. For all of its engagement with the science and detailed arguments, Grunwald all too frequently summarizes people with a memorable but idiotic quote, an argument with a lazy but striking one-off example, an entire industry or technological trend with a pithy internet meme of a sentence. Maybe that’s making these ideas accessible, but to me, it just made the tone of the book very annoying.
Despite all of these criticisms, I did find the book worth reading. Grunwald shows just how poorly suited biofuels are to meeting any of our energy need. He effectively shows just how nascent our solutions for agricultural emissions are so far. Despite my annoyances, the book does succeed in waving a big red flag for readers that we really do need to pay attention to this. And it’s a good grounding for anyone coming to this complex topic for the first time, and leaves readers with some understanding that solving ag emissions is as critical to the emissions equation and climate change challenge as renewable electricity or transportation electrification.
So, yes, I recommend this book. I just wish that recommendation came without that bitter tinge of bile in the back of my throat because of how the book is written.
In addition to being overloaded with trivia and marginally useful details (that frequently drown out the larger issues at hand for pages at a time), the author brings a glib “magazine writer” style to this book. For all of its engagement with the science and detailed arguments, Grunwald all too frequently summarizes people with a memorable but idiotic quote, an argument with a lazy but striking one-off example, an entire industry or technological trend with a pithy internet meme of a sentence. Maybe that’s making these ideas accessible, but to me, it just made the tone of the book very annoying.
Despite all of these criticisms, I did find the book worth reading. Grunwald shows just how poorly suited biofuels are to meeting any of our energy need. He effectively shows just how nascent our solutions for agricultural emissions are so far. Despite my annoyances, the book does succeed in waving a big red flag for readers that we really do need to pay attention to this. And it’s a good grounding for anyone coming to this complex topic for the first time, and leaves readers with some understanding that solving ag emissions is as critical to the emissions equation and climate change challenge as renewable electricity or transportation electrification.
So, yes, I recommend this book. I just wish that recommendation came without that bitter tinge of bile in the back of my throat because of how the book is written.
July 13, 2025
This book leaves me with one controlling thought - We may not have planted these seeds—but we’re the ones left to harvest them. And, this book highlights the facts that after centuries of mismanaged land stewardship, broken food systems, and policy dead ends, inertia is coming to fruition. We now must face the reality that - What we grow, we eat. What we sow, we reap. And now we are facing a harvest we didn’t choose—but one that we cannot escape.
Michael Grunwald’s We Are Eating the Earth is a fascinating, frustrating, and essential read. It dives deep—not just into the intersection of climate and food crises—but into the historical scaffolding that led us here. There’s an overwhelming amount of information, meticulously researched and sharply presented. But the tone shifts several time throughout the book and it sometimes left me behind . With its heavy focus on the work of Tim Searchinger, the book sometimes reads less like a mainstream nonfiction title and more like an investigative / creative nonfiction piece for Harper’s Magazine.
That may push some readers away. I nearly stumbled on the dryness and shifting focus from chapter to chapter myself. But when I stepped back, I saw the connection: the first half dissects where we’ve been and what we've repeatedly misunderstood, while the second half clarifies why familiar answers—known ideas, legacy thinking, policy bandaids—won’t save us now. All of it highlights just how far-reaching and deeply interwoven this problem truly is. But this isn’t meant to make us feel small in the face of it; rather, it empowers the reader to recognize the significance of our individual actions and the societal obligation to align those actions toward meaningful change.
Here are a few word choice alternatives if you want to mix
Grunwald doesn’t sugarcoat. He doesn’t comfort. What he delivers is clarity—and the conviction that time is running out fast. This book refuses to wrap itself in optimism for optimism’s sake. Instead, it insists we face the present with unflinching urgency.
This isn’t a blueprint. It’s a clarion call
Michael Grunwald’s We Are Eating the Earth is a fascinating, frustrating, and essential read. It dives deep—not just into the intersection of climate and food crises—but into the historical scaffolding that led us here. There’s an overwhelming amount of information, meticulously researched and sharply presented. But the tone shifts several time throughout the book and it sometimes left me behind . With its heavy focus on the work of Tim Searchinger, the book sometimes reads less like a mainstream nonfiction title and more like an investigative / creative nonfiction piece for Harper’s Magazine.
That may push some readers away. I nearly stumbled on the dryness and shifting focus from chapter to chapter myself. But when I stepped back, I saw the connection: the first half dissects where we’ve been and what we've repeatedly misunderstood, while the second half clarifies why familiar answers—known ideas, legacy thinking, policy bandaids—won’t save us now. All of it highlights just how far-reaching and deeply interwoven this problem truly is. But this isn’t meant to make us feel small in the face of it; rather, it empowers the reader to recognize the significance of our individual actions and the societal obligation to align those actions toward meaningful change.
Here are a few word choice alternatives if you want to mix
Grunwald doesn’t sugarcoat. He doesn’t comfort. What he delivers is clarity—and the conviction that time is running out fast. This book refuses to wrap itself in optimism for optimism’s sake. Instead, it insists we face the present with unflinching urgency.
This isn’t a blueprint. It’s a clarion call
July 25, 2025
Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for the digital copy of this book; I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Our current food system is wrecking the planet! I really appreciated this deep-dive investigative work that ties together history, politics, and systemic injustice to present-day stakes. This policy-heavy look at climate and man’s use of the land is a slower, more reflective look at science-entrepreneurship across the globe was so interesting. Two such forward-looking farming companies from Wisconsin are featured, so yay, us. Our state motto is literally FORWARD.
We are Eating the Earth is a fascinating book that is digestible, but not always easily (no pun intended.) The fact that this is an under-reported topic just makes the urgency to make changes more important than ever. Realizing that the love of a pot roast is actually harmful to the earth can be tough. Understanding that a juicy hamburger also impacts the environment is challenging.
A very interesting part of this book is that all the experts said the Global South would be hit the hardest, and that has come true. The weather extremes are decimating places that were once habitable. Yet some of the biggest offenders in the Global North (I’m looking at you, U.S. Project 2025 folks) refuse to even acknowledge that there’s a problem.
The writing is engaging and sometimes quite humorous despite the heavy topic. This cerebral, solutions-oriented writing spotlights land and policy issues. It focuses not only on people but also on how they can help reverse the damage to the planet. It’s also a call to action. The climate change crisis is not easily solvable. Americans in particular should reevaluate what’s on their plates. It just reminds me of something I remember learning in grade school: if all the world were industrialized like the United States and China, the planet would be in even worse shape than it is now. But change is possible if we put the planet first and not our bellies.
Our current food system is wrecking the planet! I really appreciated this deep-dive investigative work that ties together history, politics, and systemic injustice to present-day stakes. This policy-heavy look at climate and man’s use of the land is a slower, more reflective look at science-entrepreneurship across the globe was so interesting. Two such forward-looking farming companies from Wisconsin are featured, so yay, us. Our state motto is literally FORWARD.
We are Eating the Earth is a fascinating book that is digestible, but not always easily (no pun intended.) The fact that this is an under-reported topic just makes the urgency to make changes more important than ever. Realizing that the love of a pot roast is actually harmful to the earth can be tough. Understanding that a juicy hamburger also impacts the environment is challenging.
A very interesting part of this book is that all the experts said the Global South would be hit the hardest, and that has come true. The weather extremes are decimating places that were once habitable. Yet some of the biggest offenders in the Global North (I’m looking at you, U.S. Project 2025 folks) refuse to even acknowledge that there’s a problem.
The writing is engaging and sometimes quite humorous despite the heavy topic. This cerebral, solutions-oriented writing spotlights land and policy issues. It focuses not only on people but also on how they can help reverse the damage to the planet. It’s also a call to action. The climate change crisis is not easily solvable. Americans in particular should reevaluate what’s on their plates. It just reminds me of something I remember learning in grade school: if all the world were industrialized like the United States and China, the planet would be in even worse shape than it is now. But change is possible if we put the planet first and not our bellies.
September 2, 2025
Not your ordinary “stop destroying the environment” book. Part biographical love letter, part pop culture references, and part problem-identifying solution-oriented, this book takes you step by step through one of our biggest emission problems… agriculture. Or I shouldn’t say agriculture, more like our meet-obsessed selves who refuse to find solutions grounded in modern, clean, industrialized farming practices.
I think more of this book could have been focused on the “solutions,” of which the author does admit there is no silver bullet. Instead, almost all chapters introduce an issue, like the amount of meat we eat or trend to biofuels, introduces a potential solution, like plant-based and fake meat or environmental policies, and then quickly shuts those solutions down. It leaves you with a feeling of - what now? - and only devotes a final chapter to that question.
Now I might be harsh, as I do think there is one overarching theme to the book: the land problem. And the solution to the land problem is simple… use less. But the means of how we get there is what is problematic, or has been ineffective, or is just not accessible, and that is truly where the book spends the majority of its time. Well worth the read, and now I’m off to fix my behaviors by attempting more vegetable based dinners.
I think more of this book could have been focused on the “solutions,” of which the author does admit there is no silver bullet. Instead, almost all chapters introduce an issue, like the amount of meat we eat or trend to biofuels, introduces a potential solution, like plant-based and fake meat or environmental policies, and then quickly shuts those solutions down. It leaves you with a feeling of - what now? - and only devotes a final chapter to that question.
Now I might be harsh, as I do think there is one overarching theme to the book: the land problem. And the solution to the land problem is simple… use less. But the means of how we get there is what is problematic, or has been ineffective, or is just not accessible, and that is truly where the book spends the majority of its time. Well worth the read, and now I’m off to fix my behaviors by attempting more vegetable based dinners.
August 28, 2025
4 stars
This book wasn't perfect, but I learned a lot and found it fascinating. I learned about biofuels and how they are deceptively bad for the environment due to land use leakage. I learned about the alternative protein/fake meat industry and how it resembles the tech-bro startup culture of Silicon Valley. I also learned about how much of regenerative agriculture is questionable and the phrase is often just a buzzword. The tension between regenerative methods and efficiency and the importance of land (the idea that land is not free) was super interesting. I think this book could have been much shorter; the beginning where we dive into Tim Searchinger's biography, childhood, and early career could have been cut down a lot. Maybe it was just me, but the author portrays Searchinger as pretty insufferable. Also, I have beef (no pun intended) with the epilogue and call to action to change your personal choices to help the climate. It feels like a bandaid to make the reader feel better after reading how far we have to go to reduce emissions from land use change.
This book wasn't perfect, but I learned a lot and found it fascinating. I learned about biofuels and how they are deceptively bad for the environment due to land use leakage. I learned about the alternative protein/fake meat industry and how it resembles the tech-bro startup culture of Silicon Valley. I also learned about how much of regenerative agriculture is questionable and the phrase is often just a buzzword. The tension between regenerative methods and efficiency and the importance of land (the idea that land is not free) was super interesting. I think this book could have been much shorter; the beginning where we dive into Tim Searchinger's biography, childhood, and early career could have been cut down a lot. Maybe it was just me, but the author portrays Searchinger as pretty insufferable. Also, I have beef (no pun intended) with the epilogue and call to action to change your personal choices to help the climate. It feels like a bandaid to make the reader feel better after reading how far we have to go to reduce emissions from land use change.
July 28, 2025
I love that this book emphasizes the huge impact land use has on the climate crisis, a topic frequently overlooked by other figures in the climate activist movement. Grunwald impressively breaks down how the biofuel and regenerative agriculture industries are mere green washing and actually have higher emissions than gasoline and industrial farming.
The author is a human supremacist though and is biased by his love of meat. I rejoice in his belief that personal choices matter, but he is dismissive of veganism as utopian. He promotes more aggressive forms of factory farming as the saving grace for the climate crisis. Not only is this ethically heinous, but blind to the science. A vegan diet uses 75% less land than conventional diets. Rather than labeling vegans as "radical" he should be encouraging partaking in the beautiful intersectionality of animal rights and climate activism.
The author is a human supremacist though and is biased by his love of meat. I rejoice in his belief that personal choices matter, but he is dismissive of veganism as utopian. He promotes more aggressive forms of factory farming as the saving grace for the climate crisis. Not only is this ethically heinous, but blind to the science. A vegan diet uses 75% less land than conventional diets. Rather than labeling vegans as "radical" he should be encouraging partaking in the beautiful intersectionality of animal rights and climate activism.
September 9, 2025
This is not a read for the lighthearted. There is a ton of information, but the intent was to offer a big-picture view of what few have considered: not just climate change, but the need to feed a worldwide population that continues to grow while it inadvertently makes the problems of climate change worse.
There are no easy solutions, and the problem itself is a spiderweb of interconnected issues that feel like a leap into Alice's looking glass. The biggest of the problems impeding solutions is politics. From a lunatic president whose ignorance is monumental, to career politicians who aren't interested in solutions as much as they are in appeasing constituents, leadership is absent, and it is only because of warriors willing to plod on in spite of the obstacles they face that there is hope at all.
There are no easy solutions, and the problem itself is a spiderweb of interconnected issues that feel like a leap into Alice's looking glass. The biggest of the problems impeding solutions is politics. From a lunatic president whose ignorance is monumental, to career politicians who aren't interested in solutions as much as they are in appeasing constituents, leadership is absent, and it is only because of warriors willing to plod on in spite of the obstacles they face that there is hope at all.
July 8, 2025
I learned a lot reading this but was super bored. If you are like me and only interested in food, skip the first 120 pages- I would argue that we didn’t need the whole life story of Tim Searchinger (the brains behind most of the science in this book) or a bunch of info about biofuels and burning wood. Reading this feels like banging your head against a wall- each chapter is a different great idea to save the planet and then why that idea can’t work. Even more sad is this book took years to write, involving interviews with 2000 people so you’ll feel even more hopeless in the end. I felt, “If he couldn’t find an answer through all that, what can we even do?” Thank you for the gifted copy, Simon Books.
August 4, 2025
Tim's career, so well captured in this book (classic movie references and all), is a good reminder that you can and should challenge flawed expert consensus. Contrary to the nihilism of determinists, individuals can actually change the course of history and Tim's relentless and disinterested pursuit of the truth is evidence of that.
TLDR: Red meat bad, biofuels bad, dairy bad (cows), palm oil very bad, factory farming good (i promise), GMOs good, Moonstruck - essential viewing
TLDR: Red meat bad, biofuels bad, dairy bad (cows), palm oil very bad, factory farming good (i promise), GMOs good, Moonstruck - essential viewing
August 16, 2025
An incredibly digestible read on a complex issue. Despite the regular disheartening times that come with any discussion of climate solutions and it’s intersection with politics, money and policy, I consistently felt energized by the stories presented.
August 27, 2025
I hate when books are called important, but certainly the subject Grunwald is tackling couldn't be more important, or dire, but there are pockets of possibilities that might prove revolutionary. Of course, the fact that it will have to be revolutionary is what scares me the most.
July 21, 2025
I feel like everyone should read this.
August 5, 2025
a happy 3 stars
August 8, 2025
It's really good. If you're interested in climate change *or* food systems, you should read it.
September 10, 2025
A great book to make you think and reevaluate what you think is obvious about food production.
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