A summer vegetable garden is the closest many Americans will ever get to agriculture. In the spring, they prepare the soil before planting the seeds. In June and July, they water the shoots, weed the spaces around them, and worry about insects, slugs, and blights — and whether they should use chemicals to kill them. If they’re lucky, August brings an overflow of produce, so much, for some, that they now feel guilty about food gone to waste.
Growing food is hard and chancy work. It’s something of a miracle that we’re able to feed more than 8 billion people. When we do see famine or hunger, politics are more to blame than agriculture. In the coming decades, however, the odds of success will get longer. We’ll need to feed another two billion people under increasingly hostile climatic conditions.
This daunting new challenge has proved fertile ground for a new crop of books about climate change and agriculture, the focus of this month’s bookshelf.
The list begins with a photographic overview that depicts farming at radically different scales and under dramatically different conditions.
The next seven books offer an ad-hoc bibliographic debate between two groups that I would dub “maximalists” and “regenerativists.” For maximalists, like Grunwald and Smil, the goal of agriculture should be obtaining the highest yields at the lowest cost — while recognizing that debilitating the soil, poisoning waterways, and warming the climate all add to the cost. Efficient maximizing, however, necessitates tradeoffs.
Regenerativists promote agricultural practices that restore soils and the ecosystems in which they are embedded. Costs are still carefully monitored, but benefits are measured more broadly, not just by yields but also by the diversity of plants and animals the land supports, the carbon it stores, and the water it filters and saves. Measured in books, regenerativists are decisively more productive than maximalists. They published five of the twelve books in this month’s list.
Agricultural practices also reverberate — and are influenced by — social, economic, and political practices. The books by Rice and Gillespie compare and contrast fair- and foul-trade practices, while the newest book by Jose Andres, the chef-philanthropist who founded World Central Kitchen, offers anecdotal lessons about the geopolitics of food.
Rounding out the list is the latest report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization on The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World in 2025.
As always, the descriptions of the titles are adapted from copy provided by their publishers.
Editor’s Note: In the coming weeks, Yale Climate Connections will compare the positions of maximalists and regenerativists in interviews with the authors of three of the books in this month’s list: Mark Grunwald, Kelsey Timmerman, and Mark Easter.
Feed the Planet: A Photographic Journey to the World’s Food by George Steinmetz and Joel K. Bourne, with foreword by Michael Pollan (Abrams Books 2024, 256 pages, $60.00)
Do you know where your food comes from? To find out, photographer George Steinmetz spent a decade documenting food production in more than 36 countries on 6 continents and 5 oceans. In striking aerial images, he captures the massive scale of 21st-century agriculture that has sculpted 40 percent of the Earth’s surface. He explores the farming of staples like wheat and rice, the cultivation of vegetables and fruits, and aquaculture and meat production. He surveys traditional farming practices and vast international agribusinesses. And with the introduction provided by environmental journalist Joel K. Bourne Jr., Feed the Planet explains the challenge that lies head: sustainably producing food for a growing population—in the face of destabilizing climate change.
We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate by
Michael Grunwald (Simon & Schuster 2025, 384 pages, $29.99)
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 rain forest every six seconds. We are eating the earth. Even if we quit fossil fuels, we’ll keep hurtling toward climate chaos if we don’t solve our food and land problems. Bestselling author Michael Grunwald builds his narrative around unforgettable food and land expert Tim Searchinger, chronicling his uphill battles against bad science and bad politics. But through better policy, technology, and behavior, including a land ethic that values every acre, Grunwald shows how we could save our planetary home for ourselves and future generations.
How to Feed the World: The History and Future of Food by Vaclav Smil (Viking 2025, 272 pages, $30.00)
We have never had to feed as many people as we do today. And yet, we misunderstand the essentials of where our food really comes from, how our dietary requirements shape us, and why this impacts our planet in drastic ways. As a result, in our economic, political, and everyday choices, we take for granted and fail to prioritize the thing that makes all our lives possible: food. In this myth-busting book, Smil investigates key questions facing the world today: Why do most of the world’s calories come from just a few foodstuffs? Why are some of the world’s biggest food producers also the countries with the most undernourished populations? Why do we waste so much food?? Deeply researched, How to Feed the World offers solutions to our broken global food system.
Resilient Agriculture: Cultivating Food Systems for a Changing Climate 2E by Laura Lengnick (New Society Publishers 2022, 368 pages, $34.99 paperback)
Resilient Agriculture, Second Edition explores the latest science on climate risk and resilience through the adaptation stories of award-winning farmers and ranchers to explore the powerful solutions offered by agriculture and food systems designed to restore the natural, human, and social resources that sustain us. Updated content includes (1) current and expected changes in regional weather patterns, (2) new adaptation stories from sustainable, climate-smart farmers, and (3) applications of resilience thinking that connect the dots between food justice, sustainable development, regenerative economy, and planetary health. Resilient Agriculture offers real-world resilience solutions with the power to regenerate well-being for people and the planet.
From the Ground Up: The Women Revolutionizing Regenerative Agriculture by Stephanie Anderson (The New Press 2024, 256 pages, $27.99)
From the Ground Up, by award-winning author Stephanie Anderson, journeys into the root causes of our unsustainable food chain, revealing its detrimental reliance on extractive agriculture, which depletes soil and water, produces nutritionally deficient food, and devastates communities and farmers. Anderson then delivers an uplifting, narrative of women-led farms and ranches, supported by women-led investment firms, training programs, supply chain partners, and advocacy groups, all working together to create an inclusive sustainable world. From the Ground Up retraces inspiring journeys, in stories that transform the way we think about the food chain – so that we can weather the storms of climate change, conflicts, and global pandemics.
Regenerating Earth: Farmers Working with Nature to Feed Our Future by Kelsey Timmerman (Patagonia 2025, 368 pages, $30.00)
Living in rural Indiana, author Kelsey Timmerman has witnessed first-hand the damage modern industrial agriculture has done to our land and our communities. But he also suspected it didn’t have to be that way. In Regenerating Earth, Timmerman travels across the United States and around the world to meet farmers who employ practices that acknowledge the human role in complicated agricultural systems. Over and over, he finds farmers who see agriculture as not the problem but the solution, one that builds soil, promotes ecological diversity, provides people with meaningful lives and livelihoods, and sequesters carbon. Maybe even enough to combat climate change—if we accept our responsibility to play an active part in a regenerative future.
Mulberries in the Rain: Growing Permaculture Plants for Food and Friendship by Ryan Blosser & Revor Piersol (New Society Publishers 2025, 216 pages, $29.99 paperback)
The plants in our world not only nourish and sustain us, they root us within our human and ecological communities. Mulberries in the Rain explores these vital connections, combining evocative storytelling with detailed crop profiles and permaculture design tools to mentor and inspire you. Central to permaculture is the art of creating beneficial relationships—crafting inherently regenerative food systems modeled on nature. As growers, we tend to interpret this literally—think companion planting, edible ecosystems, and food forests. Where do relationships and community-building fit in? This beautifully illustrated handbook breaks new ground in social permaculture while providing a hands-on dive into creating thriving foodscapes.
The Blue Planet: A Food Lover’s Guide to Climate Chaos by Mark J. Easter (Patagonia 2024, pages, $30.00)
The Blue Plate is the perfect dinner companion for food lovers who care about the planet. Ecologist Mark Easter details the impact the foods you love have on the planet. Organized by the ingredients of a typical dinner party, including seafood, salad, bread, chicken, steak, potatoes, and fruit pie with ice cream, each chapter tells a story about these foods through the lens of the climate crisis: The soil that grew the lettuce; the farmers, ranchers and orchardists who steward the land; the grocers and workers at dairies and farms who labor to bring food to the table. What can you do to eat more sustainably? The answer is not necessarily a plant-based diet. Low-carbon, in-season alternatives can make your favorite foods more sustainable and more delicious.
Every Purchase Matters: How Fair Trade Farmers, Companies, and Consumers Are Changing the World by Paul Rice (Public Affairs 2025, 336 pages, $30.00)
In Every Purchase Matters, Rice reveals the untold story of the Fair Trade movement and its significance for us all. Calling on the close relationships he cultivated over the last forty years with the pioneers of ethical sourcing—CEOs, activists, grassroots farmer leaders, and consumer advocates—Rice gives voice to the visionaries and practitioners who are making sustainable business the new normal. These protagonists share successes and failures, lessons learned, and their extraordinary impact in communities around the world. Their stories illuminate how sustainability is good not only for people and planet but also for business. Every Purchase Matters makes the case for conscious capitalism—for a more equitable and sustainable world.
Food Fight: From Plunder and Profit to People and Planet by Stuart Gillespie (Pegasus Books 2025, 368 pages, $29.95)
Food is life but our food system is killing us. Designed in a different century for a different purpose—to mass-produce cheap calories to prevent famine—it’s now generating obesity, ill-health and premature death. We need to transform it, into one that is capable of nourishing all eight billion of us and the planet we live on. In Food Fight, Stuart Gillespie reveals how the food system we once relied upon for global nutrition has warped into the very thing making us sick. From its origins in colonial plunder, through the last few decades of neoliberalism, the system now lies in the tight grip of a handful of powerful transnationals whose playbook is geared to profit at any cost. Food Fight maps a way towards a new system—for global health and justice.
Change the Recipe: Because You Can’t Build a Better World Without Breaking Some Eggs by Jose Andres (Ecco 2025, 208 pages, $26.99)
José Andrés is a chef, an entrepreneur, an author, a television host, and a tireless humanitarian leader across the globe. A Michelin-starred chef with more than forty restaurants, José is also the founder of World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit dedicated to feeding the hungry in the wake of natural and man-made disasters. His lifetime of experience—from kitchens to conflict zones—has given him a wealth of stories that are funny, touching and insightful, all animated by the belief that food can bring us closer together and the conviction that each of us can change the world for the better. Written in José’s unmistakable voice, Change the Recipe offers hard-won wisdom from a man who has dedicated his life to changing the world through the power of food.
The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025: Addressing High Food Price Inflation for Food Security and Nutrition by UN FAO et al (UN FAO 2025, 234 pages, free download)
Every year, this most intensely scrutinized of FAO’s reports presents the headline number of undernourished people around the world, while advocating for strategies against hunger and malnutrition. Following publication of the global report, a wealth of statistics is disaggregated into regional reports. SOFI is jointly produced with fellow UN agencies IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. OFI 2025 presents the latest data and analysis on hunger, food security and nutrition worldwide, including updated estimates on the cost and affordability of healthy diets. This year’s edition highlights how elevated inflation in many countries has undermined purchasing power and, especially among low-income populations, access to healthy diets.
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