Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates about a third of our carbon emissions. We need to slow our relentless expansion of farmland into nature. In We Are Eating The Earth, Grunwald points out that we are making it worse by embracing solutions that sound sustainable but make it even harder to grow more food with less land. He also tells the stories of scientists and entrepreneurs pursuing better solutions; from a tough jungle 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.

Grunwald builds his narrative around a food and land expert named Tim Searchinger, chronicling Searchinger’s uphill battles against bad science and bad politics, both driven by the overwhelming influence of agricultural interests. He proposes a different path that could save our planet for future generations—through better policy, technology, and behaviour, and with a new land ethic that recognises that every acre matters.