Meat: A Benign Extravagance is a groundbreaking exploration of the difficult environmental, ethical and health issues surrounding the human consumption of animals. Garnering huge praise in the UK, this is a book that answers the question: should we be farming animals, or not? Not a simple answer, but one that takes all views on meat eating into account. It lays out in detail the reasons why we must indeed decrease the amount of meat we eat, both for the planet and for ourselves, and yet explores how different forms of agriculture--including livestock--shape our landscape and culture.

At the heart of this book, Simon Fairlie argues that society needs to re-orient itself back to the land, both physically and spiritually, and explains why an agriculture that can most readily achieve this is one that includes a measure of livestock farming. It is a well-researched look at agricultural and environmental theory from a fabulous writer and a farmer, and is sure to take off where other books on vegetarianism and veganism have fallen short in their global scope.

1. Sedentary pigs, nomadic cows, urban chickens
2. The Land Requirements of Livestock. An acre a meal?
3. Default livestock
4. The plight of the pig in the nanny state
5. The fat of the land
6. Hard to swallow
7. The golden hoof and green manure
8. Food Security
9. Can Britain feed itself?
10. On granaries
11. Footloose food
12. Energy and Carbon
13. Animal furlongs and vegetable miles
14. Global warming: cows or cars?
15. Holistic cowboys and carbon farmers
16. Land Use Change - The great divide
17. The struggle between light and shade
18. Towards a permaculture livestock economy