Hugh brings to this book something rare: the perspective of someone who has engaged at the highest levels of international affairs and also spent years working alongside smallholder farmers in the fields of Haiti. The result is a vision of regenerative agriculture that is globally ambitious and humanly grounded in equal measure. Whole Earth Farming speaks to leaders across government, civil society and the private sector who understand that food security, climate action and justice are not separate challenges but one. It offers HOPE.
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Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario and Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme
At Food Tank, we’ve spent more than a decade convening researchers, farmers, policymakers and advocates around a shared conviction: the solutions to our food system challenges already exist – we just need the will to scale them. Hugh’s book makes that case with both depth and clarity. What resonates most with me is how it centers smallholder farmers – not as a problem to be solved, but as leaders of a regenerative transformation that is already underway. Whole Earth Farming invites us to rethink what’s possible for agriculture. It is both a powerful reframing of the challenges we face and a hopeful roadmap for the future. For anyone working to build food systems that are more just, resilient and in balance with nature, this is essential reading – and a call to act.
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Hugh Locke possesses the rare combination of a seasoned global field practitioner and a rigorous analyst of food systems, grounded in agroecology. Equally comfortable engaging heads of state at international forums or exchanging ideas with farmers under the mango tree, he brings the same conviction, humility, and passion to every conversation. In this compelling book, he draws on a rich collection of regenerative farming initiatives and real-world interventions to illuminate pathways toward more resilient and sustainable food systems. At a time when humanity faces mounting challenges in food security and climate adaptation, this work offers both inspiration and practical wisdom. An essential and deeply timely read.
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Danielle Nierenberg, President, Food Tank
Didier Van Bignoot, Global Advisor on Agriculture, Food Security, and Climate Resilience, Aga Khan Foundation
Across the world’s faith traditions there is a deep and largely untapped reservoir of wisdom about humanity’s relationship with the land. Hugh draws on the Bahá’í writings with scholarship and care, and in doing so opens a conversation that the regenerative agriculture movement has been slow to have: about purpose, not just practice, and about the spiritual dimensions of why this transformation matters. Whole Earth Farming is a rare book that will speak with equal force to farmers, to people of faith, and to anyone searching for a vision of agriculture worthy of the moment we are in.
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The Regen10 Outcomes Framework took over two years of global, co-developed consultation because we believe a shared reference for regenerative agriculture must reflect the full diversity of the people and landscapes it serves. Hugh’s Whole Earth Farming does something complementary and equally ambitious: it situates that framework within a compelling case for why smallholder farmers must be at the center of the regenerative transformation, not as beneficiaries, but as architects. In doing so, it gives the outcomes we are working toward a human face, a historical foundation and a moral urgency, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
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Gopal Patel, Co-founder and President, FutureFaith
One Acre Fund works every day with the smallholder farmers Hugh describes, and we recognize the realities he brings to life in these pages: the enormous untapped potential, the structural barriers that have held these farmers back, and the compelling case he makes for why regenerative approaches deserve a central place in the conversation about their future. Hugh applies a unique spiritual dimension through Bahá’í teachings to guide us throughout. Whole Earth Farming is a rare book that honors the complexity of this challenge while remaining accessible and urgent from first page to last.
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Tara Shyam, Executive Director, Regen10
At Clim-Eat we built our entire approach around the conviction that evidence without action is not enough, and that action without evidence rarely scales. Hugh’s book embodies that same principle at the level of an entire argument. By centering smallholder farmers as agents of transformation rather than subjects of it, and by tracing what regenerative agriculture actually requires across policy, science and practice in low-and middle-income countries, Whole Earth Farming gives advocates and decision-makers the kind of integrated framework our field urgently needs and too rarely gets.
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John Mundy, Director of Global Partnerships, One Acre Fund
My generation has inherited both the consequences of extractive agriculture and the responsibility to build something better. Hugh’s book speaks directly to that responsibility, laying out a path toward food systems that heal land rather than deplete it and lift farming communities rather than bypass them. Whole Earth Farming is the kind of clear-eyed, grounded analysis that young innovators working on food and environment need right now.
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Dr. Dhanush Dinesh, Founder, Clim-Eat
Joseph Nguthiru, UN Young Champion of the Earth