Slash and burn farming is one of the bigges contributors to deforestation, destroying biodiversity and sending huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. S & B sits at the crossroads of two of the greatest threats to global stability: accelerating climate change and diminishing food security. Up In Smoke follows British scientist Mike Hands, who has laboured for 25 years to find a solution to replacing slash & burn agriculture in equatorial rainforests. This is a film about a struggle for our future. About the heroic, sometimes quixotic, mission of Mike Hands to get people to understand his revolutionary method. It's about the life and death struggle of impoverished farmers who can't afford to risk adopting a new farming method. It's a film about our driving need to change what's happening to the planet's rainforests, and about the pressures that may prevent that change from happening.