Why being better capitalists won't bring about food sovereignty (talk at ORFC 2024)

The pitfalls of localism, small-scale capitalism and a movement grounded more in the interests of white, wealthy landowners (in the UK)

This is the talk I gave at ORFC 2024 in the session "We Need To Talk About Capitalism: Challenging Private Property, Labour Exploitation and Endless Growth". I haven’t edited — this is what I presented — so it’s written more in a speaking voice. I introduced myself beforehand as someone who six years ago, in the exact same room, was waxing lyrical about the potential of microdairies. I still love calf-at-foot microdairies — but our experience of trying to maintain one is central to why I don’t buy into some of the rhetoric that comes out of food sovereignty in the UK.

So in many ways what I said this year was speaking to myself of 6 years ago in that room. At some point I’ll attempt to turn this into a more academic/theoretically grounded critique — this is an extremely brief intro, as I had just 10 minutes to present. I had to delete lots of points I wanted to make but I won’t add them back in here.

I just want to add that the other presentations on the panel were really excellent, I think we covered a broad base of grounding a more critical approach to capitalism. Also, the discussion afterwards was really engaging and energising with important questions. I think it’s clear there is need and desire for a lot more discussion along these lines. A massive thanks to all who came to the session as there were quite a few good sessions on at the same time. This was also mentioned in another panel I attended on land reparations (which was fantastic and one of the best conference sessions I’ve ever attended).

---

What I’m going to talk about is that capitalism isn’t just something that’s done by corporations. Yes they’re a specific and malignant outgrowth of capitalism, but sometimes I think we miss the broader picture. That’s not to suggest we ignore the corporate food regime, and Rob gave a good overview of some of this from an international perspective, but it isn’t enough by itself, and that we need to go much further into analysing the way capitalism works through our everyday experiences as farmers and farm workers. The framing of farmers versus corporations can lead to us missing important aspects. In particular, the workings of class, race and gender within land, within agriculture, with labour relations, and within our own movements. Otherwise we end up with a movement that serves the interest of landed, wealthier white people, and full disclosure — that means people like me — at the expense of everyone else. I found the first session today on land reparations incredibly on point — moving and inspiring — and Andre mentioned how he felt that there can be a blind spot in the food and farming sector around the driving roles of capitalism and colonialism.

Capitalism is an insidious logic and imperative by which we all have to live our lives.  I am hoping to illustrate some of this — very briefly — and how it operates at the level of the small farmer. Soren Mau defines the economic power of capital as an “Impersonal, abstract, anonymous power immediately embedded in the economic processes themselves”. 

My central claim is that we won’t achieve food sovereignty or an agroecological transition just by being better capitalists ourselves — we have to work towards making a break with capitalism — which in part begins with breaking down the isolation, individualism and competition it both creates and depends upon. In particular, I am going to talk about three aspects: private property and land ownership, the effects of competition and the constraints of capitalism, and why I think they hold back food sovereignty and an agroecological transition.

I really loved Esther’s point this morning, in the land reparations session, discussing the importance of alternative worldviews, that land relations are like that of a mother to a child — or rather that they should be. And that we wouldn’t sell our child. Capitalism however requires the exclusionary regime of private property, such as land ownership. Private property “rights” that are only enforceable thanks to laws which themselves depend on police and prisons that act as deterrents and arbiters of who is and isn’t deserving. Otherwise that claim to property is just a piece of paper and a fenceline.

Capitalism manifests in the inescapable logic of profit that small farmers must submit themselves to. In the competition we are subjected to — not just from supermarkets but also between each other. No matter what our loftier ideals are.

To use an example from my own experience: We were I think the first to have a milk vending machine in the area, but since 2020, 2021, you can’t drive more than like 15 minutes without hitting another vending machine. And they’re all quiet, and sales at ours dropped so low it wasn’t worth doing anymore. So we then had to start doing door-to-door deliveries which takes time away from the farm — and the management it requires — and it increases our costs. I see Facebook marketplace is now awash in milk processing equipment and vending machines. We are all fighting over a very small % of local customers.

Chatting to a local farm shop owner — one of the most well known in our area — their sales have declined the last couple of years, just as their costs have skyrocketed. I have friends who started farms at the same time as us around 7 or 8 years ago who couldn’t make a living with CSA box schemes or with selling organic eggs. I know this goes against the trend of certain influencers of regenerative agriculture and I’m sure a small percentage find a lucky niche but many new entrants in particular are failing to maintain their small farm businesses. Another main factor for us was paying £12,000 per year in rent to landowners.

Cutting costs and maximising profits works for some, usually those with close proximity to affluent cities and towns or those off farm jobs that pay the bills or — or those who have already well established family farms that they are trying to maintain. This unequal playing field combined with the imperative of competition is baked into capitalism. This same imperative forces us to make suboptimal decisions with our farming — pitting ourselves against our ideals. I understand why people go the entrepreneurial route — we tried it ourselves — but it doesn’t make for a successful political theory of change for us as a movement. To take one data point: organically farmed land in the UK has decreased over the last 20 years.

An unspoken consequence of localism can be that you end up with multiple small farms doing the same thing competing with each other for the same small pool of customers — with those who “win” and those who lose. There can be a fantasy of all of us carving out our own little niches, and through that growing a larger movement. Well decades have passed with this strategy and it’s not leading to this long promised rural renaissance. Something Julie Guthman highlighted, writing about the Californian organic movement 20 plus years ago, in her book Agrarian Dreams.

I used to fully buy into that fantasy, and our experience of the realities is what’s driving my own questioning of it now. I want to see thriving localities but I don’t think that’s happening with the current set of ideas and practices embodied by localism. I think it’s time for a rethink.

This difficulty with a lack of income is also seen with the new farming subsidy schemes: these schemes don‘t pay enough to make many of the actions worthwhile, particularly to upland farmers, and certainly not matching the bold rhetoric of the last few years. Or alternatively farmers are being turned down for very good applications due to a lack of sufficient funding to fund enough farms who want to enter the scheme. Therefore many will be forced to make a decision to intensify their management or abandon current environmental projects as the payments won’t be sufficient.

Competition, the need to profit despite tight margins, and a desire for capital accumulation, generates the kinds of pressures for business owners that can lead to the exploitation of both migrant indentured labourers, as Catherine McAndrew at the LWA is helping to shed a light on. And within agroecological circles — of landless workers who have to accept traineeships. Illegally paid wages well below even the minimum wage. The kind SALT are combatting. Nell was going to touch upon some of this with her presentation of a workers enquiry that SALT have carried out but as you know sadly isn’t with us due to illness. I think it’s really important that space is provided within our spaces to hear the words of landless workers within agroecology. 

Moving back towards the challenges of the small farmers — I think it’s vital to recognise that capitalism is not rational and it leads to issues within agriculture such as massive over-production of certain commodities. High volumes help to keep prices low. But capitalist logics impels farmers to produce more and more commodities despite often not earning much money themselves from its production.

I think it also means going beyond this split between so-called consumers and producers. Farmers are still consumers — and we all suffer this cost of greed crisis that sees our costs of production rise along with the cost of living — as Dee Woods called it: a cost of profit crisis. 

Asking consumers to pay more has become a “common sense” within food and farming, and yet how are people supposed to be able to pay more? It’s an impossible ask. Mortgages are doubling. 4 million British children are food insecure. Farmers are themselves represented within these statistics. Capitalism requires cheapened food — less than 1p from a block of cheese or a loaf of bread goes to the farmer — but if you want food to be valued more it will mean dismantling capitalism and building something better — one where life is valued more than profit.

If we are to take food sovereignty as a concept seriously I think we must recognise it won’t come about through being better capitalists ourselves. It needs us to go beyond capitalist realism — the idea that there always was and always will be capitalism. It will require us to reposition our movements as being not just anti-corporations — but anti-capitalist. It will mean going beyond just focusing on our immediate localities as capital, climate breakdown, pandemics, war and so on don’t respect localised geographies. To see thriving localities we must go beyond our own localities, as the constraints of capitalism make it impossible to achieve what we want.

I’m reluctant to offer up simple soundbite solutions. The kinds of things I look towards are going beyond individualist solutions and away from norms of land ownership towards democratised land access and secure tenure. From revamped council farms, to community land trusts, to many many more allotments. More CSAs, co-operatives and collaboration not as ends in themselves but as transitionary steps. The way LION are working to establish farm collectives led by Black people and people of colour. Expanding our focus beyond just small farmers and focusing more on landless workers as SALT are doing and doing more for tenant farmers. These are things to be discussed and come out of what is already occurring. I hope to see the food sovereignty movement in Britain breaking out beyond just our own concerns and to link up with other political struggles, and in turn this will help create a better food and farming system. 

And to close: What I hope I’ve got across is that capitalism constrains what we can achieve, holds back our visions and desires and conditions us to narrow our horizons and conserve what we have. Ultimately, politicising agroecology and building food sovereignty will mean breaking with capitalist logics and solutions — and instead looking to how we self-organise and build our own collective political power with more radical and revolutionary demands.