This is a page by page review of “What Does it Mean to Do Food Justice?” by Kirsten Valentine Cadieux and Rachel Slocum, Journal of Political Ecology, Vol. 22, 2015, (http://jpe.library.arizona.edu/volume_22/Cadieuxslocum.pdf). I apply a Farm Justice paradigm to the views presented in the paper.
This is an important piece of work, a well synthesized analysis of something that’s huge and diverse. (The most difficult part to synthesize may have been the inclusion in the model of the US minority part in addition to the more white Food Justice part and the more global Food Sovereignty part). “Good job!” (from an often grumpy critic).
This is a hurried and detailed response, aimed providing rapid feedback on a number of points to those who have serious interests in the Cadieux/Socum series of papers.
PAGE 1 (of Cadieuxslocum.pdf)
These notes of ‘peer’ review follow the sequence of the document “What does it mean to do food justice?” By Kirsten Valentine Cadieux and Rachel Slocum, mostly page by page, but with my alternative views expanded more or less as related matters come up.
I think this work is a great approach (academics giving others feedback, access, interaction), and much needed. I’ve been involved for 30 years, and I saw my father for thirty years before that, and my grandfather before him, (ultimately going back beyond the Great Depression). I worked as a farm policy specialist during the 90s and have served as a rep to both the Sustainable Agriculture and Family Farm (Farm Justice) movements. Most recently I’ve put in 8 years studying the “Sustainable Food”/etc. movement sectors of the 21st century (food/public-health/local/environmental/hunger/libertarian/church/race-&-food, etc.), and to a lesser extent other farm sectors.
There have been several phases of academic involvement from the farm side. Thirty (40, 60, etc.) years ago it was mainly the land grant universities, (with few “friendly scribes, as Jim Hightower and others documented!).
Then there were some agribusiness think tanks (see my review of “An Adaptive Program for Agriculture,” CED 1962, http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/5443/four-national-farm-and-food-policy-plans).
Churches provided major support to the Farm Justice Movement 30 years ago, including theological interpretation, but have since switched sides.
The Sustainable Family Farm Movement split off from Family Farm Justice Movement during the 1990s, with significant help from academics (i.e. Consortium for Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education or CSARE, staffed initially by the Center for Rural Affairs). Academics may not know of this split and of it’s meaning. At one point churches convened a meeting to heal the split, and the Family Farm Movement won the issue, but Sustainable Agriculture groups went back home and rejected the resolution (says George Naylor).
Today there are many more food-side academics, and they rarely know the history and culture of the farm-side movement sectors and farm-side issues. They, (and the urban-side food movement and various global movement sectors, as a whole,) try to re-invent the wheel, and get key issues wrong, advocating against their own values and goals. This includes misunderstandings of the meaning of Food Sovereignty, and seems to start with the absence of a sense of Farm Justice. Farm Justice is missing from the report.
The same holds for foundations, the sources of money that make movements possible to a large degree. Even Farm Aid, by all signs I’ve seen, has lost it’s connection to the Farm Justice of the Family Farm Movement, (though that was previously strongly affirmed by both Willie Nelson [http://www.commondreams.org/views/2008/09/24/its-about-america] and Neil Young [https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/dear-president-reagan-youre-creating-a-farm-and-food-crisis-by-neil-young/]). That is, they’ve stopped support for the Jubilee Strategy, working only on the Exodus Strategy, (as defined below). Over all, the pro-cheap food, anti-farmer, pro agribusiness “subsidy myth” is massively funded, but not the Farm Justice alternative that knows what a farm bill really is and that would cure the real problem. Without money, Farm Justice has had a hard go!
From a farm justice point of view, there has long been a dramatic rallying cry for help from urban food consumers and others (i.e. environmentalism), and that help showed up from some other rural people, from churches and labor, but little more (i.e. with a minor exceptions like the “housewives revolt” of the 1960s, one speech at the National Farm Crisis Action Rally in 1985, and some work when Public Citizen hired Al Krebs during the 80s or 90s).
So some farm leaders (i.e. A.V. Krebs) have emphasized the need for a “food” framing. Some of this same kind of reasoning may have influenced the choosing of the term “Food Sovereignty,” (or perhaps it was more influenced by shortages of food among campesinas).
On the other hand, past “family farm” activists never anticipated, (and older activists today don’t know about,) the radical misunderstandings that we have today, now that that rallying cry for urban support has finally been answered on a massive scale, (sort of answered). (See below)
Clearly, today we must emphasize that “food” is too small of a category for the big solutions. “Farm” is much larger. “Farm” includes crops like cotton, and includes total production, not mere “food” production, which is much smaller, and which is radically misunderstood in relation to “food justice,” “food sovereignty,” and “farm justice” needs. (On “food” framing see these papers: [https://znetwork.org/zblogs/national-farm-and-food-policy-response-to-bittman-et-al/] [https://znetwork.org/zblogs/don-t-grow-clover-hay-oats-corn-de-bunking-a-farmer-bashing-myth-by-brad-wilson/])
Compared to the bulk of the Food and Sustainability sectors today,, the recent 60-year phase of the Family Farm (Farm Justice) Movement (i.e. 1953-2015) has an extra 40-45-50 years experience, often at a massive scale, in dealing with agribusiness, and with farm and food issues. That experience was honed via a number of major organizations, with some academic help (but never enough), and it has involved millions of rural activists. Additionally, it’s a movement that has always emphasized its earlier phases of history, in the late 19th century and earlier in the 20th century, involving millions of activists then, as well.
The study here does have at least one citation that addresses this, (Mooney, P.H. and T.J. Majka. 1995. I haven’t see Mooney‘s other book.) That’s a plus, but it’s probably not an adequate source for the 21st century’s dominant false narrative. It takes a whole new language to communicate meaningfully to today’s Food Movement. The old messaging almost always fails. (I haven’t seen any evidence of situations where it has worked.) That likely means that Mooney et al’s work is having little influence on behalf of Farm Justice today. (A new review of it should be written from a Farm Justice perspective.)
Kathy Ozer is also cited, so perhaps that should be called another source for the earlier movement, but that video is inadequate for addressing most of the concerns that I identify here. She makes an important point about trade history, but who has ears to hear, given today’s false paradigm in relation to Farm Justice (in relation to the significance if that trade history). (More on this below.)
My general view is that there’s some standard colonization of our minds in the article, that we can only see when we apply a Farm Justice lens to the topics. This is easy as pie to see for the historic “Family Farm” Movement, and is almost impossible for food, sustainable agriculture, and global advocates to see today (Excepting Via Campesina’s policy document). (see below)
PAGE 2 (of Cadieuxslocum.pdf)
It would be interesting to see what the “ethnograpic and survey research” found for the rural upper Midwest. The dates for the research are far too recent, I believe, for it to be likely that much was learned from the earlier 5 decades (i.e. 1952-2002) of the massive Farm Justice (Family Farm) Movement.
Central to my general criticism of how the various issues are treated in the Food Movement and by scholars, such as here, is my view that the huge and very unique experience of Farm Justice (“family farm”) leaders have been largely missing, (via lack of resources, misunderstandings and exclusion,) from the movement sectors (i.e. most of those discussed here, though we get token representation in the document). What’s missing represents a unique kind of (often blue collar) “minority” that is usually not included along with “feminist, antiracist … anti-colonial” and food labor interests. (But see these minority studies: “American Farmers: The New Minority,” “First Majority, Last Minority: The Transforming of Rural Life in America”)
I believe that this (unseen?) exclusion of “family farm” voices has massive implications both in the US and globally.
PAGE 3 (of Cadieuxslocum.pdf)
The Farm Justice (Family Farm) Movement represents decades of experience on the issues here called “global food security,” and our perspective reframes the questions in significant ways that are missed in the paper.
First, in important ways, global food insecurity is seriously caused by “increased production,” (& by the accompanying cheap prices,) yet increased production is not (yet, at least,) been an actual solution. So there has not been any merit to those arguments at the largest macro levels, and academics need a bunch of clarification on that. Clearly, that clarification has not been forthcoming.
Even groups like IATP, Food and Water Watch and NFFC, (and with WHY Hunger, Food First, and others in the US Food Sovereignty Alliance,) in their emphasis on “reserves” (as a teacheable moment) a few years ago, and in their recent encounters regarding Africa-US Food Sovereignty have failed on this issue, by not adequately seeing it as I’ve defined it below.
A basic underlying fact is that 80% of the “undernourished” are rural. They’re hungry due to poverty. They are, (and have been even more over these 6 decades of decline,) mostly farmers, or closely dependent upon a farm economy, (and many urban people are also influenced, thus raising the 80% figure). What we’ve failed to do is to “pay the world,” to pay farmers fair prices. That then devastates productivity, infrastructure, regional economies, etc. And nourishment.
The paper argues for the counter argument that “smaller scale and ecologically-oriented farming” can “’feed the world.’” In part, it’s good to show that, but the question itself is an indicator of having a colonized mind. It’s the wrong question. (http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/3062/can-x-feed-the-world-wrong-question) Too much production starves the world. In very general terms, it’s clear and simple.
Of course, important qualifications need to be made. It would be horrible to not have enough, (as Daryll Ray has reminded us!). So increasing productivity is important.
Additionally, while global overproduction needs to be curbed, (but with adequate reserve supplies,) the most radically underpaid regions need increased production, (along with higher prices,) as their own share of total global production. They also need help with the inequities that have resulted from the severe lowering of farm prices since 1953, and from inequities prior to 1953 (which is in keeping with the stated priorities in this paper).
Finally, because of the long histories of global trauma for many, and then the current 60 years of declining prices, to year after year of the lowest prices in history, simply restoring fair prices to the global poor can cause problems, even crises, as indicated in the paper.
Unfortunately, today this is almost always said to be caused only by a few years of recent higher (i.e. fair trade, but that’s not understood,) prices. Corn yearly average prices, doubled and tripled, for example, causing many to call for a return to the earlier, (supposedly normal,) prices. But that was double and triple of the lowest price ever in history, (i.e. corn- 2005, cotton, soybeans & rice- 2001, wheat & grain sorghum- 1999, barley 1998, oats 2000) and it was when corn saw 8 of the 9 lowest prices in history, all in a row, and similar for the other crops. (Fruits and vegetables and some livestock items went through similar changes, as I’ve documented.)
So it was relativism, (relatively higher,) without the use of any valid standard of what would be a “living wage” price. This is what’s behind the statement at the bottom of page 3 about how “Oxfam International seeks food justice in light of the recent spikes in global food prices that disproportionately affect the world’s poor.”
No Oxfam, the problem was never a few years of higher prices (and at least one later report from Oxfam is addresses this, while their initial work on this point did not). I find, then, that 2007- 2011 wheat, rice and corn saw prices at less than 25% of record highs, with 1 minor exception out of 9. So prices “skyrocketed” up from the lowest percent to less than 25%. The underlying and mega problem was the previous 50 years of cheaper and cheaper prices, culminating in the lowest prices in history for these and other crops, year after year, 1997-2005, not the few years of higher problems.
So the 50 years, combined with other forms of exploitation (often related to the national and regional poverty from cheap farm prices,) surely created savage dilemmas, that the quick increases closer to fair trade prices severely aggravated for a significant number of the global poor.
To conclude this point, how is it that our minds have been so colonized that we called fair trade prices, (following 50 years of massive declines amounting to trillions of dollars in global farming losses,) “the food price crisis?” How did agribusiness get us to so quickly and vigorously call for a return to the most severe export dumping in 150 years of recent history, (thus restoring their massive profits at the expense of farmers? Such is the US movement, US academia, and many others, (when they lack a Farm Justice paradigm, when they [misguidedly, unknowingly] bash and exclude “family farm” activists).
The Farm Justice paradigm recognizes these two sides of the issue. Long before Via Campesina’s policy document and other statements affirming farm justice, (i.e. The Africa Group at WTO [https://znetwork.org/zblogs/wto-africa-group-with-nffc-not-ewg-by-brad-wilson/],) US farmers were fighting for, and winning balanced solutions. We won *Price Floors (at 90% of parity, of a fair trade, living wage price,) backed by *Supply Reductions as needed, for the main problem. For occasional shortages and price spikes above parity, we won *Price Ceilings backed up by *Reserve Supplies. (*These items are what I describe below as a “Jubilee Strategy,” and are the keys to the Farm Justice “operating system” and paradigm.)
It’s important to understand that to balance supply and demand, much more than food crops must be included. Food only as an over all system would cause massive oversupply and massive destruction of the entire farm and food system (see my “food only links). The same holds for getting rid of livestock. The same holds for the misguided call for increased fruit and vegetable production. Fruit and vegetable farmers are not paid enough now. Tom Philpott recently suggested, along these lines, that 10% of midwestern corn and soybean land be planted to fruits and vegetables. In real life, (using 2009 figures for 10 midwestern states,) I find that that would increase US fruit and vegetable production by 160%, to 260%! That would be massively destructive to a wide range of farm and food goals causing massive concentration, and and a severe destruction of the infrastructure and info-structure for diversity.
So that’s a great example of how massively a “Food Justice” paradigm can fail, when “farm justice” farmers are largely excluded from the movement.
In the Farm Justice Movement, we’ve long known that “feed the world” means the same as the lowering of our prices. It’s basically the same people who called for lowering farm prices (US Price Floors,) to run “one third” of US farmers out of business “in a period of not more than five years.” The US sets global prices, and the global impact is similar but worse. Price Floor programs were reduced (1953-1995) and eliminated (1996-2018), resulting in the lowest prices in history.
For these reasons, the idea that “need is too urgent to afford justice-oriented responses,” is absurd. Farm justice, distributive economic justice, is exactly what’s needed to pay the world (so the world can then afford to feed itself).
The report refers to “the social and state support currently reserved for mainstream production agriculture in the global north,” as a way, supposedly, to feed the world. That support is a bit hard to see in the running of one third, half, two thirds, four fifths of US farmers out of business, which is what we’ve seen. In fact, our “support” (compared to previous standards,) has added up to something like $8 in reductions for each $1 in subsidies.
(While those figures probably don’t give an adequate scholarly “preferential option” for the null hypothesis, they probably do include a standard that’s close to an appropriate “preferential option” for places like LDCs in Africa. My approach significantly differs from that of Tim Wise in this regard. Bottom line: fair price standards need to be re-negotiated, and in light of both what’s fair for farmers [#FarmJustice] and how much we want to ask farmers to do for society.)
By any measure, the net, (i.e. including subsidies,) exploitation of US farmers over the past 60 years has been extreme, and can be seen on a wide range of measures where I’ve examined the data (price adjusted for inflation & compared to record highs and lows, net farm income, share of the food dollar, net after paying full costs, return on equity, percent of parity, value of production adjusted for inflation, etc.). As early as the 1960s, Frank LeRoux’s over-sized booklet of data charts argued that we were seeing “the farmers worst five years.” Later versions made it the worst seven, then the worst nine.
(This issue of subsidies, [and of ignoring the larger and more massive context of price and value changes,] is also misunderstood the UN’s DeShutter, [with top US #FoodLeaders,] as I’ve explained here [https://znetwork.org/zblogs/national-farm-and-food-policy-response-to-bittman-et-al/].)
Over and over, my thesis is that Farm Justice is needed along with Food Justice and Food Sovereignty, (Farm Sovereignty?). This distinction is also important to “diagramming the lineage” of the issues and the movements. The paper refers to “’… a transformation of the current food system, including but not limited to eliminating disparities and inequities….’” There is no mention of the previous, radically better policy period, in the US (with global implications).
The introduction to the history discussion refers to “greater control over food production and consumption,” “less dependency on capital intensive inputs,” “greater attention to social and environmental contexts, and the creation of supply networks that contribute to systemic wellbeing.” While this could refer to the big farm justice issues, there is little additional material to indicate that it does. It could refer to a local and sustainable food model, and is probably taken that way by many.
On this point, I distinguish between an “Exodus Strategy” of withdrawal from the dominant system, as in local food initiatives, and a “Jubilee Strategy” of changing the macro system, as in the big Farm Justice issues of the US farm Bill, (especially the New Deal plus the Steagall Amendment period, 1942-1952, when we achieved 100% of parity or more every year, with no subsidies needed,) and trade agreements. (On Steagall see [http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/02/06/693903/-Farm-Bill-was-Steagall-New-Deal-Stimulus].)
Note that the Jubilee strategy not only makes the output complex pay farmers fairly, (& we’re the global price leader,) but also makes the CAFO complex pay us above our full costs for feed, thus giving us a competitive advantage over them, to help bring livestock back to the land. With livestock, then, we have an economic foundation for Resource Conserving Crop Rotations. We have something to eat the alfalfa and clover, and to use the straw or eat the feedgrains. That means that it ALSO saves us from those high imput costs, as we can get our ‘free’ nitrogen from the air, and utilize livestock manure.
We see the same thing distinction in the policies of Food Sovereignty at La Via Campesina, though most people, (apparently including this paper,) leave out either the specific Jubilee *policies I’ve emphasized, or the whole Jubilee side. (*See asterisk above, and see [https://znetwork.org/zblogs/via-campesina-with-nffc-support-for-fair-farm-prices-by-brad-wilson/].)
The Jubilee Strategy is also mentioned in the Food Sovereignty document in the Kathy Ozer video cited in the paper, but probably not adequately enough to effectively counter the false paradigm in the minds of the audiences. The general mission part read by Kathy clearly makes it sound like Food Sovereignty is only an Exodus Strategy (ie. local control, local food). Of the few people who know about the Jubilee Strategy of La Via Campesina [i.e. Kathy Ozer and the at least some members of the US Food Sovereignty Alliance], I see inadequate awareness of the crucial need to invent ways for speaking clearly enough about the Jubilee Strategy, such that this narrative-myth-gone-viral can actually stopped among those seeking “food justice” and “food sovereignty.”
Blindness to this was seen, (in my analysis,) the recent meeting in Seattle on US/Africa food Sovereignty, where only the Exodus strategy really shows up in the report. An African farmer who later came here to Iowa and when I quickly raised the issue with him, he complained of this not being addressed at the Seattle meeting, in spite of his request that it be clarified (i.e. how US policy really destroy’s cotton and other farmers in Africa, as opposed the the false subsidy/agribusiness myth that dominates the mainstream paradigm). In a later to a post card from Africa he said my resources on the issues would be central to major their 2015 strategy there).
The Exodus-only paradigm indicates a radical failure of our (movement & academia & foundations) ability to understand the meaning of Food Sovereignty as laid out in La Via Campesina‘s major policy statement (cited in your paper). No paper that leaves out the Jubilee Strategy is adequate in dealing with Food Sovereignty..
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Here we see a more detailed description of movement history in the US. In part, it makes it sound as if the “Black Panthers Breakfast Program of the 1960s” and “policy analysis from the NGO Food First during the 1970s” is on a par with the Family Farm Movement, defined as “farmer organizing against foreclosure in the 1980s.” This can only be written by those who don’t know the history of Farm Justice, (which could be almost everyone cited in the paper, it certainly wouldn’t surprise me).
In fact, there was massive “family farm” mobilization on issues of Farm Justice over four or five decades prior to today’s Sustainable Food Movement. Food First, (with Frances Moore Lappe,) was one of the organizations that refused to join the movement. We can see this in Lappe’s books, which favor what we’d now call neoliberal interpretations of farm markets and trade, claims not supported by the facts, either then or now. (The organization is better now, however.)
What’s missing in this and most other prior histories includes, for example, the National Farmers Organization mobilizing a million people to come out to meetings against cheap food during the 1960s, in 19 states and within a 6 month period. (I think that NFO’s role is a bit bigger than the Black Panthers, though it’s certainly good to note their admirable efforts. Correct me if I’m wrong.) NFO also held rallies of 20,000, 30,000, 35,000 farmers. At one of the meetings they brought Sears catalogs and threw them with disgust into a pile reported to be 20 feet high and 30 feet across. (If you can believe that. I haven’t yet found a picture of it. In any case it was big. That was against the corporate/academic [i.e. 1962 Land Grant] idea of running a third of US farmers out of business within five years, and I have 2 other documents from Iowa State University along similar lines, 1980s & 1990s) On the other hand, there wasn’t really a noticeable “food” presence at these earlier mobilizations against cheap food and CAFOs.
During the 1970s the American Agriculture Movement and others mobilized 40,000 people in Washington, and at one point camped out on the Mall with dozens of tractors for months. (Again, what food movement?)
As to the 1980s, the grassroots farmer view is that if you reduce it to a mere “foreclosure” issue, your mind has been colonized. Price was the key issue, undergirding the other major issues (credit, sustainablity, food aid, rural development).
This was clearly shown in the late 1980s, when thousands of farmers in all 48 lower states attended grassroots meetings and elected more than a thousand delegates to the United Farmer and Rancher Congress, (funded by Farm Aid,) which approved resolutions with exactly this structure (price as the key). The resolutions document illustrates how Farm Justice (not the false issue of farm subsides,) is essentially the “operating system” for the farm and food policy, and a very effective one (unlike subsidies, which is invalid, inoperative) (See my paper on Altair vs iMac “operating systems,” posted this winter to COMFOOD).
What this means, then, is that what still remains, (by far,) the largest and longest recent period of activism, (rooted in long earlier periods of the late 19th century and early 20th century, up through the Great Depression,) has largely been erased from history. It means that our “food justice” and US “food sovereignty” minds of today are, (what, half?) colonized by agribusiness, and thereby rendered essentially inoperative (i.e. no valid “operating system”) on the big US/global Farm Justice issues.
One of the reasons for this is that Farm Justice has received so little academic attention over the years (beyond Daryll E. Ray, at APAC, U.Tenn, who’s sort of a Noam Chomsky figure, a lone voice keeping it alive) (Tim Wise, GDAE, Tufts University, unfortunately, is the leading academic sort of understanding this, but who is almost always falsely re-interpreted by #FoodLeaders [http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/4651/philpott-bittman-are-wrong-about-tim-wise]).
The paper discusses social justice here and there, but seems to miss distributive economic justice, at least in terms of policy. I find that the word “economic” shows up only once in the text. This is typical, I think, for how food progressives do these issues. In stark contrast, economics plays a huge role in the dominant narrative, that you need to beat to win political changes. In general, it’s as if food progressives concede: you can have the “hard” stuff, wealth and technology and jobs. We’ll take the softies, caring about people and animals and the environment.
The Farm Justice view, from family farm, (“way of life”) businesses, is much different. It’s much more oriented toward beating the dominant economic and political narrative, and much more holistic. (See my “Farm Bill Economics: Think Ecology,” etc., below) (More on this below.)
PAGE 5 (of Cadieuxslocum.pdf)
The charts, then, should include Farm Justice, (including the Jubilee Strategy in ‘Food’ Sovereignty,) which would change them significantly.
For one thing, compared to the discussion on page five, it opens up a whole new population, (with a unique perspective,) that has been massively involved in the issues, US farmers. This then would reframe a significant number of issues. Our direct involvement with the dominant US system (over the 80 years of the US farm bill, great, not so great, bad, and massively destructive, in the core issues,) which is rarely understood by the others, is especially important.
Instead what we see are things like: “the rights of small-scale and indigenous farmers to access productive resources” “oriented toward self determination, global uneven development, and ecological degradation on one side,” and “urban activists” “ firmly and explicitly committed to the local.” Plus “groups organized by and for people of color indicate a desire for business skills, equitable livelihoods, and for those most marginalized by the current food system to take a leadership role.” Or something along those lines. (And, of course, that’s all incredibly important.)
It excludes, however, the main issues of the vast farming regions of the US, and the keys to understanding how the US dominates countries, and what we can do about it, specifically, here in the US.
A point is made that “Instead of reforming the World Trade Organization, LVC wants agriculture completely removed from its remit, and food de-commodified.” I think that some qualifications should be made to this. While WTO is an authoritarian model of a corporatized trade system, trade is essential to food sovereignty and food justice, including Via Campesina’s major policy goals for fair prices and supply management (see my papers on the relationship of their policy proposals with those of NFFC, and on the WTO Africa Group, linked above).
In the past we’ve had the international wheat agreement, and the trade components of the Harkin-Gephardt (Farm Justice) Farm Bill (Review of Law and Social Change, Vol. XV, 1988, pp. 283-294, no longer online?). For today, we can see the importance of trade agreements in the sugar portion of the US farm bill (IATP, “Sweet or Sour,” http://www.iatp.org/search/node/%22Sweet%20or%20Sour%22). Trade rules work in ways that supplement the farm bill, for good or ill. This also relates to the discussion about “optimism.” A good US farm bill has more impact, and is easier to support politically, if, for example, supply management reductions here are supported by similar measures elsewhere.
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FIGURE 2
Here we see the “feed the world” issue, (discussed above).
We also see the local focus of both Food Justice and Food Sovereignty, (the Exodus Strategy). The Jubilee Strategy that formerly forced agribusiness to pay fair prices, (thus fostering crop rotations, higher junk food prices, more expensive CAFO feeds, better premium prices for organic and other value added, etc. etc. etc.) is missing.
Certainly the Public Health sector is one that always (at least in my encounters with it,) unknowingly supports cheap junk food ingredients, cheap CAFO feeds and export dumping on the world. For all the science they apply to other parts of their work, their use of the subsidy paradigm is pseudoscience, not valid, based, apparently, on opinions that have gone viral. (I don’t think anyone has provided any valid evidence in favor of it.)
FIGURE 3: (of Cadieuxslocum.pdf)
The Farm Justice model contrasts starkly with the charity model. We call for “paying the world” fairly, via market management of price and supply. Adequately implemented, that would mostly fix a large number of problems, including much of US and global rural poverty, (which is most of global poverty?). The need for charity would then be much smaller. (See “Without Clarity on Parity All You Get is Charity,” by George Naylor, in Eric Holt-Gimenez, et al, Food Movements Unite)
The same model applied to SNAP would favor a living wage (outside the farm bill but inside of Congress,) and then much better subsidization of the much smaller domain that is left.
With the elimination of the need for any farm subsidies, much more money is available for other uses, and without being divided and conquered, (without food VERSUS farm). So we double the movement and are more fiscally conservative on spending issues than all but the most extreme of the conservatives, (even more so with a Living Wage).
The debate against the dominant narrative is thus reframed in major ways that give us much stronger arguments. What I’m arguing, then, is that the family farm, Farm Justice approach is much better at bringing all farmers onto our side, and at addressing the concerns of all of society. (Do conservatives really want to subsidize foreign corporations with below cost U.S. grain, over 30 years!? Is being “competitive” really so great if it means losing money on our exports. Shouldn’t conservatives consider “making a profit” for farm states and for the United States [the dominant farm exporter,] to be an even more important business value?) Ditto for “market access” and ‘free’ trade?
As to “inequitable distribution of resources and uneven relations of power,” Farm Justice policies enacted in the United States, 1942-1952 massively affected that, with agribusiness paying farmers in the US substantially more. If continued through today, im might have amounted to an additional $4 trillion for farmers instead of agribusiness buyers (in today’s dollars, with no preferential option for the null hypothesis,) and globally (trillions more).
As noted above, fair price standards need to be renegotiated, (instead of simply accepting the traditional standard of parity,) with effective answers to what farmers will do for society in return. This is a stark alternative to current efforts, where agribusiness interests and front groups pretend to support farmers by asking that few demands be placed on them.
Many of these reduced-demand benefits are dilemmas, where farmers benefit short term, but lose political support, and lose to CAFOs and to rich outside investors in the long run. (For example, the rich get 4 times as much in tax benefits for farm losses per acre as do farmers in the bottom bracket; which is more than 4 times as regressive as other farm subsidies. Unfortunately, while this has been a major farm justice issue over the decades, it is almost wholly unknown today. One consequence of these dilemmas is that, the more farmers are exploited, the richer the surviving farmers have to be, making it appear to poorly informed critics as if farmers are doing great [i.e. in terms of off-farm income]!). Why do farmers need subsidies if they’re getting richer? Because increasingly, only the rich, who can do tax loss farming, can survive. That’s not really an indicator that the farm bill is working for real farmers.
On the other side are those making greater demands on farmers.
Both sides claim (and likely believe) that they support family farmers. Curiously, both (i.e. BOTH Farm Bureau/National Corn Growers Association, American Soybean Association AND Environmental Working Group,) support fewer subsidies for farmers and both deny the key realities about the farm economy (that it fails to self-correct).
In fact, neither side supports fair prices, (and therefore neither supports keeping farmers in business, or keeping livestock on most farms). So neither supports authentic farm interests, which remain deeply clouded in mysticism, as all are de-powered, (tory farmers siding with agribusiness and [unknowing tory] food progressives).
PAGE 7 (of Cadieuxslocum.pdf)
FIGURE 4
Here again, Family Farm activists represent Farm Justice for the vast farming regions of the US, (cornbelt, wheatbelt, cottonbelt, dairybelt, western range lands,) in ways that support all global farmers (with, historically, trillions of dollars). while radically reframing the entire paradigm. We should not be reduced to a mere “farmers against debt.” This then radically changes the question of “geographies.”
Again, related to this is the misunderstanding in which “Food Sovereignty” primarly limited to the “Exodus Strategy” of local control, without the “Jubilee Strategy” of Farm Justice.
The issues of “an oppositional relationship to the state” and “co-optation” are important. I’ve argued that the US Food Justice (etc.) movement is hugely co-opted in seeing only subsidies (not prior reductions in prices and value that may be 8 times bigger,) thus blaming farmers, with concrete efforts to remove subsidies, but without any understanding at all of how mere subsidy reforms support agribusiness at the maximum possible level, (also concretely)!
Ok, for US farmers, we’ve “been to Canaan and we wanna go back again.” We had parity or better for 11 years in a row for all of agriculture (1942-1952). So government forced agribusiness to pay us fairly.
That then gives us a radically different expectation from the state. (Does no one else know what the state did during the New Deal [and Steagall Amendment period] any more? Read Henry A. Wallace, “Achieving a Balanced Agriculture,” (online), or my review of it, (linked above with reference to the CED report,) or Daryll E. Ray, “Agricultural Policy for the Twenty-First Century and The Legacy of the Wallaces,” http://agpolicy.org/pubs/RayLecture2004FromGretchen1st.pdf).
These benefits were for “white” farmers, black farmers, Hispanic and native American farmers, women farmers, etc. and global farmers. Paradoxically, for example, as civil rights have vastly improved (i.e since 1933-52,) farm justice farm policy has severely gotten worse, (1953-1995) and has disappeared (1996-2018) and has then been largely erased from history, even as an idea (as the food movement has made up a history to fill in the gaps).
This experience is significantly different from that of the “white” Food Movement. They weren’t there, and they don’t know that it existed. (And see the discussion of economics, of taking the issue to all farmers and to the general population, above.)
Can we be “optimistic?” We’d have to be able to get Congress to make a profit on U.S. farm exports, (sales to foreigners,) to stop export dumping were we lose money. As mentioned above, this flies directly into the face of “competitiveness” (defined as losing as much money as you can on exports). We’d have to establish “profit” for the US, for farm states, for farmers, as a positive business value. That also flies directly in the face of those progressives advocating “for people,” but “not for profit” for the people. It’s a paradigm change for everyone outside of the Farm Justice world.
Would Republicans support that? We’d have to show the (abundant) evidence (“4 proofs,” https://znetwork.org/zblogs/michael-pollan-rebuttal-four-proofs-against-pollans-corn-subsidy-argument-by-brad-wilson/) that ‘free’ markets don’t self correct, “on either the supply or the demand sides for aggregate agriculture.” (Daryll E. Ray, “Are the five oft-cited reasons for farm programs actually symptoms of a more basic reason,” http://agpolicy.org/weekcol/325.html) Or at least we’d have to convince them that the US should make a profit on farm exports.
(Note: since the Food Movement does not support the *big Jubilee Strategy Farm Justice Proposals, [as they generally hardly know they exist, and especially don’t know that they represent a bigger, better paradigm,] their basic position on “cheap food” or “farm subsidy” issues must be called neoliberal or conservative. Of course, believing as they do in the “farm subsidy myth,” they think they’re being very progressive. An example of this is Ken Cook talking about how the 1996 Farm Bill was supposed to lead to the end of subsidies to let the market operate on it’s own for farmers generally, apparently with his full support. See also the point that Daryll E. Ray’s statement that “they [EWG] err in their definition of the function of a safety net, [http://agpolicy.org/weekcol/589.html] Cf. my blog on this point. [https://znetwork.org/zblogs/ewg-s-ken-cook-debates-former-ag-chair-larry-combest-loses-by-brad-wilson/])
There is, however, another side to the Farm Justice angle on the optimism question. We’ve lost, most of the time, over the past 60 years. This contrasts starkly with many of the younger and urban participants in the movement. Michael Pollan and others expressed optimism over the 2008 Farm Bill, (though he’s been better than most at seeing the movement as young and naive). Farmers are old and have a very different sense of what it takes to win (i.e. it takes us all, and we fail with a split movement).
We see, then, that the family farm movement’s 60 years of repeated losses always happened without any food-side support on the key issues. For 45-50 years there was no significant food movement. And then for 10-15 years there was a huge food movement, and it was against “cheap corn” (miraculously FOR fair farm prices,) but it advocated (unknowingly) against these policies, because of the subsidy myth.
We need to note here that the U.S. seems to have a puppet government that works for an external “emperor,” the (authoritarian) corporate complex. Congress, including farm-state leaders on agricultural committees, does not support a profit for US farm exports, (or for what’s “exported” out of their own farm states). Not since 2001, when the farm progressives switched sides in what I call “The Harkin Compromise” (coming soon, but see http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/3018/subsidies-vs-price-floors-in-farm-bill-history). In agriculture, we’re essentially a colony, and have been, especially, over the past 33 years, when crops have rarely made any money (and then on back to 1953, when the trend started).
Obviously, most other countries have never had this understanding of The State “for the farmers,” (or of the US as a colony in recent history). On the other hand, La Via Campesina includes Farm Justice in it’s major policy statement. On this point Kathy Ozer’s video is very important of global activism in relation to Farm Justice. (See her and/or IATP for how the global community came to know about these policies and programs, as the EU seems to have had much less experience with them.)
Likewise, the US has had half of global farm exports, at least of some important crops, sometimes much more than half. That’s another reason why our views are unique, and why a correct understanding of the Jubilee Strategy in Food Sovereignty is so important. It’s what we can do here for the rest of the world.
PAGE 8 (of Cadieuxslocum.pdf)
Obviously, this is highly relevant for “bridg[ing] the rural-urban and North-South divides.” the US Food Justice Movement has been terrible on the rural/urban split, making things much worse. The Farm Justice sector, by contrast, has had an excellent understanding.
The same thing holds for other divides: the race & food VS white (& black) Farm Justice divide; the sustainable family farmers vs farm justice family farmers divide. In each case the Farm Justice side has great solutions and attitudes, while the other side tends to foster divisions.
For example, it’s become popular to play the race (women, etc.) vs farmers card. For decades, white and black farm justice farmers have been close allies, both supporting fair prices with no subsidies, (and subsidies, if there are no fair prices). Today the movement is arguing that it’s essentially an issue of white versus black farmers, in that white farmers get most of the subsidies, and subsidies are thought (falsely) to be what the farmer part of the farm bill is meant to be all about. In fact, most white farmers have been run out of business, and it’s worse for black farmers. Are there really any black cotton farmers left? Hardly, I’ve heard. So then, they must not get very many cotton subsidies! So white farmers are used for victim blaming, while the ways that the farm bill forces all farmers to subsidize agribusiness remain unknown, and outside of the analysis.
Farm Justice farmers see deeper, to see that it isn’t just about subsidies, (the essential source of unjust blame,) but about what came prior to subsidies. We have a much bigger paradigm of KNOWLEDGE, a much more accurate paradigm of JUSTICE, a much deeper concept of SUSTAINABILITY (i.e. rooted in a better economics of sustainability for all farmers,) and therefore, a much wiser and more effective STRATEGY (and one that makes much more farm policy money available for inclusive uses, even as much less is needed to achieve the same level of results).
I guess all of this is a huge “epistemology” that has been reduced to being a “lay epistemology.” By largely excluding blue collar farmers and farmer knowledge (based upon decades of experience in, and study of these issues, by large numbers of organizations plus actual participation in farm programs and with farm technologies, etc. etc.,) exclusion from vast movement domains, the urban and academic food-side leaders in the US have shot themselves in the foot. They’ve missed out on the Farm Justice paradigm. Instead, they’ve tried to use their limited experience to re-invent the ‘wheel,’ and they’ve had some problems with the ’round’ part or something like that. That is, in misunderstanding the subsidy issue, they’ve (unknowingly) sided with agribusiness for the cheapest of cheap farm prices, (concretely, in action, but not symbolically, in rhetoric,) against their own core values and goals.
At the bottom of the series of charts, then, I conclude that the project has much more work to do before there can begin to be an adequately inclusive discussion.
Again, when I attended a Just Food conference, (Just Food being mentioned here,) they strongly sided with agribusiness against their own core values and goals in an important plenary and an important workshop. None of the presenters seemed capable of even understanding my differing views.
PAGE 9 (of Cadieuxslocum.pdf)
The same (as Just Food in NYC) holds for “Growing Food and Justice for All” in Milwaukee last fall, for example, in the Chellie Pingree plenary presentation (and ditto for her in Oakland in November 2011). (Will Allen’s book is similar, but in a very brief way. It sees only subsidies, and not prior cheap farm prices [not caused by subsidies]. So it’s as if he bashed SNAP subsidies without acknowledging the poverty that came before. That’s standard logic for most food books)
Scholarly and activist critiques can be very good, and the model here, of lay dialogue, is essential.
There are many nice things on pages 9-12.
PAGE 12 (of Cadieuxslocum.pdf)
The discussion of “universals” is important and healthy. My view (in very genral terms,) is like that of Charles Hampden-Turner (http://bridgeacrossconsciousness.net/mindmaps/Map43.pdf and see chart in map 51, p. 181, all from Maps of the Mind). (Universal) values need to be two-sided (or 4 or 5 sided). Too much of a good thing becomes a weakness that needs to be balanced by a value on the other side. So there are two sides, each with a good (in the center,) and a bad (on the fringes), (and possibly a balance in the center). One-sidedness is utopian and becomes authoritarian. It fails to deal effectively with the dilemmas of life.
See especially Hampden-Turners model of an ecology of values in reconciliation, as opposed to the standard either/or approach of the macroculture of US business (chapter 1 in Charting the Corporate Mind.) See also his “critique of pure profit,” (the last chapter,) where he shows how, the standard model of profit, (i.e. in agribusiness, for our purposes,) isn’t even very profitable, in part because it tends to destroy other valuable stakeholders. (i.e. Farmers!) Cf. His Building Cross Cultural Competence: How to Create Wealth from Conflicting Values.
This is exactly the weakness for many progressives, on one side, and for the agribusiness view, as a mirror image. The family farm (farm justice) approach is like this, affirming both business values and social values, as described above, for example.
On the point about NFFC in relation to Food Sovereignty, then, I think that, as to the Jubilee side of Food Sovereignty, the US family farm movement has probably been ahead of Via Campesina, as our implementation of this began 80 years ago.
PAGE 13 (of Cadieuxslocum.pdf)
That “Indonesian farmers made the decision to switch to commodity cocoa production because it provided them with a much more certain livelihood and, importantly, cash” is significant. If a country is 50% farmers, (LDCs 70% rural,) wouldn’t that mean 1 local non-farm customer per 1 local farmer, on average. And then that customer has an income of $1.25 per day? How then can “local food” be a real solution.
The same holds across most US farming regions. Certainly here in Iowa we could grow many times more food than we could possibly eat.
How about paying all farmers at a “living wage” standard, as in the Farm Justice, “Jubilee Strategy” model?
Cf. Wendell Berry on the utopian farm, in The Unsettling of America, and Lewis Mumford’s criticism of utopianism (trying to cram destiny into a box by ignoring dilemmas).
PAGE 14 (of Cadieuxslocum.pdf)
Ok, “Enacts policies that repair past injustices and trauma that are still felt today.” I will address that in a future paper, in relation to the second paper in the Cadieux/Slocum series, which is about historical trauma and inequity.
“Builds on diverse knowledge systems,” see above.
“Compensates fairly, protects and supports the value of all labor,” I’ve emphasized farm prices, as something that towers above all other things as a sort of “operating system” issues over the decades among the millions in the mostly erased and excluded family farm movement. I’m not sure that merely mentioning labor gets at this adequately for 21st century audiences. In contrast, when CED and the land grant academics called for lowering farm prices, it was for the purpose of running “excess resources (mainly labor)” out of business, farmers and farm labor.
Issues of “how power is distributed” coming “into conversation,” and “policies and programs” that “bring about systemic change,” “considers when and how it is useful or not to engage the state, the market or other actors,” “institutionalizes equity in democratic participatory processes:” these have been repeated themes in what I’ve written here, but in ways that, I think, are usually unknown in today’s movement. On the latter point about democratic processes, note that Henry A. Wallace, in the (1940) book I cited above, emphasized “economic democracy” as the core of the original (farm justice) farm bill.
Finally, most of what I’ve done, I think, is along the lines of “Identifies barriers and enabling elements for the practice of” farm, rather than “food justice.” On the other hand, my main theme has been that there’s “No Food Justice Without Farm Justice” (http://edibleiowa.imirus.com/Mpowered/book/viowa2013/i4/p16).
PAGE 15 (of Cadieuxslocum.pdf)
In conclusion, I’ve argued that “farm justice” makes a significant contribution to the understanding of both “food justice, and “food sovereignty.”
I’ve also argued that understanding farm justice takes us a long way toward countering the dominant narratives of agribusiness and mainstream media, including for audiences beyond our movement sectors.
Finally, thank you again for the approach taken in and with the paper. It’s a great resource for us.
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