Food sovereignty and agroecology praxis in a capitalist setting: the need for a radical pedagogy

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the potential for anti-capitalist politics to ‘translate' among food sovereignty proponents in Canada. I argue that a crucial tool for advancing food sovereignty and agroecology in the country will be radical pedagogy—and specifically political education efforts that advance both critical analyses of capitalism and prefigurative (post-capitalist) socio-economic arrangements. I offer a vision of a ‘praxis-pedagogy triad’ that illustrates how instances of agroecological prefiguration may relate to critical theories of capitalist political economy and the agrarian question, as well as radical pedagogies that will help a counter-hegemonic food sovereignty translate in a capitalist context.

KEYWORDS:

• Food sovereignty
• agroecology
• agrarian question
• utopia
• prefigurative politics
• political education
• praxis

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the following people who offered comments on previous versions of this article: Scott Prudham, Tony Weis, Sarah Wakefield, Mike Ekers, Ken MacDonald; as well as the anonymous reviewers who helped me to strengthen my analysis and argument.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Union Paysanne (2017). Laplante was the president of Union Paysanne at the time. Quote translated from French.

2 In this article, I do not focus on a comparison of the NFU and Union Paysanne, as the notable contrasts between the two relate to policy approaches and contexts, which I discuss elsewhere (Dale forthcoming), whereas there are more similarities than differences in terms of the organizations’ members’ perspectives that are covered in this article.

3 Also see the editors’ contributions to Gramsci’s (1971, 1992) collected works, as well as The Southern Question, which was written prior to his incarceration wherein Gramsci discussed the potential for alliances to emerge between agrarian groups in Italy’s south and labouring classes in the country’s industrial north (Gramsci 2015).

4 Quotes from interviews conducted in French translated by author.

5 Field notes, November 26, 2015. This quote is paraphrased.

6 Field notes, February 26–28, 2016.

7 Field notes, October 7–18, 2015.

8 Field notes, March 6–10, 2016. This quote is paraphrased.

9 Field notes, March 6–10, 2016.

10 See www.nfu.ca/nfuniversity for more information.

11 For more on the work of these organizations, see www.centrepaysan.ca and www.efao.ca. In addition to the Centre Paysan and EFAO, similar organizations are advancing farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing in other regions of the country.

12 While I have noted a perceived generational difference in terms of farmers of different ages being more or less willing to consider anti-capitalist critiques and proposals, I cannot say that I was able to discern any clear differences along other lines, such as gender, for example. This could be an interesting question to take up in future research.

13 I have not had space here to discuss the intersections between capitalism and other systemic forms of oppression (e.g., racism, colonialism, and patriarchy), yet it is of course important for pedagogical and practical initiatives to be informed by the ways in which these forces overlap and reinforce one another (as well as the ways in which they can operate on different frequencies and disproportionately affect some groups more than others).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number: 752-2016-1032].

Notes on contributors

Bryan Dale

Bryan Dale is an Assistant Professor at Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Quebec. He completed his PhD in Human Geography at the University of Toronto with a specialization in Environmental Studies, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto Scarborough’s Culinaria Research Centre.