Reparation Ecologies: Regimes of Repair in Populist Agroecology

Abstract

Amidst the backdrop of attention to populism in general, it is instructive to understand populism through social movements focused on food and agriculture. Agrarian populism is particularly salient in agrifood movements. Agroecology has been widely identified as a domain of populist claims on environmental and social governance surrounding agricultural–ecological and political–economic systems. As authoritarian populist leaders gain power throughout the world at a time of expanding economic globalization and contingent socioecological crises, contests over populism in agrifood regimes can highlight current dynamics relevant for formative evaluation of alternative political agroecology strategies and of populist environmental governance more broadly. Can populism be harnessed by radical political agroecologies to simultaneously contest the hydra-headed nature of capitalism, authoritarianism, and pollution and implement forms of environmental governance based on repair? We argue that populist agroecology has untapped potential for repair and that the mechanism of focusing social movements on repair might help address some of the more problematic authoritarian tendencies of populism. Key Words: agroecology, agrofood activism, emancipatory rural politics, food movement, populism, rural geography.

在关注民粹主义的普遍背景下, 通过聚焦粮食与农业的社会运动理解民粹主义是具有启发性的。农业民粹主义在农粮运动中特别突出。农业生态已被大幅指认为民粹对于有关农业生态和政治经济系统的环境与社会治理之宣称的领域。当威权民粹主义领导者在扩张的经济全球化与耦合的社会生态危机中, 于世界各地取得权力之时, 农粮体制的民粹斗争, 能够凸显关乎另类政治农业生态策略的形成评估的当下动态, 以及更为广泛的民粹环境治理。激进的政治农业生态是否能够驾驭民粹主义, 以同时和资本主义、威权主义与污染的多中心本质进行竞争, 并施行以修復为基础的环境治理形式？我们主张, 民粹农业生态具有尚未利用的修復潜力, 而聚焦修復的社会运动之机制, 或能有助于应对民粹主义更具有疑义的威权倾向。 关键词： 农业生态, 农业粮食行动主义, 解放的农村政治, 粮食运动, 民粹主义, 农村地理学。

En medio del trasfondo de atención al populismo en general, es instructivo entender el populismo a través de los movimientos sociales que se enfocan sobre la alimentación y la agricultura. El populismo agrario es particularmente saliente en los movimientos agroalimentarios. La agroecología ha sido ampliamente identificada como dominio de los reclamos populistas sobre gobernanza ambiental y social que rodea los sistemas agro-ecológicos y político-económicos. A medida que los líderes populistas autoritarios logran el poder alrededor del mundo en una época de la globalización económica en expansión y contingentes crisis socioecológicas, las disputas sobre el populismo en regímenes agroalimentarios pueden relievar la actual dinámica pertinente a la evaluación formativa de estrategias alternativas de agroecología política y, en términos más generales, de la gobernanza ambiental populista. ¿Puede llegar a controlarse el populismo por las agroecologías políticas radicales para simultáneamente enfrentar la naturaleza “cabeza de hidra” del capitalismo, al autoritarismo y la contaminación, e implementar formas de gobernanza ambiental basadas en la reparación? Argüimos que la agroecología populista tiene potencial sin utilizar para reparar, y que el mecanismo de enfocar los movimientos sociales en la reparación podría ayudar a abocar algunas de las tendencias autoritarias más problemáticas del populismo.

Palabras clave:

• activismo agroalimentario
• agroecología
• geografía rural
• movimiento alimentario
• política rural emancipadora
• populismo.

Acknowledgments

Our work on ecologies of repair and healing has been supported by our coordinating author working at an institution (Hamline University, particularly through the Food and Society Workshop) and in a city (Saint Paul) that are both engaged in the conciliative process of Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation projects and by the network of youth, elders, friends, colleagues, ancestors, and family that make up the FreshLo-funded Art of Food in Frogtown and Rondo project. We are grateful to the many students who have worked with us on these projects, particularly Monica Saralampi and Matt Gunther; to the generous and thoughtful suggestions of Professor McCarthy and the three reviewers who clarified our observations; and to the Twin Cities Community Agricultural Land Trust, Urban Farm and Garden Alliance, and Farmers’ Legal Action Group and their networks for cultivating reparation ecologies.

Disclosure

Valentine Cadieux, Alex Liebman, and Stephen Carpenter have served as board members of the Twin Cities Community Agricultural Land Trust (http://tcalt.org/), which has been consistently involved in the networks described in the second case (where Liebman also participated as a farmer and partner at Stone's Throw Urban Farm and Cadieux has served on the Urban Farm and Garden Alliance Research Team), and where they have been mentored extensively by community organizers and food and farm advocates immersed in many reparative traditions.

Additional information

Funding

The work from which this article emerged was supported by four programs at the University of Minnesota: Global Programs and Strategy Alliance’s Global Spotlight Program, Center for Austrian Studies, Institute for Advanced Studies AgriFood Collaborative, and the Institute on the Environment Resident Fellows program.

Notes on contributors

Kirsten Valentine Cadieux

KIRSTEN VALENTINE CADIEUX is Director of Environmental Studies and Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department at Hamline University, St. Paul, MN 55104. E-mail: [email protected]. Using art and science approaches to society–environment relations and specifically the political ecology and moral economy of agrifood systems, she builds publicly engaged participatory research and exploration processes for people to learn together about differing ways of understanding and valuing environments and food systems in collaborative ways.

Stephen Carpenter

STEPHEN CARPENTER is Deputy Director and Senior Staff Attorney of Farmers’ Legal Action Group, Inc. (FLAG), St. Paul, MN 55102. E-mail: [email protected]. His work at FLAG has centered on discrimination in agricultural lending, debtor–creditor issues, disaster assistance, federal farm programs, sustainable agriculture and direct marketing, and the problems of farmers contracting for livestock production. He served as Senior Counsel in the Office of the Monitor in the Pigford case and is at present the court-appointed ombudsman for the In re Black Farmers Discrimination case. He has been an adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School.

Alex Liebman

ALEX LIEBMAN is a researcher of plant–soil dynamics for Lurralde, a Chilean team of activists and scientists supporting Atacameño and Ayamaran groups in their struggle for territorial sovereignty and water rights against multinational mining companies in the Atacama Desert, Seattle, WA 98104. E-mail: [email protected]. He holds an MSc in agronomy from the University of Minnesota and a BA from Macalester College.

Renata Blumberg

RENATA BLUMBERG is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ 07043. E-mail: [email protected]. She conducts research on alternative food networks in the United States and Eastern Europe, embodied geographies of food, critical management studies on institutional food systems, and feminist agroecologies and pedagogies.

Bhaskar Upadhyay

BHASKAR UPADHYAY is Associate Professor of STEM Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55414. E-mail: [email protected]. His areas of interest include science as an agent for change in communities; empowerment and social justice for urban minority youth; the intersection of science and sociocultural habits in urban school settings; issues of science learning for students from immigrant families and roles of immigrant parents in their children’s science learning; and social justice and equity in the way that science, food, and the environment are taught.