Operationalising food sovereignty through an investment lens: how agro-ecology is putting ‘big push theory’ back on the table

Abstract

A central question in the current debate on food sovereignty concerns the concepts and approaches to assist and frame the operationalisation of its agendas for peasant-based agricultural development. Another is the search for inclusive methods and language to discuss these operational, ‘territorial’ agendas with potential constituents. This paper argues that both questions call for an investment lens, a complementary approach within food sovereignty that proposes and discusses investments rather than political demands. Decolonial epistemology will treat existing investment lenses critically; however, in doing so it also urges new perspectives on what constitutes investment, the categories of cost involved, and the measurements employed. In following the rationale of investment in agro-ecological theory and practice, the paper next argues that the reconstruction of ‘big push theory’ outside the ‘modernisation’ paradigm that once produced it is possible, and that formulation and discussion of big push strategies could reclaim a space within critical agrarian studies. Big push theory offers a frame for the consistent critique of ‘silver bullet’ development projects through the study of negative feedback loops; and a frame for the study of positive feedback loops, which crucially underlie the proposals of food sovereignty movements for broad, integrated changes in agrarian systems.

Notes

1. Bernstein, “Food Sovereignty.”

2. Ibid; and Schiavoni, “Competing Sovereignties.”

3. Li, Land’s End; and Burnett and Murphy, “What Place for International Trade?”

4. Taking place at the Food Sovereignty conferences in Yale, September 14–15, 2013 and The Hague, January 24, 2014. Issues such as class, the consumer–producer divide and international trade found great resonance at these meetings. See Bernstein, “Food Sovereignty”; Schiavoni, “Competing Sovereignties”; and Burnett and Murphy, “What Place for International Trade?”

5. Akram-Lodhi, “How to Build Food Sovereignty.”

6. With ‘territorial’ proposals I refer to such proposals for investment that are specific to a place and circumstance, rather than ‘blueprints’ to be applied across the board.

7. Kay, Policy Shift; and Kay, Positive Investment Alternatives. See also HLPE, “Investing in Smallholder Agriculture.”

8. Altieri, “Agroecology.”

9. The term is taken from the formulation that decoloniality is built through the ‘humbling of modernity’ in Vazquez, “Towards a Decolonial Critique of Modernity.”

10. Altieri and Toledo, “The Agroecological Revolution.”

11. Ríos, “La Diseminación Participativa de Semillas.”

12. Moreno, “El Fitomejoramiento”; and Ortíz et al., “Logros del Fitomejoramiento.”

13. Ríos, “La Diseminación Participativa de Semillas.”

14. Leitgeb et al., “Academic Discussion.”

15. Holt-Giménez, Campesino a Campesino.

16. Escobar, Encountering Development.

17. Martínez-Torres and Rosset, “Dialogo de saberes.”

18. Ríos, “La Diseminación Participativa de Semillas.”

19. Ibid., 92.

20. Gardner, Frames of Mind.

21. Rosset et al., “The Campesino-to-Campesino Agroecology Movement”; and Machin Sosa et al., El Movimiento de Campesino a Campesino. See also Holt-Giménez, Campesino a Campesino.

22. Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail.

23. Weis, “The Accelerating Biophysical Contradictions.”

24. Altieri and Toledo, “The Agroecological Revolution in Latin America.”

25. Rosenstein-Rodan, “Problems of Industrialisation.”

26. The concept and study of negative feedback loops originates in species ecology, whence it was adapted to the study of agricultural systems and, finally, into political ecology. Clapman, Natural Ecosystems, shows that feedback loops are constituted by material flows of energy or nutrients in natural ecosystems. In human-controlled ecosystems this encompasses material flows of income and capital, as well as configurations of power, attention and incentives. While negative feedback loops diminish the effect of an intervention or shock (‘resilience’), positive feedback loops amplify the effect, often in unintended directions.

27. Holling, “Resilience and Stability.”

28. Ryszkowski, “Agriculture and Landscape Ecology,” 342.

29. Big push theory first emerged in the late 1950s under the umbrella of the modernisation theory of development. See Ghosal, “The Theory of Big Push,” 225; Rosenstein-Rodan, Notes on the Theory of the ‘Big Push’; and Nelson, “A Theory of the Low-level Equilibrium Trap.”

30. Sachs and McArthur, “The Millennium Project.”

31. Sanchez et al., “The African Millennium Villages.”

32. Wilson, “Model Villages.”

33. Altieri, “Agroecology.”

34. Sambuichi et al., “Compras Públicas Sustentáveis”; and CONAB, A Evalução do Programa.

35. CONAB, A Evalução do Programa.

36. Chmielewska and Souza, Market Alternatives; and Sambuichi et al., “Compras Públicas Sustentáveis”.

37. Agapto et al., “Avaliação.”

38. IPC, Structured Demand.

39. Chmielewska and Souza, Market Alternatives, 12.

40. Agapto et al., “Avaliação”; and IPC, Structured Demand.

41. IPC, Structured Demand.

42. Souza and Klug, “A Multidimensional Approach.”

43. Holt-Giménez, “Measuring Farmers’ Agroecological Resistance.”

44. Pretty, “Agroecological Approaches.”

45. Moore Lappé, “Beyond the Scarcity Scare.”

46. Jaffee and Howard, “Corporate Cooption.”