Alliances for agroecology: from climate change to food system change

ABSTRACT

Agroecological models have the potential to contribute to both the fight against climate change and a shift away from the dominant food system. In this article, I discuss the challenges that ecological farmers in Canada are facing in terms of scaling out agricultural systems that will help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon. I draw on Gramscian theories to argue that alliance-building is required in order to advance a counter-hegemonic agroecology in Canada, with those alliances going beyond narrowly conceived class-based interests. I suggest that the challenges farmers are facing highlight the need for a just transition in agriculture, and that the social transformation that this would entail means that proponents of agroecology must consider the positionalities of environmentalists, scholars, farmers and farm workers, and Indigenous peoples across the country.

KEYWORDS:

• Counter-hegemony
• agroecology
• Gramsci
• food sovereignty
• climate change
• greenhouse gases
• just transition

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the following people who offered comments on previous versions of this article: Scott Prudham, Zach Anderson, Elsie Lewison, Becky McMillan, Laura Vaz-Jones, Mike Ekers, Tony Weis, and Colin Anderson. Thanks also to the two anonymous reviewers who offered thoughtful comments and specific suggestions on how to improve the article after seeing the original version.

Notes

1. The figures cited here, with regard to the food system and agricultural production, include land-use change. See IPCC 2019.

2. This number includes 3,663 farms that are certified organic and 769 farms that are transitioning to organic, out of a total of 193,492 farms in Canada (Statistics Canada 2016). There are also many ecological farmers who do not go through the certification process.

3. These are gross farm incomes with government farm support program payments subtracted out.

4. Union Paysanne has adopted the term ‘peasant’ as a political identifier, which mirrors France’s Confédération Paysanne’s continued use of the term, but this is not to suggest that there was historically a class of peasants in Canada (see Dale 2017 for more on Union Paysanne’s struggles for food sovereignty in Quebec).

5. Quotes from Quebecois farmers translated from French by the author.

6. For a complementary estimate, see FCW 2011. Even if these numbers are exaggerated, the point is well taken.

7. La Vía Campesina recognizes the Center Paysan as part of its network of agroecology schools, which adhere to a structured methodology for peasant-to-peasant learning. See www.centrepaysan.ca.

8. See https://nfuontario.ca/new/climate/.

9. These charities are the Canadian Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club Canada Foundation, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Canada, the Wilderness Committee, Environmental Defense Canada, and the David Suzuki Foundation. I also looked at Greenpeace Canada (which is not a registered charity) and Friends of the Earth Canada/AmiEs de la Terre de Québec, due to their notable presence in action on climate change matters. To conduct this scan, I used the “site:” function to search the entire websites of these organizations (in both English and French) for relevant words such as “food”, “aliment*”, “farm*” and “agriculture.”

10. See Dale (2018: Ch. 1 for details).

11. Field notes, Oct. 7–18, 2015.

12. This privilege can also include inherited wealth, which is not limited to farmers involved in intergenerational agricultural operations.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) under the Doctoral Fellowship 752-2016-1032.