Hungry for Change in Food First
Hungry for Change
Farmers, Food Justice and the Agrarian Question
The agrarian question is about understanding whether or not, and if so, why or why not, capitalism is developing in agriculture.
I get a little impatient with the growing literature on food these days. In an effort to reach a broader audience, the episteme is beginning to elide many of the structural issues; trading in strong messages for “messaging” and offering up faddish solutions to complex problems. On one hand, this is good because the main issue–that we have a dysfunctional food system and that many people are trying to change it–is finally getting some mainstream traction. But it also gives the impression that the food movement is “a mile-wide and an inch-deep.” This is not good and not true. Many people still need to be heard above the din of the dominant food narrative, and to transform the food system we must reach much deeper with our understanding and much higher with our actions.
This is why Hungry for Change: Farmers, Food Justice and the Agrarian Question is such a refreshing contribution to the food movement. A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi, one of today’s foremost activist-scholars on the Agrarian Question, brings his extensive knowledge of the development of capitalist agriculture to bear on the question of food.
In a series of selected vignettes, Hungry for Change introduces us to the farmers and consumers that are both integral to and victims of today’s corporate food regime. By combining moving testimonies with trenchant analyses from the U.S., India, Mexico, China and Fiji, Mr. Akram-Lodhi carefully teaches us “the intimate and intricate connections between money, markets and the emergence of rural capitalism” to give us an historical and contemporary understanding of why the global food system is so destructive and inequitable.
He’s very good at it, in part due to decades of experience in rural research and international agricultural development. Presently a professor at Trent University in Ontario, Canada, Dr. Akram-Lodhi has been teaching courses on the agrarian question to graduates and undergraduates for years. For those unfamiliar with the Agrarian Question, it will seem at times as if Professor Akhram-Lodhi had somehow decoded the DNA of the food system… Actually, it’s the case of a good teacher (and a good storyteller), applying the classic tools of political economy to the pressing issues of our time.
And, like any good researcher, at the heart of Akram-Lodhi’s analysis is a question: “Is the problem of the global food crisis that capitalism has not yet developed agriculture sufficiently? Or is the problem that capitalism has developed agriculture in a way that contributes to the global food crisis, and it is necessary to put need before profit?”
This is the question, because in answering it we must address our framework for understanding change in the food system. Is the food system “broken” and in need of a “fix?” Or is the food system working precisely as a late capitalist food system in a period of neoliberalism is supposed to work and in need of transformation?
Throughout the book, Professor Akram-Lodhi demonstrates how the pressures of the capitalist market in agriculture drives prices to farmers down and how this drives smallholders–those who still produce over half the world’s food–to poverty, desperation and migration; and how the official responses to the food crisis (e.g. World Bank) will aggravate rather than solve the problem.
There are some passages not for the faint of heart. The sections on rice, the role of food aid and the construction of today’s Farm Bill are masterfully done, but like algebra, one still has to apply oneself to follow along (at least I did). It is all well worth the effort, and is a welcome break from the pop analyses that permeates some of the food literature these days.
My favorite chapters are “Tierra y Libertad” that uses Emiliano Zapata and the Mexican Revolution as a case to understand the roots of peasant resistance and “The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost” that chronicles the Green Revolution through the lives of Fritz Haber (inventor of commercial nitrogen fertilizer), Norman Borlaug (inventor of “miracle wheat”) and Bill Gates (monopoly philanthropist). I’ll let you guess who is who.
Like many progressive books on the food system, the “What is to be Done” finale of Hungry for Change arrives at the issue of food sovereignty. But Akram-Lodhi expands it to “agrarian sovereignty.” This is a very important contribution both because it pushes the concept of land reform to include the necessary social and technological reforms needed to make land viable, and because protecting peasant agricultural land from the ravages of the global market is essential for transforming the food system. Another strategic insight is his nuanced notion of the role of the state to ensure food as a national public good, rather than a global commodity. Given the role of the state in creating the food crisis in the first place, this is not a simple case to make.
If there are any shortcomings in this short book it is that one is left wanting more of Dr. Akram-Lodhi’s insights. While he believes in building strong social movements in order usher in food sovereignty, he dedicates considerably fewer pages making this case than he did in explaining capitalist agriculture. And, like most political economists, he touches lightly on agroecology, does not address the global trend towards urban agriculture, the struggle for food justice in under-served communities or the different forms of community-managed food systems that are sweeping urban areas worldwide. A section explaining land rent and the rural and urban land grabs sweeping the globe might help bridge the rural-urban and North-South divides in the food movement.
Granted, all this would have added another hundred pages or so to Hungry for Change, but I for one would like to know what Haroon Akram-Lodhi thinks about these social trends and what political-economic conditions exist for alliances the peasantry. Could an urban-rural/North-South convergence provide the food movement with the social power it needs to challenge the corporate food regime? This book helps us build the strategic intelligence we need to address these important of questions. - Eric Holt-Giménez, April 5, 2013 for foodfirst.org