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Reclaiming food autonomy as a response
to crisisRobert Biel
UCL Development Planning Unit
approaches to the topic:
1. projects through UCL
.... some explicitly health-related
London 2062
2. Political Ecology
... resulting in widespread environmental injustice,
deprivation, malnutrition, food poverty
critiquing systems which channel wealth, resources and power to those who already have them
... the food issue is
political!
3. practice in farming
low-input method working with soil as complex system
Political Ecology framework for this topic
this is why we are at the same time exploited, and also messed
up, mentally and physically
Marx: we are alienated ... from nature, and at the same time,
from product of our own labour
‘metabolic rift’ (Bellamy Foster 2009)
traditional sustainable farming
systems slot into these cycles
in nature, everything, organic or mineral, is cycled around
illustration: de Rosnay 1979
in a physical sense, the rift happens when we lose touch with this
at a level of property relations, the alienation or rift is expressed in
expropriation (grabbing, ripping away)
... resulting in disempowerment, loss of resilience, loss of
confidence that we can cope
... both of the land itself, and crucially, of knowledge
in the global South it’s even worse: acute deprivation, food insecurity, land and
knowledge grabbed by corporate interests
... but climate crisis – which qualitatively increases vulnerability –
adds another dimension to the urgency
at a social level alone, this would demand change
technical parameters to understanding and healing the rift
mitigation-adaptation
what’s conventionally seen as mitigation, though it’s really about kick-starting benign feedback loops
the natural metabolic cycle is also a carbon cycle
therefore, as part of
metabolic rift, we could
conceptualise a ‘carbon rift’
soil holds nearly three times as much carbon as vegetation and twice that of the
atmosphere (Yi et al, 2011)
soil conservation is “central to the longevity of any civilization,” (Montgomery 2007) ; but at present soil is
vanishing at up to 50 tonnes per hectare per year, 100 times faster than its formation rate (Banwart 2011)
there are interesting technical solutions to correct this
feedback loop: the more carbon we can get into the soil, the better plants will
grow, and the more carbon they absorb ... thus we simultaneously feed
the planet and solve the climate problem
adaptation
a. diversity of crops and of strains
primarily a question of diversity
b. allowing biodiversity to reconstitute itself (natural
predators, pollinating insects)
wide spread of responses to shocks and extreme events
but the alienation can’t be healed at a purely technical level
also a question of property relations
self-organising nature – self-organising society
... commons
knowledge commons, reconstituting traditional approaches...
e.g. in relation to carbon loops:
recapturing initiative, autonomy,
coping...
food sovereignty
and reclaiming the land itself:
radical social movements initiated in global South
tradition of struggle in this country
Land and Freedom Camp, Clapham Common, London, September 2011
self-organising nature – self-organising society
the alienation or rift is healed through a convergence from
both these directions
