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

... thanks very much!

Robert Bielr.biel@ucl.ac.uk