As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. And in the case of food policy, it takes a dynamic, deeply engaged, intersectional grassroots movement to produce transformative policies. Governments will rarely create such policies on their own.
This is particularly true in the case of policies for agroecology, a popular proposal emerging from decades of struggles for food sovereignty, food justice and power over our food system by social movements, family farmers and small-scale provisioners around the world. People can drive change. And peoples’ movements acting together have the power to make policy.
Cultivating common ground for agroecology in Canada
During a two-year research project, I held conversations about agroecological transition with leading food and environment policy experts across Canada. I asked questions like: How do you introduce a really big (and counter-hegemonic) idea like agroecology into a system that is completely unfit for that purpose (and arguably, opposed to it)? How can agroecology take hold in Canada (and more broadly, ‘Fortress North America’), which is entirely captured by the power and dominant narratives of the food industry and resistant to the democratisation and transformation of our food system?
Southern food sovereignty movements had a strong hand in shaping the policy agendas of Canadian and US food movements
Not surprisingly, my research concluded that the transition must be built on deep and broad-based alliances, a strong common cause, and the co-creation of the tools needed for the dismantling, redesign and piece-by-piece rebuilding of the food system. Without these foundational activities, agroecology will remain a distant and fragmented proposition in Canada, leading only to a series of inconsequential transitions rather than a system-wide transformation involving shifts in power.
This research made me reflect on the vital role of social movements in the process of policy change. In countries including Brazil, Senegal, India, Mexico and Cuba, peoples’ movements and farmers’ organisations have had substantial influence in shaping food policies at the national and subnational levels.
A People’s Food Policy
In 2008, the People’s Food Policy Project (PFPP), a Canadian civil society food policy initiative led by Food Secure Canada, adopted the Six Pillars of Food Sovereignty that emerged from the 2007 Nyeleni Forum as our national advocacy platform. Southern food sovereignty movements thus had a strong hand in shaping the policy agendas of Canadian and US food and social justice movements, introducing important concepts like agroecology and food sovereignty into our work. Heeding the call from our Indigenous allies in Canada, we also added a seventh pillar: Food is Sacred.
It took 3,500 people almost three years to come up with A People’s Food Policy for Canada. This grassroots response to the crises in our food systems – millions hungry, millions obese, declining numbers of farmers and fishers – offers a menu of workable policies that can put us on the right path.
The PFPP brought together food, climate, anti-poverty, Indigenous, health, and other movements to build A Peoples’ Food Policy for Canada. This comprehensive food policy platform served as the common ground for civil society engagement and advocacy towards a national food policy over the following ten years. Our efforts came to fruition in 2015, when newly-elected PM Justin Trudeau launched a National Food Policy in Canada, and later created a National Food Policy Advisory Council.
Our experience showed that national coordination and North-South alliance building are essential in advocating for agroecology policies across the continent. Recently, new and exciting forms of solidarity have emerged as fertile ground for collaboration: with powerful civil society movements for climate and biodiversity justice, Indigenous reconciliation and land back movements, racial justice, post-pandemic food systems transition, youth and gender justice, intergenerational solidarity (particularly with young farmers), and justice for migrant workers.
Promising policy levers for agroecology
My conversations with Canadian policy experts revealed a picture of a North American food system designed for maximised production and profits geared to the interests of a few, and insufficient attention to the huge external costs to the environment, health and society. Yet even entrenched systems have leverage points that can be pressured for change. In our conversations, these experts identified strategic pathways, sets of policies, legislative and regulatory measures, incentives and disincentives to create policy nudges in the right direction.
We also identified promising policy levers to enable agroecology in specific sectors (particularly in climate change, environment, health and social protection) as well as at the provincial, municipal and bioregional levels. Nonetheless, the experts were mindful that the sum of these measures might not lead to transformative change, but rather to an incremental ‘transition’ that would keep us locked into business as usual. While transitions involve changes in practice, transformation involves changes in power – as our report notes.
"Transitions involve changes in practice, while transformation involves changes in power." Growing Common Ground
My research showed how important it is for national movements to develop their own citizen’s or people’s policies. A broad-based food movement can then legitimately call for a clearly articulated agroecology strategy that is embedded in a comprehensive and joined up national food policy, integrating agroecology coherently into all major sectors and policy planks.
The lessons learned in Canada are universal. Around the world, we have seen the power of broad-based civil society and peasant farmer movements acting in solidarity, and gaining sovereignty over land, territories, waters and seeds. Beyond defending their rights, strong allied peoples’ food movement can also be propositional, which is what it will take to move towards agroecology policies in North America.
As stated in Growing Common Ground: “Transitions involve changes in practice, while transformation involves changes in power….Only when agroecology is seen as an essential vehicle for change by many movements acting together, can a more inclusive and broad-based platform for agroecology emerge.”
Author: Faris Ahmed is an Ottawa-based consultant and author of Growing Common Ground. He is a Research Associate at the Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems (Canada), and a member of the Cultivate! Collective. Contact: faris@cultivatecollective.org
Sources:
- Growing Common Ground: Pathways to Advance Agroecology Policy in Canada. Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, Waterloo, Canada (2022). This research was carried out by the author between 2020 and 2022 with support from the Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems (Wilfrid Laurier University), Carleton University, Lakehead University, Inter Pares and the National Farmers Union, Canada.
- People’s Food Policy Project, Canada
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This article is part of Issue 1-2024: Policies for Agroecology
