A Foodie's Guide To Capitalism. Understanding The Political Economy of What We Eat, Monthly Review Press - Holt-Giménez (2017) PDF

"A book for change, a book for the future .
"- CARLO PETRIN 1
A FOOD E'S
GU IDE
TO CAPITALISM
UNDERSTANDING THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WHAT WE EAT
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Holt-Gimenez, Ph.D., is the executive director of Food

First/Institute for Food and Development Policy. Previously,
Eric served as the Latin America Program Manager for the
Bank Information Center in Washington, D.C. He earned
a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies from the University of
California-Santa Cruz. He has taught Development Studies at
the University of California in Berkeley and Santa Cruz, and
for the Boston University Global Ecology Program and gradu-
ate courses in food justice, food sovereignty, and agroecology
at Marylhurst University, Antioquia University in Colombia,
the International University of Gastronomy in Italy, and the
University of the Pacific in San Francisco, California. Prior to
his work in the United States, he worked as an agroecologist
with farmers' movements in Central America and Mexico for
over 20 years. At Food First, Eric's research and writing has
concentrated on the global food crisis, the U.S. Farm Bill, the
expansion of agrofuels, land issues, racism in the food system,
community food security, and social movements for food
justice and food sovereignty. Eric is author and editor of the
Food First books, Land Justice: Reimagining Land, Food and
the Commons in the United States (2017), Food Movements
Unite! Strategies to Transform Our Food Systems (2011),
Food Rebellions: Crisis and the Hunger for Justice (2009 ), and
Campesino: Voices from Latin America's Farmer-to-Farmer
Movement for Sustainable Agriculture (2006), as well as many
academic and magazine articles and blogs.
A FOODIE'S GUIDE
TO CAPITALISM
Understanding the Political Economy of What We Eat
ERIC HOLT-GIMENEZ
FOODFIRST
B 0 0 K S
MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS
New York
Copyright© 2017 by Eric Holt-Gimenez
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

available from the publisher.
ISBN paper: 978-1-58367-659-2

ISBN cloth: 978-1-58367-660-8
This book is a copublication between Monthly Review Press and Food

FirstBooks.
Food First Books is the publishing arm of the Institute for Food and
Development Policy, otherwise known as Food First, a member-supported,
people's think tank dedicated to ending the injustices that cause hunger.
Since 1975, Food First has advanced this mission through research,
education, and action. Food First envisions a world in which all people have
access to healthy, ecologically produced, and culturally appropriate food.
Our work both informs and amplifies the voices of the social movements
actively transforming our food system.
54321
Text is typeset in Minion Pro and Bliss
Monthly Review Press, New York

monthlyreview.org
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I7
FOREWORD by Marion Nestle I 9
INTRODUCTION: Do Foodies Need to
Understand Capitalism? I 13
1. How Our Capitalist Food System Came to Be I 23

2. Food, A Special Commodity I 57
3. Land and Property I 83
4. Capitalism, Food, and Agriculture I 115
5. Power and Privilege in the Food System:
Gender, Race, and Class I 143
6. Food, Capitalism, Crises, and Solutions I 175
CONCLUSION: Changing Everything: Food, Capitalism,

and the Challenges of Our Time I 213
Glossary I 241
Notes I 253
Index I 274
For Manolo: friend, farmer, comrade, who taught me
that hope is not negotiable.
Acknowledgments
THE IDEA FOR THIS BOOK BEGAN with a comradely email con-
versation with Fred Magdoff, who was interested in producing a book
about food and agriculture and asked me for suggestions on a title.
Feeling overwhelmed by the plethora of books on food, I replied a
little flippantly, "How about, 'The Last Book about Food'?" Luckily,
Fred brushed off my remark. Some time later, over a hearty Vermont
breakfast, we went on to outline what eventually became A Foodie' s
Guide to Capitalism. The book, and my own understanding of food
and capitalism, benefited greatly from Fred's insights, suggestions,
and patience during a frustratingly protracted writing process as
work, life, and the U.S. elections led to a stream of missed deadlines.
The silver lining in these delays was that I was able to share drafts
of the manuscript with a wide range of readers. Once a week for nearly
two months, Ilja Van Lammeren, Tasnim Eboute, Francesco Guerreri,
McKenna Jaquemet, Ayana Crawford, and Lauren Tate Baeza met
with me to review the draft chapters. Their thirst for understand-
ing the capitalist roots of the stunning contradictions in today's food
systems was invaluable for developing a text for both seasoned politi-
cal economists and passionate food activists. Eva Perroni prepared
the material for many of the informative boxes. Grace Treffinger and
8 A FOOD I E'S GUIDE TO CAPITALISM
Erik Hazard worked on the glossary. Ahna Kruzic, Alyshia Silva, and
Marilyn Borchardt also contributed with suggestions and help with
the text, title, and cover. Marion Nestle gave the manuscript a full
read, provided many useful comments, and kindly agreed to write the
Foreword. Special thanks are in order for the comrades at Monthly
Review Press-Michael Yates, Martin Paddio, and Susie Day; and to
Erin Clermont, whose patient editing and helpful suggestions brought
this book to its published form. I especially want to thank my com-
panera en la lucha y la vida, Leonor Hurtado, whose love, support,
creativity, and encouragement were the main ingredients in writing
this book. Finally, thanks to everyone who, when hearing about the
book project, said, "That's just what we need!"
-ERIC HOLT-GIMENEZ
GRATON, CALIFORNIA, APRIL 2017
Foreword
by Marion Nestle
WHEN ERIC HOLT-GIMENEZ ASKED ME to introduce his

Foodies Guide to Capitalism, I said yes right away. I love the title, I
think the food movement needs this book, and I am tired of having
to treat capitalism as the "C word;' never to be mentioned in polite
company. Those of us "foodies" who love to eat and want our food
system to produce tastier, healthier, and more sustainable diets-and
to provide a decent living to everyone involved in this work-need to
bring capitalism out of the closet, understand the problems it causes,
and deal with them front and center. Eric (if I may) has done us an
enormous favor by producing this book at this time.
We are endlessly told that the American food system gives us
an abundant and varied food supply that is the envy of the world.
Perhaps, but these purported benefits come at a high cost: food inse-
curity for 45 million Americans (half of them children), obesity in
nearly two-thirds of adults, incalculable damage to the quality of our
soil, air, and water, and foods excessively high in calories, sugars, and
salt. Capitalism may not be the only explanation for these problems,
but it is a great place to begin to understand why they exist.
10 A FOODIE'S GUIDE TO CAPITALISM
We need food to live. But the purpose of food companies is not to

promote our life, health, or happiness; it is to make money for execu-
tives and shareholders. The United Nations may declare that humans
have a right to food, "realized when every man, woman and child,
alone or in community with others, has the physical and economic
access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement;' but
that is not how unfettered capitalism works. Capitalism turns food-a
life essential-into a commodity to be sold like any other commodity.
As Eric puts it:
It doesn't matter if the food is fresh organic arugula or a Big

Mac, teff from the highlands of Ethiopia, or Cheez-Whiz from
Walmart. It doesn't matter whether you need it or not, whether it
is good or bad for you, whether it is locally produced or traveled
from afar or whether it was corralled, caged, free range, or led a
happy life-if enough people want it (and have the money to buy
it), someone will turn it into a commodity and sell it.
How did something as basic to our existence as food get trans-

formed into an instrument for profit? This book recounts that history
and explains its consequences. It addresses questions we should all
be asking: Why are so many Americans too poor to buy food? Why
do so many gain weight and become obese? Why has the price of
fresh fruits and vegetables risen faster than that of soft drinks? Why
can't beginning farmers afford to buy land? Why does the USDA con-
sider fruits and vegetables to be "specialty crops"? Why does the vast
majority of our agricultural land grow feed for animals and fuel for
cars rather than food for people? Following the money is not a bad
way to get to the answers to these questions.
In addressing them, Eric wants us to see the bigger picture and ask
who "decides how wealth will be extracted and who will it belong to?
Is it the consumer? No. Is it the worker? No. It is the capitalist. That's
why the system is called capitalism and not 'laborism' or 'workerism:"
My own work deals with the influence of the food industry on
nutrition and health, the influence of capitalism, in other words,
FOREWORD 11
though I rarely use the term. In my experience, the C word makes

students and audiences uncomfortable. They don't like having to
think about politics or the power relationships that govern how food
is produced, sold, and consumed. But food is political, and deeply
so. Recognizing the uncomfortable politics behind our food system is
essential if we are really going to produce food that is more sustain -
able, less wasteful, and healthier for body and soul-and in ways that
fairly compensate everyone involved.
Let me give one example of how understanding capitalism helps
in my own area, nutrition. I am especially interested in the sharp rise
in obesity in the United States that began around 1980. The imme-
diate cause was that people began eating more food, and therefore
more calories. But why? Genetics did not change. What did change
was the environment of food choice. A look at the bigger picture takes
us back to a shift in agricultural policies to encourage farmers to grow
as much food as possible. Farmers responded and increased the avail-
ability of calories in the food supply to nearly twice the average need.
The "shareholder value" movement of the early 1980s caused Wall
Street to value companies on the basis of higher and more immediate
returns on investment. Food companies now not only had to compete
to sell products in an overproduced food economy, but also had to
report growth in profits to Wall Street every quarter.
Overproduction makes food cheap. Cheap food encourages prolif-
eration of fast- food restaurants, consumption of more food outside the
home, and creation oflarger-and more caloric-food portion sizes.
In this fiercely competitive food environment, companies looked for
new ways to sell food. They put food everywhere: drugstores, clothing
stores, bookstores, and libraries. They increased marketing to chil-
dren, low-income groups, and populations in developing countries.
They did everything possible to encourage overeating. Hence: obesity.
As this book makes clear, such consequences are not accidents of
history. They are predictable outcomes of an economic system in which
profits take precedence over any other human value. A capitalist food
system keeps labor and all other costs to a minimum and provides an
enormous overabundance of cheap food, consequences be damned.
A Foodies Guide to Capitalism takes you through the capitalist

food system step by step. Eric's analysis of this system may be disturb-
ing, but stay with it. If we want to create a food movement with real
power, we need to know what we are up against.
Writing in the New York Times late in 2016, the journalist Michael
Pollan argued that "the food movement still barely exists as a politi-
cal force. It doesn't yet have the organization or the troops to light up
a White House or congressional switchboard when one of its issues
is at stake:' We need both. Most of us troops are too immersed in
trying to fix the food problems that most concern us-whether they
be schools, farmers' markets, SNAP (food stamps), labels, fair trade,
wages, or even the farm bill-to pay attention to the bigger organiza-
tional picture.
If we want to improve our food system, we need to know what
has to change and how to make that change happen. Eric urges all of
us to join together with everyone else working on food issues as well
as with groups working on related social causes. Let's form a united
movement with real power.
Read this book. Consider its arguments. May they inspire you to
join the food movement and help make it succeed.
-NEW YORK, JUNE 2017
INTRODUCTION
Do Foodies Need to
Understand Capitalism?
T he answer of course is yes. Everyone trying to change the food

system-people fighting to end hunger, food insecurity, and
diet-related diseases, as well as those working for equitable
and sustainable agriculture and people who simply want access to
good, healthy food-needs to know about capitalism. Why? Because
we have a capitalist food system. And yet relatively few people recog-
nize this.
This seems odd, particularly for those who identify with the food
movement. After all, one wouldn't start farming without some notion
of growing plants, or build a website without knowledge of web soft-
ware, or roof a house without understanding construction. Yet many,
if not most, food activists trying to change the food system have scant
knowledge of its capitalist foundations.
In part this is because most people in the food movement are too
busy trying to deal with the immediate problems of the food system.
Understandably, they concentrate their efforts on one or two issues
rather than the system as a whole, such as healthy food access, urban
agriculture, organic farming, community-supported agriculture, local
food, farmworkers' rights, animal welfare, pesticide contamination,
seed sovereignty, GMO labeling ... the list is long. These projects
are often funded by philanthropic foundations favoring projects that
address urgent problems and organizations that can demonstrate
tangible, quantifiable results. Given the severity of the problems in
our food system, this is understandable, but this focus often eclipses
work to build longer-term political movements that could address the
root causes of those problems. What's more, organizations often find
themselves in competition for funding, making it difficult to forge
diverse, cross-issue alliances dedicated to systemic change. Intrepid
individuals and food entrepreneurs working on their own in special-
ized market niches are even less likely to address systemic issues.
But there are also larger political and ideological reasons why the
food movement does not know much about capitalism. For the most
part, capitalism is simply not discussed in capitalist countries-not
even in university economics courses-where political-economic
structures are assumed to be immutable and are rarely questioned.
Until the global financial crash in 2008, it was socially awkward to
mention the term capitalism in the United States. This is because
even a perfunctory examination of capitalism immediately uncovers
profound economic and political disparities, thus contradicting the
commonly held notion that we live in a classless, democratic soci-
ety. Those privileged enough to go to college usually need to wait
until graduate school before delving into the foundational works of
Ricardo, Smith, Mill, Marx, Polanyi, Keynes, and other notable schol-
ars of our economic system. Even then, capitalism is often treated as
an intellectual artifact to be studied in academic isolation rather than
the dynamic social and economic system of wealth and power that
constantly influences, shapes, and reshapes life around the globe.
Directed primarily (though not exclusively) to a U.S. audience,
this book takes another approach. It applies a food system frame-
work to explain some of the basic workings of capitalism, and uses a
basic understanding of capitalism to understand why the food system
works as it does. In the course of this analysis, social movements are
discussed, showing the ways in which class interests, social percep-
tions, and political organization can affect outcomes in a capitalist
INTRODUCTION 15
food regime. If you are unfamiliar with this approach to understand-

ing the world, don't be surprised. You're not alone.
In the late 1970s the United States and Great Britain introduced
policies to lower taxes on corporations and the wealthy, privatize
public goods, remove environmental and labor regulations, and lib-
eralize trade. These policies encouraged the rule of what mainstream
economists like to call the "free market:' that is, the freedom for huge
corporations to produce what and where they want, import from where
they want, and stash profits where they want, all the while evading tax
obligations and transferring huge environmental and health costs to
society. This suite of economic policies became known as "neoliberal-
isrn'' because they revived nineteenth century ideas of free markets
in a twentieth century context-to the benefit of the very wealthy.
Neoliberalism did more than create a new plutocracy of billionaires
and the highest levels of wealth and income disparity in history. In
the face of privatization and capital's growing monopoly power, the
public sphere-that part of society where decisions are made by citi-
zens engaged in political discussion and civic activity (rather than the
market) and where public goods are shared-disintegrated. Unions
were crippled, and the political influence of progressive organizations
crumbled, frequently under the direct attack of well-funded reaction-
ary forces. Although these developments are often presented as part
of the "natural" evolution of the global economy, they were all based
on decisions made by powerful wealthy classes to advance their own
interests. Neoliberalism on a global scale became known as globaliza-
tion, a class project advanced by the powerful owners of international
capital we now call the 1%. Neoliberalism reinforces the notion that
we are, each of us, completely responsible for whatever life outcomes
we have experienced. It aims to make us as vulnerable as possible, and
hence more easily exploited.
At the same time, new social movements based on gender, race,
ethnicity, and environment have been growing since ·the 1960s.
Highly fragmented, these movements tended to turn away from older
forms of political organizing like unions, vanguard political par-
ties, and politico-military organizations, which were often viewed
as undemocratic and unresponsive to the politics of identity and

to environmental issues. As neoliberalism gained momentum, the
established organizations of the "old left" became increasingly inef-
fective, while established political parties, like the Republicans and
the Democrats in the United States, moved steadily to the right,
embracing the new model.
The combination of globalization, the demise of the old left, and
the spread of new social movements broke down a lot of encrusted
political orthodoxy, opening the left to issues of gender, environment,
ethnicity, and race. But in affiuent countries, this also produced a gen-
eration of somewhat class-blind activists with little interest in how
the economic system actually works, and little understanding of the
role of capitalism in the social oppressions they were fighting. Critical
knowledge of capitalism-vital to the struggles of social movements
through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-largely disappeared
from the lexicon of social change, precisely at a time when neoliberal
capitalism was destroying the working class and relentlessly penetrat-
ing every aspect of nature and society on the planet. Many social
progressives became unwitting accomplices to the rise of economic
neoliberalism, giving rise to what Nancy Fraser calls "progressive
neoliberalism'':
Throughout the years when manufacturing cratered, the country

buzzed with talk of "diversity;' "empowerment;' and "non-dis-
crimination:' Identifying "progress" with meritocracy instead
of equality, these terms equated "emancipation'' with the rise of
a small elite of "talented" women, minorities, and gays in the
winner-takes-all corporate hierarchy instead of with the latter's
abolition. These liberal-individualist understandings of "prog-
ress" gradually replaced the more expansive, anti-hierarchical,
egalitarian, class-sensitive, anti-capitalist understandings of
emancipation that had flourished in the 1960s and 1970s. 1
The fragmentation, depolitization, and neoliberal co-optation of

the food movement, however, is rapidly changing with the crumbling
INTRODUCTION 17
of progressive neoliberalism. The rise of racial intolerance, xenopho-

bia, and organized violence from the far-right has raised concerns of
neofascism, worldwide, and prompted all progressive social move-
ments to dig deeper to fully understand the problems they confront.
Many people in the Global South, especially poor food producers,
can't afford not to understand the economic forces destroying their
livelihoods. The rise of today's international food sovereignty move-
ment, which has also taken root among farmers, farmworkers, and
foodworkers in the United States, is part of a long history of resis-
tance to violent, capitalist dispossession and exploitation of land,
water, markets, labor, and seeds. In the Global North, underserved
communities of color-historically subjected to waves of coloni-
zation, dispossession, exploitation, and discrimination-form the
backbone of a food justice movement calling for fair and equitable
access to good, healthy food. Understanding why people of color are
twice as likely to suffer from food insecurity and diet-related disease,
even though they live in affluent Northern democracies, requires an
understanding of the intersection of capitalism and racism. So does
understanding why farmers go broke overproducing food in a world
where one in seven people are going hungry.
As the middle class in the developed world shrinks, much of the
millennial generation, underemployed and saddled with debt, will live
shorter lives than their parents, due in large part to the epidemic of diet-
related diseases endemic to modern capitalism. The widespread "back
to the land" trend is not simply a lifestyle choice; it also responds to
shrinking livelihood opportunities. And as young farmers struggle to
access ever more expensive farmland, the public runs up against corpo-
rate intransigence to everything from oil pipelines and GMO labeling
to foodborne illnesses and unhealthy school food. Environmentalists
wage endless battles against industrial agriculture's water depletion,
pollution, and inhumane treatment of animals, biodiversity loss, and
carbon emissions. There is a growing desire to understand the root
causes of these related and seemingly intractable problems.
Activists across the food movement are beginning to realize
that the food system cannot be changed in isolation from the larger
economic system. Sure, we can tinker around the edges of the issue
and do useful work in the process. However, to fully appreciate the
magnitude of the challenges we face in transforming our food system
and what will be needed to bring about a new one in harmony with
people's needs and the environment, we need to explore the economic
and political context of our food system-that is, capitalist society.
This book is intended as a political-economic tool kit for the
food movement-from foodies, farmers, farm justice activists, and
concerned consumers to climate justice and environmental activ-
ists. It is a basic introduction to the economic system of capitalism
as seen through the lens of the food system, though it's not meant to
be an exhaustive treatment of either. By understanding some of the
rudiments of how capitalism operates, we can better grasp why our
food system is the way it is, and how we can change it. Conversely,
understanding how capitalism shapes the food system can help
us understand the role food plays in the structure and function of
capitalism itself. These kinds of insights can help us put our different
forms of activism into political perspective and recognize opportu-
nities for building alternatives, forging alliances, taking action, and
comprehending the difference between superficial and truly transfor-
mative reforms.
What is behind regional free trade agreements, carbon markets,
GMOs, "sustainable intensification;' and the public-private partner-
ships to "feed the world"? Will more organic farms and gardens,
community-supported agriculture, and "voting with our forks"
transform the food system? Will more certified fair trade and micro-
finance rebuild rural economies in the Global South? Can we fight
rising land values and corporate land grabs with land trusts and vol-
untary responsible agricultural investment principles, or should we
demand massive agrarian reform? This book will help you address
these questions.
While activist jargon and the arcane language of political economy
is kept to a minimum here, we will introduce essential concepts of
political economy, and the terminology may seem arcane. A detailed
glossary of these terms is included for convenient reference. For those
INTRODUCTION 19
who want to dig deeper into issues of capitalism, food systems, and
food movements, there is plenty of reference material.
Who owns what? Who does what? Who gets what? What do they
do with it? 2 These are the basic questions posed in the study of capi-
talism. To understanding how a capitalist food system works, we'll
answer these questions by introducing selected concepts from the
study of political economy, a social science that predates economics
by over one hundred years.
Our study begins with a broad, historical review in chapter 1,
"How Our Capitalist Food System Came to Be;' which focuses on the
role of agriculture in capitalist development and the role of capital
in the development of agriculture over the last two centuries. The
early commodification of key crops like potatoes, rice, and corn were
instrumental in European colonialism, U.S. expansionism, and the
rise of industrialization. Their cultivation and commodification were
made possible through processes and events such as the imposition of
enclosures, genocide, slavery, and indentured servitude. These were
facilitated by the introduction of such revolutionary technologies as
the fence (used for the enclosures), seabird droppings (to restore soil
fertility), and New World crops like corn and potatoes (used to feed
the growing ranks of the poor). Our study will discuss the agrarian
question, the New Deal, and the Green Revolution, and will show
how they all shaped the emergence of three historically linked global
food regimes.
Chapter 2 starts of by addressing food as a special commodity.
We'll look at its use value and exchange value. Labor, the often forgot-
ten ingredient in our food, is fundamental to food's surplus value, the
basis for the formation of the "capital" in capitalism. Ever wonder why
organic carrots are so expensive? This chapter will help answer that
question by exploring the concept of "socially necessary labor time:'
Why do we have Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operations (CAFOs)
and genetically engineered salmon? Look to "relative surplus value"
for an explanation.
The appropriation of food's value is impossible without private
and corporate ownership. In our examination of"Land and Property"
in chapter 3, we will look at the interrelated role that public, private,

and common property have played in the construction of our food
systems. Understanding "land rent" reveals how capital's cyclical
crises unleash waves of land grabs and the steady financialization of
farmland. Land use follows both a logic of capital and a logic ofter-
ritory. We'll look at a case study in the Guatemalan highlands to see
how capitalism "drills down" to access and extract resources.
Despite its capacity to generate trillions of dollars in wealth, agri-
culture is hard work and a risky business, made riskier with climate
change. Farmers can't just pick up and move to a better location. The
"disjuncture between labor time and production time" presents sig-
nificant barriers to capital investment. How capitalism overcomes
these barriers and avoids risks in order to profit from agriculture
is nothing short of an economic marvel. Nonetheless, as the food
system is steadily capitalized through a dual process called "appro-
priation and substitution;' it falls victim to capitalism's cyclical crises.
In chapter 4, "Capitalist Food and Agriculture;' we'll see how gov-
ernments have historically dealt with this problem, and how capital
makes society pay for its devastating boom-and-bust cycles. We'll
look at contract farming, CAFOs, and global warming as part and
parcel of the "metabolic rift" intrinsic to capitalist agriculture. Why
is capitalist agriculture considered irrational, and what would a ratio-
nal agriculture look like? Agroecology, the moral economy, and the
diversity of farming styles help us address this question.
How did capitalism co-evolve with inequality? In chapter 5,
"Power and Privilege in the Food System: Gender, Race, and Class;'
we'll look at the political economic history of patriarchy, racism, and
classism in the food system, analyzing the common roots of exploita-
tion of people of color, women, and the poor. How is racial caste and
whiteness itself constructed in the food system? By introducing the
relationship between imperialism and the spheres of production and
reproduction, we'll look at the mechanics of "superexploitation'' in
the production and consumption of our food. The differences of class,
gender, and color in the food system also give rise to opportunities for
alliances and resistance.
INTRODUCTION 21
The list of social and environmental problems caused by capital-

ism-from hunger, malnutrition, global warming, and food waste-is
vast. So is capitalism's list of solutions to the problems it created. In
chapter 6, "Food, Capitalism, Crises, and Solutions;' we'll look criti-
cally at some of the key problems and proposed capitalist solutions,
applying the lessons in political economy learned in previous chapters.
We also describe capitalism's new agrarian transition and compare it
to the agroecological alternative.
The Conclusion to A Foodie' s Guide to Capitalism calls for
"Changing Everything" (with thanks to Naomi Klein). We revisit the
nature of the capitalist food regime and look at the ways in which
the fragmented food counter-movement is converging to forge a new
politics of food. The contradictory role of the "nonprofit industrial
complex" and the importance of building a critical transnational
public sphere are discussed. Our journey through the political
economy of the food system concludes with an explanation of how
to distinguish between strategical and tactical alliances, and a call to
change everything. I've written a personal postscript, but don't read it
until you've finished the book.
For many readers, some of the concepts introduced in this book
may be new and may seem counterintuitive at first, making it a
challenging read. Stick with it. If we can share an analysis, we can for-
mulate a shared strategy. If we can work strategically, we can change
the world.
-1-
How Our Capitalist Food System

Came to Be
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,

Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.
-OLIVER GOLDSMITH
THE DESERTED VILLAGE ( 1770)
F arming began in separate locations around the world as people

domesticated plants and animals, ushering in the Neolithic
Revolution some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Although agricul-
ture did not completely replace hunting, gathering, or fishing, it did
drive a global population explosion, creating societies that depended
largely on agriculture for their survival. Centuries of co-evolution
among people, plants, and animals produced a tremendous variety
of cultivars, breeds, production methods, knowledge, tools, cultures,
and cuisines. These also gave rise to complex systems of governance,
production, and exchange. All of these produced the vast social
wealth without which capitalism could never have emerged.
The continued existence of non-capitalist forms of production
and social organization throughout the emergence and development
of capitalism indicates that this system does not exist independently
and is not the only path to human development. Nonetheless, over the
course of the last three centuries it has become the world's dominant
economic system and has been viewed by many as the ultimate and final
stage of human economic development-even as "the end of historY:' 1
Agriculture continues to play a central role in capitalist production,
and in capitalist development, despite the rise of manufacturing, heavy
industry, information technology, and the service sector.
The Industrial Revolution and Northern Imperialism
The particular role of agriculture in capitalist development was

addressed by classical political economists in seminal publications
like The Wealth of Nations, 2 An Essay on the Principles of Population, 3
The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 4 and Das Kapital. 5
Economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo concentrated on the
nature of wealth creation, the market, and the differences of power
between workers, peasants, landlords, and industrialists. Their con-
cepts of property and commodities, the labor theory of value, land
rent, and the creation of surplus value are still foundational to under-
standing capitalist agriculture.
Our early understandings of capitalist agriculture began in the
British Isles, because in the pre-dawn of the Industrial Revolution,
rural England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland were undergoing pro-
found transformations. Peasant communities were denied their
feudal land rights by large landowners and textile manufacturers, in
what came to be known as "enclosures:' Karl Marx termed these the
"prelude to the revolution that laid the foundation of the capitalist
mode of production:' 6 In order to establish pasture for commercial
sheep production, enclosures destroyed common property rights,
privatizing and fencing off land formerly dedicated to food cultiva-
tion, grazing, and gathering by peasant communities. The enclosures
generally favored large landowners and were bitterly contested by
peasants from as early as the sixteenth century, exploding in riots
and rebellions in the face of the Enclosure Acts of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. The enclosures undermined the ability of
HOW OUR CAPITALIST FOOD SYSTEM CAME TO BE 25
people to feed themselves and created a destitute landless class that

was obliged to work for wages. This "reserve army of labor" pro-
vided the Industrial Revolution with cheap, expendable workers. 7 But
not all of the displaced peasantry went to the cities. Some became
laborers or tenant farmers on the large commercial farms that char-
acterized British "high farming;' a set of intensive farming techniques
introduced in the nineteenth century that relied largely on imported
guano for fertilization. The larger, wealthier farms using high-farm-
ing techniques could produce more per unit of land than peasant
farmers who could not afford these inputs. This tended to drive down
the price of farm products, favoring larger economies of scale, and
pushed more peasant farmers out of agriculture, leading to the con-
solidation ofland ownership in larger and larger holdings. 8 (A similar
process was to occur in a number of Third World countries in the
1960s and 1980s, the so-called Green Revolution, which we'll address
later in this chapter.)
Once they dominated food production, large-scale farmers
ensured lucrative profits by passage of the Corn Laws of 1815, which
placed steep tariffs on imported grain. This kept the price of food,
something most rural people had previously been able grow rather
than buy, relatively high. Though this favored large landholders, the
tariffs were opposed by the emerging industrialists who wanted cheap
food for their workers. This was not out of altruism, but because the
price of bread determined how much they would have to pay their
workers. In other words, "The laborer would get wages enough to buy
his crust and no more:' 9
The widespread hunger in 1845 (which preceded the Great
Hunger of the Irish famine of 1846) led to the repeal of the Corn
Laws, opening the British Isles to imported grain and cementing the
power of the industrial sector over agriculture. The drop in grain
prices did not help peasant farmers, who found it even harder to
make ends meet. Agricultural land continued to concentrate in fewer
and fewer hands as food production was steadily drawn into inter-
national markets. England became the world's first society in which
competition, profit-maximization, and capital accumulation drove
the economy. 10 This pattern was to repeat itself around the world as
the demands of industry first emptied the countryside of people and
wealth and then reinvested capital in the industrialization of agricul-
ture itself.
One of the consequences of this "golden age" of British agriculture
was that the British Isles ceased to be self-sufficient in food produc-
tion. But then, it didn't need to be. Britain accumulated wealth by
enforcing its own favorable terms of trade, subsidizing exports, keep-
ing wages low, and prohibiting colonies from industrializing, forcing
them to buy the empire's own manufactured products. Called "mer-
cantilism'' or "mercantile capitalism" these imperial trade strategies
became a common characteristic of Western empires. Britain steadily
conquered other territories for their raw materials and fertile lands,
subjugating vast areas and people to its own mercantile project, a fur-
thering of what Marx called "primitive accumulation" -primitive in
the sense of original. Referred to as "accumulation by dispossession''
by David Harvey, primitive accumulation continues to this day in the
expropriation of land and resources, mainly in the Global South for
privatization under neoliberal regimes. 11 This simultaneously created
consolidated landholdings, capitalist-oriented farmers, and a class of
laborers that had to sell their labor power to survive.
Although wheat was imported mainly from North America and
Ukraine, as Western Europe industrialized it came to depend more
and more on colonies in the Global South for food and raw mate-
rials. This had a profound impact on food systems throughout the
imperial orbit, affecting landscapes, diet, and cuisine. For example, in
their diet working-class Britons largely replaced beer, which supplied
important calories and nutrients and could be locally sourced, with
tea and sugar, which had to be imported. 12 This fit nicely into the mer-
cantilist-industrial transition, providing a caffeine-and-sugar fix to
workers-subsisting almost exclusively on bread-to dampen hunger
and maintain productivity during the long hours spent working in
the factories. 13 It also created a rapidly expanding market for the tea
and sugar plantations steadily transforming Asia and the Americas
into vast, slave-powered monocultures.
The role of food, both its production and consumption, was thus
central to colonial "capital accumulation" in which wealth, technol-
ogy, social organization, and political power steadily built in the
centers of empire. Non-food agricultural products like cotton and
tobacco also played essential roles, but it is not an exaggeration to
say that seventeenth-century European capitalism would never have
emerged without non-European food and beverage crops such as
maize, potatoes, rice, sugar, and tea.
Take potatoes, for example. Tubers were the caloric foundation
of Andean civilization. Just a few of the Andes' four thousand variet-
ies were taken to Europe by Spanish conquistadores. Potatoes spread
across Western Europe, in large part because they out-produced
wheat, barley, and oats at least four times over. 14 Further, peasants
could leave them in the ground, harvesting them as needed. This gave
potatoes a distinct advantage over European grains that had to be
harvested and stored, leaving farmers vulnerable to hungry armies
and voracious tax collectors. Though potatoes did not replace grains,
they are sometimes credited for saving Western Europe from periodic
famines. On the other hand, the overreliance on just a few varieties-
along with poverty, absentee landlord arrangements, and a market
incentive to export food in times of hunger-also placed the potato at
the center of Ireland's Great Famine. 15
Maize, a staple for indigenous peoples from Mesoamerica to North
America, was brought to Africa in the 1500s where it quickly spread
farmer-to-farmer, revolutionizing agriculture. 16 It was less popular in
Europe, however, because people thought it wasn't as nutritious as
barley or wheat. 17 But slave traders stocking up in West Africa discov-
ered that it stored better and kept more slaves alive in the horrendous
Atlantic passage than did wheat, barley, or potatoes. This made the
slave trade more viable, leading to the expansion of the brutal slave
plantations in the Americas. 18
The role of rice in slavery and plantation agriculture is also tragic.
The first rice cultivated in North America was likely brought from
Africa, not Asia. European colonists had no idea how to cultivate
or process it. West Africans were experts at sophisticated forms of
floodplain and tidal irrigation and adept at the difficult and arduous
process of hand milling. Rice-producing slaves were initially able to
exchange knowledge of rice cultivation for land. This arrangement
ended when the plantation owners finally learned the technology.
African rice became a staple for the enslavement of the very farmers
who shared the secrets of its cultivation. 19
Even fertilizer, one of the hallmarks of capitalist agriculture,
really took off in Europe with the importation of Peruvian guano-
the nutrient-rich excrement of bats and seabirds found mostly on
remote islands-and the scientific endorsement by Justus von Liebig
in his book Organic Chemistry in Its Application to Agriculture and
Physiology. Not only did guano usher in British high farming, it
became a highly profitable colonial business, thanks in part to the
slave and convict labor used to dig it. Historian Charles Mann calls it
the key ingredient of Europe's very first "Green Revolution:' 20
Slavery and Capitalism
Although slavery was commonly thought of as a pre-capitalist form of

production, historians are now demonstrating that it played a pivotal
role in the development of industrial capitalism in the first half of the
nineteenth century. 21 Slavery made possible a cheap, plentiful supply
of cotton for the burgeoning textile mills.
Prior to slavery, capitalist agriculture failed to keep up with the
growing demand for cotton because capitalists couldn't force the
peasantry to grow it on an industrial scale. In the southern United
States, white settlers had exterminated and driven off indigenous
populations to appropriate their land, a strategy that left them with-
out a workforce. The enslavement and translocation of Africans from
West Africa to North America and the Caribbean was capitalism's
answer to the labor shortage.
The lucrative profits from the U.S. slave trade circulated through
a thriving banking sector and were reinvested in Northern industry,
which then sold industrial products from plows to clothing back to
the South. Fortunes accrued and were further reinvested in genocidal
Guano Imperialism
During the mid-nineteenth century, the capitalist world

economy converged around the guano trade, which brought
together the United States, Britain, Peru, and China in a
system of extreme ecological and human exploitation.
Justus von Liebig, along with other prominent agronomists
of the time, highlighted how capitalist agriculture had
fundamentally altered the nutrient cycle leading to a drastic
loss of soil nutrients. This nutrient deficit was experienced
with particular acuity in the United States-especially
among farmers in Upstate New York and in the southeastern
plantation economy, who suffered from a paucity of natural
fertilizers. As Britain had already established a monopoly
on Peruvian guano supplies, the United States pursued,
first unofficially and then as part of deliberate state policy,
imperial annexation of any islands thought to contain this
potent natural fertilizer, rich in nitrogen and phosphorus.
In 1856 the U.S. Congress passed the Guano Islands Act,
allowing U.S. capitalists to seize ninety-four islands, rocks,
and keys from around the globe between 1856 and 1903,
marking an important early chapter in the history of
American ecological imperialism. Sixty-six of these were
officially recognized by the Department of State as U.S.
appurtenances (property attachments), with nine remaining
as U.S. possessions today. Despite the millions of tons of
guano that were excavated and exported internationally,
the excrement failed to provide the United States with the
quantity and quality of natural fertilizer it required. The
exhaustion of agricultural soil under capitalist agriculture in
the eastern United States thus became one of the key drivers
for westward expansion.
projects for westward expansion. The centrality of slavery and dispos-

session for the emergence of modern capitalism flies in the face of many
myths about our food system. As historian Sven Beckert points out,
It was not the small farmers of the rough New England country-
side who established the United States' economic position. It was
the backbreaking labor of unremunerated American slaves in places
like South Carolina, Mississippi, and Alabama . . . After the Civil
War [and abolition], a new kind of capitalism arose, in the United
States and elsewhere. Yet that new capitalism-characterized first
and foremost by states with unprecedented bureaucratic, infrastruc-
tural, and military capacities, and by wage labor-had been enabled
by the profits, institutions, networks, technologies, and innovations
that emerged from slavery, colonialism, and land expropriation. 22
Slavery had a tremendous influence on food systems around the

world. Enslaved Africans were highly skilled farmers who not only grew
rice, cotton, sugar, and tobacco, but were also expected to grow food for
themselves as well as the plantation owners, for whom they also had to
cook. The famed southern cooking and "soul food" of the United States
is an African-American invention with deep roots in slavery.
After the hard-fought abolition of slavery, many former slaves
were forced into sharecropping, through Jim Crow laws that seg-
regated, discriminated against, incarcerated, and exploited former
slaves. Sharecropping was an extractive system that recreated cer-
tain slave-like conditions among those who worked the land but
did not require the landowners to pay for the reproduction of the
labor force, that is, the costs of raising and maintaining the laborer
before, during, and after their productive life. In spite of this, by dint
of backbreaking work, frugality, and cooperation among themselves,
African Americans by 1910 had acquired 15 million acres of farm-
land. Nevertheless, the systematic abuse of civil and human rights left
African-American farmers vulnerable to the cyclical crises of capi-
talist agriculture, leading to the Great Migrations of 1910-1930 and
1940-1970. Millions of African Americans left the rural South for
northern cities in the United States.
Agrarian Wisdom
African crops and agrarian wisdom were the basis for wealth
not only in the United States but also in Brazil. Even though
the introduction of rice into the Western Hemisphere is most
often associated with its arrival in South Carolina shortly
after the founding of that colony in 1670, rice was grown in
Brazil approximately one century earlier. 23 Other crops of
African origin were found in Brazil as early as 1560, including
okra, pigeon peas, black-eyed peas, millet, sorghum, yams,
and African oil palm. But rice had the greatest agricultural
and cultural impact. French historian Jean Suret-Canale
observed that the importation of crops and food-processing
technology and nutritional practices from Africa to Brazil
laid the cornerstone for civilization in Brazil. As one Brazilian
official stated, "It is Africa that civilised Brazil." 24 Three-
quarters of enslaved Africans brought to Brazil between 1548
and 1560 came from the rice-growing region of Senegambia.
Rice was grown as a plantation and subsistence crop in
Brazil. It was an important source of food for the maroons
who escaped slavery.
The enslaved Africans' knowledge base on rice production
was extensive. Enslaved African farmers in South Carolina
knew much more about rice production than the plantation
owners. In 1670, approximately a hundred enslaved Africans
were brought by the first white settlers to reach South
Carolina. Evidence exists that rice was grown there from the
beginning of the colony's existence. Africans' technology and
labor created a multimillion-dollar industry that eventually
provided the revenue for the Industrial Revolution. African
seeds and knowledge also supported the development of rice
production in Louisiana. According to historian Gwendolyn
Hall, two slave ships from Senegambia arrived in Louisiana in
1719 carrying several barrels of rice seed that probably came
from that region. 25
Jonathan Green conveys the ingenuity of Africans coming

into South Carolina. "All the earth was moved by people
only using sweetgrass baskets. They moved earth larger
than the Great Wall of China ... larger in volume than the
pyramids." 26 However, once the enslavement of Africans by
Europeans began, Europeans stole the credit for introducing
rice and the technology for growing it. The Portuguese were
said to have introduced rice from Asia into Africa. Not until
the twentieth century was this misinterpretation corrected. 27
Several indigenous wild rice varieties were found throughout
Africa. 28 The main improved variety of rice grown in Africa
was Oryza glaberrima, which was of a different species than
the main variety developed in Asia, Oryza sativa.
The Food Regime
By the end of the nineteenth century, mercantilism, colonialism, and

industrialization had all combined in a new form of global capitalism
that spread powerfully, if unevenly, around the earth. The empires of
Europe expanded their military and economic might in Africa, Asia,
and the Americas in new and violent ways. The massive increase in
commodity production required the liberalization (deregulation) of
markets so that goods and money could flow freely without being
hindered by tariffs and trade barriers. Financial and banking sys-
tems, communications, transport, society, culture, and language were
all swept into the dynamic system of capitalist relations. The flow
of cheap raw materials from the colonies to the centers of imperial
power transformed livelihoods, territories, and systems of gover-
nance as food, land, and labor became global commodities.
All of the institutions, treaties, and regulations shaping and gov-
erning food on a global scale made up the first colonial "food regime;'
a uniquely capitalist phenomenon. 29 It was the first regime to domi-
nate the world's food systems. It followed the logic and served the
interests of Northern capitalism.
To say it dominated the world's food systems does not mean that
every local and regional food system was completely integrated into
the colonial food regime. Most of the world's people still traded and ate
their food as they had done for centuries-except when they produced
global goods, or were hired (or forced) to harvest an export crop, or
ate any of the international commodities circling the globe, like sugar,
coffee, wheat, rice, and maize. The colonial food regime was the first
hegemonic regime, however, in that it was ubiquitous, and had con-
solidated a powerful set of institutions and rules that influenced food
production, processing, and distribution on a world scale.
New technology and free markets are often touted as the main
factors for the development of capitalism. But when we look at the
emergence of the capitalist food system, we see that regulation in the
form of the enclosures that privatized the production and flow of
goods, and the violent dispossession of land and resources by state-
financed armies, and the exploitation oflabor by coercive means such
as poverty and slavery allowed the system to emerge. This pattern of
regulation, dispossession, exploitation, technological development,
and market expansion was to repeat itself many times throughout the
development of capitalism. As we'll see, these patterns also character-
ize food regimes today.
Capitalism's Agrarian Question
Capitalism is a system in which most goods and services are produced

to be bought and sold as commodities in a market. Labor is supplied
by people who have no way to make a living on their own and must
sell what they do have-their ability to work, that is, labor power. In
capitalism, value is created by bringing labor, resources, technology,
and markets together to create commodities that are sold for more
than it cost to produce them. Capital, in turn, is profit in search of
more profit. Value is extracted and wealth is accumulated in this pro-
cess and turned again into capital. Capitalism as a system must either
grow or die. Because capital is always in motion as owners compete
for more profits and a greater share of the market, capitalism expands
constantly. This is why land, labor, and other resources are often forc-
ibly and violently colonized by capital through dispossession (such as
the enclosures) or war. Expanding markets and access to resources are
very high priorities of the system as a whole, as well as for individual
business owners and managers. These priorities are then posited as
social necessities and this gives rise to the view that our economic
well-being is best measured by our economic growth rate, irrespective
of how such growth destroys the environment, lives, or entire cultures
and societies. Disasters such as hurricanes add to the gross domestic
product (GDP) because of the economic activity of rebuilding. So do
private prisons, the illegal drug trade, and the war on drugs. On the
other hand, the work traditionally done at home by women, such as
cooking and cleaning, child-rearing and care of the family-all essen-
tial to capitalism-are not part of the GDP. Neither is food grown for
self-consumption, nor food that is bartered or given away.
When capitalism emerged, most people in the world were peasant
farmers. The challenge for capitalism was how to use the tremendous
social and environmental wealth held in rural societies to develop
industry, which was much more profitable to capital than peasant
farming. At first, large landholders sought to monopolize the supply
of wool to meet the demands of industry. The original strategy for
accomplishing this was to separate the producer (the peasant) from
the means of production (the land). The forcible displacement of
large sectors of the peasantry created a mass of paupers that became
a potential labor force. Later, agriculture itself was industrialized,
which required capital from the industrial sector, more land, cheap
labor, and cheap food, all largely expropriated and extracted from
the peasantry.
In his book The Agrarian Question (1899), the Czech-German
philosopher Karl Kautsky rigorously addressed the role of agricul-
ture in the nineteenth century development of capitalism. Kautsky
believed that peasant agriculture was inferior to industrial agriculture
and destined to disappear in what he called the "agrarian transition:'
He thought that some peasant farms could remain under capitalism
because peasant families would "self-exploit" by producing food at
What Is Capital Anyway?

The notion of "capital" has generated considerable
conceptual and theoretical debate. Capital can mean many
things. Many people confuse capital with money. Though
money can be capital, capital takes other forms as well, and
is even more basic to capitalist relations of production and
value-generation than is money. One way of thinking about
capital is as "value in search of more value." A person or a
firm has accumulated some measure of wealth-which is
simply an accumulation of value-and uses this to produce
or obtain more wealth. Money is usually involved-to make
more money. So the accumulation of capital becomes a self-
propelling process or circuit; the surplus wealth accumulated
in one stage becomes the investment to produce more
wealth in the next stage:
Suppose "M" represents money and "C" represents a
commodity, like grain, kale, or gardening rakes. Someone
takes money, buys a commodity with it, and then sells it for
money, represented by the equation:
M-C-M
Actually, the point of capitalism is to sell the commodity
for more money than they to produce it, so,
spent M-C-M'
Here M' represents a sum larger than M, the increase
representing the money profit. Over the whole circuit/
process, capitalists appropriate this value, able to do so
because they hold monopoly ownership of the means of
production that everyone else depends upon.
Capital is not just profit, however. Capital can take many
forms as it moves through this circuit: it can be money in
the form of cash or credit, commodities in the form of raw
materials, tools, and factories, as well as the labor embodied
in commodities, including machinery. It also embodies the
social relationships between the workers and the owners of
the capital being produced! What's important to note is that

these things are only considered capital when they are part of
this circuit and when its various phases move seamlessly into
one another. Money sitting in one's pocket or bank account
or idle workers at factories are not considered capital because
they aren't actively moving through this circuit.
Competition, and the drive to increase one's capital,
making more money and wealth, to make more money and
wealth is intrinsic to capitalism. To compete, capitalists must
cut costs, by using more efficient technologies or processes,
and/or paying their workers less. This will give them an
advantage, until their competitors do the same. Then, the
only way to out-compete their competitors is to get bigger
and to access new markets. This is why capitalism is in
constant expansion.
But why can't capitalist businesses just stay the same size?
Why can't capitalism produce a lot of small businesses instead
of consolidating into bigger and bigger operations? The simple
answer is because capitalist businesses eventually saturate
their markets when people can't consume products as fast
as capitalists produce them. Goods and savings pile up and
capital stagnates. Workers are laid off, which further reduces
demand. The only solution is to find new markets, or take over
someone else's market. That is the foundation of competition.
labor costs that were below the going agricultural wage and thus be
able to compete with industrial agriculture, which had to pay full
wages. But because peasants also needed money, they would also
work for wages, providing cheap labor, thus subsidizing industrial
development in the countryside and providing a market for industrial
goods. 3°Contrary to the many happy narratives of modern economic
progress, none of this happened seamlessly.
Russian agronomist Alexander Chayanov worked for the Ministry
of Land Reform in the Soviet Union after the October Revolution
and had access to vast stores of agricultural data. He claimed that
the inevitable disappearance of the peasantry was a statistical illu-

sion stemming from ignorance regarding the internal dynamics of
peasant production and the ways peasant families grew, divided, and
grew again across generations. He concluded that economists were
wrong to treat peasant farms as if they were underdeveloped capitalist
enterprises, stressing that rather than seeking profit, peasant families
strove for a balance between the number of working family members
and the amount of food they needed to maintain the family. They
could sell some of their goods on the market, but would avoid taking
market risks. He believed that under the right conditions, peasant
farming could be just as productive (or more so, depending on the
measure of productivity) than industrial agriculture. 31
Debates on the ''Agrarian Question''· were a matter of life and
death for millions of peasants throughout the twentieth century as
both capitalist and socialist countries raced to industrialize. Although
modern agriculture needed seasonal peasant labor (available at low
cost because the peasantry still fed itself), it also had to move the
vast masses of peasants out of the countryside to make way for indus-
trial agriculture. This was accomplished by the forces of the market,
politics, violence, or a combination of all three. Nonetheless, nations
had tremendous difficulty accomplishing this task. People stubbornly
hung on to their farms and their way of life. Despite the peasantry's
reputation for being conservative, violent peasant rebellions for land
and against injustice have been common throughout modern history.
Major wars of liberation-most against capitalism-were fought by
peasants in Mexico, China, Algeria, Vietnam, and Cuba. 32
Of course, rural people also make up most of the military forces
of governments around the world and few nations, even industrialized
countries, can afford to dismiss or take them for granted. In the late
1960s at the height of the Cold War, the anti-colonial wars ofliberation,
and the counterinsurgency programs of the Western powers, sociologist
Teodor Shanin wrote: "Day by day, the peasants make the economists
sigh, the politicians sweat and the strategists swear, defeating their plans
and prophecies all over the world-Moscow and Washington, Peking
and Delhi, Cuba and Algeria, the Congo and Vietnam:' 33
The hotly contested Agrarian Question of the nineteenth and

twentieth centuries-and the role of small-scale producers in soci-
ety-have persisted until the present day. Just how, when, or whether
small-scale production would or should disappear is still unresolved.
This is because, despite widespread agricultural industrialization and
the massive displacement of the peasantry, the world has about as
many small-scale and peasant farmers today as it did over a hundred
years ago. More than 70 percent of the world's food is produced by
small family farms on less than 25 percent of the world's arable land. 34
Most of these farmers, primarily women, are poor and thus make up
about 70 percent of the world's hungry people.
Understanding these contradictions is impossible without under-
standing the way capitalism interacts with our food system. The 30
percent of the world's food not produced by small-scale farmers is
mostly produced by huge, highly capitalized, industrial agribusiness
operations. These farms have tremendous economies of scale that
give them an advantage in the global marketplace. They constantly
upgrade their technologies and farm larger and larger areas to stay
competitive in capitalist food markets. This is very good business for
the multinational corporations that supply seeds, fertilizer, pesticides,
irrigation, and farm equipment. It is also good business for large pur-
chasers of agricultural products, especially the large grain traders like
Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) that earn only pennies
per ton of grain traded and need to buy and sell billions of tons to
make a profit.
Despite their great size, however, there is only so much technology
these large farms can absorb before this input market of fertilizers,
pesticides, herbicides, and machinery becomes saturated. When this
happens farms either have to get even bigger (thus creating a demand
for bigger farm machinery, precision agriculture services, and more
labor-saving technologies) or small farms must be consolidated into
large farms capable of buying the large-scale inputs. Agribusinesses
are capitalist enterprises. They need to constantly grow. For this
reason, behind their promises to "feed the world;' agribusinesses
are eager to increase their market share by expanding large-scale
industrial agriculture into the 70 percent of the world's food that is

still produced by small-scale and peasant farmers.
Capitalist agriculture's large-scale industrial operations have
been very effective at producing cheap food. The mass production
of cheap food brings down the cost of labor by making the worker's
"food basket" less expensive. This stimulates industrial growth. Cheap
food also means that workers can afford to buy more new products
corning from industry. Of course, large farms and factories produce
much more than workers eat or buy. This drives market expansion,
nationally and globally, as capital seeks out more and more consum-
ers. (Though capitalist agriculture has been adept at producing cheap
food, it is not energy or water efficient, is not good at providing living
wage jobs, and is rife with negative social and environmental con-
sequences that rnainstrearn economists call "market failures" and
"externalities:' More on these later.)
The agrarian transition is a continual process. It is also continually
resisted by peasants, pastoralists, and small-scale producers around
the world, who are forging other forms of production that challenge
the capitalist food system.
The Second Global Food Regime: "Breadlines Knee-Deep in Wheat"
Throughout the nineteenth century most people in the world were

still farmers who got most of their food from their own farms. There
was, of course, a tremendous diversity of practices around the world-
frorn slash-and-burn agriculture, to floating gardens and flooded rice,
to farms that used animal traction and fertilized with cover crops
and animal manure. There was also a diversity of work and tenure
arrangements, from family farms to plantation agriculture, and
multiple forms of tenant farming, sharecropping, and traditionally
managed cornrnunal land.
The first food regime, rocked by international events, began to
change at the dawn of the twentieth century, culminating in profound
transformations by the 1950s and the dawn of a second global food
regime.
The first global tremor was the First World War, fought among
colonial powers. The United States, a latecomer that had largely
turned its colonies and land grabs into states, did not initially join the
fight. Agriculture in the United States was in its golden age. Farmers
enjoyed prices that allowed them to cover their costs of produc-
tion and provide a decent livelihood. This was known as "parity:' In
1914-on the eve of the war-a bushel of corn bought five gallons of
gasoline. No one suspected that seven years later it would take two
bushels just to buy one gallon. 35
Most Americans wanted to stay out of the war, and U.S. banks and
steel companies were making windfall profits supplying capital and
armaments to England and France. Farmers also saw prices and prof-
its rise as Europeans relied more and more on food from the United
States. But when German U-boats sank U.S. supply ships going to
Europe, the United States entered the "War to End All Wars:'
High wartime grain prices, plentiful credit, and new Ford tractors
led to an agricultural boom in the United States. Land values rose dra-
matically. Farmers took out second, third, and fourth mortgages and
bought more land to take advantage of the boom. Financing flowed
and land speculation was rampant. Fortunes were made on Wall Street
as well as in the North American heartland. Then the war ended.
After the Armistice of 1918, European farmers began growing
food again, leading to a global oversupply and a crash in international
grain and cotton prices. Capital investment abandoned agriculture,
bursting the speculative land bubble. Overextended on their loans,
with crop prices hopelessly below the costs of production, farmers
began going broke at the height of the Roaring Twenties, when Wall
Street was getting rich. Throughout the 1920s corporate profits rose
by 62 percent while wages for workers rose only 9 percent. By 1929
the wealthiest 10 percent of the U.S. population controlled 34 percent
of the country's wealth, as much as the bottom 42 percent. 36 (Compare
these figures to today's global distribution of wealth, in which eight
individuals own as much wealth as the poorest half of the world!)
The boom-bust cycle of the "Agricultural Depression" turned
out to be a prelude to the 1929 stock market crash and the Great
Depression. The Great Depression only made things worse for agri-
culture. In recessionary times the capitalist market simply dries up
because of lack of demand, leading producers to cut back produc-
tion. However, for farmers, with their high fixed costs, the response
to a decline in prices provokes an increase rather than a decrease in
production.
Trying desperately to farm their way out of debt, farmers produced
even more food, which only drove prices further downward. But no
matter how much cheap food they produced, the millions of people
who were out of work (up to one in four by 1932) still could not afford
to buy it. Farmers dumped milk on highways, slaughtered sheep in
the fields, and plowed crops into the ground, desperately trying to
cut their losses and bring up prices. Long breadlines of hungry, desti-
tute people wound through the nation's cities even as grain rotted in
silos across the country. The phrase "breadlines knee-deep in wheat"
epitomized the brutal market logic of overproduction within a highly
productive food regime in the grip of an economic depression. 37
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to pull the United
States out of the Great Depression by implementing a series of policies
that became known as the New Deal. He began with the Agricultural
Adjustment Act (AAA), which tried to return to "parity prices" that
gave farmers the same purchasing power they had before the First
World War. The Secretary of Agriculture sought to manage supply
through "set-asides" that paid farmers to take land out of production,
and marketing agreements that limited the amount each farmer could
produce. The AAA levied taxes on processors and middlemen, who
then passed costs on to industry and the public.
The problem of agriculture was not lack of production, but low
prices. The problem of food access was not high prices, but unem-
ployment. The New Deal pumped federal money into job creation
programs, attempting to put money back into people's pockets to kick-
start the economy. The first national food assistance programs were
also initiated to deal with both overproduction and poverty. It was the
dawn of the second food regime. The agricultural policies of the New
Deal set the institutional and regulatory framework for the relation
between food, agriculture, government, and capitalism for the next

half-century. According to George Naylor, an Iowa farm leader:
New Deal farm programs involved conservation-supply man-

agement to avoid wasteful, polluting overproduction; a price
support that actually set a floor under the market prices rather
than sending out government payments; grain reserves to avoid
food shortages and food price spikes; and a quota system that
was fair to all farmers and changed the incentives of production.
"Parity" was the name associated with these programs because it
meant the farmer would be treated with economic equality and
prices would be adjusted for inflation to remove the destructive
cost-price squeeze and the need for farmers to overproduce their
way out of poverty and debt. It was understood that the farmer's
individual "freedom" to do whatever he or she wished with the
land would be tempered for the good of all farmers and society. A
social contract was established. 38
The Second World War eventually pulled the U.S. economy out of
the Depression. The country's labor surplus disappeared overnight.
Women headed for the factories. Agriculture could not meet peak
seasonal labor demands. The United States needed hundreds of thou-
sands of workers for planting, weeding, and harvest.
The nation found its ideal workforce in Mexico. Able to execute
quick, precise, repetitive movements while bent over all day long
under the hot sun for months at a time-despite physical pain-
Mexican peasants kept the U.S. food system running. Without them,
the United States could not have fought the war. Brought in under the
Mexican Farm Labor Program Agreement of 1942 (later the Bracero
Program), over two decades, some 4.6 million Mexican farmers trans-
formed U.S. agriculture. 39 Mexican labor was cheap. Because of their
foreign citizenship and their contract stipulations, workers were pro-
hibited from organizing or seeking redress against the rampant labor
violations that plagued U.S. agriculture. It was not the first or the last
time the United States would rely on cheap immigrant labor. The
Waves of Labor
The history of early agricultural industrialization in the
United States is inextricably linked to the history of
immigrant labor. There have been four major waves of
immigration in U.S. history, the events and policies of which
have shaped-and continue to shape-the conditions of
laborers in the agricultural system.
FIRST WAVE: 1600-1800
Born from the acute need for cheap labor to work and develop
the land, indentured servitude operated as the primary
mechanism for European immigration to the United States
during the early seventeenth century. It served as a labor
system for both Europe's "surplus" people-the rootless, the
unemployed, the criminal-and those willing to sell their
labor and freedom for a fixed term of four to seven years in
exchange for free passage and board. Indentured servants
were quantitatively important in the early colonies that
produced staple crops for export, but as the price of indentured
agricultural labor increased overtime, colonial landowners
turned to African slave labor as a cheaper alternative. 40 The
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database conservatively estimates
that approximately 12.5 million slaves arrived in the United
States between 1500 and the end of the Civil War in 1865,
the majority of them brought to the southern colonies and
states where the warm climate and long growing season made
slave labor profitable. After the end of the Civil War, during the
Reconstruction Era, the U.S. government passed laws to prohibit
slavery and involuntary servitude with the ratification of the
Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
SECOND WAVE: 1820-1880
More than seven million newcomers, mostly from Western

and Northern Europe, entered the United States during this
period: about a third were Irish, many of whom were fleeing

from their country's disastrous potato famine. Another third
were German, who in general arrived with more wealth,
and ventured to the Midwest in search of farmland. The
California Gold Rush that began in 1849 and the building
of the First Transcontinental Railroad from 1863 to 1869
brought migrants from around the world, including the first
substantial Chinese population in the United States. The
large pool of Chinese workers later turned to Californian
agriculture, but rising xenophobia in California and elsewhere
culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which
effectively ended this labor flow. 41
THIRD WAVE: 1880-1920
Over roughly four decades, more than 24 million so-called

"new immigrants" entered the United States from Southern
and Eastern Europe. As agriculture rapidly transformed into
a large-scale industry, the need for farming labor increased
and the United States began importing Asian (predominantly
Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino) labor as African Americans
moved into other industries. By the time of the 1910 census,
foreign-born residents accounted for nearly 15 percent of
the U.S. population and about 24 percent of the U.S. labor
force. 42 The 1917 Immigration Act, the nation's first set of
widely restrictive immigration rules, established the "Asiatic
Barred Zone," which banned immigrants from most Asian
and Pacific island nations save Japan and the Philippines.
As historian Mae Ngai notes, this geographical parameter
"codified the principle of racial exclusion into the main body
of American immigration and naturalization law." 43
An immigration pause occurred in 1915 as the First World
War spread across Europe. As immigration flows began again
in the 1920s, the Immigration Act of 1924 introduced strict
numerical limits, or "quotas," based on national origin in an
attempt to curtail the migration of "undesirable races." The

severe economic depression of the 1930s further discouraged
more foreigners from moving to the United States. In
order to compensate for the loss of farm labor to military
enlistment during the Second World War, the Bracero
Program (1942 through 1964) brought in more than 4.5
million Mexican farmworkers who were granted temporary
U.S. guest worker status.
FOURTH WAVE 1965-PRESENT
The national origins quota system was phased out with

the passage of the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, replaced by a
skills-based preference system, and for the first time since
the colonial period, immigration became dominated by
non-Europeans. In response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, post-
2001 immigration enforcement amplified the significance of
migrant "illegality," resulting in an increase in deportations
and border security expenditures. Today, the vast majority
of U.S. agricultural workers come from Central and Latin
America, with an estimated 75 percent being undocumented.
Underpinned by their political vulnerability, undocumented
migrant farmworkers continue to be exposed to dangerous
working conditions, labor violations, and low pay. 44
"immigrant labor subsidy" transferred billions of dollars in value to

the sector, increased agricultural land values, and turned the Second
World War into an agricultural boom placing the United States at the
forefront of global agricultural markets.
After the war, the large manufacturing facilities producing war-
time nitrates (for bombs) and toxic chemicals (for poison gas) were
refitted to produce fertilizers and pesticides. 45 Since the U.S. mainland
had not suffered any war damage to its productive infrastructure-on
the contrary, it had expanded-heavy industry quickly converted to
peacetime production, pushing out tractors and combines in place

of jeeps and tanks. The U.S. banks were flush with recently printed
war dollars. They eagerly lent money to farmers to buy chemicals and
machinery. Petroleum, cheap and abundant, fueled the moderniza-
tion of agriculture. More land was brought into production and farms
got a lot bigger. Production soared, bringing down food prices. Huge
food surpluses built up. For a while, the government offloaded this
food in Europe as food aid. But when U.S. farmers could no longer
absorb all the fertilizers, pesticides, and new machinery being pro-
duced in the United States, companies began selling these inputs to
Europe as part of the U.S:s Marshall Plan for European reconstruc-
tion. Pretty soon, Europe didn't need more food or inputs from U.S.
companies, either. Europe began to overproduce food.
Instead of cutting back on production, Northern governments
used combinations of subsidies, price supports, and quotas to ensure
a continuous oversupply. Why? On the one hand, this lowered the
price of grains for powerful grain traders. On the other, these cheap
surpluses could be channeled into food aid and dumped into overseas
markets. Overproduction in the North was used as a battering ram
to open up grain markets in the Global South (and to hook Southern
consumers on U.S. products), to the detriment of the unsubsidized
farmers in the South who could not compete. In India, the United
States used food aid as a political weapon to force the Indian gov-
ernment to accept U.S. fertilizers and hybrid seeds. 46 The U.S. price
supports to farmers were lowered yearly. Overproduction increased
year after year, and farms got bigger in order to stay financially viable,
forcing smaller farms out of business.
Most of the benefits of government support to agriculture are
captured by large corporations that revel in the cheap grain, and by
seed, machinery, and fertilizer suppliers. Although public support for
the food system is vital, the way that subsidies and market-price sup-
ports have been used in the United States and Europe exacerbated
oversupply, leading to international dumping driving family farmers
bankrupt. These farmers sold out to larger, more capitalized opera-
tions, leading to corporate concentration in the food system. 47
In part, this was a Cold War strategy. Western governments

were trying very hard to steer what they began calling "underde-
veloped" countries (former colonies) away from the Soviet Union.
Governments in the Global South received food aid, then sold the
food at low prices in national currency. This provided them with rev-
enues for public works (when not siphoned off through corruption).
It also undermined their capacity for local food production, how-
ever, because farmers could not compete with food from the Global
North that was sold at prices below the costs of production. Squeezed
between plantation agriculture and cheap food, smallholders-those
growing most of the locally consumed food-became more and more
impoverished. The result was to reverse the South-North flow of food.
Former colonies went from supplying the North with food to becom-
ing dependent on the North for their food. 48 This simply confirmed
the Western notion that poor countries needed to be "developed:'
Agriculture was to play a central role.
The Green Revolution: Exporting the U.S. Industrial Model
In 1970 Norman Borlaug, a crop scientist from Iowa, won the Nobel
Prize for developing high-yielding dwarf hybrids of Mexican wheat,
which were later introduced to India and Pakistan. Borlaug is widely
credited for "saving a billion people from hunger:' The application
of Borlaug's breeding techniques to rice and maize and the general
spread of hybrids, irrigation, fertilizers, and pesticides from the
United States to the developing world became known as the Green
Revolution. The term was specifically selected to counter the com-
munist-inspired "Red revolutions" that swept poor countries in Asia,
Africa, and Latin America during the 1960s. Modern agriculture was
capitalism's bulwark against rebellion.
The Green Revolution (1960-1990) was a campaign to spread
capitalist agriculture-itself an extension of the industrial North's
economic model-into the countries of the Global South. Though
routinely credited for saving the world from hunger, the Green
Revolution also produced as many hungry people as it saved. 49
On the one hand, the spread of high-yielding hybrids displaced

thousands of local varieties of wheat, maize, and rice, leading to a 90
percent reduction of in situ agrobiodiversity. Because Green Revolution
hybrids would only produce high yields with heavy applications of fer-
tilizer, irrigation, and pesticides, industrial agriculture quickly became
a major contributor of pollutants and greenhouse gases.
On the other hand, because the Green Revolution required capi-
tal input, it primarily benefited middle- and large-scale farmers who
could afford to pay for them. 50 Smallholders went bankrupt, resulting
in the massive displacement of the peasantry, who fled to the cities
in search of work or migrated to the fragile hillsides and forest fron-
tiers to grow subsistence crops. During this period vast slums began
to ring the major cities of the Global South creating, as Mike Davis
described it, a "planet of slums:' 51
As a technological centerpiece, the Green Revolution was similar
to the English high farming that sought to replace peasant agriculture
during the agrarian transition of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies. The rationale of capitalist development-that people should
leave the countryside to work in manufacturing and industry-
concentrated the best agricultural land in fewer, larger, and richer
holdings. The enclosures of the Green Revolution affected not only
peasant land but peasant seeds. Green Revolution hybrids essentially
privatized the genetic material developed by the peasantry over mil-
lennia. Though this material was free to the seed industry, hybrids
do not "breed true" (when seeds were saved and replanted, the plants
tended to express regressive genetic traits). Farmers were obliged to
buy these new seeds every year. Similar to the first agrarian transition,
industrial agriculture under the Green Revolution also depended on
the peasantry for cheap labor. Known as "functional dualism;' the
Green Revolution's dependence on the peasantry was largely masked
by capitalism's celebratory claims of technical superiority. 52
The persistence of the peasantry throughout the Green Revolution
was not only due to the ability of these family farmers to self-exploit.
Because there weren't enough jobs in the cities, large sections of the
peasantry steadily opened up new areas of tropical forest and fragile
hillsides to farming, using slash-and-burn techniques. After a few

years weeds, declining fertility, and pressure from cattle ranchers
obliged peasant farmers to move on.
When the large, highly capitalized farms could no longer absorb
more hybrid seeds and chemical inputs from the Green Revolution,
governments lent money to peasant farmers so they could buy these
products. The combination of Green Revolution practices and inputs
on the best land, the increase in area of agricultural lands, and the
application of chemicals on the peasant farms of the hillsides and
forest frontiers produced a glut of basic grains worldwide that would
last for decades. Unfortunately, the use of chemicals and hybrid seeds
on these fragile soils was not sustainable. After initial increases in pro-
ductivity, much of this land quickly degraded, leading the peasantry
to abandon farming or push even deeper into the agricultural fron-
tier. Though yields were increased using new technology, sometimes
dramatically, much of the credit for "saving the world from hunger"
claimed by the Green Revolution is due to the displacement and vast
expansion of peasant agriculture.
The story of Gabriel Sanchez, a peasant farmer in the state of
Tlaxcala, Mexico, is an example. In the 1960s, Gabriel married and
obtained two hectares of hilly, rain-fed land to farm. In good years,
Gabriel and his budding family produced enough maize, beans, and
squash to feed themselves and sell a bit on the market. Over time
they accumulated a cow, two mules, and a few sheep and goats that
they grazed on communal land. Like most of their neighbors, they
had a pig that ate kitchen scraps. A dozen or so of their chickens and
turkeys foraged around the yard. These typically ended up prepared
in a delicious chocolate-chili mole that I was lucky enough to taste
on festive occasions. The family saved their seed for planting from
one year to the next and always kept a grain reserve on hand for poor
harvest years. When he could, Gabriel worked for wages nearby on
large farms.
In the early 1970s the Mexican government offered peasant farm-
ers credit to buy the Green Revolution's hybrid seeds and synthetic
fertilizer. Gabriel was one of the first in the village to sign up-an
so A FOODIE'S GUIDE TO CAPITALISM
"early adopter" in development parlance. (His father advised against it;

he didn't believe in going into debt.) The government contract obliged
him to grow his maize as a monoculture, eliminating the beans (which
added nitrogen to the soil and were a staple of the family's diet) and
the squash (which helped conserve moisture and fed his animals). This
meant he had to buy beans to feed his family and feed to maintain his
animals, but the yields and price he got from the new maize were high
enough to cover these costs. Everything went well for the first couple
of harvests. Then, since fewer and fewer farmers were growing beans,
the price went up. Since more and more farmers were growing hybrid
maize, the price of corn fell. At the same time, because the organic
matter in the thin hillside soils of his farm was not being replaced,
despite the new fertilizer, Gabriel's yields began to drop. Gabriel rented
some more land, took out more credit, and applied more fertilizer in
an effort to maintain his income. But the hybrid maize did not stand
up to pests very well. He had to buy pesticides, further increasing his
production costs. Hybrid maize didn't store well, either, so Gabriel had
to sell most of his crop soon after harvest when prices were lowest.
Months later, when he had to buy maize to feed his family, the price
was much higher. One year a drought hit. The hybrid maize, unlike
local varieties that had been selected over millennia to withstand
severe weather events, withered away. To make matters worse, his
youngest daughter fell gravely ill. Gabriel sold most of his family's ani-
mals to pay the medical expenses and cover his farm debt. He went to
work in Mexico City on a construction site. His wife and oldest son
grew maize, beans, and squash on as much of the family plot as they
could manage that year and left the rest to be cultivated by relatives.
Unfortunately, the soil had lost most of its fertility. The harvest was
poor. The family was determined to hang on to the farm, but knew that
another year of debt, drought, or illness would ruin them. 53
Gabriel's story is typical of the second stage of the Green
Revolution when government banks extended credit to peasants so
they could buy high-yielding varieties and synthetic chemical fertil-
izers. Although official accounts of the Green Revolution profile the
successful farmers who became bigger and more productive, they
rarely mention the millions who went bankrupt and were driven
out of farming. The agrarian transition in which some small farmers
become large operators and the rest are forced to work for wages-
a standard feature of capitalist agriculture-is often presented as a
natural occurrence or as an inevitable process of modernization that
invariably has winners and losers. In fact, the process is still hotly
contested and continues to be the subject of much debate.
The difference between the first and the second agrarian transi-
tions was marked by intensity: what took two centuries during the
Industrial Revolution took less than fifty years under the Green
Revolution. What made the difference? In a word: capital. Whereas
capital was largely funneled into industry during the first transition,
the Green Revolution funneled significant amounts into agriculture
during the second.
The Corporate Food Regime
Today's corporate food regime-thus named to reflect the rise of

the global corporations controlling our food supply from farm to
fork-was built on the food regimes that preceded it. The Vietnam
War and the 1972 oil crisis were the catalysts that introduced the new
regime. In 1972 oil-producing Arab nations formed a cartel, restrict-
ing production and raising the price of petroleum. Banks filled up
with "petrodollars" at the same time that money printed by the U.S.
Treasury to pay for the Vietnam War began to make its way into
the international banking system. 54 Because they had to pay inter-
est on all this cash, private banks were eager to invest, and loaned
this money generously with favorable terms to developing countries
in the Global South. The United States and European governments
encouraged heavy borrowing, in large part so that Third World coun-
tries would buy Northern technology and hire Northern expertise for
their economic development.
The modernization of agriculture was a big part of this develop-
ment strategy. The Green Revolution pushed high-yielding hybrid
seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides, irrigation, and farm
machinery with the help of the international agricultural research

centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural
Research (CGIAR). Legions of consultants and experts from the
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID), and private devel-
opment agencies worked under lucrative contracts in the development
industry. The billions of dollars in development aid spent during the
heyday of the Green Revolution (1960-1980) succeeded in opening
vast markets for Northern agricultural technologies-and in flood-
ing the global market with food. The oversupply of food drove prices
steadily downward.
Then, in a move to stem the nagging inflation left over from the
Vietnam War, in 1979 the U.S. Federal Reserve tightened the money
supply. With less cash available, interest rates rose as high as 20 per-
cent. High interest rates slowed the economy, creating a recession.
People bought fewer goods on the world market. High interest rates
also meant higher payments for borrowers. This squeezed borrowing
countries that had counted on high prices in global markets to pay
back their development loans. Starting with Mexico in 1982, coun-
tries began defaulting on their loans, sending the Global South into
a profound economic crisis and creating an unpayable foreign debt. 55
Because commercial banks refused to extend further credit, the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) moved to
fill the gap. The bank loaned (public) money to debtor countries so
they could keep up their payments to private banks in the Global
North, doing so on the condition that these countries institute struc-
tural adjustment policies (SAPs). The IMF and the World Bank then
used the SAPs to force countries of the South to open up their econo-
mies to international markets by removing controls on international
finance capital, privatizing state-held industries and services, and
deregulating labor markets. 56 The bank also pushed debtor countries
to dismantle their grain reserves, stop growing food and instead grow
"non-traditional" export products, which would fetch dollars on the
world market to pay back the banks. This was supposed to get prices
right and provide cheaper food through global trade. Coincidentally,
what the SAPs also did was to make the Global South dependent
on food from the Global North. The Northern banks not only got
their money back, they locked developing countries into endless pay-
ments. The SAPs were the first salvo in a global agenda known as
the "Washington Consensus:' which steadily imposed neoliberal eco-
nomic policies around the globe.
In 1995, following the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations
(General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, 1986-94), the World Trade
Organization (WTO) was formed and agriculture and trade-related
aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPs) were officially added
to the trade agenda. The inclusion of the TRIPs was essential for the
rapid global expansion of genetically modified maize and soybeans.
Unless developing countries could be kept from reproducing the
North's new GMOs, the chemical-cum-seed companies like Bayer
and Monsanto were not going to do business in the Global South.
The WTO enshrined the structural adjustment policies of the 1980s
and early 1990s into international treaties (where, coincidentally, citi-
zens cannot rescind them) called Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). The
stated purpose of the WTO was to reduce trade barriers and estab-
lish non-discriminatory mechanisms to enforce global trade rules. In
practice, the WTO has protected the markets and subsidies of the
United States and Europe while at the same time lowering tariffs in
the Global South.
The United States and other countries have also signed bilateral
and regional FTAs that are enforced by the WTO. The 1994 North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the 2004 Central
America-Dominican Republic-United States Free Trade Agreement
(CAFTA-DR) are among fourteen different FTAs signed with the
United States. The FTAs have been widely opposed by farmers in the
Global South because they sanction Northern dumping (selling sub-
sidized grains from the North at below their costs of production in
the South). They are also rejected by many concerned citizens who
oppose the loss of jobs and the lax labor and environmental regula-
tions that are part and parcel of the free trade agenda. Indeed, citizen
outrage against the FTAs is driving much of the rise of neo-fascism
in the United States and Europe. At the time of this writing, The
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership (TTIP)-negotiated under strict corporate
secrecy-are politically on hold.
The construction of the corporate food regime has been rife with
painful contradictions. The Global South went from a billion dollars
in yearly food exports in the 1970s to importing 11 billion dollars a
year in food by 2001. The environmental costs of the neoliberalization
of the global food system have been devastating. Industrial agriculture
has destroyed up to 75 percent of the world's agrobiodiversity, uses up
to 80 percent of the planet's freshwater, and produces up to 20 percent
of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Millions of peasants have lost
their livelihoods and been forced to migrate across hostile borders and
dangerous seas in search of work. In 2008 and again in 2011 when food
price inflation sent a billion people into the ranks of the hungry, the
world was producing record harvests. At the same time, giant agribusi-
ness and agrifoods corporations were making record profits, as were
major financial houses speculating with food commodities. 57
The corporate food regime is characterized by the monopoly
market power and mega-profits of agrifood corporations, globalized
meat production, the emergence of agrofuels, and the devastating
expansion of palm and soy plantations. Virtually all the world's food
systems are tied in to today's regime, controlled by a far-flung agri-
food industrial complex, made up of huge monopolies like Monsanto,
Syngenta, and Bayer (all in the process of different mergers), and ADM,
Cargill, Yara, Coca-Cola, Tesco, Carrefour, Walmart and even on-line
giant Amazon (which recently acquired Whole Foods). Together,
these corporations are powerful enough to dominate the govern-
ments and the multilateral organizations that make and enforce the
regime's rules for trade, labor, property and technology. This politi-
cal-economic partnership is supported by public institutions like the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the World Food
Program, USAID, the USDA, the World Trade Organization, and pri-
vate fortunes like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Liberalization and Reform
Like the larger capitalist system of which they are a part, global food
regimes alternate between periods of liberalization, characterized by
unregulated markets, corporate privatization, and massive concentra-
tions of wealth, and periods of devastating financial busts (like the
Roaring Twenties and the stock market crash of 1929). When these
busts provoke widespread social unrest-threatening profits and
governability-governments usher in reformist periods in which
markets, supply, and consumption are reregulated to rein in the crisis
and restore stability to the regime. Infinitely unregulated markets
would eventually destroy both society and the natural resources that
the regime depends on for profits. Therefore, while the "mission" of
reform is to mitigate the social and environmental externalities of the
corporate food regime, its "job" is identical to that of the liberal trend:
the perpetuation of the corporate control of the food system. Though
liberalization and reform may appear politically distinct, they are
actually two sides of the same system.
Reformists dominated the global food regime from the Great
Depression of the 1930s until Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher
ushered in our current era of neoliberal "globalization" in the 1980s,
characterized by deregulation, privatization, and the growth and
consolidation of corporate monopoly power in food systems around
the globe. With the global food and financial crises of 2007-2010,
desperate calls for reform have sprung up worldwide. However, few
substantive reforms have been forthcoming, and most government
and multilateral solutions simply call for more of the same policies
that brought about the crisis to begin with: extending liberal (free)
markets, privatizing common resources (like forests and the atmo-
sphere), and protecting monopoly concentration while mediating the
regime's collateral damage to community food systems and the envi-
ronment. Unless there is strong pressure from society, reformists will
not likely affect, much less reverse, the present neoliberal direction of
the corporate food regime.
Conclusion: Food and the Logic of Capital
The role of agriculture in the rise of capitalism and the role of capi-
talism in the food system spans several centuries. Understanding
this history is essential in understanding the food system because as
a capitalist food system it is going to work the way capitalism does.
Food-from seed to plate-is organized in a way that generates the
highest possible global cash flows, regardless of the consequences. 58
The history of capitalism illustrates a typical trajectory, in which the
system shifts from liberal market periods characterized by deregu-
lation, privatization, "free trade;' and corporate dominance, to
reformist periods in which supply and trade are regulated, the gov-
ernment invests in the economy, and the public sphere is dominant.
Our food system, as this exploration of the three global food regimes
demonstrates, is central to this process.
In her book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate,
Naomi Klein points out that the present neoliberal form of capital-
ism, a form that simply shows the nature of capitalism as a system, is
incompatible with reversing climate change. 59 It is also incompatible
with a healthy, equitable, and sustainable food system.
The tendency of capitalism is to constantly grow and expand; to
concentrate more and more monopoly power in the hands of a few
firms; to pass off capital's social and environmental costs to society
(or turn them into a market) and to experience cyclical crises of over-
production and economic boom-busts. That is also the nature of the
capitalist food system.
This is why calls to "fix a broken food system'' are misplaced. To
call the system broken is to believe it once worked well for people,
the economy, and the environment. This would mean ignoring the
three centuries of violence and destruction characterizing global food
systems since the first food regime. The food system is not broken;
rather, it is working precisely as a capitalist food system is supposed to
work. That is the first thing we need to realize if we want to change it.
-2-
Food, a Special Commodity
C ommodities are so central to capitalism that Karl Marx started

his multivolume opus Capital with an explanation of them:
A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that
by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another.
The nature of such wants, whether for instance they spring from
the stomach or from folly makes no difference. 1
That's right, under the capitalist mode of production food is a

commodity, just like any other. It doesn't matter if the food is fresh
organic arugula or a Big Mac, teff from the highlands of Ethiopia, or
Cheez Whiz from Walmart. It doesn't matter whether you need it or
not, whether it is good or bad for you, whether it is locally produced
or traveled from afar, or whether it was corralled, caged, free range,
or led a happy life. If enough people want it and have the money
to buy it, someone will turn it into a commodity and sell it. And,
of course, even if people don't know they want it, companies will
do their best through the wonders of advertising to try to convince
them to buy it, in effect creating a market for a new (or even a slightly
changed) food product.
Marx's writings provide perhaps the most exhaustive examination

of what capitalism is and why it works the way it does. We are not
going to present Marx's inquiry into capitalism here (For those inter-
ested in it, there are excellent online classes and companion guides.) 2
However, here we are going to draw on some of Marx's key concepts
from Capital in order to explain why and how the capitalist food
system works as it does. Like Marx, we'll start with the commodity.
Because it satisfies the basic human need to eat, food is at the
core of any society. Without food, capitalism or any other economic
system would grind to a halt. We incorporate it into our bodies and
can't live very long without it. Food is clearly a special commodity,
with essential properties that make it unlike all others. Food's differ-
ence is important, though in capitalism, it is just another product that
is bought and sold. 3
As a commodity, food-like shirts, automobiles, or smart-
phones-is produced to be sold in a market. The production and sale
of food commodities responds to market demand, which is different
from need. If you have enough money you can buy as much food
as you like. Those who need food but can't afford it must produce it
themselves, barter for it, steal it, or rely on charity. Or they can go
hungry, as do over one billion people around the world.
Like all commodities, food embodies different forms of value
(which is explored later in this chapter). Because food is indispens-
able to human labor, and since human labor is a part of the value
of all commodities, the value of food permeates the entire economic
system. Just how is the value of food determined? And how does
food's value affect its price? Why is organic food more expensive than
conventional food? 4 Why is food from large-scale, industrial mono-
cultures and confined animal feedlot operations cheaper than food
from small, sustainable family farms? How does food's value affect
our health and the environment?
Partial answers to these questions can be found in the laws of
supply and demand. For example, when affluent consumers in Europe
and the United States suddenly discovered quinoa, they were will-
ing to pay high prices for the relatively limited supply of this ancient
FOOD, A SPECIAL COMMODITY 59
Andean staple. The "poor people's food" quickly became too expen-
sive for the poor, forcing them to look to cheap imported bread and
pastas for nourishment. On the production side, traditional quinoa
farmers were pushed out of the market as the crop was moved from
the terraced hillsides, where it was part of a complex cropping and
animal husbandry rotation system, to the bottomland pastures where
it is now cultivated as a monocrop in large, mechanized fields. These
fragile grazing areas, which have sustained llamas for millennia,
are disappearing under the quinoa boom, resulting in erosion, dust
storms, and hardship for traditional communities. 5
Another reason is economies of scale. Large farms, even though
they frequently produce less per acre than small farms, have more
market power in buying and selling than small farms, can leverage
more capital (and usually pay lower interest rates), and usually ben-
efit from more direct and indirect subsidies than do small farms. Large
industrial farms are made possible by cheap petroleum and natural
gas, as well as internal combustion engines that allow farmers to work
larger and larger plots of land without increasing labor costs. Because
of mechanization, large farms have lower labor costs per acre ofland or
per amount of food produced than small farms. They also replace nitro-
gen-fixing cover crops, legume hay crops, and bulky animal manure
with concentrated synthetic fertilizers. Large monoculture production
allows for the mass standardization of cultivation, processing, distribu-
tion and sale, all of which lower market transaction costs for each ton
of food produced. This increases the labor productivity of the industrial
farm in relation to other farms. Thus, fewer farmers can produce more
food by cultivating more land. The average area ofland cultivated by a
farmer in the United States is fifty times the world average. 6
Of course, the advantages in labor productivity also come at a
high energy cost, the true price of which is not paid for by industrial
agriculture. 7 Nor does "mass food" pay for any of the social and envi-
ronmental costs caused by the industrial model of food production,
such as pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, food contamination,
antibiotic resistant bacteria, diet-related diseases, poverty, disposses-
sion, and displacement.
Small farms, organic or not, are less like these standardized

"factories in the field" and more like intensively complex, knowl-
edge-based systems that demand lots of expertise, thus keeping labor
costs high relative to conventional products. In addition, the social
and environmental benefits of many of these farms, for example, soil
and water conservation, high agrobiodiversity and species richness,
and rural employment are not recognized by the market nor remu-
nerated by society. 8
There are many ways we can look at food-as particular parts of a
culture, the amount of energy used to produce it, access to land, the
phenomenon of hunger amid plenty, and so on. But most critical for
understanding food in a capitalist food system is the fact that food is
a commodity, valued not just as sustenance but as potential capital.
Food has a use value (to feed people) and an exchange value (as a com-
modity). But before the market even kicks in, the amount of socially
necessary labor time has defined the parameters of food's price.
Use Value, Exchange Value, and Socially Necessary Labor Time
Use value is a measure of the usefulness of a thing. The usefulness of

food is that it sustains us, can be pleasurable to consume, and pro-
vides us the energy and nutrients we need to live, work, play, and
reproduce. The use value of food, a commodity we eat every day, is
fundamentally different from the use value of a shirt, an automobile,
or a smartphone. But all commodities must be traded in a market-
place on the basis of some kind of common measure. Money is the
medium through which this exchange occurs and thus price is the
measure offood's exchange value. The exchange value of a commodity
is roughly equal to the cost of its production plus profit. But if com-
modities have different use values, what makes the exchange value
for a certain amount of food commensurate with the exchange value
of a car or a smartphone? This issue is confounded even more by the
vast differences in wealth and income in our society. Food to hungry
people has a huge use value, but they don't have enough money to
purchase it. The price of food doesn't (and can't) take into account the
needs of people with low ability to pay, what the economists call a lack
of effective demand.
What value is common to all commodities? All commodities,
including food, are the products of human labor. Even honey, made
by the planet's beleaguered bees, needs to be collected and processed
by human labor. Wild mushrooms still need to be gathered; salt
needs to be mined or produced in evaporating ponds; and wild fish
must be caught. Even the new, fully automated parlors for milking
cows need human labor to make and maintain the milking machines
and care for the animals. One way or another, human labor-physical
and mental-is common to all commodities and directly or indirectly
embeds the value of labor into everything we buy and sell.
The value oflabor within our food isn't easily perceived. As David
Harvey says, "When you go to the supermarket you can see the
exchange values [prices] but you can't see or measure the human labor
embodied in the commodities directly. [The] embodiment of human
labor has a phantom-like presence on the supermarket shelves. Think
of that next time you are in a supermarket surrounded by these phan-
toms!" 9 In addition to not knowing the amount oflabor it took to get
a particular product to the supermarket shelf (including its packag-
ing, an important part of corporate sales efforts) different products
might have different markups, or rates of profit. Thus the price of
a product, its exchange value, supplies little information about the
labor needed for its production.
One reason the labor in commodities is phantom-like is because
it is abstract. The societal value of labor can't be calculated by simply
adding up the amount of labor time expended in producing a pound
of broccoli in California's coastal valleys, but depends on the amount
of socially necessary labor time needed for its production. The value of
labor in a commodity is based on the average levels of worker produc-
tivity in a given society. This is why we don't pay more for the exact
same product that took more labor time to produce than the one
with less labor time. If you took your home-cultivated broccoli to the
supermarket, it would sell at close to the same price as its industrial
cousins, unless the store could distinguish it in some way from them.
Here's how the average levels of worker productivity works:

Let's compare two hypothetical farms in the United States, one
organic and one conventional. The ten-acre organic farm grows veg-
etables 10 months of the year and employs an average of 10 people. It
produces 10 tons (T) of vegetables per acre each year for a total of 100
T /yr. That means each person's labor produces the equivalent of 10 TI
yr., or a ton a month. So, each ton of produce "embodies" one month
of a worker's labor. Now look at the neighboring 100-acre conven-
tional farm, also employing an average of 10 people over 10 months.
Assuming yields are the same at lOT/acre (in the United States, they
are typically from 9 to 20 percent more) total production is 1,000 tons.
Each of these tons contains just 1I10 of one month of a worker's labor.
Even though certified organic produce is often two or three times
more expensive than conventional produce, by a straight-line labor
calculation in our example it should cost 10 times more, which of
course it does not. That is because the value oflabor in the commod-
ity-organic or conventional-is primarily determined by average
level of socially necessary labor time (social within the framework of
a capitalist system of production, not in terms of what would be best
for society as a whole), which in this case is the labor time needed to
produce conventional food. The amount and the cost of socially nec-
essary labor depends on how much it costs to produce labor power in
a society; that is, how many years and resources it takes to raise and
train a worker to a needed level of skills, how much it costs to feed,
clothe, house, and maintain her or him, the costs of health care and
retirement, and more. This is referred to as the cost of reproduction of
the worker's labor.
Once the value of the socially necessary labor time is established
for the commodity, a lot of other market factors come into play-
like a person's willingness and ability to pay more for organic, the
high costs of machinery and chemical inputs of conventional farms,
lower transaction costs for large farms, the willingness of small-scale
farmers to work below the minimum wage, the possibility of direct
marketing and certified organic "premiums;' among other things.
Regardless, the difference in price between the two is still a fraction
Figure 2.1: Socially Necessary Labor Time
Source: Alyshia Silva, Food First.

of the difference in labor input because the commodity's value is not

determined by individual labor but by socially necessary labor time.
But, you say, an organic carrot is not the same product as a con-
ventional carrot! The organic carrot has no pesticide residue, did not
use synthetic fertilizers, and did not release toxins into the environ-
ment! Well, fair enough, but isn't it interesting that organic farmers
must charge more for a product that uses less external inputs? The
reason is that the price of the extra labor power used in organic pro-
duction is not determined by the organic production process itself
but by the cost of socially necessary labor in agriculture, generally.
And because so much agricultural production is highly mechanized,
the socially necessary labor time to produce a carrot, a potato, or a
chicken has been reduced to a very low amount.
When we inquire into the commodity's value (rather than just the
price) the question "Why is organic so expensive?" becomes "Why
isn't organic more expensive?" The answer is that once an organic
good becomes a commodity, its exchange value will be largely deter-
mined by the amount of socially necessary labor time to produce
a similar conventional product. It appears that mechanization of
conventional agriculture is the reason for the low value of socially
necessary labor. But this is only half the story. The other half is that
labor is also exploited in the food system. Its value is actually much
higher than its cost in the labor marketplace. The evidence for this is
the abject poverty of farmworkers and foodworkers. It is fair to say
that they are super-exploited, being paid wages too low to support
themselves and their families at an average standard ofliving.
Ever since peasants were pushed off the land and made depen -
dent on wages, agricultural labor has been paid far less than its
social value (what it costs to reproduce a farmworker's capacity
to work), much less what it adds to the price (exchange value) of
food products. Today agriculture and food processing in the United
States and Western Europe largely depend on undocumented labor.
Undocumented workers-without whose labor power the food
system would collapse-are criminalized by definition. This status
makes it extremely difficult for them to demand living wages or basic
Coalition of lmmokalee Workers
The small farm town of lmmokalee, Florida, located forty

miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, is the epicenter of
Florida's $650 million fresh tomato industry and home to
the state's largest farmworker community. The Coalition of
lmmokalee Workers (CIW), a worker-based human rights
organization, has organized for the labor rights of tomato
pickers since the early 1990s. Built on a foundation of
farmworker community organizing and bolstered by a national
network of churches, students, and consumer activists, the
CIW has fought to address the precarious conditions faced
by Florida's agricultural workers: their poverty, occupational
hazards, vulnerability to unemployment, and subjection to
slavery and irregular immigration status.10 The organization's
work encompasses three broad and overlapping campaigns:
the Fair Food Program (FFP), the Anti-Slavery Campaign, and
the Campaign for Fair Food, which builds alliances between
farmworkers and consumers to demand major corporate
buyers sign on to the Fair Food Program. Signatories to the
CIW's Fair Food Program (FFP) make a commitment to a wage
premium in their supply chain in the form of a "penny per
pound" of harvested tomatoes, compliance with the Fair Food
Code of Conduct, the provision of worker-to-worker education
sessions, a worker-triggered complaint resolution mechanism,
and the establishment of health and safety committees
on every participating farm.11 To date, fourteen major food
retailers have signed FFP agreements, including Walmart,
McDonald's, Subway, Taco Bell, Burger King, and Whole
Foods. Placing workers' agency at the center of the campaign
is key to the FF P's success. The Fair Food Program is a workers'
rights program designed, monitored, and enforced by the
workers themselves.12 Direct agreements with food retailers
and growers serve to shape a new geopolitics of food
production and labor, one that is worker-driven and not
dependent on the good will of corporations to bring justice

to Florida's fields.
The CIW's Anti-Slavery Program has uncovered,
investigated, and assisted in the prosecution of numerous
multi-state, multi-worker farm slavery operations across
the Southeastern United States, helping liberate over 1,200
workers held against their will. The U.S. Department of State
credits the CIW with "pioneering" the worker-centered and
multi-sectoral approach to prosecutions, and hails the CIW's
work on some of the earliest cases as the "spark" that ignited
today's national anti-slavery movement.13
labor rights. Further, the cost of what it takes to feed, raise, care for
and educate a worker from birth to working age (the costs ofrepro-
duction) are assumed by the immigrants' countries of origin and is
free to their employers in the rich nations, such as the United States
and the nations of Western Europe. The low cost of immigrant labor
works like a tremendous subsidy, imparting value to crops and agri-
cultural land. This value is captured by capitalists across the food
chain, but not by the worker. It is also captured by governments, for
example, through taxes and Social Security, which immigrant work-
ers pay, but get little or no benefit from. The effect of criminalizing
immigrant labor is to drive down its cost while passing the value of
immigrant labor power up the food chain.
This helps explain why the tendency in organic farming is to shift
from small, diversified labor and knowledge-intensive farms to large,
capital-intensive organic monocultures. These are the farms that giant
supermarket chains like Walmart, Tesco, and Carrefour buy from, not
just because transaction costs are lower with large economies of scale,
but because Walmart can pay less for products from large industrial
organic farms, which will be delivered on familiar, standardized pal-
lets on a fixed schedule. The downward pressure of socially necessary
labor time on wages also helps explain the growing conflict between
small to medium and large-scale organic farms and between indig-
enous peasant farmers and new mechanized farms producing ancient
crops like quinoa for trendy commodity markets. The combination of

mechanization, quantity buyers, and regulations that favor large-scale
production for large-scale distribution lowers the value of socially
necessary labor time (that is, it lowers the average amount of labor
needed to produce a commodity) and favor large farms-organic and
otherwise.
The commodity nature of food leads to the differentiation of
the agricultural sector. Large farms get bigger as they buy out mid-
size farms. Small conventional farms get even smaller and off-farm
income becomes more and more important to livelihoods. The "dis-
appearing middle" of the U.S. farm sector is a reflection of capitalist
differentiation in agriculture. Large mega-farms are growing a larger
and larger share of our food. 14 Even though the number of very small
farms is growing in the United States (especially those operated by
women and farmers of color), they aim mainly to sell in niche mar-
kets and their percentage of total food production is small. 15 The same
trend applies to organic farms.
Notice that nothing about large-scale industrial farming and low
values of socially necessary labor time (on conventional or organic
farms) has anything to do with sustainability, which encompasses
environmental and social considerations. Large organic farms gener-
ally use procedures best described as "input substitution;' using large
amounts of products that have been approved by the U.S. Department
of Agriculture's National Organic Standards Board. Large, mecha-
nized organic farms use copious amounts of petroleum, over-apply
organic pesticides and fertilizers, and ship their produce thousands of
miles in plastic containers to supply uniform organic winter vegeta-
bles in Northern climates. This kind of industrialized organic farming
can't be considered "sustainable;' no matter how green the label.
So how do small commercial farms-organic or otherwise-com -
pete with large, capital-intensive farms? The simple answer is, most
don't.
Most of the world's 1.5 billion small-scale and peasant farmers
find a niche market where they do not compete with industrial agri-
culture. Examples are community-supported agriculture (CSA), such
as farmers' markets or farms that sell directly to local restaurants, or

farmers who produce primarily for family consumption and barter,
selling only a small part of their production on the market. They also
economize by using unpaid family labor, cut costs by using on-farm
agroecological methods to maintain fertility and manage pests, and
supplement farm income with off-farm employment. Most small
farmers don't make much money. That doesn't mean that they all live
poorly-though many do-but that they operate outside the circuits
of capital and do not commodify their products or all of their labor.
This kind of livelihood strategy is based on use values rather than
exchange values, growing food for people not profits.
Of course, there are many small-scale farmers who do manage to
make a decent living despite the small size of their operations. They
do this by carefully combining different forms of production and
exchange (like agroecological, organic, non-organic, market-oriented,
self-provision, and barter) into particular farming styles that lower
costs and reduce their exposure to market risk. 16 For these strategies
to be effective within the larger capitalist economy, it usually requires
specific geographic and regulatory conditions that are favorable (or
less adversarial) to small farmers, as well as savvy farmers. Small-scale
co-op dairy farmers in Norway have a protective monopoly on milk
and cheese production that provides them with a high income (sub-
sidized largely by oil revenues). Small-scale Asian-American farmers
in the Sacramento Delta region of California own small plots of rich
agricultural land and produce locally for tightly managed ethnic mar-
kets in Sacramento and San Francisco. They bought small, low-lying
farms cheaply because their area was prone to seasonal flooding.
Then, when the Delta levee system was extended, they found them-
selves in possession of prime agricultural land in close proximity to
major urban centers where Asian communities were eager to buy
Asian products.
One way or another, these farmers change the relation between
the use value and exchange value of food, defying the logic of the
commodity markets that would put them out of business. In doing so,
they are producing vast amounts of use value that either circulate as
goods rather than commodities or that have established a commodity

market that is protected from global circuits of commodity capital.
This is one reason why their farms are generally vilified by corpora-
tions and institutions in the corporate food regime.
Food's use values and exchange values are interdependent. Socially
necessary labor time must be expended to produce a commodity that
we can consume in order for it to be exchanged as a commodity.
Break any link in this chain of relations and we can no longer talk of a
commodity but of a "good" that is traded outside of normal commod-
ity markets. If you grow your own vegetables for self-consumption or
give some to your neighbor, you eliminate exchange value. Produce
a product that does not fulfill any wants or needs, and it has no use
value. Sit around idly instead of expending socially necessary labor
time, and you won't have a commodity to sell (unless you work on
Wall Street or have a lot of money to invest, but that's another story).
So What?
Why is it important to understand value in our food system?

Because the production, appropriation, and accumulation of
value determines the system itself. Unless we change the underly-
ing value relations of our food system-the contradiction between
food as essential for human life and food as a commodity-we will be
working on the margins of a system that is structurally designed for
profit rather than need, speculation rather than equity, and extraction
rather than resilience. This doesn't mean that the many social inno-
vations challenging the inequities and externalities of the corporate
food regime around the world are not worth implementing. On the
contrary, our food system needs innovation. But for these hopeful
alternatives to have a chance of becoming the norm rather than the
alternative within a food system that is structurally favorable to large-
scale industrial agriculture, we will need to know what structural
parts of the system need changing.
Much of the global food movement is concerned with the intrin-
sic usefulness and importance of good, healthy food (its use value).
The food justice movement fights for affordable healthy food (use
value and exchange value). Farmworkers and food workers are on the
other side of the equation; they want living wages and decent work-
ing conditions. These are aspects that are not recognized by a system
designed for profit above all else and in which a) labor time of the
most labor-efficient operations governs the worth oflabor in less effi-
cient operations; and b) labor is purchased as cheaply as possible and
laborers work under conditions to increase their efficiency to the limit
(socially necessary labor time). Family farmers are also concerned
about socially necessary labor time (of the farmworkers they hire and
of their own labor) and exchange value (price paid to the farmer).
Certain crops and management styles impart ecological services to
the farm and society (use values aside from food). Not all of these can
or should be turned into exchange values (such as carbon sequestra-
tion in soil, pollination, better water quality, or genetic diversity).
With capitalism, value is only recognized when it is embodied in
a marketable commodity. The commodification of food, labor, and
agriculture has not given us an equitable, healthy, and resilient food
system. The relationship between use value and exchange value-and
the social relationships embedded in socially necessary labor time-
have implications for the food movement and the strategies chosen
for the transformation of the food system. Though we are not likely
to lose the commodity form of products any time soon, we can work
to change the relation between use and exchange values, and we can
change the terms of socially necessary labor time (and working con-
ditions) to make a more sustainable and equitable food system that
reduces the exploitation of workers and does not pass off onto society
the social costs (the externalities) that the producers ought to bear.
For example, small-scale family farmers tend to self-exploit by
working long hours that when added up don't equal a minimum wage.
It is not uncommon for these farmers to make less hourly than the
seasonal workers they hire. They may not be able to save much for
their children's education or their own retirement. It is in their objec-
tive interest to ally with farmworkers to raise the minimum wage and
improve working conditions on all farms-large and small. This is
because raising the value (the wage income) of socially necessary labor
in food commodities would indirectly raise the value of the farmer's
own labor within the commodity itself. If all farmworkers received
living wages and basic social benefits, it would help to level the playing
field between large-scale industrial operations and small-scale pro-
duction, ultimately benefiting farms that use family labor. Of course,
it would help, but it clearly wouldn't fix the system. Because the large-
scale producers use much less labor per acre or per pound of product,
the increase in wages won't affect them as much as the small-scale
farmers where labor is a much larger portion of their budget.
Another example and fashionable notion for changing the food
system-one that fits nicely with ideas of freedom, choice, and per-
sonal agency-is to "vote with your fork" by boycotting cheap junk
food or buying fresh, local, organic food. In effect, this strategy selec-
tively engages with the exchange value of the food system to send the
market a signal of what kind of use values-healthy, non-processed,
GMO-free, high-fructose corn syrup free, organic, sustainable, local,
fair trade-conscious eaters prefer.
Though most people in the world simply cannot afford to eat
according to their values, it is important for those who can to do
so. But again, this doesn't change the basic commodity relations of
value in the food system. Nor does it resolve the issue of large-scale
intensive "organic" producers making it hard for smaller scale, more
environmentally sound farmers to make a living.
A "local" label on a food commodity at the supermarket may or
may not make it cost more than other similar food products, may or
may not mean passing higher prices on to the producer, and may or
may not mean the food comes from close by, depending on the inter-
pretation of "local" by the retailer. Certified organic and fair trade
products like fruits and vegetables, coffee, and bananas are commodi-
ties that attempt to extract a price premium in the marketplace by
raising the exchange value of these commodities. A higher price to
consumers pays for programs that are supposed to help the environ-
ment, use fewer pesticides, and pay more to small-scale farmers. There
are many documented social and environmental benefits to certified
organic and fair trade markets, the least of which has been the pos-
sibility for family farmers-those upon whom both the organic and
fair trade systems were built-to get a better price for their product.
However, the steady entry of large-scale producers into both organic
and fair trade markets is driving down the value of socially neces-
sary labor time for these products. This is welcomed by large retailers
because higher volumes mean that lower prices can be paid to farmers
and also that sales and profits are higher. Unfortunately, this process
will eventually squeeze out all but the largest producers.
From the perspective of value, there are different measures that
could protect small- and medium-sized producers. One option is to
peg the organic and fair trade premiums to the costs of production
rather than to the conventional price, which is the current practice.
Since labor is the biggest (rising) cost for producers in this market,
this will increase the value oflabor in these products, benefiting small
and medium producers. However, this will only work if certification
is denied to large-scale farms.
Agroecology-working together with, and relying on, ecological
functions to raise crops and animals sustainably-is one way farm-
ers are staying in business despite the downward trend in prices. In
Costa Rica, many farmers producing for the Fair Trade coffee market
have been steadily converting their coffee farms to pasture because
labor and organic fertilizer and pesticide costs have risen dramati-
cally while coffee prices have plummeted, reducing revenues by much
more than the compensation they received from Fair Trade premi-
ums. However, those farmers that employ agroecological practices
continue to produce coffee because they do not use as much organic
fertilizer or pesticide. 17 Although its volume is much lower and it is
difficult for small farmers to accomplish, direct marketing of coffee
(that does not go through a fair trade distribution system but is sold
directly from producer to consumer) can also provide a much higher
premium to farmers.
The undervaluing oflabor, due to both below-subsistence wages of
many workers and the higher level of mechanization in conventional
food commodities, is a heavy leveler and helps explain why organic
and fair trade products have failed to raise the bar in the mainstream
food industry. When voting with our fork, we should remember that
the freedom to buy food according to our values does not in and of
itself change the power of commodities in our food system. If we want
to change the power of commodities in the food system, we will have
to change the way we value the labor in our food as well.
The Value of Value
When most people consider value in a capitalist sense, they

think about the price of something. This led Oscar Wilde to
deliver the powerful observation that most people know "the
price of everything and the value of nothing." 18 Values take on
multiple forms, varying across time and space from generation
to generation, culture to culture. People may consider
something to have value simply because they hold it dear, like
a beautiful sunset. This is often labeled intrinsic value. Then
there are personal values, things people consider important
that make up the moral principles they strive to uphold, such
as honesty, fairness, loyalty, and compassion. The ingenuity of
capitalism is that it has been able to convert these intangible
values into exchange values that can be bought and sold in
the marketplace. Marketers trying to sell anything from food
and beverages to cars and housing developments utilize this
highly profitable strategy to cultivate desire for their products
and brands by imbuing them with intangible, yet emotionally
powerful "values" such as health, hope, happiness, even the
betterment of the human soul.19 But beyond using subliminal
value-messaging to sell products, capital also sells intangible
values directly. Fairness and health, once simply considered
values to live by, can now be purchased through fair trade
and organic labeling. Values have been appropriated and
utilized by corporations as marketing differentiators for their
products-products for which they'll charge a premium.
74 A FOODIE'$ GUIDE TO CAPITALISM
The contradiction between the use and exchange values of food

commodities is not easily resolved. Stopgap measures like certified
organic and fair trade do not favor low-income consumers. As both
of these labels enter mainstream supermarkets, the returns to farmers
shrink, favoring big agriculture rather than small and medium farm-
ers. Immigrant farm labor-criminalized under present immigration
law-is another key contradiction in the food system, one that is not
resolved through guest worker programs (which keep wages low) or
through amnesty programs (because workers immediately leave farm
work). Living wages for farmworkers and parity prices for farmers
that cover costs and provide for a decent living would invariably drive
up the price of food, meaning that the rest of society would require a
living wage in order to buy good food. Agroecology provides farm-
ers with some protection from the upstream side of the "cost-price
squeeze" of the capitalist food system, as do direct marketing arrange-
ments for the downstream side. Some farmers and some consumers
can protect themselves from the ravages of commodification in these
ways. But if these hopeful alternatives are to move from the mar-
gins to the mainstream, the basic structural conditions of use value,
exchange value, the value oflabor power, and socially necessary labor
time will have to be transformed.
A Slightly Nerdy Explanation of Surplus Value,

the Holy Grail of Capitalism
Many people commonly confuse capital, value, and money. Money is a

measure of exchange value and as such can be used to represent capital
and facilitate buying and selling. One way of thinking about capital is
as "value in search of more value:' A person or a firm that has accumu-
lated some measure of wealth, usually cash as well as stocks, bonds, and
various financial instruments that can be easily converted to money
when needed and uses this to produce or obtain more wealth. Under
capitalism, money is normally used in the process. Capital emerges
when money is put into circulation to make more money. 20
Suppose "M" represents money and "C" represents a commodity,
like grain, kale, or gardening rakes. Someone takes money, produces

a commodity with it, and then sells the commodity for money:
M-C-M. Actually, the point is to sell the commodity for more money
than what one invested in it, so we have M-C-M', in which M' repre-
sents the original amount of money invested plus profit. This money
is capital that will be reinvested, after using some portion for the capi-
talist's higher living standards.
So isn't capital just profit? Not exactly. Capital refers to the entire
process and to the things in the process, including the commodity
that is bought and sold, the labor embodied in the commodity, and to
the social relationships between the workers, machines, and owners of
the capital being produced. Capital always embodies a social relation.
In any case, at the core of capital lives the Holy Grail of capitalism:
profits. There is no end point to the system; those who own the capital
try to continually accumulate more and more capital. The term Marx
used to describe what most would call profits was surplus value.
Let's look at our equation again:
If M-C-M' and M' represents the original money invested plus
profit, where did the extra value of M' come from? The original
money-capital "M" was used to hire workers who would then use the
means of production (machines, raw materials) to produce a com-
modity "C" that when sold rendered M', that is, the original capital
invested plus the increase in capital. How did the capital change?
Money was used to pay for raw materials, machinery, and labor. But
when these were transformed into a commodity by workers, extra
value was created. This extra value is surplus value.
The question is, where did the surplus value come from? Labor-
power and the means of production were all paid for with M, right?
Did their combination magically create extra value? Some people like
to think so. But capitalism is definitely not about magical thinking.
When the capitalist pays the worker for his or her labor-power, it
is as if the capitalist rented a generator for its power. (If this was slav-
ery, the capitalist would own the generator.) Imagine that the capitalist
pays for four hours of power but the generator actually runs for eight
hours. The extra four hours oflabor-power are a "surplus" of power that
in the production of the commodity infuse it with surplus value. To

whom should this extra value belong? In a capitalist system, it belongs
to the capitalist. He or she owns the means of production and bought
the labor-power, precisely to generate surplus value. And the capitalist
justifies receiving the surplus value by figuring it is a "return" for use of
his capital. But let's say that a capitalist borrows money to start the busi-
ness (not uncommon) and hires a manager (also not uncommon). In
this case, the capitalist did not use any of their own money nor provide
production oversight. The interest was paid on the loan, the manager
received a salary, the workers received wages, all the raw materials were
paid for, and so on. So how do the profits miraculously arise in this
situation? Every input cost was paid for. But it was the workers who
took the machinery, raw materials, and power and converted it into a
salable commodity. In other words, they added more value during the
production process than they were paid for. Another way to look at it
is that they worked longer than they needed in order to produce the
quantity of commodities that would have been sufficient if workers had
been paid the full amount of money that represented the value they
added. So, workers labor longer than the time it would take to produce
the commodities they need to maintain their subsistence. Their wage
embodies less labor time than the hours they are compelled to labor.
Compelled because they themselves own no means of production, no
capital, but cannot live without access to it.
As a commodity itself, labor-power has a clear use value and an
exchange value: exchange value is the worker's wage, the use value
(to the capitalist) is its ability to create surplus value. The workers
are allowed to keep the exchange value of their labor. But they must
give up the use value to the owner of the means of production. As
Karl Marx explained in the second volume of Capital, "The purchase
of labor-power is a contract of sale which determines that a greater
quantity of labor is provided than is necessary to replace the price of
labor-power, the wage:' 21
The separation of workers from both the use value and the prod-
uct of their labor is known as "alienation" and is the seed of class
conflict. Of course, capitalists believe that they have every right to
appropriate surplus value. After all, they deserve a rate of return for
the use of their money (assuming it is not borrowed) and their will-
ingness to assume risk. The laborers sold their labor-power of their
own free will and knew full well what the capitalist was going to do
with it. Besides, the capitalist provided employment, isn't that a good
thing? Well, yes, that's one way to think about it. But there are a few
more things to consider.
First, let's dispense with the fiction that laborers sell their labor-
power of their own free will. Long ago, the enclosures dashed the
possibility for huge numbers of peasants to feed, clothe, and house
themselves and their families. Nothing remained for them but their
ability to work for wages. And the British Poor Laws (that criminal-
ized the unemployed) tried to make sure that they would be willing
to sell their labor to capitalists. Given a real choice, including other
more pleasant occupations, most people would not have gone to work
in England's "Satanic Mills" that worked people to death to produce
textiles. Ever since then, ensuring that workers are dependent upon
wages is pretty central to capitalism; so for most people, this is not a
choice but a condition.
Second, though it is true that capitalists put their own capital into
the project of production (or borrow capital), it is also true that this
capital had to come from somewhere: it too originates in surplus
value. It is a tautology to claim rights over more surplus value because
one has had rights to previously appropriated surplus value!
Third, let's think about production, value, and exchange. In main-
stream economic theory, goods are traded between people until all
parties are satisfied and trading stops. This is called "Pareto optimal-
ity;' a point at which no one can gain without at least one person
losing. So, just imagine that farmers producing potatoes in Idaho
want iPhones made in Beijing, and that workers producing iPhones
want potatoes. Farmers and workers start trading. When all the farm-
ers in Idaho have iPhones, and all the workers in Beijing have all the
potatoes they need, both parties are satisfied and the value of potatoes
equals the value of iPhones. Now imagine a system in which all goods
produced are traded among actual producers all around the world
until Pareto optimality is reached. Everyone is satisfied-except for

the capitalist. Why? Because in this system there is no pro.fit. Goods
are traded on the basis of their use value until everyone has what
they need to use. All the use values even out. Clearly, this is not what
happens under capitalism, in which all goods are commodities and
money is the intermediary of all trading. At the end of the day, when
trading stops, some people have gotten much richer.
Where did this extra wealth come from? It came from sur-
plus value. Who, then, decides how wealth will be extracted and to
whom it will belong? Is it the consumer? No. Is it the worker? No.
It is the capitalist. That's why the system is called capitalism and not
"laborism'' or "workerism:'
The quest for surplus value is at the core of capitalism. It is the
moving force for the whole system, propelling it ever outward.
Squeezing out more and more surplus value from commodity produc-
tion-the motor force behind capitalism-drives the system to exploit
both labor and the environment, which is called "efficiency:' Although
individual businesspersons (capitalists) may have more complex and
varied motivations, in the role of owner or manager of a large business
that must compete with other like businesses, these individuals must
be concerned almost exclusively with the bottom line.
One way to make the bottom line higher is to increase absolute
surplus value by extending the workday while paying the same wages
for labor-power. We can see this in the berry fields of Washington
State, in which the piece rate paid to immigrant labor for the har-
vested basket drops, thus making farmworkers harvest more boxes
and work longer hours for the same pay.
Another method entails an increase in relative surplus value by
introducing technological innovation or organizational changes to
shorten socially necessary labor time in the production process, thus
improving productivity. Increasing the line speed in meat processing
plants is an example of increasing relative surplus value. One of the
business mantras during the Great Recession of 2007-2009 as people
were fired in huge numbers was that the remaining workers needed
to "do more with less:' Indeed, while unemployment ballooned, so
did productivity as workers labored harder and harder to keep from

losing their jobs.
Increasing relative surplus value is also achieved in capitalist
livestock production through "biological speed-up:' For example,
selective breeding, genetic engineering, and the use of antibiotics
and growth hormones has drastically reduced the growing time of
animals on factory farms and shortened the lactation time and the
number of lactations of dairy cows, even as each cow produces more
milk per lactation. Cows produce more milk than ever before, but
live much shorter lives, burning out in just a few years. Poultry farms
can now grow chickens from chicks to broilers in eight weeks. The
negative biological and environmental consequences of biological
speed-up are well documented; cows are biologically exhausted after
three lactations and are then "beefed" -most becoming hamburger.
The manure ponds of confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs)
have become environmental hazards; hormones and antibiotics used
in animal production disrupt human hormonal development and
endocrine functions, and create resistant bacterial strains. But since
these costs are borne by society rather than the livestock and dairy
industries, they do not affect the increase in relative surplus value.
Biological speed-up is not restricted to land-based livestock. Salmon
production has steadily moved from intensified sea harvest to intensive
caged farming of genetically modified, inland farmed fish. The patented
AquAdvantage salmon combines genes from the Chinook and Atlantic
salmon with the ocean pout, a fast-growing eel-like fish, reducing pro-
duction time "from egg to plate" from three years to eighteen months.
Far from an environmental breakthrough, the genetically engineered
"salmon'' will still be grown largely on fish meal and grown in ponds in
Panama before being shipped around the world. 22
Like capital, our food is a social relation that embodies the labor,
value, ownership, expertise, biology, and power relationships of the
capitalist system. This logic of capital-rather than the logic of fair-
ness, compassion, ecology, conservation, or health-governs our food.
Our attempts to change or transform the food system hinge on chang-
ing the social relation embedded in our food. Because food is both a
commodity and an existential necessity, and because our food system

impacts all other aspects of our social and economic system because
we all eat, the social relation of food is pivotal in terms of human well-
being. The firms controlling our food system understand this perfectly,
exploiting the public use value of food to extract exchange values for
corporate profit. Substantive changes to the food system will affect the
entire economic system. Perhaps this is precisely what we need.
The Inhumane Treatment of Animals

FRED MAGDOFF
The raising of animals in large factory farms is done under

inhumane conditions. Chickens for meat (broilers) are raised
in barns of tens of thousands of birds. 23 The chickens have
been bred to gain weight rapidly-this, of course, means
more rapid turnover and more profits-and have large
breasts because of the preference for white meat. They are
less active because so much of the energy they consume is
converted into growth and thus they spend most of their
lives sitting on the floor-even as the manure accumulates
during a growing cycle-usually losing feathers on their
breasts and developing sores as well because of the almost
constant contact with manure. The barns are only cleaned
out after the chickens have been shipped but the litter
(manure) may be left for the next group of chickens by
placing a thin layer of fresh litter such as wood chips on top
of the old manure. Raised mostly in dim light (companies
may forbid natural lighting), they live a short six- to eight-
week life entirely in the barn. They are fed a diet laced with
questionable additives such as antibiotics that enhance
growth, but many die under the crowded conditions, and
one of the jobs in this operation is to go through the barn
regularly and remove dead birds or those with deformities.
The incredibly rapid growth of meat birds-from 0.002
to 8.8 pounds in eight weeks, analogous to a baby that

weighed 6.6 pounds at birth growing around 660 pounds in
two months-produces abnormal birds. There is no question
that chickens grow faster than humans, but the extra-rapid
growth caused by "improved" genetics and optimal feeding
has created a most unfortunate animal. Because the birds
have been bred to grow so rapidly their legs may not be able
to support them, so there are always lame ones, unable to
walk; these are usually euthanized. New York Times columnist
Nicholas Kristof commented on the treatment of meat birds:
"Torture a single chicken and you risk arrest. Abuse hundreds
of thousands of chickens for their entire lives? That's
agribusiness." Chickens in caged layers may have it even
worse, with little room and their entire lives within the small
cage and no ability to even peck at the ground.
These problems are not confined to poultry. Hog gestation-
with sows in crates in which they cannot turn around so as
to make it "more efficient" for them to feed their piglets-is
difficult to look at even in photos. Beef cows, which are
ruminants, have evolved to be able to gain their entire
energy diet from grasslands, with cellulose-a structural
element of plants that we cannot digest-providing most
of their energy as a result of the activity of microorganisms
in their rumens. In order to get them to gain weight rapidly,
beef cows on feedlots, with thousands of animals, are fed
diets high in corn grain, and soy to provide protein. {Growing
corn and soybeans requires high rates of pesticides and
fertilizers that would not be needed if cows were on pasture,
where pests pose less of a problem and most of the nutrients
are directly recycled into the land as manure and urine.)
Again, antibiotics and hormones are part of the system to
produce the most "efficient" weight gains.
Thus, because the pursuit of profit is the goal of raising
these farm animals under industrial conditions, the only issue
considered is how to do so as rapidly and cheaply as possible.
-3-
Land and Property

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.
-SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH FOLK POEM
0 n Earth Day of 2012, two hundred students and commu-

nity residents occupied the Gill Tract, a 26-acre agricultural
research station owned by the University of California,
Berkeley. 1 Inspired by Brazil's Landless Workers Movement (MST),
the group planted over 1,500 vegetable seedlings, set up an encamp-
ment, and demanded the UC's Office of Capital Projects halt a plan to
sell the Gill Tract for private urban development. Among other hous-
ing and recreation projects, the university hoped to sell a portion of
the Gill Tract to the Whole Foods supermarket chain. The "Occupy
the Farm'' movement called on the university to instead establish an
urban community farm to serve the public interests of the growing
urban agriculture movement in California and the San Francisco Bay
Area. Throughout the 23-day occupation, teams of protesters cleared,
planted, and cultivated the farm. Rather than negotiate, UC Berkeley
cut off the Gill Tract's water supply. Neighbors provided water for a
massive bucket brigade. The university finally sent riot police to drive
occupiers from the research station. A year of organizing, a commu-
nity referendum, legal battles, threats of a boycott (leading Whole
Foods to pull out of the project), and another brief land occupation
followed. In the spring of 2014 the university announced it was halt-
ing the sale of the Gill Tract for at least ten years. Occupy the Farm
had succeeded in stopping the sale of the last large piece of prime
agricultural land in San Francisco's urban East Bay region.
The Gill Tract occupation is emblematic of the calls for land justice
and land sovereignty sweeping the globe. Though the term is often asso-
ciated with the massive land occupations of the MST in Brazil and with
peasant resistance to extractive industries and land grabs in Africa,
Asia, and Latin America, and to growing pressure for popular control
over agricultural land everywhere, the fact that a movement of well-fed,
relatively affluent, and predominantly white urban protesters chal-
lenged the sale of publicly owned land for the purpose of growing food
indicates just how widespread people's rejection of the privatization of
public resources and the corporatization of our food has become.
Food and Property
Capitalism would be pointless if individuals and corporations were

not able to appropriate the value of things for their exclusive ben-
efit. Private property confers monopoly ownership rights to both
use values and exchange values of commodities. Though it can't
exist without public and common forms of property, private prop-
erty is the basis for capitalist wealth accumulation. Private property
dominates modern food systems. Other forms of ownership include
cooperatives, traditional uses, and collective ownership. Each of these
prohibits, restricts, or redistributes exchange values and can allow for
shared use values, sometimes by taking land, labor, or capital off the
market, essentially "de-commodify" them.
"Who owns what?" is the first of four key questions in political
economy. 2 The private ownership of land (and increasingly, fisheries)
LAND AND PROPERTY 85
is foundational to capitalist food systems, in which the tendency is

to commodify everything by turning it into private property to be
bought, used, and sold as the owners see fit. While capital will go to
great regulatory lengths to turn everything into private property (for
example, land, seeds, water, genetic information, carbon emissions,
knowledge), once a thing becomes a commodity capitalists may seek
to de-regulate capital so that it can be traded without impediments
such as tariffs, labor laws, or policies for environmental protection.
The objective of private property is the appropriation of surplus
value for the accumulation of wealth. Period. This requires the hand
of the state to enforce property rights, print money, and ensure the
free flow of capital. But this doesn't lead to a sustainable or equita-
ble food system. In fact, because the tendency of capitalist markets
is toward concentration of ownership and constant growth, without
strong regulation and control from society, exactly the opposite hap-
pens. The gap grows between rich and poor and the environment is
destroyed. 3
Our capitalist food system has concentrated the wealth of the
six-trillion-dollar-a-year industry in a handful of oligopolies, from
Monsanto, Bayer, and Syngenta on the farm input side, to huge grain
and livestock companies like Cargill and Smithfield, and the global
grocery giants Walmart and Carrefour on the output side. It has also
led to massive deforestation, desertification, and pollution. 4 At the
same time, the existing food system leaves many people hungry and
malnourished, leading to widespread protests and social struggles for
equity, sustainability, and the right to food itself. Sooner or later-
because of the nature of capitalism-land and property are drawn
into the epicenter of this resistance.
Private, Public, and Common Property
Most of us have an idea of the difference between public, private, and

common property: Public belongs to all citizens and private belongs
to me. Common property is owned by a community-like a coop-
erative.Open-access resources are not property at all, rather they are
elements like the air, the high seas, and outer space that no one owns,
at least not yet. These simple definitions describe the different ways we
treat resources under property regimes, but property was not always
understood in this way. Indeed, despite some continuities, the rules
regarding property are constantly being modified. The main issue
with regard to private property isn't really about whether individuals
and families can own furniture, utensils, or grooming products. The
real issue is the private ownership of the means of producing goods
and services we all need to live.
Modern -day conflicts over the patenting oflife (known as genome
property), corporate personhood, privatized water, and land grabs
have their roots in centuries-long processes of wealth accumulation,
state-making, and imperial expansion. The struggles over resources
have been accompanied by heated debates over the social, economic,
and ethical justification of private property. These historical argu-
ments go to the core of political and economic power.
Property and the State
In the fourth century BCE, the Greek philosopher Plato extolled the
virtues of common property because he believed it would encour-
age cooperation and avoid divisiveness. After his death, his pupil
Aristotle argued against the Commons because he thought it encour-
aged free riders. He favored private property because he thought it
bred prudence and responsibility. Property was the basis for citi-
zenship and freedom. Freedom was contingent on owning one's
self, rather than being owned (as a slave). Citizenship depended on
owning property (land or slaves). But the problem was, if things
and people could be privately owned, who or what would enforce
the rights of private property? The answer was government. Both
philosophers placed property at the center of a powerful state. The
problem for governments ever since has been that the power of the
state does not depend only on the rights of property owners but on
a combination of coercion and consent of all of the governed-even
the propertyless.
So, the protection of private property depends in no small degree

on the existence of public property-in other words, the State.
Establishing and maintaining public property is not easy; the governed
have to consent to be governed, pay taxes, and serve in the military.
If the state is not providing them with any benefits, why should they?
Coercion will work for a while, but unless there is a social contract,
force is unsustainable in the long run. So the question was-and still
is-how can the state reconcile the private ownership of the produc-
tion of essential goods and services with the public good?
[Private) property is continually in need of public justification-

first, because it empowers individuals to make decisions about the
use of scarce resource in a way that is not necessarily sensitive to
others' needs or the public good; and second, because it does not
merely permit that but deploys public force at public expense to
uphold it. 5
Without the power of the state, individuals and corporations

could not enforce their exclusive claims to property's uses and ben-
efits. It is still the sine qua non for private property. Public property,
which theoretically belongs to all citizens, also requires the power of
the state to ensure that public officials can administer access to parks,
schools, roads, forests, and other resources. This means there is a bal-
ance of Plato and Aristotle in all capitalist property regimes.
The Romans developed a complex legal system to rule the exten-
sive properties of their empire, dividing property into res publicae,
res privatae, and res communes: state, private, and Commons. Those
properties that couldn't be possessed and were available to all (open
access) were extra patrimonium. 6 The Romans saw pretty clearly that
the combination of private property and government was not suffi-
cient to extract resources from their minions, the subjects of whom
depended on the Commons for their survival. They left common
property to unpropertied people because otherwise the empire
would not have been able to rule over or extract wealth from them,
despite the power of the Roman legions. For thousands of years, the
Commons ensured for the community the food security that private
property and government wouldn't or couldn't provide. In many ways
and in many places around the world, the Commons still does. 7
Private property has been the cornerstone for the liberal nation-
state that merges democratic political systems with capitalist
economic systems. The "father of Classic liberalism;' philosopher
John Locke (1632-1704), famously claimed private property was
part of a natural order in which ownership belonged to whoever
added labor to a natural object-especially land. This theory was
used by the landed gentry of the eighteenth century to rationalize
the dispossession of church, crown, and common property. It was
used by the founders of the United States to support their strug-
gle for independence from England, and later elaborated upon to
justify "Manifest Destiny;' the supposed divine right of the United
States to appropriate the lands of the North American continent.
(Conveniently forgotten in the drive to accumulate new real estate
was Locke's proviso that the appropriation of property through labor
did not give an individual the right to encroach on common land or
dispossess already inhabited land.)
The role of public goods in capitalist systems was first addressed
by utilitarian thinker John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), who thought that
"humane capitalism'' (a combination of public spending and liberal
markets) could best meet the needs of individuals. But it was English
economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) who probably did
more than anyone else to support the notion of public property in
capitalist economic systems. To bring the United States and Europe
out of the Great Depression, Keynes argued for the strong interven-
tion of the state in the economy, including taxing the rich, public
deficit spending, job programs, and control of interest rates. Though
this did not address the issue of land and property directly, Keynes's
economic theories gave a prominent role for public goods and to
the state in public life. Keynes probably believed in the power of the
public purse more than the need for public land, but Keynesianism
and its later iterations provide the rationale for public property's eco-
nomic role in capitalist systems.
The Commons and the Tragedy of Commodification
Who argued for the Commons? In The Great Transformation, Karl

Polanyi (1944) called for social control over the market (which
is, after all, a social institution) and for the de-commodification of
capital, labor, and land. In an historical analysis that spanned cen-
turies, he made a case for the rational and compassionate allocation
of resources through the public sphere, the social, cultural, and insti-
tutional space of democratic, civic engagement where the problems
and the projects of the community are discussed and decided upon.
Though not arguing against property per se, he argued against its
unregulated commodification and in favor of preserving the social
institutions-like the Commons-that protected people and commu-
nities from the ravages of unregulated markets.
Polanyi was part of a long and significant tradition, from anar-
chist Pierre Proudhon's "Property Is Theft"8 on to Elinor Ostrom's
"Governing the Commons;'9 which sought solutions to the challenges
of production and distribution centered within the decision-making
space of the public sphere, rather than the market. Proudhon rejected
legal claims to land as property and held that property, "to be just and
possible, must necessarily have equality for its condition:' 10 He argued
in favor of an individual's right to land access and to the product of
his or her labor. As far as he was concerned, no one could lay claim to
the product of anyone else's labor. Elinor Ostrom won the 2009 Nobel
Prize in Economics (the only woman to do so) for her work on the
Commons and "Common Pool Resources:' 11 Her fieldwork with tradi-
tional societies convinced her that natural resources held in common
could be sustainably managed without regulation from government.
She also believed that collective action and reciprocity were criti-
cal components to human survival and for solving social dilemmas
in which individual short-term self-interest undermines the greater
good. 12 Ostrom's framework for common pool resources still serves
as the most comprehensive, functional definition of the Commons. 13
When a resource is neither public nor private nor commonly
owned it is called "open access" (extra patrimonium). Ecologist
Garrett Hardin notoriously confused open-access resources with the

Commons in his article "The Tragedy of the Commons:' 14 Concerned
with overpopulation, Hardin claimed that the unrestricted use of the
world's resources would lead to ecological and civilizational collapse.
He used a simple metaphor taken from an obscure 1833 econom-
ics pamphlet that described an open pasture in which self-interested,
individual herdsmen each added animals to their flocks in an effort to
increase their individual material gain. This "rational choice" on the
part of individual herders eventually led to the degradation and col-
lapse of the common pasture and the demise of the herders:
Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that com-
pels him to increase his herd without limit-in a world that is
limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each
pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the
freedom of the Commons. Freedom in a Commons brings ruin
to all.
It was a powerful, masculine metaphor that struck fear into the

hearts of environmentalists. Capitalists, on the other hand, rejoiced.
They used the Tragedy of the Commons to push for the privatization
of both common lands and public lands. Ironically, Hardin, who was
a staunch Malthusian with strong racial overtones to his assumptions,
was actually arguing against the free-market capitalists, who took him
for their standard bearer:
We can make little progress in working toward optimum popula-

tion size until we explicitly exorcize the spirit of Adam Smith in
the field of practical demography. In economic affairs, The Wealth
of Nations ( 1776) popularized the "invisible hand;' the idea that
an individual who "intends only his own gain;' is, as it were, "led
by an invisible hand to promote ... the public interest:' Adam
Smith did not assert that this was invariably true, and perhaps
neither did any of his followers. But he contributed to a dominant
tendency of thought that has ever since interfered with positive
action based on rational analysis, namely, the tendency to assume

that decisions reached individually will, in fact, be the best deci-
sions for an entire society.
Hardin had never actually seen a Commons or taken the time to

study them. He assumed it referred to any area that was not privately
owned. He was rigorously challenged by a number of anthropolo-
gists and historians and soundly disproven by Ostrom. Nonetheless,
Hardin's central thesis-that too many people using common
resources are the cause of environmental collapse-is still used to jus-
tify everything from the privatization of fishing grounds to enclosures
of indigenous lands for nature reserves. This notion has persisted,
especially among the large conservation organizations, despite ample
evidence that the "tragedy" was not too many people chasing after
limited resources but rather the unregulated capitalist exploitation of
open-access resources in search of profits. For example, the real prob-
lem in the decline of fisheries isn't overfishing by large numbers of
fishermen but rather the huge industrial trawlers in search of global
profits that overfish with nets that damage the sea floor.
Under capitalism, what is politely termed "open access" is actually
a frontier. A frontier is a territory in which resources are in dispute.
The "agricultural frontier" in Central America is a classic example.
One of the effects of the Green Revolution was the displacement
of millions of peasants by larger-scale farmers. To keep them from
coming to the cities, governments encouraged them to colonize
the rainforests with vague promises of land titles. Destitute farmers
slashed and burned ancient trees in a desperate attempt to access land
and nutrients for food. After a couple of years, weeds choked their
fields, driving them to chop down more trees. Big cattle ranchers,
encouraged by the lucrative markets of the "hamburger revolution" in
the United States, quickly moved in to grab the new pasture, pushing
peasant farmers deeper into the rainforest. Land titles, given on the
basis of"improvements" -that is, clearing the forest-were expensive
to process and thus steadily accrued to the large landholders. The
rainforest was hard to access but full of precious hardwoods, gold,
and other resources for whomever could reach them. A free-for-all

ensued throughout the 1980s and 1990s as industrial carpetbaggers
from around the world jumped to grab resources in the open-access
regime of Central America's rainforests. 15 Because the forest was first
cleared by poor, dispossessed peasants, the name "agricultural fron-
tier" was given to the process of the rainforest destruction.
The process is playing out today in open-access frontiers in which
the resources are in dispute, being grabbed, privatized, commodified,
traded, and speculated on in world markets. The remaining rainfor-
ests in Indonesia, the oil in the North Pole, the carbon in the air, the
fish in the sea, even the genes in our bodies have become part of an
open-access frontier and thus the first step in their ownership by capi-
tal. The tragedy is not of the Commons but of the commodification of
nature and the unregulated, private exploitation of its resources. 16• 17
Land, Labor, Capital, and Markets
Markets have been around a long time, but before the nineteenth cen-
tury did not organize society as they do today. Throughout feudalism
and mercantile capitalism, markets served as one more complement
to social life. Under mercantilism the market was firmly under the
control of a centralized state administration. These arrangements
spread around the world through imperial licenses and charters like
the British and Dutch East India companies, the Massachusetts Bay
Colony, and the Hudson Bay Company, or the vast Spanish land
grants in what is now Mexico, the U.S. Southwest, and California. As
Karl Polanyi pointed out, "Regulation and markets, in effect, grew up
together:' 18 The concept of a "free" market was not only unknown, it
ran counter to reality.
With the emergence of the market economy, or "self-regulating
market;' everything was assigned a price. Ideally, a perfect, self-reg-
ulating market provides everyone-producers, landowners, workers,
bankers, and traders-with sufficient income to buy all the goods that
are produced. In a perfect market economy all commodities, includ-
ing money, people's labor power, and the land, are bought and sold
in the market. 19 Rent is the price ofland; wages are the price oflabor;
and interest is the price of money. But are these really commodities?
A commodity is something that is produced for the purpose of
sale in a market for more than the cost of producing it. But land can't
be produced for the market; it is simply part of nature. Labor is really
people, who are not "produced" to be traded on the market but are
born and raised to live life. Money is not technically produced as
a market good either, and only has value as a medium of exchange
to facilitate the circulation of goods (it also has use value). As Karl
Polanyi put it:
Labor is only another name for a human activity which goes with
life itself, which in its turn is not produced for sale but for entirely
different reasons, nor can that activity be detached from the rest of
life, be stored or mobilized; land is only another name for nature,
which is not produced by man; actual money, finally, is merely a
token of purchasing power which, as a rule, is not produced at
all, but comes into being through the mechanism of banking or
state finance. None of them is produced for sale. The commodity
description oflabor, land, and money is entirely fictitious. 20
The same can be said of resource deposits, like gold, oil, or ura-
nium. They are not commodities, but commodities are produced as
the resource is exploited. With agricultural land, there is the pos-
sibility-if managed wisely-for it to retain its productive capacity
forever. But in a market economy, all are treated as commodities.
Land, labor and money, all essential to agriculture and the food
system, are considered "false commodities:' 21 This is because none
of these are actually manufactured for consumption. Until recently,
none were regularly bought and sold on the market, either.
Over time, economies dominated by market relations produce
market societies, market cultures, and a market ideology. Today,
the logic of the market penetrates all other forms of production,
exchange, politics, and everyday life. Agricultural land, once a mea-
sure of wealth and power and a means by which to produce value,
Land and Labor: A Farmworker's Perspective

ROSALINDA GUILLEN, farmworker, organizer, ecofeminist
Living in the labor camp, nothing there was ours. Nothing!

We were landless. In Mexico, we had our place. The first thing
we realized when we got to the labor camp was that nothing
was ours. We couldn't go anywhere, do anything, touch
anything. It was made very clear that nothing belonged to
us. That's a very dislocating feeling. You're nowhere. That
had a huge impact on me. Being taken away from our land
in Mexico was huge. My mother went into a deep depression
and we, as children, were stunned. We refused to accept that
the labor camp was a reality.
Farmworkers in the United States are the largest landless
workforce in the food system. We're not just landless in that
we don't own the land we're working-we don't even own
our own homes. The biggest issue for many farmworkers
is that people expect us to live in farm labor camps. Labor
camps are like a slap in the face-throwing in our faces how
really landless we are, how little we count for in every way.
When you live in a labor camp, the people in town know
that you live there. Therefore you're something less than
everybody else in the community, because you don't have
a place. Some of these other workers own their homes.
When you go into rural towns there are parks named after
somebody, buildings named after somebody. That's like a
recognition that you're a human being that owns something
in the community. For farmworkers, we're nowhere. We're
not seen anywhere. We are so invisible, except for the value
we bring to some landowner.
You have to have land to produce food. You have to have
land to package it. You have to own the land where you put
the coolers. Some landowner is receiving the value of your
work. What you're getting is the opportunity to give him
value, and that's it.
As farmworkers that happens over and over again

everywhere, in every community where you go. The value
of what we bring to a community is blatantly waved aside.
We're invisible. Our contributions are invisible. That's part
of the capitalist culture in this country. We are like the
dregs of slavery in this country. They're holding on to that
slave mentality to try to get value from the cheapest labor
they can get. If they keep us landless, if we do not have the
opportunity to root ourselves into the communities in the
way we want, then it's easy to get more value out of us with
less investment in us.
We need to look at farmworkers in this country owning
land, where we can produce. That is the dynamic change we
need in the food system. 22
is now a financial asset, its value atomized and repackaged, bought,

sold, and circulated in global markets at the speed of a keystroke. The
land, of course, never moves, but its ownership changes rapidly. Rents
produce a steady income stream for non-farmer owners, something
that doesn't happen if one owns gold or silver.
What does this mean for our food system?
It means that farmland is prohibitively expensive for young,
beginning farmers. It also means that farmers are getting older. The
average age of a farmer in the United States is fifty-eight. Over a third
of the farmers in the European Union are over sixty-five. Many of
these farmers lament that there are no farmers left to work the land
anymore, even though they are often surrounded by farmworkers
from the Global South who used to be farmers. The other side of the
ageing of the farm sector is reflected in many villages in the Global
South populated by old people and young children. There are many,
many young people around the world who still want to farm but can't
because the price ofland is too high and the returns to production too
low for them to enter farming. What has happened? Why is farmland
becoming so expensive, and why is it so hard to be a farmer?
From Land Rent to Land Grabs
From a market perspective, the reason farmland prices have risen is

because the price of food has gone up, thus making farmland more
valuable. Urban sprawl and population growth also push farmland
prices up. When the price of farmland increases, it attracts financial
speculators who engage in "arbitrage" by buying low and selling high.
But there are deeper, structural reasons why this is possible.
When land is commodified, it is taken out of traditional, common
public holdings or reserves in order to be owned, rented, or traded in
the market. Even areas of public land can be commodified through
leases and licenses. Land value is partially reflected in its market price
(exchange value), which is influenced by market demand. But the use
value of land also influences its market price. Part of this use value
is called "land rent:' Though the term originally referred to the part
of the harvest that landless peasants turned over to landlords, in the
classic definition land rent refers to the income derived from land as
a productive asset.
Location, natural fertility, surrounding resources, the availability
oflabor, technology, and changing use can all affect land rent, making
some plots ofland more valuable than others because of their capacity
to produce more wealth. The land rent of a piece of property is always
valued at its highest potential. However, this is not always the same as
its market price.
Ideally, in a market economy the price of a plot of land faithfully
reflects the value of its land rent. But under capitalism this can fluctuate
wildly. Sometimes the price ofland in the marketplace drops far below
the value of the land rent. This can happen when production is under-
valued; for example, during a glut when commodity prices drop below
the costs of production. If this happens for too long, the market price of
the land will also drop because working the land doesn't turn a profit. In
the United States and the European Union, taxpayers provide subsidies
to grain farmers so that they can stay in business even when prices fall
due to overproduction. These subsidies can keep the price of land in
line with the land rent, though too many subsidies can inflate the price
of land beyond the rent as well. Sometimes the price of land is much
higher than its land rent. This can happen when agricultural prices are
artificially increased through subsidies, hoarding, or speculation, creat-
ing a financial "bubble" that inflates the price of land. One example is
the land-price bubble in the Midwest due to U.S. government subsidies
for corn-based ethanol production. Under this scenario, land is worth
more as a financial asset than as a productive asset: you can make more
money buying and selling land than by farming it. This is the case for
much of the agricultural land in the United States today.
With a few notable spikes due to war and oil crises over most of
the last half-century, the chronic overproduction of food has steadily
Biofuels
Biofuels invoke an image of renewable abundance that allows
industry, politicians, the World Bank, the United Nations,
and even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
to present fuel extracted from corn, sugarcane, soy, and
other crops as a "clean and green" transition from peak oil
to a renewable fuel economy. Myths of sustainability and
abundance divert attention away from powerful economic
interests that benefit from this biofuel transition, avoiding
discussion of the multiple ripple effects and trade-offs
between food, feed, energy, and the environment that come
with the expansion of biofuel production. These trade-offs are
multidimensional, with both local and global implications.
In the United States today, biofuels are mainly produced
from corn and soybeans grown on existing agricultural land
However, there is increasing concern that biofuel production
expansion could bring some 10 million acres of fragile land
protected by the government's Conservation Reserve Program
into production. 23 There are also indirect land-use effects in
other countries. Experts have long been concerned that by
affecting prices, biofuel mandates will have impacts on
land use far beyond the countries in which they operate,
particularly in the conversion of pasture and forest land. 24

This is already occurring in countries such as Brazil, Indonesia,
and Malaysia, where forests are being slashed to expand soy,
sugarcane, and oil-palm plantations for biofuel production.
One of the most pertinent effects has been the massive
appreciation in U.S. agricultural land values. "The average price
of U.S. farmland increased 74 percent between 2000 and 2007
to a record $4,700 per hectare. In Iowa-a leading maize-
producing state-farmland values rose by roughly $2,470 per
hectare between 2003 and 2007 to more than $7,900 per
hectare." 25 Rapid growth in biofuel markets has resulted in
equally rapid capitalization and concentration of power among
a handful of corporate partnerships in grain, oil, and genetic
engineering-primarily Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, and
Monsanto. The convergence of these powerful industries has
far-reaching effects that will transform both food systems and
rural economies worldwide.
driven down food prices and kept agricultural land prices more or
less indexed to the land rent. The food price spikes of2007-2008 and
2011 changed all that. Food is now more expensive and commod-
ity prices are fluctuating wildly. Land values are climbing. Financial
investors who have ignored farmland for decades now see it as a good
investment. According to agrarian sociologist Madeleine Fairbairn:
Although some insurance companies have had farmland holdings

for years, most financial investors found farmland, and agricul-
tural investment in general, unappealing compared to the much
higher returns to be made in financial markets. However, this
began to shift around 2007 as the prices of agricultural commodi-
ties started to climb and land prices followed suit. The recession
that began with the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble in 2008
caused investor interest to suffer a momentary dip but also added
fuel to the fire, as investors sought alternative, and more secure,
places to put their money. 26
At least a quarter of farmland acquisitions are a result of financial

speculation and hedging. In fact, land is becoming as or more impor-
tant as a non-farm financial asset than a farm-based productive asset.
Called "financialization;' this phenomenon attracts billionaires and
institutional investing, from pension funds, hedge funds, university
endowments, private foundations, and sovereign wealth funds to the
$8.4 trillion market in farmland. Investors already own up to $40 bil-
lion in farmland assets. Farmland is consolidating, both because of
Land Rents in the U.S. Heartland

Most issues in the farm sector are connected to land
ownership and tenure. An owner of productive agricultural
land may not necessarily be a farmer or have any interest
in farming (termed a non-operating landlord). Or they may
be a farmer that farms only part of their land and leases the
rest (part-owners). Or they may be full-owners who own 100
percent of the land they farm. Over the past three decades,
shifts in ownership and increases in farm size have seen more
renters (farmers who rent 100 percent of the land they farm)
and part-owners farming a growing number of acres, especially
in the agriculturally productive Midwestern United States. 27
In 2012, agricultural producers rented and farmed nearly
354 million acres of farmland, nearly 40 percent of total
U.S. farmland, according to the results of the USDA's Tenure,
Ownership, and Transition of Agricultural Land (TOTAL)
survey. Of this rented land, individual farmers own 20
percent, while the remaining 80 percent is rented out by
non-farming landlords, either as individuals or participants in
differing ownership arrangements.
The percentage of rented farmland is increasing across the
Midwestern United States, with a larger portion of farmland
being managed by renters rather than owners.
In Iowa, the leading state for corn production, 53% of

farmland (16 million acres) was farmed by renters in 2012, up
from 48% in 1982. Meanwhile, the average farm size for

part-owners and tenants has nearly doubled. The 2007
Census found that there are nearly 1500 part-owner and
tenant operators who each farm more than 2000 acres
in Iowa: a steep increase from the 238 part-owners and
tenants who farmed over 2000 acres in 1982. Conversely,
full-owners are farming fewer acres. This farm size increase
for part-owners and tenants is also a national trend, with
part-owners and tenants operating 78% of farms over
2000 acres nationally. 28
There is no singular causal factor for this trend, but rather

a confluence of factors: (1) increased production via an
expansion in acreage is increasingly occurring due to the need
of U.S. farmers to cover mounting costs for equipment and
other expensive inputs; (2) high commodity prices are likely to
be driving renters to farm more land in order to maintain profit;
(3) ever-increasing land sales prices serve as barriers to entry
for new farmers, leaving rent as their only viable option. 29
When farmland is rented, particularly from non-operating
landlords, a short-term, bottom-line approach to farming may
more often be applied, an approach that stands in contrast
to the long-term management processes required for more
sustainable production systems. Non-operating landlords
are less likely to be enrolled in the USDA's Conservation
or Wetlands Reserve Programs, while intense competition
for cropland-as farmers try to outbid each other to offer
the highest rents-often leaves only the largest operators,
those with more liquid capital, able to compete for rented
land. Power inequalities between tenant and landlord are
extremely difficult to dismantle given the inherent unequal
nature of land tenure, in which one owns the other's means
to production. And with fierce competition for farmland, as
is the case in Iowa and generally across the Midwest, this
asymmetry is only exacerbated. 30
land grabs and a scalar change in the forms of production that favor
big land-and big investments.
Institutions like the World Bank welcome this, arguing that big
land deals bring agricultural investment. But as farmland concen-
trates in the hands of fewer and fewer owners interested in short-term
financial profit, farmland becomes disconnected from those who
actually cultivate it.
The financialization of farmland is different than other forms of
real estate speculation because farmland is a productive asset. When
farmland's exchange value is worth more than its use value, the logic
governing how it is used changes dramatically. The investment time
horizon for speculative sale and purchase ofland as a financial asset is
fractions of a second as bits and pieces of the property's value change
hands in global financial markets. Compare this to the time horizon
of a family farmer who plans on farming the land productively and
sustainably for generations. When farmers become operators and
managers on land owned by international investors, there is no incen-
tive to invest in soil fertility, reforestation, conservation, and other
sustainable practices that require generational stewardship. The only
incentive is to pump out more production, whatever the environmen-
tal cost, to ensure rising returns to investors.
The increase in farmland's value on financial markets is far above
farmland's land rent, its value as a productive asset. This situation is
not permanent, but it is damaging and can be dangerous for farming,
the environment, and the national economy. How did it come about?
The Land Fix to the Crisis of Over-Accumulation
Since the 1980s the United States Federal Reserve has kept interest
rates on loans to private banks very low, making it easy for investors
to borrow money. Banking regulations have been relaxed to facilitate
financial investments. 31 But behind the neoliberal regulations lurks a
familiar crisis peculiar to capitalism: over-accumulation.
This kind of farmland investment-and outright land grabs-are
a quick fix for an age-old capitalist problem that has taken on global
proportions. In a recession, purchasing power is reduced because of

unemployment and underemployment. Goods pile up unsold. Banks
fill with cash because there are no attractive outlets for productive
investment. During the Great Recession of 2007-2009, many large
businesses cut costs drastically, fired workers, and worked the remain-
ing employees harder. Doing more with less increased productivity
for business but reduced the overall purchasing power of the working
class, leading to an over-accumulation of goods. Investors are reluc-
tant to invest in productive activities if no one will buy their products.
Global corporations are sitting on mountains of cash. There are lit-
erally trillions of excess dollars sloshing around the world's banks
waiting for profitable investments. With interest rates near zero,
money is cheap. Nonetheless, banks are reluctant to lend because they
don't think they will get a return on the investment.
When this happens, land becomes a good refuge for excess capital.
As Mark Twain purportedly said, "Buy land, they're not making any
more of it:' There is no point in holding wealth as money (which is
losing value) when one can hold wealth in land, which can potentially
gain in value. Investors count on buying land at low prices, then sell-
ing high when the recession is over. The current rush to buy land has
driven up prices worldwide. Today the price of agricultural land is
rising so fast that its financial value is outpacing its productive value:
land is worth more in terms of what it can sell for than for what it can
produce. Susan Payne, global land speculator and CEO of Emergent
Asset Management, once bragged:
In South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa the cost of agriland,

arable, good agriland that we're buying, is one-seventh of the
price of similar land in Argentina, Brazil, and America. That
alone is an arbitrage opportunity. We could be moronic and not
grow anything and we think we will still make money over the
next decade. 32
What Ms. Payne is referring to is that the price of land in South

Africa and sub-Saharan Africa is so low in relation to its land rent
(what it is worth for what it can produce) that the capture of the dif-
ference (arbitrage) between low price and high land rent will provide
investors with a handsome profit. Any benefits from actually grow-
ing crops are secondary to the deal. This is why the ability to capture
value without having to produce anything is often referred to as "rent-
seeking behavior" or "neo-rentism:'
With the fall in value of almost all global currencies, former driv-
ers ofland inflation like gold mining and mineral extraction have also
returned in force. "Green grabbing" ofland to access carbon markets,
set aside nature reserves, and to plant agrofuels is also on the rise.
But relatively few land grabs actually result in productive projects,
leading many observers to ask if the land rush is not just one gigantic
speculative bubble.
Land Grabs
A convergence of global crises across financial,

environmental, energy, and food sectors in recent years has
seen powerful transnational and economic actors-from
corporations to governments to private equity funds-rush
to gain access and control of land. This is occurring globally,
but there are clear North-South (and increasingly even
South-South) demarcations that echo the land grabs of
colonial times. 33 There are various mechanisms through
which land grabbing occurs, including straightforward
private-private purchases of large tracts of land, and public-
private long-term leases through which investors hope to
build, maintain, or extend large-scale agro-industrial and
extractive enterprises. National governments in "finance-
rich, resource-poor" countries are looking to "finance-poor,
resource-rich" countries to help secure their own food and,
especially, energy needs into the future. Three key factors
underpin the recent momentum in global land grabs: 1)
increased demand for food, feed, pulp, and other industrial
raw materials, driven by global population and income
growth; 2) increased demand for biofuel crops as a result

of policies and mandates in key consuming countries and
regions, such as the United States and European Union; and
3) shifts of agricultural production from regions already
operating at their productivity frontier (such as the United
States and China) to land-abundant regions where the price
of land is relatively cheap, namely Latin America, Africa,
and Asia. In many cases, private investors, including large
investment funds, have acquired land and cleared it of local
inhabitants and users for merely speculative motives, in the
hopes that the price of arable land will continue to rise in
the future. Land grabs do not happen overnight. Markets
must be deregulated (or created), national laws must be
changed (or broken), and infrastructure must be developed.
This is the drilling down of investment capital in which land
grabs, whatever their form, are simply one part of a larger
reconfiguration of rules, markets, and landscapes. The "grab"
is one link in a long chain of larger political and economic
transformations called "territorial restructuring." 34
Territorial Restructuring: Colonizing Places and Spaces

for Capitalist Development
Land, while viewed by the market as a tradable commodity, is the

social space where economic and community decisions are made. It
is the place of neighborhood, culture, and livelihoods. For indigenous
peoples, it is their territory. It is home.
Land arbitrage opportunities come about by bringing new land-
with an attractive land rent-into the global land market where rents
can actually be capitalized. While capitalism has a natural tendency
to seek out rents, such rents are not always so easy to capture, that
is, bring to the market for sale. Other people or communities might
already have possession of the land; infrastructure may be deficient;
land might be regulated to restrict use or protected from sale by law,
treaty, trusts, or reserves. Once purchased, speculative (rent-seeking)
capital may face difficulties in raising the price for resale. Established
land markets might not exist or may have been destroyed by eco-
nomic collapse, war, or corruption. People and communities might
resist the commodification of their land.
The capture of land value (rents) and the extraction of profits
(surplus) from a given area requires a series of physical and political
conditions that favor capitalist investment. If these conditions do not
exist, the private sector needs the state to create them. If the state is
weak or unwilling, the private sector can turn to multilateral develop-
ment organizations for help.
The World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Asian
Development Bank, African Development Bank, and European
Development Bank were all created to facilitate the development
of capitalism. The development banks can work individually, with
each other, or with other multilateral institutions, governments,
and transnational corporations to create the conditions for capitalist
development, rent capture, and surplus extraction in a given region,
country, or territory. This process is called territorial restructuring. 35
Territorial restructuring follows a "logic of territory" and "logic of
capital:' 36 The first logic includes activities such as privatization, envi-
ronmental enclosures (like nature reserves), and land titling programs
that convert traditional or communal landholdings into individ-
ual, private ownership. The second logic utilizes the instruments of
finance, investment, market liberalization, and environmental dereg-
ulation. The former is concerned with the physical places capital is
interested in exploiting for profit, the latter with the social spaces in
which the political decisions are made over these resources to allow
businesses to profit.
Because of the weak planning and regulatory capacity of many
countries, infrastructure-roads, electricity, or power generation-is
also a means for territorial restructuring. If territorial restructuring
takes place where people already live, it can completely transform
communities, for better or for worse. If it takes place in sparsely
populated areas, it can facilitate colonization, also for better or for
worse. Land reform and land titling programs are often a part of
territorial restructuring. Once formal titles to the land are given to

original inhabitants, or more likely, to owners taking control follow-
ing dispossession, it can become a saleable commodity. Depending
on the political objective, territorial restructuring projects can either
be regressive or redistributive.
For example, the World Bank worked diligently to restructure the
Guatemalan Highlands in order to open it up to gold extraction by
Northern mining companies. Reviving the sector was a remote pos-
sibility until 2001-2004 when the international price for gold jumped
from $277 to over $400 an ounce. 37 Old, low-grade, mined-out or
hard-to-reach mines around the world suddenly became potentially
profitable. In Guatemala, gold deposits are found in the Western
Highlands, home to most of the country's impoverished indigenous
population.
For decades during the country's civil war, the Highlands was the
theater for widespread and grisly episodes of government and para-
military human rights abuses. After the signing of the Peace Accords
in 1996, the World Bank quickly advised the Arzu government to
modernize the nation's mining sector. This led to one of the most
imperialist mining codes since Guatemala's independence from Spain
in 1821. Under the new mining law, companies could be 100 percent
foreign owned, 6 percent mandatory royalty levels were replaced with
a mere 1 percent, and the 58 percent tax on profits was reduced to 31
percent. In a country where poor consumers pay up to $140 a month
for water, the substantial quantities of it needed for processing gold
ore became free to mining companies. Licensing was streamlined,
and though some environmental regulations were strengthened, no
provisions were made to increase the regulatory capacity of the min-
istries of Mining and Environment, thus making these improvements
effectively symbolic.
In 1997, the World Bank introduced a $13 million project designed
to prepare conditions for the privatization of the state-owned tele-
phone company, roads, and ports. This was quickly followed by three
projects totaling over $133 million, all in the same year. In all, from
1997 to 2005, the bank introduced twenty-four separate projects
totaling $859 million, loaning more to Guatemala in nine years than

it had in the past forty. The bank's post-accords suite of projects
included seven project investments from the bank's private sector
lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), totaling
$139 million. The largest of these projects-$45 million-went to
Glamis Gold Corporation of Canada to reactivate the Marlin Mine in
the predominantly indigenous municipality of San Marcos.
Nearly one-third of the bank's project lending since the Peace
Accords went directly or indirectly to the Western Highlands for a
wide array of projects that both redirected the flow of wealth and
mitigated the social and environmental consequences of mineral
extraction: reconstruction, land titling, and roads. A large, natural
resources management project was particularly deceptive. A natural
resources audit carried out by the bank had determined that the best
prospect for generating revenues for indigenous communities in the
Western Highlands was through reforestation. The project sought to
work with communities to formalize private land titles so that they
could take advantage of potential carbon markets. These carbon mar-
kets never materialized. The bank's audit did not mention that gold
was an important natural resource in the region. Nor did it mention
that sharing just a fraction of the profits from the gold lying under-
neath the ground within these communities would increase their
wealth many times more than carbon markets. The fictitious market
for environmental services was a ruse to divert attention from the real
profits at stake.
The Marlin mine was strongly opposed by the indigenous residents
in surrounding communities, who carried out a widespread public
consultation in which 99 percent of those interviewed voted against
it. Delegations of indigenous leaders traveled to Washington to file a
complaint with the IFC and implore the World Bank to stop fund-
ing the project. Though they were not aware of the legal and physical
restructuring that would transform the Western Highlands in the
interests of foreign mineral extraction, they knew that the influx of
workers and the contamination from open-pit cyanide mining would
overrun their lands.
The indigenous communities lost their fight against the Marlin

mine. By the time they realized that the mine was coming, their ter-
ritory was already deep in the throes of a capitalist restructuring. The
mining concession was actually the last step in a series of projects and
agreements designed to open the area to foreign mining interests. The
land where they had grown food and lived for centuries had become
part of another logic, one in which they were in the way. 38
The Real Tragedy: The Loss of the Commons and the Public Sphere
For three centuries, capital has waged war to appropriate the

Commons and open-access areas for free exploitation. In times of
market expansion, it has also sought to privatize all forms of public
ownership and to subjugate the power of public decision to the needs
of capital. Given the steady march of capital into land, markets, and
politics, it is remarkable that today, following a quarter-century of
neoliberal privatization and deregulation, there is any public sphere
of or Commons left to appropriate.
Although it is true that much of the decision-making spaces of
the public sphere worldwide have been destroyed by neoliberal-
ism, large parts of the world's food systems still follow a community
rather than a private market logic. Some countries must import a
significant amount of their food from abroad and their populations
are quickly affected by changes in prices on international markets.
However, in total, only about 15 percent of food crosses international
borders and well over half of the world's food is produced by small
farmers and peasants. The 86 million acres of land currently being
grabbed by speculators and producers of agrofuels have given rise to
widespread resistance, indicating that people around the world are
stubbornly hanging on to land and livelihoods outside the logic of
capital. Moreover, seemingly against all odds, people are working to
reestablish the Commons as a means of resisting the capitalist food
system.
One of the largest examples of this resistance is the ejido system of
Mexico. Ejidos are collectively managed tracts ofland that are usually
divided into family parcels. The Mexican ejido system, established by

the Mexican Constitution in 1917, has its roots in the Aztec calpulli
and in the collective land management of seventeenth-century Spain.
Mexican ejidos replaced the hacienda system (a feudal arrangement),
left over from the days of Spanish colonialism. Ejidos provided land
to the peasantry, who fought a bloody revolution against the landed
oligarchy. Members of an ejido have rights to farm the land but
no private title. The asamblea ejidal or ejido assembly to which all
ejidatarios belong is the highest authority regarding the use and man-
agement of the ejido, and its authorities are elected democratically
by ejido members. For over seventy years the vast ejido system of
Mexico ensured peasant access to land, food, and livelihoods. It was
the backbone of the Mexican food system, far outproducing its indus-
trial food sector, even after the introduction of the Green Revolution
in the 1960s. Large land interests in Mexico never gave up hoping that
one day they could take back the land lost in the Mexican Revolution,
particularly the vast extensions of land distributed during the presi-
dency of pro-poor reformer Lazaro Cardenas (1934-1940 ).
In 1991, in preparation for the signing of the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the United States, Canada, and
Mexico, Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari constitutionally
abolished the ejido and gave individual property titles to its farmers,
effectively privatizing millions of acres of what had been public land.
A neoliberal modernizer who did his graduate studies at Harvard
and the Kennedy School of Government in the United States, Salinas
de Gortari was eager to send a strong signal to Northern investors
that Mexico's economy was open for business-starting with peas-
ant farms. The hope was that the ejidatarios would sell their land
to Mexican and North American agribusiness concerns, paving the
way for the development of capitalist farms and the incorporation of
Mexican agriculture into the globalized food regime. Although the
neoliberal policies of the scandal-ridden Salinas de Gortari presi-
dency led to the crash of the Mexican economy in 1994, they did not
lead to the widespread sale of ejido land. Though the small farm-
ers of the ejidos were effectively abandoned with the privatization
of agricultural services, and though NAFTA did drive several mil-

lion farmers into bankruptcy (leading to waves of migration to the
United States in search of work), most ejido farmers have not sold
their farms. One strong factor in this was the refusal of women to part
with the land. Alicia Sarmientos, an ejidataria, states:
We discovered that we had rights to land because if we are married

and our husbands want to sell the ejido, they can't do it without
our consent. ... We realized that we had this power. This has been
great because many women have not permitted their husbands
to sell the ejido. The men have migrated to work, okay, because
of economic need. They have wanted to sell the land, but no! We
women are defending ourselves now. We can work the land. 39
Restructuring Land and Property; Rebuilding the Public Sphere
Because of global capital's need to constantly expand, because of its

tendency to store excess profits in land, and because of the current
expansion of the financial sector, land and resource struggles are
occurring in both rural and urban food systems of the Global North
and the Global South. Private property relations dominate the cor-
porate food regime, but private property cannot exist without the
public sector: multilateral banks, police forces, infrastructure, and the
power of public government to enforce and ensure private accumula-
tion. Similarly, many of the world's food producers cannot survive
without common property, and none can survive without the public
sphere. Open-access resources can be converted into public, private,
or common property (this is precisely why they are usually in dis-
pute). The interplay of different property forms under capitalism is
complex and fluid and reflects different class interests that can be part
of class domination or part of different forms of resistance.
The Commons can supplement the food, fiber, and other resource
needs of small-scale farmers, pastoralists, and fishermen, lowering
their livelihood costs and allowing them to sell their products cheaply,
and thus help them compete with large-scale, capitalized production.
Brazil's Landless Workers Movement-MST 40 • 41
Few issues have been as contentious in contemporary

Brazilian politics as land reform. Born out of resistance to the
economic plans imposed by Brazil's military governments
during the 1970s and 1980s, an array of popular movements
pressed the Brazilian state for reforms. A strong convergence
of movements came together in 1984 to form the Brazilian
Landless Workers' Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores
Rurais Sem Terra, or MST). Taking advantage of the 1964
Land Statute, in which land must serve a "social purpose,"
the MST began by occupying idle and socially unproductive
lands belonging to the latifundios (large landed estates).
With its roots in socialist activism, Liberation Theology, and
the popular education theories of Paulo Freire, the MST is
now at the forefront of social action for agrarian reform.
The MST identifies and occupies underutilized or empty
lands to gain legal title and bring them into productive
use by employing agroecology. Once underused land is
successfully occupied by families organized by the MST,
schools, cooperatives, and credit unions are set up and the
land is farmed to grow fruits, vegetables, grains, coffee,
and livestock. Present in 23 of Brazil's 25 states and with
over 1 million members, the movement has ratified over
2,000 settlements, settling over 370,000 families with an
estimated 80,000 more awaiting settlement, established
a network of approximately 2,000 primary and secondary
schools, partnered with 13 public universities, 160 rural
cooperatives, 4 credit unions, and started food processing
plants, and retail outlets. In recent years, the MST has
established itself as an influential voice in international
advocacy networks such as the World Social Forum and Via
Campesina.
However, this "subsidy" from the Commons can cut both ways. If
the Commons is used to produce goods for market rather than for
subsistence, low prices in the market can lead to the overexploitation
of the Commons. Also, when small-scale producers or their family
members work for industrial wages, the Commons can allow indus-
try to obtain labor power more cheaply, essentially allowing industry
to appropriate the subsidy of the Commons. So, under certain condi-
tions, the market and the private sector may indirectly benefit from
the Commons. In recessionary or deflationary times, capital may seek
to privatize the Commons in order to put its wealth in land rather
than hold it as money. If capital wants land or needs labor, it can use
the power of the state to enclose the Commons and force smallhold-
ers to sell their land and enter the labor market. So even though the
Commons is a historic refuge for non-capitalist relations in the food
system, it does not always escape manipulation by capital.
Capitalism has the same fluid, opportunistic relation with public
goods. In order to access, appropriate, or steal resources, the private
sector needs the economic and coercive power of the state. In times
of capitalist crisis-for example, the lack of profitable investment
opportunities-the private sector calls upon the state to eliminate
regulations in order to provide capital with more flexibility and
opportunities to profit. And when financial crashes occur, the state is
recruited to bail out the large "too big to fail and too big for jail" com-
panies with taxpayer money. Even in good times the private sector
relies on state subsidies (for example, the U.S. Farm Bill, with most of
the benefits going to agrifoods businesses), the privatization of public
goods (research at public universities), and the complicity of public
regulatory bodies (like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration) to
ensure the privatization and unregulated circulation of goods. The
private sector also relies extensively on public property in the form of
infrastructure to do business.
Open-access resources are sometimes left as such-in which case
they are often subject to dispute between different users-or can be
brought under the control of the state, to be privatized or placed in
the public domain. Opening the North Pole to oil rigs, the buying
and selling of carbon credits, and the vast "uninhabited lands" of the
Sahara and equatorial rainforests are examples of this. In some cases,
capital prefers the free-for-all of open access in order to extract wealth
without having to pay for externalities or be subjected to regulation.
Sometimes capital needs the resources and regulatory power of the
state to facilitate access.
Under private property relations of the liberal capitalist state, all
economic actors have equal rights to do business. With public prop-
erty relations, all actors have an equal vote. In common property
relations all actors have equal power. This goes a long way toward
explaining the persistence of the Commons, even under capitalism.
The mechanism for exchanging (buying and selling) private prop-
erty is the market. The mechanism for deciding what happens to both
public property and the Commons is the public sphere. Without a
market, private property would wither and die. Without a public
sphere both public property and the Commons eventually disappear,
leaving the future of society to whatever corporations have the most
market power. The last three decades of neoliberal privatization have
not just seen the transfer of trillions of dollars in public and common
property resources to the corporate-dominated private sector, they
have also seen the steady erosion of the public sphere-the basis for
community survival. Gone are the ejido assemblies of Mexico where
villagers came together to manage their land-based resources; gone are
the parent-teacher associations that engaged the community in their
children's education; gone are the community health committees that
addressed issues of environmental health and much, much more.
Property is not just a reflection of social relations, it is a social
relation. Any project for the reconstruction of public and common
property must necessarily work to recapture and strengthen the
public sphere. Any effort to rebuild our civic life must also restruc-
ture property.
-4-
Capitalism, Food, and Agriculture
For one who gained riches by mining,

Perceiving that hundreds grew poor,
I made up my mind to try farming,
The only pursuit that was sure!
-"LAY OF THE OLD SETTLER," NORTHWEST UNITED
STATES FOLK SONG BY FRANCIS D. HENRY, CIRCA 1874
T wo hundred years after capitalism emerged in Europe, the

term "capitalist agriculture" was still largely an oxymoron.
With the exception of wool and the colonial trade in hides,
cotton, tobacco, coffee, tea, and sugar, there was very little direct
capitalist investment in farming. Food was something to be bought
cheaply-and farmland something to be leased at a high price-but
farming per se was not considered a wise investment for the burgeon-
ing capitalist classes. In many parts of the world today, and in many
ways, capitalist agriculture is still a contradiction in terms. This is
because while the business of selling inputs (seeds, tools, machin-
ery, and fertilizer) to farmers and trading in farm products can be
quite lucrative, farming itself presents certain obstacles to capitalist
investment.
On one hand, this tension between agriculture and capitalism

has produced an irrational capitalist agriculture rife with intracta-
ble social and environmental problems. 1 On the other hand, it has
resulted in the "persistence of the peasantry" and of petty commodity
production worldwide. 2 Today, despite centuries of capitalism, large-
scale capitalist agriculture produces less than a third of the world's
food supply, made possible in large part by multibillion-dollar sub-
sidies and insurance programs. Peasants and smallholders still feed
most people in the world, though they cultivate less than a quarter of
the arable land. 3
Obstacles to Capitalist Investment in Agriculture
Farming is a risky business. Environmental factors like droughts,

floods, freezes, and pest outbreaks make agriculture a bad bet.
Farmers must buy expensive, industrialized products (machinery,
chemicals, and genetically modified seeds) in order to produce
cheap raw materials, typically resulting in low margins of profit.
Agriculture under capitalism has a tendency to overproduce; for
the last half century the world has produced 1.5 times more than
enough food to feed every man, woman, and child on the planet.
Overproduction in the Global North has led to a steady decline in
the price of agricultural commodities. Commodities in most indus-
tries are manipulated by a handful of monopolistic corporations that
try to avoid "price wars" between each other. There are far too many
farmers in agriculture to engage in this inter-firm behavior and no
single farmer or group of farmers controls enough of the food supply
to influence price by increasing or reducing supply. Farmers must
take the prices they are given. Individual farmers have to cover their
fixed costs and can't, on their own, hold back production to raise
prices. Unless government programs or marketing boards limit pro-
duction in times of falling commodity prices, farmers will do exactly
the opposite: producing more in an attempt to cover their fixed costs.
When farmers try to "farm their way out" of low prices, the result is
even lower prices.
CAPITALISM, FOOD, AND AGRICULTURE 117
To keep commodity prices stable, capitalist governments imple-

ment price supports and supply management programs. These can
take the form of "set-asides" to take land out of production, grain
reserves, and marketing boards and commodity agreements to
manage market supply. Governments can buy up excess grain, taking
it off the market. This helps to sop up oversupply, raising prices to
farmers. Tariffs and subsidies are also used to manage prices. Subsidies
are especially liked by grain companies and processors because these
allow them to buy up product cheaply, letting the taxpayer pick up the
bill in the form of direct payments to farmers.
Subsidies are often criticized by some environmental groups,
which claim that they drive overproduction of cheap food and are
given primarily to large farmers. The reality is that low prices drive
overproduction, which results in subsidies. Eliminating subsidies
(without other major structural changes to supply and price) would
likely drive small and midsize farmers out of business, thus con-
tributing to further farm consolidation into larger and larger farms.
All of these measures have fallen in and out of favor and have been
replaced with others, such as crop insurance, that basically attempt
to resolve the same contradiction. Without some form of supply and
price management, farmers typically increase their production, thus
bringing down commodity prices even more. Then, if they can, they
switch to higher-value crops and start the boom-bust cycle all over
again.
Can farm programs ensure a stable, fair income for farmers and
a healthy, affordable food supply? Of course they can. Unfortunately,
capital is not invested in ensuring a fair income for farmers but in
profiting from agriculture. Banks give loans; seed and chemical com-
panies sell hybrids, GM Os, fertilizers, and pesticides; grain companies
buy and process corn, wheat, and soy. All of this without having to
worry about an individual farmer's crop failure. But, you say, fortunes
are made by capitalists who take risks! True perhaps, but in farming,
risks prevail and fortunes are rare.
One reason capital generally avoids investing directly in farming
is the "fixity" of land-based production. Farmers are tied to the land
through their soil, fences, barns, farmsteads, and local knowledge. If

a farm is losing money, it can't just cut its losses and move to an over-
seas "free enterprise zone" like a sweat shop. Another big difficulty is
contracting skilled seasonal labor on a timely basis. Few people have
the combination of quickness and stamina needed to harvest crops
efficiently, all day long, all season long, year after year. 4 Also, farmers
are price-takers rather than price-makers; because of the perishability
of most agricultural crops, they can't withhold their products from
the market to drive up the price but must take whatever comes along,
even if it means losing money. All of these factors act as disincentives
to direct investment by capital.
But there is an even bigger deal-breaker for capital. At the core of
agriculture's production process is a troublesome disjuncture between
labor and production time:
Working time is always production time; that is to say, time

during which capital is held fast in the sphere of production. But
vice versa, not all time during which capital is engaged in the pro-
cess of production is necessarily working time. 5
What this means for farming is that labor and capital are invested
"up front" to prepare the soil and plant the crop, and then only inter-
mittently to irrigate, cultivate, fumigate, etc. The sum of all activities
in which labor is needed is "labor time:' But to bring a crop to harvest
takes a lot longer than the sum of the labor time because agricul-
tural production also depends on slow natural processes like water
and nutrient uptake and photosynthesis. Livestock takes time to grow
to market weight. So the full agricultural production time is much
longer than the amount oflabor time invested in producing a crop.
These time-consuming natural processes are a necessary part
of agricultural production. During this period, however, capital is
immobile, tied up in the production process. Unlike a factory that
can speed up or slow down production on an hourly or daily basis,
a farm can't fine-tune its operations to constantly respond to price
signals. Adjusting labor and input costs to respond to market changes
is difficult or impossible within the agricultural year. But even more

basic is that surplus value-the "holy grail" of capitalism-is only cre-
ated when labor is being absorbed into the commodity. This happens
when farmers and laborers perform work, either by hand or using
tools and machines (that were made with labor sometime in the past).
When labor is not being employed in the production process, capital
is essentially dormant.
Capitalist agriculture does all it can to make farms work like
factories, from eliminating labor and expertise with machines to
standardizing crop phenotypes for easy harvest, even ripening,
and long shelflife. But the core objective of capitalist agriculture is
to shorten production time in relation to labor time. In their semi-
nal article "Obstacles to the Development of Capitalist Agriculture;'
Susan Mann and James Dickenson explain how this has led to very
specific forms of large-scale, highly capitalized production on one
hand, and the persistence of small-scale, "petty commodity produc-
tion" on the other:
[The] capitalization of agriculture progresses most rapidly in

those spheres where production time can be successfully reduced.
Conversely ... those spheres of production characterized by a
more or less rigid non-identity of production and labour time are
likely to prove unattractive to capital on a large scale and thus are
left more or less in the hands of the petty producer. 6
For example, capitalist livestock operations have greatly reduced

the days to maturity of poultry, pork, and beef through selective
breeding, antibiotics, and hormones. Traditional livestock breeds
and heirloom crop varieties may be tastier but take much longer to
mature than industrialized animals and cultivars. The new GMO
salmon doesn't taste better (nor is it better for the environment), but
was developed because the fish grow to market size in half the time
of wild salmon.
The flip side of the disjuncture between labor and production time
is, as Mann and Dickenson point out, the persistence of the "petty
producer": peasants, smallholders, and family farms that farm on the

margins of capitalist agriculture. These farming units can be more
productive (kilo per hectare and pounds per acre) than industrial
farms, because smallholders have to make the most they can on very
small plots of land. 7 These farmers intensify productivity because
unlike in industrial agriculture they can't increase overall produc-
tion by farming larger and larger areas. They use family labor and
cut costs by using low-external input, agroecological methods. They
have a knack for finding market niches. But the existence of nearly
1.5 billion small undercapitalized farms in the world (plenty of which
are less productive than industrial farms) also reflects the fact that
because of the disjuncture between labor and production time, capital
has simply been invested elsewhere, at least for now.
Capital's avoidance of actual farming and the technological devel-
opment of agriculture have also resulted in a large family farm sector
that is fully engaged in commodity production. Ninety-seven percent
of farms in the United States are family-owned and a full 87 percent
rely mostly on family labor. Of the 3 percent of non-family corporate
farms, most are tightly held by just a few partners. 8
Smallholders today in the Global North as well as the Global
South interact with capitalist markets by selling part or all of their
crop as a commodity. However, in the South-and increasingly in
the North-they also try to avoid global markets where they are
unable to compete with industrial agriculture. Rather, they sell in
locally or regionally constructed markets, barter, or seek to pro-
cess their product on a small scale to add value. Many also seek to
lower costs and risk by avoiding capitalization schemes and indus-
trial intensification. This gives rise to many farming styles that may
have a lower market output but can provide higher farm incomes,
and is reflected in the tremendous heterogeneity of practices. 9 These
petty commodity producers making up the majority of the farmers
in the world have been around since the dawn of capitalist agricul-
ture. Though their proportion of overall production has diminished,
there are about as many smallholders in the world today as there
were a century ago.
The Agricultural Treadmill
Over the past hundred years, farmers have been continually

offered new technologies from land-grant universities, the
USDA, and large agribusiness firms with the inherent promise
of increased profits. Willard Cochrane saw the continual
application of new technologies resulting in a "technology
treadmill" that the farmers had to jump on if they expected
to survive.10 Professor John Ikerd summed up the inner
workings of the treadmill in his presentation at the 2002
Missouri Farmers' Union Annual Conference: "Invariable [sic].
these technologies require more capital, but reduce labor and
management, allowing each farmer to reduce per- unit costs
of production while increasing total production. However,
as more and more farmers adopt these new technologies,
the resulting increases in production cause prices to fall,
eliminating the profits of the early adopters and driving those
who refuse to adopt, or adopt too late, out of business. This
'technology treadmill' has resulted in chronically recurring
overproduction and has been driving farmers off the land for
decades." 11
Increasingly advanced industrial technologies encourage
farming on an ever-expanding scale. For farmers who choose
to expand their operations, many incur large debts in order
to finance the major capital investment required for new
technologies. This investment in specialized machinery
encourages the planting of monocultures and abandonment
of crop rotations, as farmers attempt to get the greatest use
out of their expensive equipment, designed to cut and gather
uniform crops. Similar, and even inherent, to the technology
treadmill is the "chemical treadmill."
Chemical pesticides in agriculture were at first embraced
by many farmers with the promise (from chemical companies
no less) of lower overall costs. Ultimately, the ongoing
use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers increases costs,
as pests become more chemical-resistant and fertilizers

deplete the soil of vital nutrients. Secondary pest outbreaks
(organisms that weren't formerly major pests but become so
as their natural enemies are destroyed by targeted pesticide
use) and changes in soil qualities from overuse of fertilizers
leave crops more vulnerable to disease and damage. As
"superbugs" and "superweeds" have developed in response
to widespread and continuous use of chemicals, farmers are
left little option but to purchase more and more pesticides
each year just to keep crop losses at a standard rate.
Farmers, farmworkers, and rural residents end up being
the bearers of the risks associated with new technologies
and chemicals, be they economic, environmental, or health-
related, with the financial benefits asymmetrically accruing to
off-farm capital. Unlike farmers, the farm input supply sector
receives a return when they sell their product or technology,
regardless of the farmers' production outcome. Why not
then just jump off the treadmill? Getting off the industrial
agriculture treadmill is no simple task: the cost-price squeeze
that encouraged farmers onto the treadmill in the first place
has increased rather than decreased in intensity as small
family farms are run out of business and production becomes
increasingly concentrated on large commercial farms.
Opportunities for Investment-Not Farming
On the other hand, the obstacles to capitalist development in agricul-

ture sooner or later become opportunities for capitalist development
in the food system. The agrifoods sector is extraordinarily adept at
inventing technologies or services to make profits without actually
engaging in the risks and limitations of farming. 12 The land itself can
be used to generate profits to capital without assuming the risks of
agriculture through financialization, which allows investors and
speculators opportunities to profit from the value of land and crops
without actually having to farm. 13 Even the market risks of agriculture

are an opportunity for capital. Commodity futures are promises from
buyers to pay a certain price on the farmer's product. Farmers can
lock in prices long before they harvest. Buyers of futures are speculat-
ing that the actual price of the agricultural commodity (like wheat,
corn, or pork bellies) at time of sale will be higher than the price
established when they bought the futures. This is a way of making
(or losing) money on the difference in seasonal prices. There is even
a market for betting for or against the rise or fall in the value of com-
modity futures. The value of this financialized market has increased
exponentially since the 2008 global food crisis. The tremendous vola-
tility in food commodities has driven this market opportunity.
The Financialization of Food

The global food crisis of 2007-2008 certainly elicited
worldwide attention when rapid and extreme increases
in food prices led to civil unrest and riots in almost thirty
countries. The crisis sparked international debate among
institutions, scholars, and activists about its underlying
systemic causes. Analysts attributed the rising food prices
to a "perfect storm" of converging factors, one of which
was financial speculation in the agricultural commodity
market. While the world food economy has had links
dating back centuries to financial markets via agricultural
commodities futures exchanges, an increasing trend toward
"financialization" has occurred, whereby international
financial institutions-banks, financial service firms, and
large-scale institutional investors-have become involved in
previously isolated commodities markets.
Agricultural futures markets developed in the United
States over 150 years ago and have been under federal
regulation since the 1920s (U.S. Commodities Future Trading
Commission). The futures market developed to provide a
vital link between two parties: sellers (farmers) and buyers
(food processors and manufacturers, flour mills, meatpackers)

that agree to buy and sell a specified product for delivery
in the future at a fixed price. On the most basic level, the
agricultural futures market allows farmers to avoid having to
sell all their crops at harvest times, when the supply is high
and the price is low.14 Instead, both sellers and buyers can
lock in a fixed price well in advance of the point of exchange,
allowing both parties to hedge their bets and reduce risk from
potential volatile prices and seasonal fluctuations.
The deregulation of commodity markets from the
1990s onward obscured the distinction between those
with a physical interest in the commodity (farmers and
food processors) and those with a financial interest in the
commodity (purely speculative investment bankers and
money managers), treating them as one and the same. For
speculative investors, agricultural derivatives are not about
the agricultural products they represent (they will never come
in contact with the corn, beans, or wheat) but the financial
opportunities they offer. just prior to the global food crisis,
a flood of new speculative investments from Wall Street
not only increased the liquidity but also the volatility of the
market. In the 2006-2008 period, average world prices for
rice rose by 217 percent, wheat by 136 percent, maize by 125
percent, and soybeans by 107 percent, pushing millions of
people worldwide into the ranks of the extremely poor and
hungry.15 In the United States, grocery store food prices rose by
6.6 percent and cereal and bakery prices rose by 11.7 percent
in 2008, the biggest increase in almost three decades.16
Although the argument is not universally accepted, a
number of significant global institutions, including FAQ,
UNCTAD, the G20, the EU, and the World Bank, either
accept or at least acknowledge that financial speculation is a
significant contributor to food price volatility, with the global
poor, who spend up to three-quarters of their income on
food, harmed the most.
Because of the disjuncture oflabor and production time, the easi-

est ways for capital to penetrate agriculture is on the upstream and
downstream sites of the production process through what is called
appropriationism and substitutionism. 17 On the upstream (produc-
tion) side, capital steadily appropriates on-farm labor processes by
replacing agroecological management practices (like the use of green
manures, cover crops, animal-based fertilization, biological and
biodiverse forms of pest control, and farm-grown seed stock) with
synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and genetically engineered seeds.
On farming's downstream side (merchandising, processing, retail,
and consumption), capital substitutes direct producer-consumer rela-
tions with a complex of buyers, wholesalers, carriers, commission
merchants, packers, cooperatives, and grower-shippers who send
farm products on to canners, bottlers, and packers before ending up
on supermarket shelves, restaurant plates, and in fast-food cartons.
Farm products are also broken down into basic ingredients (pro-
tein, carbohydrates, and oil) to be reassembled in industrial products
like soft drinks, processed food or cosmetics. The tendency toward
overproduction in the farm sector means that new markets must be
developed for the ever-increasing volume of production. As Richard
Walker's landmark study on California agriculture points out, the
profitability of substitutionism depends on acquiring good quality
crops cheaply and dependably, moving products along the pipeline
efficiently, and adding value through processing in factories and res-
taurants.18 Those firms able to vertically integrate along either side of
agriculture's complex value chain are rewarded with greater capital
efficiencies.
The downstream process of substitution explodes farm products
from a direct relation of producer-product-consumer into an array of
basic ingredients for a vast array of food products sold by the power-
ful supermarket sector. Upstream, appropriation does the opposite
by imploding the complex farm labor process into fewer and fewer
inputs. Monsanto's GMO seeds, for example, have introduced Bacillus
thurengensis (Bt) genes and a gene that is tolerant to glyphosate (a pow-
erful herbicide) into their seeds. The Bt genes replace pesticides and
the glyphosate-tolerant genes allow the cultivar to withstand applica-

tions of herbicide (that is, at least until insects develop a tolerance to
Bt and weeds develop a tolerance to glyphosate). Even the ostensibly
humanitarian effort to biofortify crops like "Golden Rice" or the "GM
banana'' that attempt to insert vitamins into crops are a substitute for
a diversified diet-and a diversified farming system. This results in
fewer and fewer vitamin-rich cultivars in the field, and a loss of diver-
sity in diet as well. The drive to introduce more "stacked" seeds (with
multiple introduced characteristics) through genetic engineering that
controls pests and weeds, incorporates vitamins, and resists drought
is a classic example of how appropriationism replaces diverse farming
systems and complex farm, labor, and management processes, col-
lapsing them into a single seed commodity.
The concentration of capital in the agribusiness and agrifoods
sectors has given rise to multibillion-dollar oligopolies that control
credit, farm inputs, services, processing, distribution, and retail.
The incessant expansion of these corporations has steadily shaped
agriculture's labor and production processes to conform to the capi-
talist logic of appropriation and substitution, and increasingly, global
finance capital. This has resulted in the steady decline of the farmer's
share in the value of agricultural production. U.S. farmers received
over 40 percent of the food dollar in 1910, but by 1990 they received
under 10 percent. 19
Contract Farming
One way that capital profits from agriculture without engaging in the
risks of farming is through the system of contract farming. A modern
version of sharecropping and tenant farming, contract farming is a
fixed-term agreement in which the farmers give exclusive rights to a
firm to buy their product. Though a market-specification contract, the
firm guarantees the producer a buyer, based on agreements regard-
ing price and quality, and with a resource-providing contract the firm
also provides production inputs (like fertilizer, hatchlings, or tech-
nical assistance). If the firm provides all the inputs and buys all of
the product, it essentially controls the production process while the

farmer basically provides land and labor:
Contract farming is a form of vertical integration within agricul-

tural commodity chains, such that the firm has greater control
over the production process, as well as the quantity, quality, char-
acteristics, and the timing of what is produced. Contract farming,
Contract Livestock and Poultry Production
Poultry producers often get into the business by obtaining a

contract that guarantees the delivery of chickens for a few
years. Based on that contract they obtain large loans, often
backed by the federal government, to build poultry houses
on their own land. The poultry company delivers chickens
and feed and tells the farmer how to raise the chickens.
In exchange, the farmers have to dispose of the chickens'
waste, compete against neighbors in a "tournament" system
in which high-producing farmers are paid more per pound,
and lower producing farmers are paid less, 20 and work
to pay off the debt they took on to get into the chicken
farming business. The farmers are generally on flock-by-flock
contracts, with no guarantee of future bird deliveries. Well
before the loans for the buildings are paid off, they could lose
the contract. This gives the companies great leverage over
the farmers, since the chicken houses are basically useless
other than to raise chickens, and the farm has a construction
loan that needs to be paid off.
These challenges don't just impact poultry farmers; they
are also seen in the pork industry, but the issues are most
acute with poultry because chicken production has operated
under the integrated system the longest. In fact, many refer
to what is happening with hogs as the "chickenization" of the
pork industry. Signs of similar changes are beginning to occur
in cattle markets. 21
in its various forms, allows a degree of control over the produc-

tion process and the product without the firm directly entering
into production. 22
Pineapple in India, passion fruit in Brazil, asparagus in Thailand,

cow-calf operations in Canada-around the world grains, vegetables,
almonds, chocolate, sugarcane, palm oil, cattle, poultry, and hogs are
farmed under contract, often between family farmers or "petty pro-
ducers" and large corporate food processors like Pepsi, Cadbury, Del
Monte, Purdue, and Tyson. There are many different types of arrange-
ments regarding credit, installations, inputs, quantity, quality, and
price.
Two things are common to all contract farming. First, the farmer
takes full risk on the product. If the crop is poor or fails, or the flock
underperforms or dies, the farmer, not the firm, assumes the loss.
Second, whereas the farmer has long- and medium-term investments
in land, installations, and equipment, the firm only invests seasonally
(in seedlings, fertilizer, or chicks). This means that farmers are often
"locked in'' to contracts for many seasons while they pay off their
long-term investments, regardless of the price they receive.
Contract farming is usually presented as a "win-win'' arrangement
that ensures supply to the buyer and a buyer to the farmer. In the
United States, contract farming dominates the poultry industry. The
World Bank considers contract farming to be the primary means for
linking peasant farmers to the global market and promotes it widely
in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. 23
The downsides of contract farming are few-for the buyer.
Sometimes farmers will find ways to hold back their product or sell
it elsewhere at a better price. But since the farmer is the most lever-
aged partner, the pitfalls can be many: the buyer can stop renewing
the contract and buy elsewhere, provide substandard inputs, make
unreasonable demands regarding quality or installation upgrades, or
reduce the price or keep it fixed even as the price of inputs soars. All
of this can lock the farmer into a sort of debt bondage that is all too
reminiscent of sharecropping and tenant farming.
The Metabolic Rift
Like Adam Smith and David Ricardo before him, Karl Marx fol-
lowed the early development of capitalism and its relationship to
agriculture very closely. He witnessed the early capitalization of agri-
culture, so he wasn't suggesting it couldn't exist. Rather, he believed
that capitalist agriculture was biologically and socially irrational,
stemming from the "metabolic rift" created by capitalism as it drove
people from the countryside into the cities. Urban concentration led
to a one-way flow of nutrients out of the countryside and into the
city, where they were consumed as food and goods. These nutrients
were not returned to the countryside, but were sloughed into the
rivers and oceans as waste. Marx saw both the flow of nutrients and
the flow of people as an essential-but destructive and exploitative-
part of capitalism:
Capitalist production collects the population together in great

centers, and causes the urban population to achieve an ever-
growing preponderance. This has two results. On the one hand,
it concentrates the historical motive force of society; on the other
hand, it disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the
earth, i.e. it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent ele-
ments consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence
it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the
lasting fertility of the soil. ... All progress in capitalist agriculture
is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker but of rob-
bing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for
a given time is a progress toward ruining the more long-lasting
sources of that fertility.... Capitalist production, therefore, only
develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the
social process of production by simultaneously undermining the
original sources of all wealth-the soil and the worker. 24
Early capitalist agriculture addressed the declining fertility of agri-

cultural soils caused by the metabolic rift by digging up graveyards
and mining old battlefield sites from the Napoleonic wars for bones
to use as fertilizer. New lands were conquered. The colonies provided
a bounty of natural resources and nutrients. When guano was dis-
covered, European empires annexed hundreds of islands and mined
thousands of tons of the nitrate-rich fertilizer. These measures post-
poned the impoverishment of the world's agricultural soils, but did
nothing to resolve the metabolic rift. They did succeed in further con-
taminating major rivers, aquifers, and streams.
The problem of falling fertility of agricultural soils in capitalist
economies-from the wheat fields of Ukraine to the tobacco fields
of the Americas-resulted in environmental problems and ways of
thinking about agriculture, population, and wealth that are still with
us today. David Ricardo and Thomas Robert Malthus believed that
poor fertility not only put a permanent premium on naturally fer-
tile lands (land rent) but required population control to avoid mass
starvation. These views were challenged by Scottish agronomist-
farmer James Anderson, who insisted that farmers could build and
maintain soil fertility-even on poor soils-with manure, drainage,
conservation, and careful cultivation practices. This didn't happen,
not because of a lack of manure or a lack of knowledge, but because
the landed gentry had no interest in making these investments, pre-
ferring instead to live off the rents from the poor farmers who worked
their lands. Farmers cultivating rented land had no incentive to invest
in building the soils of the owner's land. In this view, private prop-
erty, not overpopulation and limited fertility, was the problem facing
agriculture and society. Land reform, a focus on keeping people in
the countryside, and the recycling of human and animal manure
was the solution to pollution and the metabolic rift. The invention of
synthetic fertilizer and colonization of other lands, however, allowed
European capitalism to avoid land reform.
In 1840, German chemist Justus von Liebig's Organic Chemistry
and Its Applications to Agriculture and Physiology identified nitrogen,
phosphorous, and potassium as the basic elements for plant growth.
This led to the production of soluble "superphosphate" that gave poor
soils an initial boost in productivity-until potassium and nitrogen
became limiting to production. While phosphorous and potassium

could be mined-and guano was high in both nitrogen and phos-
phorous-it would be seventy more years until synthetic nitrogen
fertilizer was invented, eventually leading to the emergence of the
commercial fertilizer industry.
Most political economists, chemists, and agronomists welcomed
the introduction of synthetic fertilizers but did not consider them
to be a solution to soil fertility. Despite being considered the father
of synthetic fertilizers, Liebig argued for the recycling of nutrients.
"Rational agriculture;' he claimed, would give "back to the fields the
conditions of their fertility:' Following Liebig and Marx, Karl Kautsky
foresaw the science of agroecology when he referred to "advances in
cultivation" without synthetic fertilizers:
Supplementary fertilizers ... allow the reduction in soil fertility

to be avoided, but the necessity of using them in larger and larger
amounts simply adds a further burden to agriculture .... [They]
would then, at most, have the task of enriching the soil, not stav-
ing off its impoverishment. Advances in cultivation would signify
an increase in the amount of soluble nutrients in the soil without
the need to add artificial fertilizers. 25
For nearly a half-century since the use of synthetic agricultural

inputs became widespread after the Second World War, the prob-
lem of urbanization and the metabolic rift was largely forgotten.
Today, capitalist agriculture is inconceivable without synthetic fer-
tilizer. However, as the hypoxic "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico
attests, not only has capitalism's metabolic rift led to urban-based
pollution, capitalist agriculture is now a major source of rural and
marine pollution as well. But pollution is only one of the manifesta-
tions of capitalist agriculture's irrationality. The wholesale reliance
on synthetic fertilizers-and the inability to confront the metabolic
rift- have led to the spread of monocultures, the concentration of
agricultural land in large holdings, and a host of social and environ-
mental externalities. Why?
The ability to apply nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium to

agricultural soils eliminated the practices of cover cropping, inter-
cropping, and relay-cropping with legumes. This separated grain
cultivation from livestock production, leading to monocultures and
feedlots. It also eliminated the use of animal manure as a soil con-
ditioner and supplementary source of nutrients, especially important
micro-nutrients that helped plants resist damage from insects and
disease. Pesticides were introduced and as insects' resistance to them
grew, their use steadily increased. Livestock operations concentrated
near processing plants that tended to locate in economically depressed
areas with little or no environmental and labor regulations. As big
seed and chemical suppliers, grain companies, and livestock proces-
sors in the United States became even bigger, control concentrated
in the hands of a few oligopolies that dominated certain geographic
regions. The southern Great Plains holds gigantic confined animal
feedlot operations (CAFOs), while Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia
specialize in poultry. Hog production is concentrated in parts of the
Midwest and in North Carolina. The net metabolic effect of capitalism
on agriculture has been first to separate humans from agriculture, then
to separate animals from plants, severing nutrient cycling between pri-
mary and secondary producers and consumers. 26 (See Figure 5.1)
The separation between humans, animals, and plants have in
turn created more lucrative opportunities for capital investment both
upstream and downstream in the farming process (appropriation
and substitution). Using grain production in the U.S. Midwest as an
example, Fred Magdoff points out that it has been disastrous for the
environment (and many farmers):
1. The first decision to concentrate on one or two crops automatically
means that a more ecologically sound and complex rotation of
crops is not possible.
2. Planting corn after corn or alternating between corn and soy leaves
the soil without living vegetation for more than half of the year.
3. Because per acre (per hectare) profits are low for these crops, more
land is needed to produce sufficient total farm profits to maintain
a family at current economic standards.
Figure 5.1: Changes in the Spatial Relationships of Plants, Animals, and Humans n
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energy ~ }>
& Cl
;o
nutrients primary consumers
(farm animals) n
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-l
primary consumers c
;o
nutrients (farm animals)
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'L_ primary producers primary producers primary producers
(plants) (plants) (plants)
a) early agriculture b) urbanizing society c) industrial agriculture

(mid-19th to mid-20th century) (mid- to late-20th century)
Source: Modified from Fred Magdoff, Les Lanyon, and Bill Liebhardt, "Nutrient Cycling, Transformation and Flows: Implications for a More Sustainable
~
Agriculture," Advances in Agronomy 60:1-73 (1997). w

w
4. A larger farm means that larger machinery is needed in order to

cover the larger area.
5. Specialization in corn and soybeans leads to more pesticide use.
6. Specialization in corn and soybeans leads to more fertilizer
use than would be needed in a more complex rotation or on
integrated farms raising both animals and crops. The two-crop,
corn-soybean system is particularly "leaky;' with elevated levels of
nitrates routinely reaching ground and surface waters.
7. Because larger areas are being farmed, anything that simplifies the
system is attractive to farmers and allows them to farm even larger
areas. And this is where GM seeds come in.
8. A new dimension has been added over the last decade with
on-the-go electronic information gathering as farmers go over
fields for preparation, planting, and harvesting. These costly
additions to field equipment mean that the full suite of these is
primarily of use to very large farms. 27
Global Warming
The classical political economists who studied agriculture and capi-

talism could not have predicted what may be the most irreversible
consequence of the metabolic rift: global warming.
Agriculture, livestock, and other related land uses (such as defor-
estation) are responsible for just under a quarter of global greenhouse
gas emissions. 28 But not all agriculture systems are created equal.
While industrial agriculture represents the majority of emissions
from global agriculture, ecologically based practices, used primarily
by small-scale farmers, not only contribute fewer emissions, but also
sequester more carbon and other greenhouse gases. 29 Nonetheless, the
capitalist incentives to double down on large-scale, energy-intensive
monocultures far outweigh the incentives to diversify agriculture and
conserve natural resources. Crop losses due to the effects of climate
change, such as more intense droughts and floods, hit small farm-
ers the hardest, threatening their hold on the land. Climate change
also affects livestock and fisheries through, for example, the reduction
of quality forage and changes in marine life due to increased water

temperatures. 30 However, many investors view climate change as an
opportunity. With increased climatic instability, land degradation,
and water scarcity come the potential for soaring profits. As celebrity
investor Jeremy Grantham observes, "Good land, in short supply, will
rise in price to the benefit of the landowners:' 31
A Rational Agriculture
Fred Magdoff describes rational agriculture, the antithesis of capital-

ist agriculture today:
A rational agriculture would be carried out by individual farmers or

farmer associations (cooperatives) and have as its purpose to supply
the entire population with a sufficient quantity, quality, and variety
of food while managing farms and fields in ways that are humane to
animals and minimize ecological disturbances. There would be no
exploitation oflabor-anyone working on the farm would be like all
the others, a farmer. If an individual farmer working alone needed
help, then there might be a transition to a multi-person farm. The
actual production of food on the land would be accomplished by
working with and guiding agricultural ecosystems (instead of domi-
nating them) in order to build the strengths of unmanaged natural
systems into the farms and their surroundings. 32
Rational agriculture reverses appropriationism and substitution-

ism by bringing these production, distribution, and market functions
back to the farm and the community, and intensifies production time
rather than shortening it by inter-planting, companion planting,
cover cropping, relay cropping, and other agroecological methods. A
rational agriculture also reduces or reverses the metabolic rift by recy-
cling and conserving nutrients, conserving water and fixing carbon.
Proposals for rational agriculture imply a de-concentration of large
industrial plantations and repopulating (rather than depopulating)
the countryside.
Agroecology
Agroecology is the science and practice of sustainable agriculture.

Agroecological farmers work with and enhance on-farm ecological
functions (rather than replacing them with the chemical inputs of
appropriationism). With agroecology, farmers primarily use animal
manures, legumes, and cover crops to provide nutrients. Weeds
are controlled by cultivating, cover-cropping, inter-cropping, and
mulches (live or dry). Pests are managed by attracting predators with
companion planting, interrupting pest cycles and vectors with crop
rotations, alley cropping (in which annual crops are grown with rows
of perennial trees and bushes), and the use of trap crops and repel-
lant crops. Though these are just a sample of different agroecological
management practices, they give an indication why agroecology is
anathema to capitalist agriculture: agroecology is knowledge intensive
(rather than capital intensive) and thus doesn't provide an opportu-
nity for the appropriation of profits by agribusiness.
Agroecology was first developed as a science when ecologists
and anthropologists made careful observations of peasant farming
systems, some of which had been sustainably producing food for mil-
lennia. 33 They observed that farmers' vast knowledge of soils, plants,
organisms, weather patterns, and microclimates allowed them to
manage farm ecosystem processes (water cycle, mineral cycle, energy
flow, and community dynamics between the organisms of an ecosys-
tem). This gave their farming systems tremendous environmental
resiliency and allowed them to produce a surplus, recycle nutrients,
and conserve water and resources. Many of these systems formed part
of inter-regional nomadic, pastoral, and trading networks that not
only traded goods but recycled nutrients.
In the wake of the well-documented ecological destruction of
the Green Revolution, the practice of agroecology spread steadily
among peasant farmers as a way to restore productivity and eco-
system functions to hundreds of thousands of hectares of degraded
farmland. 34 Though some of these practices require more labor
(especially in the transition period before they are well established),
many also reduce labor or spread labor out more evenly over the
agricultural year.
Today, agroecology is taught in many universities and is the sub-
ject of a number of scientific journals. It is the preferred agricultural
method for many rural development projects and has been widely
adopted by smallholders around the world. Commonly referred
to as the "science of sustainable agriculture;' agroecology has been
endorsed by the International Agricultural Assessment on Science,
Knowledge and Technology for Development35 and the former
United Nations Rapporteur on the Right to Food36 as the best agricul-
tural method to end hunger, eliminate poverty, and address climate
change. Indeed, this is because agroecology is, in human and ecologi-
cal terms, a "rational agriculture:'
But agroecology is not part of the agricultural development
programs of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR),
the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, the Department
for International Development (DFID), the World Bank, or the
plans for agricultural development of the African, Asian, or Inter-
American Development banks. Funding for agroecological research
in the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States rep-
resents less than 1 percent of the funding dedicated to conventional
agriculture.
If agroecology is so great, why don't agricultural development
institutions support it? The simple answer is because the objective of
these institutions is the development of capitalist agriculture. This is
accomplished by expanding the opportunities for capitalist invest-
ment through appropriationism. Since agroecology reduces the ways
that capital can appropriate agriculture's labor process, it works at
cross purposes to capitalist agriculture.
But what about substitutionism, the downstream side of agricul-
tural production?
The long, global food value chains of substitutionism have led to a
"supermarket revolution'' in which a handful of retail oligopolies (like
Walmart, Tesco, and Carrefour) dominate the global food market. In
138 A FOO DI E'S GUIDE TO CAPITALISM
the United States, some 3 million farmers produce over 7,000 farm
products. These are processed by 28,000 manufacturers, then sold
through 35,000 wholesalers to 150,000 stores where they reach 300
million consumers. 37 The power over the trillions of food dollars flow-
ing from farmer to consumer is concentrated with the processors,
wholesalers, and retailers. The interest of these firms is to extend and
control the substitution side of the food value chain in order to cap-
ture a higher percentage of the food dollar.
Moral Economy
Like agroecology, a moral economy pushes back against capitalism.

The concept of moral economy comes from historian E. P. Thompson's
studies of the emergence of capitalism in Britain. In the first instance,
moral economy was defined in relation to widespread protests over
what was seen as the reprehensible trend of grain hoarding and price
gouging during food crises.
My own usage [of"moral economy"] has in general been confined

to confrontations in the marketplace over access (or entitlement)
to "necessities" -essentially food. It is not only that there is an
identifiable bundle of beliefs, usages and forms associated with
the marketing of food in time of dearth, which it is convenient to
bind together in a common term, but the deep emotions stirred
by dearth, the claims which the crowd made upon the authorities
in such crises and the outrage provoked by profiteering in life-
threatening emergencies, imparted a particular "moral" charge to
protest. All of this, taken together, is what I understand by moral
economy. 38
Thompson argued that the periodic food rebellions that dogged

the emergence of capitalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies found their social justification when capitalism breached
long-standing social agreements regarding the price, control and dis-
tribution of food, land, and labor.
Different from political economy, which studies the relationships

between capital, resources, markets, and power, moral economy tries
to understand the ways that communities make decisions based on
normative principles. The underlying logic of the moral economy is
the overall resiliency of the community. Thus there is not just one
moral economy, rather, the term is used to describe an arena of social
interaction that is deeper and broader than the political and eco-
nomic systems in which communities are embedded.
A moral economy approach has been applied by agrarian schol-
ars in an attempt to understand why peasant societies rebel, 39 and by
development scholars trying to understand the management of the
Commons, smallholder decision making, and villagers' actions and
interactions not explained by economic rationality such as overex-
ploitation, mutual aid, and market aversion.
More recently, moral economy has been used to describe an
array of approaches and activities that prioritize socially regulated
relations of reciprocity over commodity (market) relations, such as
value-based cooperatives, farmers' markets, community-supported
agriculture associations (CSAs), "Food Commons;' in which food
is treated not as a commodity but as a common good, 40 "civic agri-
culture;' which puts citizens rather than corporations in charge of
agriculture, 41 and other intentional approaches to the food system.
In this regard, the new moral economy pushes back against the
wholesale privatization of social institutions and "the market" as
the organizing principle of society. The moral economy puts people
before profits.
Farming Styles
An appreciation of the moral economy is essential to understanding

the heterogeneity of today's food and agricultural systems. Indeed,
many of the market failures described by conventional economists-
and the long-standing tendency for farmers and communities to seek
out alternatives to the capitalist food system-are a reflection of the
moral economy.
As agrarian scholar Jan Douwe van der Ploeg explains, though the
moral economy is governed by different rules than political economy,
it is not external to it,
In everyday life, complexities ... are governed through cultural

repertoires (consisting of values, norms, shared beliefs and expe-
riences, collective memory, rules of thumb, etc.) that specify
recommended responses to different situations. . .. The moral
economy is not external to the "economic machine": it is essential
to the "machine's" performance.42
Van der Ploeg has observed different farming styles he describes

as "capitalist;' "entrepreneurial;' and "peasant:' Around the globe,
we find that these styles operate alongside one another, though with
very different logics and often very different results. Capitalist farms
both produce and rely completely on commodities; land, water,
labor, energy, and inputs are all bought on the market and all farm
products are sold as commodities. Capitalist farms tend to be large
and rely on relatively little manual labor. Entrepreneurial farms are
more midsized. They are also "commodified" but use more family
labor. Peasant farms (or small family farms operating on a peasant
logic), reduce their reliance on commodity inputs like fertilizer and
big tractors, by using on-farm inputs (manures, animal traction,
etc.) and family labor. A significant part of the agricultural product
is consumed on the farm or traded outside commodity markets. All
three farming styles are embedded in a larger capitalist food system,
but the farming styles reflect very different forms of engagement and
very different strategies of dealing with environmental and market
risks. Because peasant-style farming usually takes place on smaller
farms, the total output is less than capitalist or entrepreneurial farms.
However, their total output per unit of land (tons/hectare; bushels/
acre) tends to be higher. 43 This is why, as capitalist agriculture con-
verts peasant-style farms to entrepreneurial and capitalist farms,
there is often a drop in productivity, even though individual farm
production increases as a result oflarger size. 44
Different farming styles also show different degrees of environ-

mental and financial resilience in the face of extreme weather events
and market volatility. In the Netherlands, a rise in input prices and
a fall in milk prices led to bankruptcy (and government bailouts)
for many capitalist and entrepreneurial farms whereas peasant-style
farms were less affected. In general, these smaller, less capitalized
producers had higher margins than producers using other farm-
ing styles. 45 In Central America, peasant farms using agroecological
practices suffered fewer losses after Hurricane Mitch than did the
entrepreneurial family farms that practiced conventional agriculture
(pesticides, fertilizers, hybrid seeds). Many conventional farmers
never recovered from the massive disaster. 46
Beyond the Dead End of Capitalist Agriculture
Far from the pastoral, "feed the world" narratives that often depict
agriculture, a brief dive into the political economy of capitalist agri-
culture reveals that it is and has always been a terrain of conflict,
struggle, and resistance. The immense power of capitalist agricul-
ture can easily obscure its shortcomings and weaknesses, giving the
impression that it is invincible, or at least "too big to fail:'
The upcoming trends in capitalist agriculture are not at all
encouraging. If the current iteration of the agrarian transition is
allowed to continue, we would expect the final depopulation of the
countryside and the consolidation of agricultural production into
the hands of 50,000 or so mega-farms, worldwide. These might be
able to supply the planet with industrial food, but they will not pro-
vide employment for the 2.5 billion peasants, small farmers, and
their families presently living in the countryside. These people make
up a third of humanity. There is no new Industrial Revolution to
provide employment to this many people. If rural communities are
displaced, they will be pushed to the city slums. The global economy
would have to grow at a rate of 7 percent over the next half-century
to absorb just a third all this labor. This is impossible. The capital-
ist agrarian transition not only condemns a third of humanity to
dispossession, unemployment, and misery, but most likely means

global chaos. 47
Won't the laws of supply and demand in agriculture eventually
work things out? The notion that capitalist agriculture will somehow
self-correct flies in the face of three hundred years of agrarian his-
tory. Reforms to the food system are desperately needed. The spread
of alternative food systems outside the existing global food system
will be essential not only to demonstrate that "another agriculture is
possible" but to build political will within the food regime for deep,
transformative reforms. Clearly, there aren't enough farmers in the
United States to create the political will in the legislatures and in the
committees that insulate the U.S. Farm Bill. Changes to agriculture
will have to be anchored in strong consumer-farmer-worker alliances
with a clear understanding of capitalist agriculture and a compelling
vision for a better farm future.
_5_
Power and Privilege in the Food System:

Gender, Race, and Class
C lassism, racism, and sexism predate capitalism, but they

merged powerfully during the formative period of the colo-
nial food regime and have been co-evolving ever since.
Slavery, exploitation, and continent-wide dispossession of the land,
labor, and products of women, the poor, and people of color are still
foundational to the capitalist food system, as are hunger, malnutrition,
diet-related disease, and exposure to toxic chemicals. Poor women of
color and children, especially girls, bear the brunt of these inequities.
Many people think these injustices are unfortunate anomalies
of our food system, or that they are pesky vestiges of prior stages of
"underdevelopment:' Some believe the high rates of hunger and mal-
nutrition afflicting underserved communities to be market failures,
correctable through better information, innovation, or entrepreneur-
ship. One way of thinking believes that poor individual choices are
what drive land loss, diet-related disease, unemployment, low wages,
and the desperate migration of millions of peasant families out of the
countryside. There is no doubt that good information, initiative, and
good personal choices are necessary for building a better food system,
but given the system's structures, these alone are woefully insufficient
for ending hunger, poverty, and environmental destruction.
The global food system is not only stratified by class, it is racialized
and gendered. These inequities influence access to land and produc-
tive resources; which people suffer from contaminated food, air, and
water; working conditions in food and farm jobs; and who has access
to healthy food. These inequities affect resiliency, the ability of com-
munities and individuals to recover from disasters such as the floods
and droughts of climate change. The skewed distribution of resources
and the inequitable exposure to the food system's "externalities" are
rooted in the inseparable histories of imperialism, colonialism, and
patriarchy.
But each form of oppression brings forms of resistance from work-
ers, peasants, women, and people of color. Far from disappearing over
time, struggles for justice take on new strategies and tactics, produce
new leaders, forge new alternatives, and create new conditions from
which to survive, resist, and fight for human rights. Understanding
the structural conditions of struggle for those who are most exploited
and abused by today's capitalist food system is essential to under-
standing not only the need for profound change, but the paths to
transformation.
Gender, Patriarchy, and the Capitalist Food System
During the 2009 global food and economic crisis, 1 to 2 baby boys per
1,000 births died who would have lived in a non-crisis economy. The
figure for baby girls was 7 to 8 extra deaths per 1,000 births. 1 That in
the twenty-first century baby girls die at four to eight times the rate as
baby boys during times of crisis should be a wake-up call for anyone
who thinks the world has reached gender equality. The drivers behind
this sordid statistic include a host of gendered inequities that include
access to food, health services, fair incomes, and ownership. These are
also reflective of women's disproportionate exposure to violence and
their exclusion from formal structures of political power. These are
not just phenomena from developing countries. In the United States
POWER AND PRIVILEGE IN THE FOOD SYSTEM 145
over 30 percent of women earn poverty wages compared to 24 percent

for men, and women are paid just 78 cents for every dollar men make
to do the same job. These statistics reflect deep structural injustices.
But it's not only that women need to "catch up" with men. The
inequitable position of women in the food system is actually part of
what makes the food system work. How? Patriarchy.
Patriarchy predates capitalism by millennia. The emergence of
agriculture, social hierarchies, and male privilege together established
some of the pillars of what became the capitalist food system. In short,
agriculture (probably invented by women) and animal husbandry
(largely controlled by men) not only produced a surplus of storable
food and a population boom within hunter-gatherer societies during
the early Neolithic Period, but also unleashed a social struggle over
the ownership and control of the food surplus. This struggle began
between men and women.
Early control over the agricultural surplus was a defining moment
for human civilization. The politics of nomadic hunter-gatherer soci-
eties-as often matricentric as patricentic-revolved around the laws
of "irreducible minimum;' which meant that everyone in the com-
munity or clan had the same rights to its food, regardless of their sex,
age, or ability. 2 Mutual aid and cooperation were the primary tools
of survival. Private property was basically nonexistent. The sexual
division of labor between men and women did not confer power of
men over women, or women over men. The gradual incorporation of
agriculture, and a shift to semi-nomadic and sedentary communities,
introduced a new mode of production and a new division of labor.
Men mainly hunted big game, an activity that allowed them to
specialize in weaponry. They ranged far from the settlements where
women took charge of gathering, small-game hunting, farming, and
the care of young children:
In hunter-gatherer and horticultural societies, there was a sexual

division of labor-rigidly defined sets of responsibilities for
women and men. But both sexes were allowed a high degree
of autonomy in performing those tasks. Moreover ... in many
cases, [women] provided most of the food [combining] moth-

erhood and productive labor.... Women, in many cases, could
carry small children with them while they gathered or planted,
or leave the children behind with other adults for a few hours at a
time. Likewise, many goods could be produced in the household.
Because women were central to production in these pre-class
societies, systematic inequality between the sexes was nonexis-
tent, and elder women in particular enjoyed relatively high status. 3
But the roles of production and reproduction began to shift as

agriculture came to dominate community activities. Agriculture
demanded more time and more labor. Whereas hunting societies tried
to limit their numbers in order to adjust their population to limited
supplies of game, agricultural societies sought to increase the number
of able-bodied family members to meet the greater labor demands of
field work. As men steadily dedicated more of their time to agricul-
ture rather than hunting, women began to specialize in childcare and
household activities.
Most early agricultural societies were polygynous or polyandrous
and matrilineal. Children knew who their mother was, but not their
father. This was not a problem for children. Men from the father's clan
were all "fathers;' and the aunts from their mother's clan were also
treated as "mothers:' When a man died, his accumulated agricultural
wealth was passed on to children through the "mother-rights" of the
woman's clan. What "wealth" did men have? Primarily livestock.
Men controlled much of the livestock and ranged far from the
settlements to find forage. Livestock provided milk, blood, and an on-
the-hoof surplus of meat. As men controlled more and more of the
surplus they were faced with a problem: How could they pass their
accumulated wealth on to their children if they didn't know exactly
who their children were? Patriarchy and private property emerged as
a way for men to control both the inter-generational and the intra-
generational distribution of agricultural surplus. The destruction of
women's "mother-right" ensured men's livestock were inherited by
the male rather than the female clan. Relying on U.S. scholar Lewis
Henry Morgan's work with the Seneca communities of the Iroquois

nation, Friedrick Engels wrote:
Thus, on the one hand, in proportion as wealth increased it

made the man's position in the family more important than the
woman's, and on the other hand created an impulse to exploit
this strengthened position in order to overthrow, in favor of his
children, the traditional order of inheritance.... Mother-right,
therefore, had to be overthrown, and overthrown it was .... The
overthrow of mother-right was the world historical defeat of the
female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman
was degraded and reduced to servitude; she became the slave of
his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children. 4
For many, the rest is history-of patriarchy, property, and capi-

talism. Patrilineal inheritance and ownership shifted from clan to
individual men, and eventually to primogeniture (the eldest son)
inheritance. Monogamy (for women) was enforced to ensure only
biological progeny inherited the father's wealth. The foundation for
capital accumulation, the state, and the nuclear patriarchal family
was established. Trade in agricultural surplus increased, leading to an
even greater accumulation of wealth. This led to more production for
exchange. This required more labor, in the form of big families and
slaves, both owned and controlled by men. Women were subjugated
even further and their reproductive burden increased.
The Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, largely credited for an
explosion in global populations, was a social and political revolution
that laid the basis for the establishment of states and social hierarchies
between men and women and between classes. The development of
the state and class differentiation were accompanied by the forma-
tion of patriarchal societies. Of course, not all agricultural societies
became patriarchal. The Iroquois Nation and many other indigenous
societies provide examples that patriarchy is certainly not inevitable.
However, all capitalist societies did establish the rule of patriarchy as
the hierarchical basis for class rule.
Women's subjugated status did not end their participation in the

food system, but it did devalue their work both inside and outside
the home. This is readily evident today. Although women produce
much of the world's food, cook most of our meals, and feed and care
for nearly everyone, they have less access to land and the means of
production than men and earn less working in the fields and factories
than men. 5 That these inequities are a reflection of patriarchy seems
obvious, but to understand the intersection of gender and class we
need to ask: How does capitalist patriarchy work in the food system?
Production and Reproduction
Two processes sit at the heart of capitalism: production and repro-

duction. In a strict capitalist sense, production is about making
commodities to sell at a profit and reproduction is about providing
human labor-power for capital. Workers who produce commodities
need food, clothing, and housing. The cost of these "goods and ser-
vices" over the course of the workers' productive lives-the cost of
reproducing the labor force-is the cost of reproduction.
But this way of understanding things treats workers as gifts of
nature. Where did the workers come from? Who fed, clothed, and
cared for them and raised them to working age? As adults, who cooks,
cleans, and cares for them when they are sick, ensuring they can have
long, productive lives? What are the conditions of these caregivers?
What is their economic status, their role in society, and their con-
tribution to culture? What is their potential for transforming the
conditions of production and reproduction? Addressing these ques-
tions brings us to the realm of social reproduction because workers
aren't simply being "produced:' They come from societies that corre-
spond to a particular mode of production. Societies dominated by the
capitalist mode of production are profoundly differentiated by class,
race, and gender.
The food system is an essential part of the social reproduction
of capital because it produces food that everyone eats and engages
more people in productive activities than any other economic
sector. Women, domestic labor, sexuality, and procreation are cen-

tral to production and reproduction in the food system; women
work throughout it and care for most food system workers and their
families.
During the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the sphere of
reproduction was practically ignored. The textile mills of eighteenth-
century England ran on the labor of men, women, and children who
were quite literally worked to death. Labor was treated as an inex-
haustible and disposable resource. Capital made no investment in the
reproduction of labor. As capitalism shifted to heavy industry and
the running and maintenance of machines became more compli-
cated, it required a more skilled, less disposable worker. Because these
workers were in shorter supply, the reproduction of this labor force
required greater investment (in training) on the part of the capital-
ists, raising the value of specialized labor. But it did not mean that the
reproductive work carried out by women (housework, cooking, child
bearing, child rearing, and family nurturing) was paid at its full value.
On the contrary, just as with wage labor, most of the value of women's
reproductive work was passed on to the capitalist through the appro-
priation of the surplus value of the worker. In other words, the unpaid
work of women in raising children and doing other housework was
for all practical purposes a subsidy for the bosses, contributed by the
wives of male workers. Women's domestic work was part of a capital-
ist mode of production that required it to take a certain form, one that
disciplined it to play a subservient role in the production process just
as capital had disciplined the worker to give up the product of their
labor for an hourly wage.
Silvia Federici describes this as the "shift from absolute to relative
surplus value" in the nineteenth century. In the first instance, capital-
ists simply increased the length of the workday in order to increase
their profits above and beyond the wages paid to the worker (absolute
surplus value). Violent clashes between laborers and capitalists brought
hours from 16 hours a day down to 8. This shifted the strategy of capi-
talist accumulation to one of extracting profits by increasing relative
surplus value. This is accomplished either by increasing productivity
(through mechanization or automation) or by lowering wages. To

lower wages without starving workers, the cost of wage goods (food,
clothing, and housing) must be reduced. But, barring breakthrough
technological advancements, decreasing the prices of wage goods
purchased by workers means decreasing the price of commodities,
which would decrease profits. Where did capitalism find the sav-
ings necessary for a decrease in wages? In the reproductive (domestic,
care-giving) work of women. The cleaning, feeding, and physical and
emotional care-giving carried out by women has a value to capital-
ist production because it maintains the labor force-the source of
labor power. While this was always free to capitalists, it became more
important as competition and technological development drove firms
to cut costs and find savings in their quest for profits. This largely
explains the capitalist turn from the exploitation of women as factory
workers to their exploitation as full-time housewives. 6
Another century would pass until mechanization ushered in the
shift from absolute to relative surplus value in agriculture. Rather,
colonialism expanded agriculture to new, conquered land where the
exploitation of rich soils and abundant resources provided a natural
"subsidy" to capitalist food and fiber markets (in addition to the "sub-
sidy" provided by workers earning at or below subsistence wages). As
the natural subsidy to agriculture inevitably waned, fertilizers, pes-
ticides, and machinery were introduced to intensify the production
process. This was accompanied by a steady shift of women's activities
out of the field and into domestic (reproductive) work.
In her seminal work Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale:
Women in the International Division of Labor, Maria Mies challenges
the orthodox Marxist bias in understanding the social origins of the
gender division of labor. Less interested in when this division of labor
occurred, Mies is concerned with why it resulted in a hierarchical struc-
ture of patriarchal oppression. "This division;' writes Mies, "cannot be
attributed to some universal sexism of men as such, but is a conse-
quence of the capitalist mode of production, which is only interested
in those parts of the human body which can be directly used as instru-
ments oflabor or which can become an extension of the machine:' 7
Capitalism requires worker's heads, hands, legs, and backs as

labor power in order to produce surplus value. While women's heads,
hands, legs, and backs also enter the labor market, their life-giving
wombs and mammary glands are not considered profit making. This
determination by capital relegates women's reproductive functions to
the realm of nature. The capitalist division between "human labor"
and "natural activity" values men's physical labor power as produc-
tive, but devalues women's reproductive activity as not productive.
"Productive" in this strict sense refers only to the production of sur-
plus value. Valuing only the work that produces surplus value-rather
than the reproductive activity that produces the worker-is at the
heart of the gender bias in the capitalist system.
Maria Mies rejects this narrow interpretation of the productivity of
labor and considers women's production of life as non-wage "subsis-
tence" labor-that is, the amount oflabor needed for the production
of life. She links the exploitation of women with the exploitation of
slavery, colonialism, and of primary food producers-peasants:
[The] general production of life, or subsistence production-

mainly performed through the non-wage labor of women
and other non-wage labourers as slaves, contract workers and
peasants in the colonies-constitutes the perennial basis upon
which "capitalists' productive labour" can be built up and
exploited. Without the ongoing "subsistence production" of
non-wage labourers (mainly women), wage labour would not
be "productive:' In contrast to Marx, I consider the capitalist
production process as one which comprises both: the superex-
ploitation of non-wage labourers (women, colonies, peasants)
upon which wage labour exploitation is then possible. I define
their exploitation as superexploitation because it is not based on
the appropriation (by the capitalist) of the time and labour over
and above the "necessary" labour time, the surplus labour, but
of the time and labour necessary for people's own survival or
subsistence production. It is not compensated by a wage, the size
of which is determined by the "necessary" reproductive costs
of the labourer, but is mainly determined by force or coercive

institutions. 8
Immigrant farm labor is another modern-day example of"super-

exploitation:' In the United States during the Second World War, the
labor of white farmworkers largely disappeared as men went to war
and women moved into the factories. Peasant farmers from Mexico
were imported under the Bracero Program to pick the country's crops.
Mexican farm women largely stayed behind, taking care of families.
The farm labor workforce has been treated as disposable ever since,
with increases in productivity coming from increases in hours and a
relative decrease in pay. Because it is treated as inexhaustible, there is
no thought to the reproduction of the immigrant labor force, even in
the twenty-first century.
However, the last three decades of neoliberal globalization have
steadily destroyed household and village economies in the Mexican
countryside, driving women across the Northern border in search of
work. The massive transition of both the productive and reproductive
Women Farmworkers
The agricultural sector has historically been and continues

to be one of the largest employers of women worldwide.
In developing and developed countries alike, women in
agriculture have less access to productive resources and
opportunities than men. 9 Female farmworkers in the United
States suffer disproportionately from workplace discrimination
and abuse as a result of their intersectional identity-as
farmworkers, people of color, women, and immigrants, be
they permanent, temporary, or undocumented. Female
farmworkers (who make up 24 percent of the U.S. agricultural
workforce) earn less than male workers for several reasons:
they work fewer hours, are sometimes paid less than men
for the same work, and are occupationally segregated into
lower-paying "women's work" positions. Some
employers refuse to hire or promote women, and others

have refused to give women benefits offered to men, such as
housing.
Childcare is virtually never an employment benefit of
agricultural work, and thus farmworkers' children work in
the fields, "play" around the fields while their parents work,
or are cared for at home, usually by grandmothers, aunts, or
siblings. Agricultural employers, like the employers of other
transnational migrants, rely heavily on the unpaid caring labor
of some women to make possible the wage work of other
women and men. The few rights that female farmworkers
do hold are often violated purely on the basis of gender. The
Southern Poverty Law Center reports, for example, that some
employers take advantage of women's marital status by
illegally paying women on their spouse's paychecks instead
of issuing individual payment.10 This illegal practice allows
employers to deny women the minimum wage and evade
extra payments like Social Security.
Reproductive oppression persists to the extent that
women's reproduction is affected by 1) poverty rooted in
low wages, low benefits, and exploited labor, 2) the work of
migration that adds significantly to women's unpaid domestic
labor, 3) hazardous work conditions, including pesticide
exposure and increased vulnerability to sexual violence, and
4) weak labor and safety regulations limiting those hazards.
It is important to recognize that though work sites are not
gender segregated, men make up the majority of farmworkers
in the United States and hold most of the supervisory
positions, allowing the agricultural industry to foster a culture
of patriarchal dominance. Together, the labor/occupational
conditions of farmwork, the state of U.S. healthcare for
farmworkers, and pervasive and stigmatizing social relations
interact to create a context that regulates, controls, and
exploits women farmworkers. In short, women work in a
context of reproductive oppression.
workforce from South to North has allowed segments of the U.S. food
system to prosper, especially large corporate farms producing fresh
fruits and vegetables, processing enterprises, and restaurants. Similar
patterns have played out in other parts of Latin America, Asia, and
Africa as impoverished men, women, and children flood into North
America and Western Europe searching for work. 11
The "globalization of exploitation" in the food system's productive
and reproductive spheres has given rise to diverse and broad-based
movements for social justice up and down the food value chain. For
example, for every four or five farmworkers in the United States, one
is a woman. The preponderance-and militancy-of women in these
movements is striking and has shifted the agenda for social justice in
ways that reflect their condition and their presence.
Food-Systems-Racism
Racism, the systemic mistreatment of people based on their ethnic-

ity or skin color, affects all aspects of our society, including our food
system. 12 Racism has no biological foundation, but the socioeco-
nomic and political structures that dispossess and exploit people of
color, coupled with widespread misinformation about race, cultures,
and ethnic groups, along with potential competition with the white
population for jobs and educational opportunities, make racism one
of the more intractable injustices. Racism is not simply attitudinal
prejudice or individual acts, it is a historical legacy, deeply embedded
in our institutions, that privileges one group of people over others.
Racism-individual, institutional, and structural-also impedes
good-faith efforts to build a fair, sustainable food system.
Despite its pervasiveness, racism is almost never mentioned in
international programs for food aid and agricultural development.
Although anti-hunger and food security programs frequently cite the
shocking statistics, racism is rarely identified as the cause of inordi-
nately high rates of hunger, food insecurity, pesticide poisoning, and
diet-related disease among people of color. Even the widely hailed
"good food movement;' with its plethora of projects for organic
People of the Earth

ROSALINDA GUILLEN, farmworker, organizer, ecofeminist:
[My father] loved being a farmworker.... He loved growing

food, growing plants. He talked to us about it and kept
journals about it. In those journals he would write, "Today
I sat out in the fields. I was getting ready to go out, and the
smell of the soil was this way. The birds sounded this way
... the clouds ... the air. Touching the soil makes me feel
happy. It makes me whole." He was a person of the earth. He
said, "We are people of the earth. There's no getting around
it. We are people of the earth and we have to be in it." My
father was a self-educated man .... He would say, "You are
children of people of the earth. You are farmworkers. Don't
let anybody make you ashamed for being that."
Industrial agriculture has taken the farmworker's voice
away, so we don't hear them identifying themselves as
people of the earth. We have been identified as machines,
as beasts of burden. It's convenient for people to identify us
that way because then it's easy to exploit us. But if you're
talking about a human being who can express herself or
himself as a person of the earth, with this intellect and
wisdom about the right way to grow food, then it's not as
easy to exploit. A lot of the family farmers and growers know
that the way they're growing food and treating the earth is
wrong. They feel guilty, and want a buffer between them and
the reality of what farmworkers will say if you give them the
opportunity. You're looking at that human being every day,
knowing that you are doing wrong.
My father would say, "This is special. What you do is a
work of grace, because what you do will make somebody else
healthy and whole. You are feeding humans, and nobody else
is doing that except for the person growing the food or the
animal." I have to say that when I was in the fields working,
I liked it. My father would say when the soil was ploughed,
"Just stand here, mi hija, and smell. Take a deep breath."

And we would. And he would say, "This is the only time you
can smell that smell." Then when you irrigate it's another
different smell, but it's the same earth. It's nourishing
itself. Every time is different. You know the smell of the
plants when they grow and the different types of plants by
touching, sitting in the fields ....
When we drive up to the field, you hire us to work and
we sit in the field. We watch the sun come up, and the mist
comes out of the soil, and the smells change, and the breezes
come up, and the earth comes alive. And you feel an energy.
Nothing else can give you that energy. And you want to get
to the hoeing or whatever it is you're doing. It makes you feel
good-the beauty of the earth around you, with the birds
flying and the bees buzzing. There is nothing like it in the
world. You know it, and I want you to know that we know it
and we feel it, too. And it's wrong that you will not recognize
that we are the same as you. 13
agriculture, permaculture, healthy food, community supported agri-

culture, farmers' markets, and corner store conversions, tends to
address the issue of racism unevenly. 14
Some organizations are committed to dismantling racism in the
food system and make this central to their activities. Others are sym-
pathetic but not active on the issue. Many organizations, however,
see racism as too difficult to address, tangential to their work, or a
divisive issue to be avoided. The hurt, anger, fear, guilt, grief, and
hopelessness of racism are uneasily addressed in the food movement,
if they are addressed at all.
Racial Caste
The term racial caste describes a "stigmatized racial group locked

into an inferior position by law and custom:' 15 Racial caste is one
consequence of a hierarchical imbalance in economic, political, and

social power (sexism and classism are others). In North America and
much of Europe, this racial caste system privileges light-complex-
ioned people of Northern European ancestry. (Although racial caste
has some social similarities to the Hindu caste system, it is historically
very different.)
Any country that has been subjected to Northern colonialism
has been structured by a racial caste system in which "whiteness"
grants social privileges. This system was originally developed to
justify European colonialism and enable the economic exploitation
of vast lands in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Outright disposses-
sion through genocidal military conquest and government treaties
affected 15 million indigenous people throughout the period of U.S.
westward expansion. Colonization was largely carried out by white
planters and aspiring white smallholder-settlers. 16
In the Americas, Europeans and people of European descent
murdered and dispossessed indigenous populations for their natu-
ral resources, sometimes enslaving them-for example, the Spanish
Catholic missions. People from West African regions were enslaved,
forcibly shipped across the Atlantic Ocean, and sold as chattel to do
backbreaking labor, primarily on sugar, tobacco, and cotton planta-
tions. Although slaves acquired through war and trade had been part
of many societies for thousands of years, widespread commerce in
human beings did not appear until the advent of capitalism and the
European conquest.
The superexploitation of enslaved human beings on plantations
allowed slave systems to outcompete agrarian wage labor for over two
hundred years. Under slavery, human beings were bought, sold, and
mortgaged as property. The tremendous wealth generated from slav-
ery was sent to Northern banks where it was used to finance military
conquest, more plantations, and ultimately, the Industrial Revolution. 17
The social justification for the commodification of human beings
was the alleged biological inferiority of the people who were used as
property, and the supposed divinely determined superiority of their
owners. This division of power, ownership, and labor was held in
place through violence and terrorism. It also required constant reli-

gious and scientific justification, constructed on the relatively new
concept of "race:' Although enslaved peoples came from ethnically
and culturally different regions of West Africa, they were classified
as black. Though slave owners came from different areas of Europe
where they had been known by vague tribal names like Scythians,
Celts, Gauls, and Germani, they were classified as white.
Slavery produced over a century of "scientific" misinforma-
tion that attempted to classify human beings on the basis of their
physical traits. Eventually, people were racialized into three major
categories: Mongoloid, Negroid, and Caucasoid, with Caucasians
awarded superior intelligence, physical beauty, and moral character.
Scientists argued over how to classify the many peoples that didn't
fit into these categories, such as the Finns, Malays, and most of the
indigenous people in the Americas. The messiness of the categories
was unimportant to the political and economic objectives of racism.
Systematically erasing the unique ethnic, tribal, and cultural back-
grounds of the world's people while elevating a mythical Caucasian
race was a shameful exercise in egregiously bad science, but it endured
because it supported the control of the world's land, labor, and capital
by a powerful elite. 18
Slavery had a tremendous influence on food and labor systems
around the world and was the central pillar of capitalism's racial caste
system until it was widely abolished in the late nineteenth century.
In the United States, after nearly three years of bloody civil war, the
Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 released African Americans
living in Confederate states from slavery, though it took nearly two
more years of war before ex-slaves could freely leave their planta-
tions.19 The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution finally
put a legal end to slavery in the United States in 1865. But after a
"moment in the sun;' African Americans living in the former
Confederacy were quickly segregated and disenfranchised through
"Jim Crow" laws, which criminalized and discriminated against for-
merly enslaved African-Americans and maintained the racial caste
system in the absence of slavery. 20
The Birth and Mutation of Whiteness
The concept of race has always been fluid, shifting to

accommodate the changing demands of capital and the
ruling class, while undermining political struggles for equality
and liberation. For example, in colonial America, there was
little social difference between African slaves and European
indentured servants. The colonizing British and Anglo-
American population had reduced immigrants and slaves
alike into one undifferentiated social group of inferior status.
But when they began organizing together against their
colonial rulers, the Virginia House of Burgesses introduced
the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705. These laws established
new property rights for slave owners; allowed for the legal,
free trade of slaves; established separate trial courts for
whites and blacks; prohibited black people from owning
weapons and from striking a white person; prohibited free
black people from employing whites; and allowed for the
apprehension of suspected runaways.
Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
poor, light-skinned Irish-Catholic immigrants living in
the United States were initially treated as an inferior race
and experienced discrimination as nonwhite. American
cartoonists of the time depicted the Irish with the same
racist stereotypes they applied to African Americans,
illustrating both ethnic groups as subhuman monkeys in an
effort to dehumanize them and justify their exploitation.
As the historian Noel lgnatiev observed, the Irish in
America had to become white in order to overcome
the structural barriers that kept them alongside African
Americans on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. 21
The Irish made the strategic choice to differentiate
themselves from African Americans by aggressively aligning
themselves with the Democratic Party and labor unions, and
by embracing a virulent strain of racism. Trade unions
defined certain jobs as fit only for whites, and excluded blacks
from lowly jobs open to the Irish. Slave owners cultivated Irish
American support for slavery by suggesting freedmen would
head north to compete for jobs. In essence, the Irish "became"
white. In doing so, they helped to create the modern concept
of "the white race," by systematically discriminating against
blacks. Mediterranean peoples, Eastern Europeans, and light-
complexioned Latin Americans underwent similar processes as
they immigrated to the United States.
Racial caste has systematically shaped the food system, particularly

during periods of labor shortage, as it did during the Second World
War, when over 4 million Mexican farmworkers were brought to the
United States. Mexican labor was cheap and ruthlessly exploited. This
was made socially acceptable through a system of racial norms that
classified Mexicans as inferior. 22
To this day, important sectors of the food system in the United
States and Europe continue to be defined by dispossessed and exploited
immigrant labor from the Global South. Their systematic mistreat-
ment is justified by the centuries-old racial caste system.
Racism in the Food System
Calls to "fix a broken food system'' assume that the capitalist food
system used to work well. This assumption ignores the food system's
long, racialized history of mistreatment of people of color. The food
system is unjust and unsustainable, but it is not broken. It functions
precisely as the capitalist food system has always worked, concentrat-
ing power in the hands of a privileged minority and passing off the
social and environmental "externalities" disproportionately to racially
stigmatized groups.
Statistics from the United States confirm the persistence of racial
caste in the food system. In 1910 African Americans owned 16 million
Racism Definitions
• INTERPERSONAL RACISM: The prejudices and discriminatory

behaviors by which one group makes assumptions about
the abilities, motives, and intents of other groups based
on race. This set of prejudices leads to cruel intentional or
unintentional actions toward other groups.
• INTERNALIZED RACISM: In a society where one group is

politically, socially, and economically dominant, members
of stigmatized groups, bombarded with negative messages
about their own abilities and intrinsic worth, may internalize
those negative messages. It holds people back from
achieving their fullest potential and reinforces the negative
messages that, in turn, reinforce the oppressive systems.
• INSTITUTIONAL RACISM: This is when assumptions about race

are structured into the social and economic institutions in
our society. Institutional racism occurs when organizations,
businesses, or institutions like schools and police
departments discriminate, either deliberately or indirectly
against certain groups of people to limit their rights. This
type of racism reflects the cultural assumptions of the
dominant group.
• STRUCTURAL RACISM: Although most of the legally based

forms of racial discrimination have been outlawed, many
of the racial disparities originating in various institutions
and practices continue and accumulate as major forces in
economic and political structures and cultural traditions.
Structural racism refers to the ways in which social structures
and institutions, over time, perpetuate and produce
cumulative, durable, race-based inequalities. This can occur
even in the absence of racist intent on the part of individuals.
• RACIALIZATION: The process through which "race" (and

its associated meanings) is attributed to something-an
individual, community, status, practice, or institution.
Institutions that appear to be neutral can be racialized,

shaped by previous racial practices and outcomes so that
the institution perpetuates racial disparities, or makes
them worse. This is true of the criminal justice system, the
education and health systems, and so on.
• REVERSE RACISM: Sometimes used to characterize affirma-
tive action programs, though that is inaccurate. Affirmative
action programs are attempts to repair the results of insti-
tutionalized racism by setting guidelines and establishing
procedures for finding qualified applicants from all segments
of the population. The term "reverse racism" is also some-
times used to characterize the mistreatment that individual
whites may have experienced at the hands of individuals
of color. This too is inaccurate. While any form of humans
harming other humans is wrong, because no one is entitled
to mistreat anyone, we should not confuse the occasional
mistreatment experienced by whites at the hands of people
of color with the systematic and institutionalized mistreat-
ment experienced by people of color at the hands of whites.
• RACIAL JUSTICE: Racial justice refers to a wide range of ways
in which groups and individuals struggle to change laws,
policies, practices, and ideas that reinforce and perpetuate
racial disparities. Proactively, it is first and foremost the
struggle for equitable outcomes for people of color.
acres of farmland. But by 1997, after many decades of Jim Crow, sev-
eral national farm busts, and a generally inattentive (or obstructionist)
Department of Agriculture (USDA), fewer than 20,000 black farmers
owned just 2 million acres of land. 23 The rate of black land loss has
been twice that of white land loss and today less than 1 million acres
are farmed. 24 According to the USDA 2012 Census of Agriculture, of
the country's 2.1 million farmers, only 8 percent are farmers of color
and only half of those are owners of land. Though their farm share is
growing, particularly among Latinos, who now number over 67,000

farmers, people of color tend to earn less than $10,000 in annual sales,
produce only 3 percent of agricultural value, and farm just 2.8 percent
of farm acreage. 25
While white farmers dominate as operator-owners, farmworkers
and food workers-from field to fork-are overwhelmingly people of
color. 26 Most are paid poverty wages, have inordinately high levels of
food insecurity, and experience nearly twice the levels of wage theft as
do white workers. While white food workers have an average annual
income of $25,024, workers of color earn only $19,349 a year. White
workers hold nearly 75 percent of the managerial positions in the
food system. Latinos hold 13 percent and black and Asian workers
6.5 percent. 27
The resulting poverty from poorly paid jobs is racialized. Of the 47
million people living below the poverty line in the United States, less
than 10 percent are white, while 27 percent are African Americans,
26 percent are Native Americans, 25.6 percent are Latinos, and 11. 7
percent are Asian Americans. 28
Poverty results in high levels of food insecurity for people of color.
Of the 50 million food-insecure people in the United States, 10.6 per-
cent are white, 26.1 percent are black, 23.7 percent are Latino, and 23
percent are Native American. Even restaurant workers-an occupa-
tion dominated by people of color (who should have access to all the
food they need)-are twice as food insecure as the national average. 29
Race, poverty, and food insecurity correlate closely with obesity
and diet-related disease; nearly half of African Americans and over
42 percent of Latinos suffer from obesity. While less than 8 percent
of non -Hispanic whites suffer from diabetes, 9 percent of Asian
Americans, 12.8 percent of Hispanics, 13.2 percent of non-Hispanic
African Americans, and 15.9 percent of indigenous people have dia-
betes. At $245 billion a year, the national expense in medical costs and
reduced productivity resulting from diabetes are staggering. 30 The
human and economic burdens of diabetes and diet-related disease on
the low-income families of color are devastating.
Trauma, Resistance, and Transformation:

An Equitable Food System Is Possible
Recognizing racism as foundational in today's capitalist food system

helps explain why people of color suffer disproportionately from its
social and environmental "externalities": labor abuses, resource ineq-
uities, and diet-related diseases. It also helps explain why many of
the promising alternatives such as land trusts, farmers' markets, and
community-supported agriculture tend to be dominated by people
who are privileged by whiteness. 31 Making these alternatives readily
accessible to people of color requires a social commitment to racial
equity and a fearless commitment to social justice. Ensuring equal
access to healthy food, resources, and dignified, living-wage jobs
would go a long way toward "fixing" the food system.
The trauma of racism is inescapable. In addition to the pain and
indignity of racialized mistreatment, people of color can internalize
racial misinformation, reinforcing racial stereotypes. While white
privilege benefits white communities, it can also immobilize them
with guilt, fear, and hopelessness. Both internalized racism and white
guilt are socially and emotionally paralyzing, and make racism dif-
ficult to confront and interrupt.
Difficult, but not impossible. Since before the abolition move-
ment and the Underground Railroad of the mid-1800s, people have
found ways to build alliances across racial divides. The history of the
U.S. food system is replete with examples of resistance and liberation,
from the early struggles of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union to
the Black Panthers' food programs and the boycotts and strikes by
the United Farm Workers. More recently, the Food Chain Workers
Alliance has fought for better wages and decent working conditions.
The Detroit Food Policy Council is an example of the increase of
local food policy councils run by people of color, and the spread of
Growing Power's urban farming groups reflect a rise in leadership
by those communities with the most at stake in changing a system
that some have referred to as "food apartheid?' Indigenous peoples
and other oppressed communities have developed ways of healing
The Pedagogy of the Oppressed

First published in Portuguese in 1968, Paulo Frei re's
Pedagogy of the Oppressed presented a detailed analysis of
the mechanisms of oppression, examining the relationships
between those he defined as "the oppressors," or colonizers,
and "the oppressed," the colonized. He details how every
person, however submerged in the "culture of silence"-
the system of dominant social relations that silences
and subsumes the oppressed-can gradually come to
perceive their social reality through developing a critical
consciousness with which they can question and challenge
the values, norms, and cultural conditions imposed on them
by their oppressors. Liberation, Freire argued, lay in the
education of the oppressed, so that they may recognize the
oppressive class structures and overcome them:
[The] great humanistic and historical task of the

oppressed [is] to liberate themselves and their
oppressors as well. The oppressors, who oppress,
exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot
find in this power the strength to liberate either
the oppressed or themselves. Only power that
springs from the weakness of the oppressed will
be sufficiently strong to free both. Any attempt to
"soften" the power of the oppressor in deference
to the weakness of the oppressed almost always
manifests itself in the form of false generosity;
indeed, the attempt never goes beyond this. In order
to have the continued opportunity to express their
"generosity," the oppressors must perpetuate injustice
as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount
of this "generosity," which is nourished by death,
despair, and poverty. That is why the dispensers of
false generosity become desperate at the slightest
threat to its source. 32
historical trauma, and there are peer counseling groups with skills for
working through the immobilizing feelings of internalized oppres-
sion, fear, hopelessness, and guilt. All of these resources and historical
lessons can be brought in to the food movement.
Racism still stands in the way of a good-food revolution. If the food
movement can begin dismantling racism in the food system and within
the food movement itself, it will have opened a path not only for food
system transformation, but for ending the system of racial castes.
Class, Food, and Power
Food systems have always had some form of social division, though
as we have seen, this didn't always mean that some people had more
power over the food supply than others. Power over food began with
animal husbandry, the spread of irrigated agriculture, the differentia-
tion of tasks (crafts, rituals, war, and child-rearing), and the struggle
to control agriculture's surplus. As hunter-gatherer societies were
displaced by agriculture, clans were replaced by kin-based chiefdoms
that were in turn replaced with princely states. 33 States divided soci-
ety into classes of royalty, nobility, commoners, and slaves. Priestly,
political, and military castes gained power in the agrarian civiliza-
tions of Mesoamerica, Europe and the Mediterranean, Asia, and the
Nile River Valley. These elites kept a tight grip on the food produced
by slaves, serfs, and peasants. 34 The old social divisions were the sub-
strate upon which capitalism was to construct an entirely different
form of social differentiation based not on kinship, caste, or lineage
but on capital itself.
Capitalism revolutionized all prior social relationships. The aris-
tocracy was overthrown by the bourgeoisie, who dispossessed the
peasantry to construct an industrial proletariat and a massive under-
employed lumpen-proletariat underclass to ensure a "reserve army
of labor:' These transformations to the established social order were
defined by land, labor, and capital. For example, workers (proletar-
iat) were people who owned their labor-power, which they sold for
wages; landowners (gentry) owned land from which they received
rent; capitalists (bourgeoisie) owned capital and got an income from

profits, either through production or trade. A constellation of small
property owners, shopkeepers, merchants, professionals, and civil
servants emerged as the petty bourgeoisie, who followed the ideol-
ogy of the more powerful bourgeoisie, but were unable to accumulate
as much capital. Then, there was the peasantry, capitalism's eternal
"awkward class;' which resisted these changes, routinely withheld
their surplus and their labor, and were a poor market for capital's
products. 35
The three founders of social science, Karl Marx, Max Weber, and
Emile Durkheim, had similar but different ideas about class. Following
on the works of economist David Ricardo, Marx (and Engels) cen-
tered private property and ownership of the means of production at
the core of class conflict. They believed that "the history of all hitherto
existing society is the history of class struggles:' 36 Weber agreed that
property was a driver of class conflict, but he thought that class was
one of several aspects of social stratification, which included status
and politics. This introduced complexity in that classes could adopt
contradictory ideologies and form alliances in unpredictable ways,
making Marx's class war likely, but not inevitable. Norms, beliefs, and
values undergird Durkheim's theory of"collective consciousness;' the
objective ideological glue that holds society together at the same time
class conflicts pull it apart. (Weber and Durkheim's thinking helps
explain why classes "vote against their interests" in elections and sup-
port politicians who appeal to social and cultural mores but enact
impoverishing economic policies.) All three scholars were trying to
explain the cataclysmic changes that capitalist society had wrought
upon community life. Their studies of class became foundational for
the discipline of sociology. Later, in the revolutionary crucible of the
early twentieth century, researcher-activist thinkers and leaders like
Rosa Luxemburg37 and Emma Goldman 38 elaborated on the nature of
imperialism, class struggle, and the state itself.
Another important concept is Antonio Gramsci's notion of "hege-
mony;' the multiple ways in which the ruling class exerts its ideological
power on the state and civil society in order to obtain the political and
social consent of those being ruled. 39 Intellectuals play a fundamental

role in extending the worldview of the ruling class over the rest of
society, so much so that these views are often taken as natural laws.
For example, today under free-market capitalism, the notion that free
(liberalized) markets are the natural state of affairs is largely accepted
as fact. Not only are liberal markets not really free, the only verifiable
fact about them is that they serve the class interests of multinational
corporations that seek to move capital across borders, unimpeded by
labor or environmental regulations. As Edward Herman and Noam
Chomsky point out, the media plays a decisive role in advancing class
hegemony because " [among] their other functions, the media serve
and propagandize on behalf of the powerful societal interests that
control and finance them:' 40
Class relations and theories regarding social stratification have
become much more complex since the fathers of sociology published
their seminal texts. Ironically, reference to class today is typically lim-
ited to income, consumption patterns, and lifestyle choices. Liberal
democracies in Western societies don't talk much about class-class
interests were supposed to have vanished with the prosperity of capi-
talism. But as inequality, poverty, and hunger have worsened, the
hegemonic ideology of a "classless society" is beginning to crumble.
Both class divisions and class alliances are on the rise, especially in
the food system.
Food: What Difference Does Class Make?
In the food system, the principal class division is still between work-
ers (field, packing, processing, retail, restaurant) and the owners of
the means of production (the food, grain, and chemical monopolies).
We don't typically call the former the "food proletariat" and the latter
the "food bourgeoisie;' but few other modern industries have such a
classic division between capital and labor.
Farmers, however, are a more complicated group. Most of the
farmers in the world are peasant women who produce food on very
small farms both for themselves and for the (usually local) market.
Less than half of the world's food is produced on large, highly capital-
ized industrial farms for the global market. Many of these producers
are large, corporate family farms; others are not so large (and only
a couple of crop failures away from bankruptcy). Some of these
farmers-like poultry producers-are owners of their means of pro-
duction in only a tenuous sense. They are more like "food serfs" than
the yeoman farmers of Jeffersonian lore. Other farmers may own
their land and machinery but are highly leveraged and locked in to
growing commodities like genetically modified corn, soybeans, or
sugar beets "for the market:' There is a small, undercapitalized but
highly committed subclass of small-scale family farmers growing for
Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) and farmers' markets in
the Global North who live almost as precariously as peasants in the
Global South-but without the extended family and village support
networks.
Then there is the "food petty bourgeoisie" made up of small res-
taurateurs, and retailers, producers for high-end niche markets, the
technicians and bureaucrats in the agricultural ministries, midsize
philanthropic foundations, and "food entrepreneurs" producing
everything from liquid meal replacements and boxed meal ingre-
dients to wine aerators and smartphone food apps. Their media
presence far outweighs their actual activity in production itself.
The "food intellectuals" also make up a part of this class (and some-
times that of the bourgeoisie). Though it is fashionable to consider the
celebrity chefs, individual scientists, technicians, professors, authors,
and commentators working in the food system as independent think-
ers, they all serve the needs of some class. (Some celebrity chefs
are full-blown, multi-million dollar capitalists.) Gramsci believed
that every class, except for the peasantry, had their own group of
"organic" intellectuals who helped them advance their class interests.
"Intellectuals;' he wrote, "think of themselves as independent, auton-
omous, endowed with a character of their own:' 41 But for Gramsci,
intellectuals were characterized less by the intrinsic nature of their
activities and more by the ensemble of social relations in which
they carried out their activities. We can see this in our modern food
system: some scientists, professors, and internet trolls and food blog-
gers work in the class interests of the great food monopolies, whereas
the work of other intellectuals reflects the interests of small farmers,
and farm and food workers, and the efforts of still others reflect the
interests of the petty bourgeoisie.
Does this mean that all classes are ultimately doomed to serve the
dominant class interests of the bourgeoisie? Not necessarily. The poor
want affordable food; capitalists need compound growth rates and
a 15 percent return on their food system investments; farmers want
parity; workers want at least living wages; and most intellectuals want
a comfortable salary and social recognition.
Karl Polanyi wrote, "The fate of classes is much more often deter-
mined by the needs of society than the fate of society is determined
by the needs of classes:'
We can better understand Polanyi's formulation by applying it to
our food system. Polanyi did not dismiss class, class interests, class
struggle, and class warfare (nor would he likely have dismissed gender
or racial equity struggles). On the contrary, in his study of the impact
of capitalism on society, he found that class alliances-more than the
independent struggles of classes themselves-were a fundamental aspect
of social change. Success in the struggle against rapacious liberal mar-
kets depended on the ability of the most negatively affected classes
to ally with other classes. This, in turn, depended on their ability to
work for "interests wider than their own:' This way of thinking about
class is especially important in understanding the transformation of
our food systems.
Food embraces the concerns of class, but also those of gender and
race. This means that food provides an opportunity to build alliances
on the basis of interests "wider than our own:' The question is, what
kind of alliances, and with whom? What are the transformative inter-
ests and social classes of today's food system and which can build an
alliance for its transformation?
Given that the food and agriculture sector is the largest employer
in the world, it would seem obvious that any transformation of the
food system would have to place the interests of the "food proletariat"
prominently in any strategy for change. This is not the case. With the
exception of the very few farmworker unions and food retail and res-
taurant workers' coalitions, most of the good-food movement centers
on food access that, in the words of Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini,
is "good, clean and fair:' The mainstream media, the internet, and
social media all give the impression that the food movement is either
about entrepreneurs inventing clever food apps, consumers seeking
an authentic food experience, or underserved communities seeking
healthy food. Farmers are presented as individuals rather than as a class
with material and social demands, and workers are largely ignored.
The prominence of intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and classless
consumers in what some analysts call "the dominant food narrative"
is an ideological reflection of a food system in which farmers and
blue-collar food workers have lost power in relation to multinational
corporations.42 It is also a reflection of a capitalist system unable to
resolve chronic crises of overproduction and underemployment.
Thus we have a handful of innovative farmers and food entrepre-
neurs held up as success stories, while tens of thousands of retiring
farmers are forced to sell their farms and millions of food workers
are underemployed, mistreated, and underpaid. A triumphant "food
revolution" is touted on television food channels, on the internet, and
in college courses at a time when the relations of production (and
the wealth of the food system) are firmly under corporate control.
Even initiatives that ostensibly benefit farmers, like Fair Trade, are
run by managers and distributors rather than farmers, which helps to
explain why the fair trade premium is based on market prices rather
than costs of production. Above all, ownership of the most basic
factor of production-land-is unquestionably rooted in a capitalist
system of private property that economically shuts out new farmers,
particularly women and people of color.
The Fetish of Food and the End to Oppression
The popularity of food in the media and talk of food revolutions give
the impression that society is transforming the food system by dint
of improved technologies, disruptive ideas, and conscious eating.

Market-based strategies for farmers, restaurateurs, and incubator
kitchens invite us to believe that patriarchy, racism, and class exploi-
tation in the food system can be eliminated if only we help women,
people of color, and the poor become better capitalists. The rise of
monopoly ownership of the means of production-land, labor-power,
and capital-is blithely ignored in favor of a happy narrative of mid-
dle-class economic development, precisely at a time when the middle
class is disappearing worldwide. This hegemonic food discourse not
only reflects the dominant ideology of the corporate food regime, it
avoids addressing how the capitalist food system is inextricably based
on the oppression and exploitation of women, people of color, and
workers. Worse, this dominant food narrative lulls us into the magical
belief that somehow we can change the food system without changing
the capitalist system in which it is historically embedded. This is the
political fetishization of food.
We can't change the food system without transforming capitalism.
Yet we can't transform capitalism without changing the food system.
And we can't do either of these without ending patriarchy, racism,
and classism. So, if we want a better food system, we have to change
everything. Admittedly, this is a tall order for any social movement.
The question for the food movement, however, is not "how do we
change everything;' but "how is the food system strategically posi-
tioned to influence systemic change?"
Clearly, a true food revolution would upend the social relations
of patriarchy, racism, and classism in the food system and in soci-
ety as a whole. A food revolution would also smash the monopoly
ownership of the means of production by disabling the mechanisms
of monopoly power: corporate personhood and intellectual property
rights, corporate amnesty (from paying the health and environmental
costs of the industrial model of food production), corporate finan-
cialization of land, food speculation, and the ability to buy elections
and determine food, labor, and environmental policy.
These instruments of power must be addressed if patriarchy,
racism, and classism are to be eliminated in the food system; they are
precisely what hold these oppressions in place. The food movement's

strategic advantage in the struggle for food system transformation is
that the main oppressions within it are the primary oppressions of
capitalism itself. If hunger, food insecurity, poverty, and social dis-
enfranchisement are addressed not as "problems" to be "fixed" within
the existing food system, but rather as part of a historically con-
structed capitalism based on gender, race, and class oppression, the
road to transformational change within and beyond the food system
becomes increasingly clear.
The next question is, of course, who will lead this transformation?
History indicates that those with the most at stake in system change
are the most effective leaders. Peasants have led movements for agrar-
ian reforms; workers have led struggles for wage and workplace
improvement; women have led the struggles for equality and suffrage;
and African Americans have led the movements for civil rights in the
United States. Two things were essential to the successes of all of these
movements: cross-class alliances and legitimate "organic" leadership.
The movements for good food, food justice, food democracy, and
food sovereignty that have gained traction around the globe are often
led by women, people of color, workers, and peasants. However, the
gatekeepers of the dominant food movement discourse are profession-
als, academics, intellectuals, and bureaucrats who are mostly white
males. This disjuncture ultimately depoliticizes the food movement,
taking its attention away from capitalism and impeding effective alli-
ances, which are difficult under the best of circumstances. Supporting
the radical leadership of women, people of color, peasants, farmers,
and food workers-and centering food system change within capital-
ist transformation-will go a long way to overcoming these obstacles.
-6-
Food, Capitalism, Crises, and Solutions

The industrial agrifood complex tells us that only big, industrial
agriculture with more and more technologies (including those
that are needed to fix the problems caused by current technolo-
gies) are the only way to feed a global population predicted to
reach 10 billion people by 2050. This "Golden Fact" is actually
a "Big Lie:' We produce one and a half times more than enough
food for everyone on the planet-already enough to feed 1Obillion
people. But more than one billion people are still going hungry
because they are too poor to buy the food being produced. Just
producing more commodities won't help them. No matter, corpo-
rate salesmen tell farmers to increase production with GMOs and
chemicals. My co-op even tries to demonstrate how farmers' yield
will increase by throwing everything in the spray tank except
the kitchen sink. Why not the kitchen sink? Because Monsanto
doesn't sell kitchen sinks. 1
-GEORGE NAYLOR, IOWA FARMER
I n 2015 the United Nations announced that the Millennium

Development Goals were going to be met and that we were on
track to end hunger and poverty. 2 After all, the world was actually
producing l 1h times more than enough food for everyone. At the

same time, the FAO insisted that we had to double our food supply
over the next thirty years in order to feed 10 billion people.
What can we make of this? Nearly a billion people are going
hungry even though there is too much food. If we are already over-
producing food, how will producing more food end hunger? When it
comes to the call to produce more food, hunger gets stretched. When
it comes to the effectiveness of the capitalist food system, aston-
ishingly, hunger shrinks. As Alice in Wonderland remarked as she
shrank and grew, things get "curiouser and curiouser:'3
The market-led, neoliberal approach to meeting this curious food
demand bases its policies on an assumption of food scarcity and an
unshakable belief in the power of enterprise, technology, and free
trade. In this view, to solve hunger we must rely on the best and the
newest that capitalism and free markets have to offer, namely big
agriculture and big data, precision agriculture and nanotechnology,
synthetic biology, genetic engineering, glyphosate, Agent Orange,
CAFOs, growth hormones, antibiotics, and liberalized trade.
Neoliberal approaches tend to underplay health and environmen-
tal concerns, claiming that there is no evidence of any harm from
industrial technologies or that newer, more efficient technologies will
replace the old ones soon enough. The answer to market failure (as
in 2008 when a billion people could not afford to buy food), is to
produce more, further liberalize trade, accept corporate monopoly
concentration to attain better market efficiencies, automate super-
markets, and add nutrients to staple crops and cheap, processed food.
Too poor to buy food? Don't worry, be entrepreneurial.
Reformist approaches to hunger are a little more nuanced and a
bit more empathetic to the plight of the poor. While they work from
the same neoliberal premise of scarcity, reformers tend to recognize
some socioeconomic and environmental failures in the food system.
For example, they agree with the neoliberal technological and market
proposals, but believe food aid and development programs should
help the poor by making sure they have enough calories and can
access new technologies and global markets. They sometimes argue
FOOD, CAPITALISM, CRISES, AND SOLUTIONS 177
that the problem of hunger is so big and so urgent that "all solutions;'
including organic farming, should be employed in the battle against
hunger and environmental degradation (a bit like George Naylor's
"kitchen sink'' approach). This perspective doesn't attribute the
problems in the food system to capitalism per se, but to badly imple-
mented capitalism. Typical reform initiatives, like USAID's Feed the
Future (a government-sponsored, overseas agricultural development
program), claim to spread the benefits of the capitalist food system
to the poor. Other reformist proposals, like reducing and repurpos-
ing food waste to end hunger, never ask why people are poor or why
the food system produces so much waste to begin with. Reformist
policies do not challenge capitalist structures, like concentrated land
ownership, the financialization of food and land, corporate concen-
tration, or market fundamentalism. Nor do they consider whether
it is socially just that a basic human need like food is considered a
commodity, the same as any other, as part of an economic system
that does not guarantee people good-paying jobs, or even any job for
that matter.
The True Extent of Hunger:

What the FAQ Isn't Telling You 3
In 1996, 840 million people were hungry worldwide. Leaders

from 185 countries met at the World Food Summit in Italy
and drafted the Rome Declaration, promising to reduce the
total number of poor and hungry people by half to 420
million people by 2015.
Four years later, in 2000, the Millennium Declaration diluted
the commitment laid out by the Rome Declaration. Leaders
at the Millennium Summit utilized a numbers game that
ultimately made the hunger reduction commitment weaker
and easier to reach. Instead of sticking to a commitment to
reduce hunger by a certain number of people {420 million),
they changed the goal to decrease the percentage of
hungry people. Because of population growth, this adjust-
ment meant ending hunger for only 296 million people. This
sleight of hand allowed leaders to claim quick progress on
paper, when in reality the fight to end hunger was proceeding
slower than anyone wanted to admit.
Official hunger reduction goals were again eased when the
base year was backdated from 2000 to 1990. This allowed
the inclusion of China's accomplishments in the 1990s in
which millions were pulled from poverty and hunger, even
though China was not a part of the Millennium Declaration.
It also extended the period of population growth, and as
a result, the proportion of people saved from hunger. This
modified time frame actually increased the "acceptable"
number of hungry from 420 million to 591 million.
As if shifting the goal posts was not misleading enough,
the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
misrepresented the true extent of world hunger by using an
inaccurate definition of hunger itself. The FAO only counts
people as hungry when caloric intake is inadequate to cover
minimum needs for a sedentary lifestyle for over one year.
But we know most hungry people are peasant farmers
engaged in demanding physical labor and need much more
than the FAQ's "sedentary" minimum caloric threshold.
Incredibly, people who go hungry for 11 months out of the
year are not classified as hungry by the FAO.
If we measure hunger at the level of calories required for
intense activity, the number of hungry people today is closer
to 2.5 billion, and this does not count those suffering from
serious vitamin and nutrient deficiencies, or those hungry
seasonally or for months at a time (but less than a full year).
This estimate is two times higher than the FAQ's numbers
would have us believe.
Through the Millennium Development Goals, the FAQ
misrepresented the true extent of hunger. In reality, between
1.5 and 2.5 billion people lack access to adequate food. And
the numbers are rising, not falling.
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Hunger: What t he FAO Isn't
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from 1990 levels 10% than the 1996 Rome Declaration
commitment No.ZA. Summer 2016. "<.D
Let's look at a few of the neoliberal and reformist proposals coming

from the corporate food regime.
Sustainable Intensification: Less Is More, or Less ...
Development experts have advanced "sustainable intensification" as a

solution for producing more food in a way that does not damage the
environment. Sustainable intensification "is based on the principle
that in a complex world with a growing population, the more effec-
tive use of inputs and the reduction of undesirable outputs in order to
achieve greater yields-intensification-is fundamentally required in
order to achieve sustainabilitY:'4 Specifically, "sustainable intensifica-
tion [is] a form of production wherein 'yields are increased without
adverse environmental impacts and without the cultivation of more
land:"s
These principles ostensibly work for all farms, large and small,
from the Global North and the Global South, poor or rich, and for
women or men. Sustainable intensification is a big-basket approach
that encompasses all technologies, including nanotechnology, big
data, precision agriculture, pesticides, genetic engineering, com-
mercial fertilizers, organic farming, agroecology, and permaculture,
as long as it produces more food on less land without increasing its
negative environmental impact. Sustainable intensification generally
assumes a particular form of production as given and then attempts
to improve upon it. It avoids making comparisons or addressing the
conflicts between one form of agriculture and another.
At its core, sustainable intensification seeks to feed more people
while at the same time "sparing land" (mostly forests and wetlands)
from further agricultural encroachment. A number of economic and
environmental assumptions are built in to the land-sparing argument
that fly in the face of how capitalist agriculture, and agroecosystems,
actually work. As our farmer friend George Naylor points out:
The Golden Fact/Big Lie also claims that by increasing yields

on existing farmland, we can avoid the need to convert virgin
land-like the rainforest, marshland, or the savanna - to com -

modity production. The opposite is actually true; any time you
increase yields, you cut the cost of production, making cultivation
on marginal land even more likely. 6
Land Sparing
Land sparing is the notion that if production on agricultural

land is intensified, the pressure to expand farmland to
forests, wetlands, and other natural areas will decrease, thus
sparing these areas from agricultural development and thus
conserving their biodiversity.
The land-sparing environmental argument is loosely
based on the theory of "island biogeography" developed by
E. 0. Wilson and Robert MacArthur. 7 Island biogeography
modeled the rates of species colonization and extinction on
islands in the ocean. The bigger and closer the islands were
to the mainland, the greater the biodiversity-the numbers
and kinds of birds and plants. Conservation biologists applied
the theory to forest biodiversity. They treated the forest as
a species-rich "mainland" and the neighboring agricultural
fields as an inert "ocean" they called a matrix. The bigger and
closer forest fragments in the agricultural matrix were to the
forest "mainland," the richer they would be in biodiversity.
The agricultural matrix was also assumed to be devoid of
species and biodiversity. This is fairly true for large-scale,
industrial agriculture that only permits the growth of one
species: the commodity crop.
However, though this theory may hold for industrial
agriculture, it does not hold for extensive patchworks
of small, diversified, agroecological farms. In Nature's
Matrix researchers Vandermeer, Perfecto, and Wright
quantitatively demonstrated that agroecological farms are
rich in biodiversity and actually serve to replenish and enrich
biodiversity in the surrounding forests. 8
Under current free market conditions, if farmers find ways to

increase yields, they may well expand rather than reduce the area
under cultivation in order to make more money. Suppliers of chemi-
cals, seeds, big data, and farm machinery will be happy to sell them
more inputs. Banks and financial investors will also be glad to lend
more money or financialize larger and larger areas of profitable agri-
cultural land. And if agricultural commodity prices decline because of
more production by many farmers, these farmers will try to increase
production to have sufficient income to pay for their fixed costs.
Sustainable intensification ranges from a narrow calculus of
a simple yield per hectare increase accompanied by a reduction in
chemical inputs to broader considerations that take into account
water, biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, animal welfare,
nutrition, market demand, and governance. In the end, however,
sustainable intensification, much like English high farming and the
Green Revolution before it, avoids challenging existing political and
regulatory issues, just as it avoids addressing the driving force behind
the spread of industrial agriculture in the first place: capitalism. The
social conditions of production negotiated by people, governments,
and the private sector are left to the status quo. As is the commodity
nature of the end product, food.
In essence, sustainable intensification does not address the mode
of production (capitalism), the inequitable distribution of the means
of production (land, labor capital), or the unequal distribution of
income and wealth that leaves a people unable to purchase sufficient
amounts of healthy food. Rather, it calls for technological changes to
the forms or techniques of production within the existing politics and
structures of the corporate food regime. The underlying premise is
that new agricultural technologies or changes in the way we apply
existing technologies are sufficient to solve the problem of hunger and
environmental degradation, will eventually drive new innovations, or
are the best we can hope to accomplish within capitalist agriculture
at this time.
By putting capitalism safely outside of its purview, sustainable
intensification not only affirms and normalizes capitalist agriculture,
it avoids addressing how capital favors some forms of production over

others and ignores how some forms can exploit others. For example,
large-scale agriculture for feed and fuel crops crowds out food-grow-
ing smallholders without providing jobs to compensate for the loss of
livelihoods. Contract farming traps farmers in a serf-like form of debt
bondage, no matter how sustainable the intensification. Large-scale
monocultures and CAFOs, with all their inherent ecological and eco-
nomic risk, fit nicely within the sustainable intensification framework.
All they have to do is reduce the footprint of their manure ponds and
be more efficient with the tremendous quantities of chemicals, hor-
mones, antibiotics, water, and energy they consume. The quality of the
food and the diets of consumers are of no concern, nor is the steadily
concentrating power and wealth of the monopolies that supply seeds,
fertilizers, pesticides, and services to industrial agriculture and are
financially invested in continuing this form of production.
But wouldn't it be better if all farms produced more food on less
land and were more sustainable? Well, perhaps. But do we want to
sustain CAFOs, contract farming, and monocultures on huge farms?
Shouldn't we be looking at the small-scale agroecological farms that
are already producing high yields using practices that work in concert
with the environment and redistribute wealth within the food system?
Sustainable intensification steers us away from these questions.
Climate Change, Agriculture, and Two Primary

Contradictions of Capitalism
The capitalist food system may not be sowing the seeds of its own
destruction, but it may well be sowing the seeds of ours. Capitalism is
not only a crisis-ridden system, it is crisis prone. Two primary contra-
dictions inherent to capitalism lead to cyclical crises.
The first contradiction is between capital and labor. Capital keeps
wages low in order to extract surplus value and make ever-increasing
profits. In a competitive environment, capitalists intensify productiv-
ity by paying workers less or using fewer workers to produce the same
amount of goods (exploitation). But low-wage workers can't buy very
much. This leads to a crisis of accumulation, or "realization:' when

goods pile up unsold or need to be unloaded at a loss. Capitalism
often resolves this crisis by expanding into new markets to find con-
sumers who can afford their products. This fix works until the new
markets are saturated. Other mechanisms can then be implemented.
Capital can find new areas of even lower wage labor to make products
for the workers with higher wages. Advertising is used to stimulate
more sales. In the area of processed foods (especially junk food), a
lot oflaboratory effort is devoted to find just the right combination of
artificial flavors, salt, sugar, and fat to make products more appealing
and addictive. Corporations can provide backing for governments to
go to war to protect sources of raw materials or markets, with side
effects such as provision of government-funded jobs and creation of
more disposable income. Capitalist wars are very efficient at produc-
ing profits. The products of the war industry-arms, ammunition,
ships, vehicles, chemicals-are destroyed in the course of war, and so
don't pile up, thus resolving the crisis of overproduction. Lowering
prices of goods through automation may help sell cheaper products,
but if workers are thrown out of work by machines and end up unem-
ployed or in lower-wage work, they aren't going to be able to buy as
much as they did previously. Credit is a great invention to increase
purchasing power of consumers, but sooner or later, the bills come
due. All of these fixes are temporary and can end up exacerbating the
inevitable crisis in the long run.
Another problem for capital is that global population growth is
leveling off and in some countries even declining. This reduces the
growth potential of markets and profits. It forces companies to rely
more on export markets for future growth and raises the issue of a
redistribution of wealth downward in order to maintain consumer
demand. Though capitalist institutions continuously warn us of the
threat of overpopulation in order to justify the industrialization of the
food supply, the truth is that far-sighted capitalists are terrified by the
projected end of population growth in 2050.
When economies are growing, companies can always find prof-
itable investment opportunities, either expanding production or
opening up new endeavors. However, problems arise when economic

growth slows, as it has over the last decades. Monopoly (or oligopoly)
power may enable companies to maintain profits. But then the prob-
lem becomes how to use the accumulated wealth. Companies may
accumulate more capital than they literally know what to do with.
Outside the finance sector, U.S. corporations have over $1.5 trillion
in cash and cash equivalents. During cyclical crises of accumula-
tion, capitalists typically restructure industries and business sectors
through mergers, buying other companies, pushing for devaluation
and deregulation, and so on, ridding their businesses of excess capi-
tal at society's expense. But capital also restructures the relations of
production as well, by restructuring the division of labor from labor-
intensive manufacture to automation, or replacing national with
foreign labor by offshoring, or by substituting "free" (unorganized)
labor for unionized labor, for example; restructuring family and civic
relations (as when education and prisons are privatized); and by alter-
ing and destroying nature.
This brings us to a second contradiction of capitalism, between
the desires of the wealthy and corporations and the finite qualities
and quantities of soil, forests, water tables, oceans, biodiversity, and
even the biology of people and communities. In other words, there
is a systemic contradiction between capitalism, which is impelled to
continually grow and acknowledges no limits to the supply of natural
resources nor of the availability of "sinks" to absorb and dilute pol-
lution associated with production, and the environmental and social
conditions that people need to live and reproduce as a society. 9
Some of the contradictions of capital-getting rid of the vast
quantity of goods produced, finding new profitable investment
opportunities, and finding new sources of natural resources needed
for industry-have historically been resolved by expansion into
new territories. After the Second World War, most former colo-
nies became independent and blatant colonialism fell out of favor.
"Development" stepped in to serve the colonizing function for
capitalism, opening markets, appropriating existing forms of pro-
duction, and pulling new labor, land, and resources into the circuits
of Northern capitalism. The problem in today's world is that capital

is running out of easy territories to colonize, leading it to revisit areas
that have proven difficult to capitalist development, like the Arctic
Sea and sub-Saharan Africa.
One of the greatest contradictions of capitalism is dramatic and
far-reaching, namely global climate change. Along with other nega-
tive environmental and social side-effects in the way the system
operates, climate change is referred to as an "externality:' These are
"externalities" only in the sense that they are external to business bal-
ance sheets. But this leaves humanity and the biosphere to bear the
system's environmental and social costs. It is significant that the food
system is a large contributor to greenhouse gases (GHG). Industrial
agriculture, particularly livestock, is a significant contributor to GHG
emissions. The plastic packaging and 2,500 average food miles that
characterize the global food system also play a role in GHG emis-
sions. Rising global temperatures and erratic weather patterns are
already disrupting agriculture around the world, particularly in the
Global South. This has created terrible hardships, but, ironically, new
opportunities for corporate profit.
Climate-Smart Agribusiness
Solutions to global warming range from embracing C02 emissions

(plants love it!) to carbon offsets, carbon markets, carbon taxes, and
irreversible global experiments in geoengineering. Within the food
system, one high-profile approach is "climate-smart agriculture"
(CSA). According to the FAO, climate-smart agriculture is "agricul-
ture that sustainably increases productivity, resilience (adaptation),
reduces/removes GHGs (mitigation), and enhances achievement of
national food security and development goals:' 10
What's the difference between sustainable intensification and
climate-smart agriculture? Since both are fairly vague in their appli-
cation, not much. However, while sustainable intensification is
primarily a strategy to justify the continuation of large industrial
farms, CSA is generally reserved for poor smallholders:
The majority of the world's poor live in rural areas and agriculture
is their most important income source. Developing the potential
to increase the productivity and incomes from smallholder crop,
livestock, fish and forest production systems will be the key to
achieving global food security over the next twenty years. Climate
change is expected to hit developing countries the hardest. Its
effects include higher temperatures, changes in precipitation pat-
terns, rising sea levels and more frequent extreme weather events.
All of these pose risks for agriculture, food and water supplies.
Resilience is therefore a predominant concern. Agriculture is a
major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Mitigation can often
be a significant co-benefit of actions to strengthen adaptation and
enhance food security, and thus mitigation action compatible
with national development priorities for agriculture is an impor-
tant aspect of CSA.11
Climate-Smart Seeds
Although climate-smart agriculture has been heartily embraced by

industry (particularly the fertilizer and chemical monopolies), there
has been considerable pushback from farmers' organizations and
civil society against the concept. 12 Most of this opposition concerns
the regulatory work in favor of genetic engineering and proprietary
seed technology. The African continent is a clear example. African
governments working with the Alliance for a New Green Revolution
for Africa (AGRA), USAID's Feed the Future program, the industry-
led Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture, and the African
Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) are developing a suite
of climate-smart seeds, including drought-resistant maize. The
Water-Efficient Maize for Africa project (WEMA) is a public/private
partnership, led by the Kenyan-based AATF and funded by the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation,
and USAID.
The AATF champions WEMA's use of conventional breeding,
marker-assisted breeding, and biotechnology, and plans to make
these varieties available to sub-Saharan smallholders in Kenya,

Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. Though not yet
commercially available, WEMA seed is going to be offered royalty-
free. This doesn't mean the seed is free. It means that Monsanto is
not going to charge a premium for the seed's drought-resistant trait.
However, WEMA seeds will be "stacked" with the Bacillus thuringien-
sis (Bt) gene for pest control, and a gene for resistance to glyphosate
and other Monsanto weed killers. Though it is unclear whether
farmers will have to pay royalties for the other traits, the glyphosate
and fertilizer required by these seeds will definitely not be free. The
unstated objective behind climate-smart seeds is finding ways for
seed, chemical, and fertilizer companies to break into the African
markets. WEMA seeds with a free, drought-tolerant gene are not only
an excellent package for the sale of Monsanto's other products, they
usher in the required regulatory frameworks for the commodification
of all African seed. Whether or not these seeds actually help small
farmers in the long run is irrelevant to capital. Once Africa's seeds
are commodified, companies can sell them to the large farmers that
will end up displacing the continent's smallholders. In line with the
classical agrarian transition, the model for agricultural development
pursued by industries like Syngenta and endorsed by the World Bank
and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation plans on helping small-
holders by pushing most of them out of agriculture (see Figure 6.2). 13
The convergence of different forms of capital from philanthropy,
finance, industry, and government is not new, but the "private-public
partnerships" and the scales in which these sectors operate-from
nano-particles to entire continents-are unprecedented. The dimin-
ished power of government to set research agendas through public
universities and the increased power of industry and speculative
capital to produce product-oriented research is a characteristic of
neoliberal development.
By investing in and regulating the private capture of genetic mate-
rial and new genetically engineered products, capitalism creates
"biocapital;' a form of value based on the commodification of the
building blocks of life itself. 14 Bio capital in the form of seeds not only
Figure 6.2: Syngenta's Version of Agricultural Development 0
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Stages of progression 00
2010, 4. l.D
unleashes the power of speculative capital investment in agribusiness,

it recruits and creates a vast socioeconomic and political network of
scientists, technicians, extensionists, investment firms, foundations,
development agencies, and public relations firms invested in a geneti-
cally modified future.
Whether any of this has anything to do with actually ending
hunger is questionable, especially since hunger could be wiped out
rapidly by distributing wealth and income more evenly. If the World
Bank, CGIAR, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID,
Monsanto, Bayer, and Syngenta were really interested in ending
hunger they would have launched a new Green Revolution in Asia,
not Africa. After all, that is where most of the world's hungry people
actually reside. Why insist on Africa? Because Asia already had
a Green Revolution and is still going hungry. Hunger is beside the
point. Asia's markets for Green Revolution products are already satu-
rated. Africa is the great frontier.
But don't Africa's farmers need new, drought-resistant seeds to be
able to adapt to climate change? Because climate change is increas-
ing drought and heat waves in sub-Saharan Africa, no doubt Africa's
farmers would welcome more drought resistance. But that doesn't
mean that a gene-centered or commodity-centered approach is nec-
essarily the right fit for farmers who don't have enough money for
the required inputs and machinery, and who generally fare poorly in
global commodity markets.
An agroecological approach to climate resilience, in which the
entire agroecosystem (soil fertility and conservation, crop diversity,
agroforestry, biomass management, water harvesting, and biological
pest management) would better fit the livelihood needs and farming
styles of Africa's smallholders. Agroecology's whole farm approach to
resilience has much more to offer smallholders in terms of adapta-
tion and mitigation than the gene-by-gene approach of climate-smart
agriculture. The problem with agroecology is that it doesn't fit the
model for capitalist development because agroecological farmers use
fewer rather than more commercial inputs. This explains agroecol-
ogy's subordinate status in most large-scale development programs,
despite its endorsement from farmers' movements and its proven

ability to increase yields.
Hidden Hunger and the Trojan Horse of Fortified Commodities
In 2016, Maria Andrade, Robert Mwanga, Jan Low, and Howarth

Bouis were crowned the 2016 World Food Prize Laureates during a
ceremony at the U.S. State Department. 15 Celebrated as "biofortifica-
tion pioneers;' their combined efforts have been heralded as potentially
impacting over 10 million rural poor across Africa, Asia, and Latin
America through biofortification, the process of scientifically breed-
ing vitamins and nutrients into staple crops. 16 Researchers Andrade
and Mwanga developed a carotene-rich, orange-fleshed sweet potato
(OFSP) bred for Vitamin A, while Jan Low promoted the product,
convincing 2 million people in Africa to adopt it. Howarth Boisas
spent twenty-five years promoting iron- and zinc-fortified beans, rice,
wheat, and pearl millet, along with Vitamin A-enriched cassava, maize,
and OFSP. The biofortification of crops is carried out by scientists at
the international centers for agricultural research and funded largely
by public monies and big philanthrocapitalists. Proponents claim they
are improving the diets of people in over forty countries.
Upstream in the food regime, scientists are breeding and geneti-
cally engineering crops to address the hidden hunger that affects 2
billion people worldwide. Hidden hunger is not limited to poor coun-
tries in the Global South. Vitamin and mineral deficiencies occur in
the high-density, low-nutrient diets of the Global North as well, where
obesity can often mask nutrient deficiency. The ravages of hidden
hunger can affect all aspects of social and economic life. According to
the Global Hunger Index:
Effects of hidden hunger include child and maternal death, physi-

cal disabilities, weakened immune systems, and compromised
intellects. Where hidden hunger has taken root, it not only pre-
vents people from surviving and thriving as productive members
of society, it also holds countries back in a cycle of poor nutrition,
poor health, lost productivity, persistent poverty, and reduced eco-

nomic growth. This demonstrates why not only the right to food,
but also access to the right type of food at the right time, is impor-
tant for both individual well-being and countries as a whole. 17
The biofortification network grew out of the mandate to shift

micro nutrient interventions from nutritionally fortified foods (eaten
by urban dwellers) to "hard to reach" rural populations that grew their
own food. Along with rice and maize, so-called poor man's crops such
as sweet potato, millet, beans, sorghum, cassava, and banana became
the targets of biofortification programs. 18 Biofortified crop variet-
ies have been heralded as the new miracle seeds, able to address the
problem of micronutrient malnutrition through the introduction of
"nutrient-rich'' crop varieties, even in remote rural areas. 19
The project emerges out of a twenty-year collaboration between
public research institutions, philanthropic organizations, and trans-
national seed corporations. Decades of advanced research and
development in raising the beta-carotene levels in the genetically
engineered "Golden Rice;' for example, has been primarily funded
and supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and agribusiness giant
Syngenta. DuPont collaborates with the nonprofit Africa Harvest
Biotech Foundation International (Africa Harvest), and Monsanto
donates to the BioCassava Plus (BC+) program of the Donald Danforth
Center. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the biggest philan-
thropic donor of biofortification programs, having committed more
than $160 million, worldwide. 20
Promoters frame biofortification as a nutritional silver bullet:
technical, generic, and scalable, putting nutrients into crops much like
putting fluoride in water systems. 21 This promotion ofbiofortification
fits into a broader discourse of "benevolent biotechnology" upheld
and supported by transnational ag-biotech corporations, interna-
tional regulatory bodies, and governments with "modern scientific
knowledge and practice within market-oriented, poverty-reduction
strategies with the aim of integrating rural agricultural communities
into the global agricultural system:' Promotion of biofortified crops
is a promising way for companies to expand into the staple crop seed
market that is still presently supplied by farmer-to-farmer seed sys-
tems. In this context, biofortification is a vehicle (some say a Trojan
horse) for the corporate consolidation and control of food systems
still operating outside of their control. 22
Nowhere in the biofortification discourse does anyone ask why
farmers are nutrient-poor. Poor nutrition is assumed to be some sort
of natural state, to be remedied by injecting nutrients into staple crops.
How and why smallholder farms lost their capacity to produce a bal-
anced diet based on a diversified cropping system is not of concern.
Fortification and Nutritionism
Downstream, industrial food companies are not only reducing salts,

sugars, and preservatives in their food products, they are "fortify-
ing" them to contain the nutrients lost in a standard processed foods
diet. Fortification is as old as iodized salt and baby formula. In the
1960s, as the diets of the poor were being decimated by the spread
of export agriculture, government food supplement programs in
developing countries added micronutrients to staple products such as
flour, oil, sugar, and margarine. Today, the task of fortifying food has
fallen to food industry giants like Nestle, Unilever, PepsiCo, Kellogg,
Danone, and General Mills, who use the market to channel nutrients
to the undernourished. To support the trend, in 2005 the World Bank
started the Business Alliance for Food Fortification (BAFF). Chaired
by Coca-Cola, the partnership includes the major players in the global
food industry, like Nestle, Heinz, Ajinomoto, Danone, and Unilever. 23
But fortified foods often fail to reach the poorest of the poor,
those who live on the margins of the market economy. Due to their
low purchasing power and underdeveloped distribution channels,
processed fortified food items have limited reach and impact for
subsistence farmers and rural people who consume locally produced
food. Nevertheless, there is tremendous support for fortification in
capitalist food systems. Science plays an important role in this.
The scientific framework used to buttress the claims of the
nutritional superiority of foods specifically engineered for enhanced

nutrient content over whole foods is called "nutritionism:'
Nutritionism is specifically tailored to support the consumption
of newly fashioned, ultra-fortified commodities. Just as the Green
Revolution produced a "science of scarcity" to justify the overpro-
duction of agricultural commodities (which needed inputs like
fertilizers and pesticides), nutritionism has produced the "science of
insufficiency" to justify cramming nutrients into staple foods eaten
by farmers, and into food products sold to the poor by global monop-
olies. Nutritionism is a reductionist form of science that avoids
addressing the causes of malnutrition and simplifies and exaggerates
the role of nutrients in dietary health. 24 Ideologically, nutritionism
reduces world hunger to a problem of insufficient nutrients-without
asking why nutrients are lacking-and carves out a space for nutri-
ent-enriched products offered by the market.
When hidden hunger is reduced to a problem of micronutrient
deficiencies, addressing hunger serves a political and economic func-
tion. First, it gives power and profit to whichever corporation provides
the micronutrients. Second, it masks the ways the global food system
has destroyed traditional sources of nutrients and impoverished peo-
ple's diets. In its extreme version, champions of fortification even claim
that human beings cannot obtain their necessary nutrients by eating
a healthy diet made up of diverse, whole, and fresh foods, but need
personally targeted nutrients, to be administered by the food industry.
Arguing for Nestle's vision of a "scientifically engineered Garden
of Eden'' based on fortified food products, outgoing chairman Peter
Brabeck-Letmathe claims, "Nature is not good to human beings.
Nature would kill human beings. The reason why Homo sapiens have
become what we are is because we learned to overcome nature:' 25 The
political economy behind fortification tells another story. Like many
monopolies, Nestle's corporate growth has dropped by 50 percent
over the last five years, leading it to seek profits by morphing its mass
food products into the more lucrative pharmaceutical sector.
This focus on the inability of humans to feed themselves and the baf-
fling "scarcity" of nutrients enables food industries and biotechnology
corporations to sell more products and obtain better profit margins,

thus satisfying their shareholders. It also allows governments and
industry to depoliticize the causes of world hunger and nutrient defi-
ciency by recasting them as technical problems to be solved by technical
solutions rather than structural measures like land reform, promotion
of agroecological approaches to farming, market reforms, and living
wages. Biofortification pioneers and tech-savvy food companies invite
us to believe that ending hunger is simply about getting the science
right. This suggests that hunger is caused by no one and nothing, it just
happens. And lucky for us, science and industry can end it.
People are hungry because they cannot afford to buy food, not
because science hasn't figured out what to feed them. Farmers are
nutrient-deficient because they don't have enough land to grow a bal-
anced diet. These are political, not technical problems.
The Problem with Food Waste
Forty percent of food grown in the United States and around the world
is "wasted;' generating global concern about the social and environ-
mental costs of food waste. The difference in how waste is viewed is
the difference between need and demand, and between sustenance
and commodities. In the first instance, waste is food that is "lost" to
the eater. In the second, food waste is a factor of production that has
simply been used up.
The term waste is based on the Latin vastus, meaning "unoc-
cupied" or "uncultivated:' When we think of wasting food-our
sustenance-we invoke the term as a verb, "to use or expend care-
lessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose ... to fail to make full or good
use of' But capitalism tends to treat food waste as an adjective, as
"A material, substance or by-product eliminated or discarded as no
longer useful or required after the completion of a process:' 26
The US Food Waste Challenge is a private-public initiative between
the USDA and the agrifoods industry to reduce food waste by 50 per-
cent by 2030. 27 The industry is eliminating "shrinkage" in packing,
shipping, and processing. Supermarkets are giving expired products
to food banks or selling old produce for animal feed. Walmart and
other stores are selling "ugly fruit:' These efforts follow international
trends. France recently passed legislation prohibiting grocery stores
from throwing away expired food.
Because food provisioning uses 10 percent of the total U.S. energy
budget, 50 percent of national land, and 80 percent of all freshwater
consumed, it means that Americans are throwing away the equivalent
of $165 billion in resources each year. 28 Theoretically, reducing food
losses by just 15 percent could save enough to feed over 25 million
Americans yearly. This calculus has prompted the USDA and major
philanthropic foundations to fund projects to reduce and repurpose
food waste and at the same time reduce environmental pollution,
create jobs, and improve food security. The geography of food waste
is influenced by gender and age, location in the supply chain, and
whether a society is industrialized or agricultural. Even socioeco-
nomic status differentiates the kinds of food waste. This has led to
diverse responses: everything from composting and energy genera-
tion to food banks and processing is being thrown at the problem.
Most of these measures could help reduce some of the exter-
nalities related to food waste (landfills, GHG emissions, overuse of
natural resources), and that's a good thing. What is curious about the
proposals to deal with food waste, however, is the focus on the effects
and a complete avoidance of one of the major causes of food waste:
overproduction.
The defining characteristic of capitalism is its tendency to overpro-
duce. The food system is no exception. Our cheap grain policy drives
farmers to overproduce. Farmers tend to increase production when
prices are high (as is the norm in capitalism), but they also increase
production in response to low prices. Although it seems contrary to
what they should do, farms have so many fixed costs that even when
there are low or even no profits, more output means that they can at
least cover these costs. This leads to constant gluts unless there are
weather-related reductions in yields. The glut of grain is bought at
discounted prices by grain, agrifood, and energy companies, which
turn it into cheap food products, feed for CAFOs, and ethanol. The
Food Waste at a Glance
An estimated 30 to 50 percent of the world's food goes

uneaten. In the United States 40 percent of food is wasted. 29
Food waste is not uniform across the globe: 28 percent
of global food loss and waste occurred in industrialized Asia
with 23 percent in South and Southeast Asia, 14 percent in
North America and Oceania, 14 percent in Europe, 9 percent
in sub-Saharan Africa, 7 percent in North Africa and West
and Central Africa, and 6 percent in Latin America. While
more food is lost in production and storage in developing
countries, food waste occurs on a higher scale in the
consumption stage in developed countries. 30
As household incomes grow, particularly in transition
economies (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), the consumption
of starchy food staples declines and diets diversify with fresh
fruits and vegetables, dairy, meat, and fish. This shift toward
shorter shelf-life food items is associated with greater food
waste and a greater use of resources. 31
Adults waste more food than children, and larger
households waste less per person than smaller households.
There is less food loss in low-income households than in high-
income households, and young people tend to waste more
than older people. Hispanic households in the United States
waste approximately 25 percent less food than non-Hispanics.
"For the average U.S. household of four, food waste translates
into an estimated $1,350 to $2,275 in annual losses." 32
In farming, production losses are greatest for fresh
produce. Produce may not be harvested because of damage
caused by pests, disease, weather, or low market prices. It
is difficult for farmers to grow the exact amount that will
match demand, and so they may grow too much food.
Approximately 7 percent of planted fields in the United
States are not harvested each year, costing an estimated
$140 million in crop losses. 33
Loss can occur due to storage, inadequate packaging,

and frequent handling by food processors, brokers, and
wholesalers. According to some studies, a typical food product
is handled an average of 33 times before it is touched by
a consumer. Of the estimated 5.4 billion pounds of food
discarded at the retail level in 1995, nearly half of the losses
came from dairy products and fresh fruits and vegetables. 34
Twenty percent of consumer waste occurs because of
date label confusion. 35 In most cases, people throw away
food once the date passes because they mistakenly think
the date indicates that it is no longer safe to eat when in
fact the date indicates how long the manufacturers think
the food will be at its peak quality. Factor in that food labels
range in phrasing from "sell by" to "best before" to "use by,"
and it is no wonder that retailers and consumers alike are
confused.
objective is to sell as much as possible. Similar trends occur in fruits

and vegetables, for which low prices, standardization, and the big lots
demanded by the agrifoods industry drive farmers to produce more,
flooding the market. Even the much-touted farmers' markets that
connect local producers and consumers can drive local farmers to
overproduce. Because these markets are largely saturated with farmers
competing with one another to sell the same products, farmers select
only the most cosmetically attractive produce for display and sale. The
rest tends to get thrown or given away (or composted). These farm-
ers work on thin margins and tend to pay high rent or mortgages for
farmland that is close to urban markets. 36 Producing food waste is a
collateral effect of their market strategy for economic survival.
Waste is endemic to capitalist overproduction. Turning food
waste into a commodity or donating it to food banks does nothing
to address the cause of waste, though it might create new economic
activities that depend on food waste for their existence. The key to
ending food waste is to end overproduction.
Meet the New Agrifoods Transition
From seed to fork, the food system is being primed for further inten-
sification. Today's techniques in genetic engineering have surpassed
the crude technologies of earlier genetically modified seeds by light
years, allowing direct manipulation of DNA without having to resort
to inaccurate and expensive genetic transfer. 37 Anyone can download
a "genetic map" from the internet and use it to directly manipulate
DNA, changing a metabolic pathway to express any phenotypic char-
acteristic, not only to produce seeds but also to make any kind of
lifeform. What we could only dream of doing with DNA can now be
realized. 38 New technologies collapse and shorten the innovation time
between conception and commercialization. And they are accessible
to any molecular biologist.
Corporations are investing in "digital agriculture;' in which mas-
sive amounts of information about the environment, climate, soil, and
cultivars are carefully recorded by satellite, then analyzed and sold
to farmers, allowing them to apply inputs with great precision. All
major corporations in the food chain, from Monsanto, John Deere,
and Cargill to Nestle, Walmart, and Amazon are using these big data
information systems.
The integrated control of genetic and environmental information
increases the tendency of land and corporate consolidation: among
the six monopolies that control 51 percent of seed and 72 percent of
the pesticides in the international market there is strong pressure to
merge. Syngenta, ChemChina, Monsanto, Bayer, Dow, and DuPont
are all negotiating mergers. When two merge, the others have no
choice but to merge as well. Vertical consolidation is also underway.
Amazon's 2017 purchase of the high-end organic foods supermar-
ket Whole Foods is another example of corporate consolidation. In
open war with the Walmart model, Amazon is planning to sell food
through huge supply centers to be delivered by food taxis and drones.
Amazon's new Amazon Go stores will be fully automated, allowing
consumers to walk through the store selecting items, and walk out
without going through checkout. A smartphone application will reg-
ister their purchase and charge their credit card. 39
And what will you find in the store? Food products made from
commodified ingredients with slightly lower transfats, sodium, and
sugar levels than before, but now fortified with micronutrients and
disease-preventing, plant-derived compounds called phytonutri-
ents. Nestle, the 150-year-old fortification pioneer-and the world's
largest packaged foods monopoly-will sell you a "health chip" to
implant under your skin. These will measure your nutrient levels
and communicate by satellite with your physician and your smart-
phone, individually tailoring your shopping experience by indicating
which fortified (Nestle) products you should buy-perhaps an anti-
Alzheimer's frozen pizza or some cancer-fighting Hot Pockets.
All the financial and structural pressure of the multitrillion-dollar
agrifoods industry leads to even larger scales of production. Seeds,
inputs, machinery, financing, insurance, nanotechnology, and mass
information will deliver larger and larger batches of uniform prod-
ucts to the supermarket shelves. And the monopolies of the food
regime will be even bigger and more concentrated than ever before.
The agrifoods transition will exacerbate both the first and second
contradictions of capitalism: inequality, with workers having insuffi-
cient purchasing power to absorb all that is produced, and ecological
havoc resulting from the system's inability to relate to the environ-
ment in ways that maintain a healthy and thriving biosphere. In the
first case, it will steadily eliminate labor, not only through automation
in the Global North and the emerging economies, but by driving a
large portion of the 2.5 billion rural poor, a third of humanity, off the
land through land grabs and the industrialization of agriculture in
the Global South. The intensification of overproduction will lead to
more, rather than less, GHG's, greater losses of agrobiodiversity, and
further contamination of the earth's water, soil, and genetic diversity,
thus accelerating the second-ecological-contradiction of capital.
Where will a third of humanity find work? How many will be able to
afford the fortified, food-like substances to ensure their health?
George Naylor: An Iowa Farm Leader

Calls for Food Sovereignty40
I believe we need to transform our food system. To do this,

we need everybody to be a piece in the same puzzle-a
puzzle for democratic, egalitarian social change that respects
our ecological limits, not a puzzle that supports the status
quo and creates more problems for our democracy, our
health, our society, and our environment.
The typical farmer in the Midwest owns probably only
10 percent of the land they farm; the rest is cash rented.
Landlords often take the highest rent bid from the biggest,
most industrialized farmer. Through the years, farmers have
invested in bigger and bigger livestock facilities, only to
lose money, watch their facilities become "obsolete," and
abandon their beneficial crop rotations. Today, almost all the
pigs, chickens and even market cattle in the United States
are owned by corporations and fed in giant feedlots and
confined animal feeding operations {CAFOs). The millions of
gallons of CAFO manure, along with the remaining farmers'
fencerow-to-fencerow corn and soybeans rotation, pollute
our lakes and waterways. Getting bigger is clearly not the
answer to our problems.
When a big farmer is going broke, I often hear, "Well,
do you really feel sorry for them? They brought it on
themselves." My answer to that is, "We should all feel sorry
for ourselves for losing one of our most precious institutions,
the family farm." Farm depressions do not reverse farm
consolidation; the land will continue to be farmed, but by
some other farmer who pursues the inevitable call to "get big
or get out." In some cases, corporations are already doing
the farming. We are headed to a time of "farming without
farmers," where the bottom line drives every decision.
Fortunately, some farmers who defy the odds by farming
agroecologically or organically are preserving inherited
wisdom and developing new methods and techniques. We

will all need these practices when our society recognizes that
we can provide healthy food and leave a beautiful planet
for future generations. And likewise, simply voting with our
fork won't do the trick. We need to recognize how market
forces affect farmers, the land, and consumer behavior, and
demand policy solutions to achieve a sustainable future.
We need to de-commoditize food and land. Unless
we recognize that industrialized agriculture depends on
the production, consumption, and sale of commodities
(often speculatively), and that our most basic assumptions
and economic behavior actually reinforce the industrial
status quo, we can't begin to address the problems of land
concentration, unhealthy food, and the degradation of rural
environments.
The biggest market for chemical and biotech products is
the production of storable commodities: feed grains, mostly
corn; food grains, mostly wheat and rice; and oilseeds, mostly
soybeans. There are approximately 250 million acres of these
storable commodities, versus only about 12 million acres of
fruits and vegetables in the US. The feed grains and oilseeds
comprise most of the feed for producing industrial milk, meat,
and eggs-not food that hungry people can afford when
shipped from thousands of miles away. Much of the corn and
soybeans are used to produce biofuels and biochemicals-
again nothing that will relieve anyone's hunger.
Farmers are going broke growing these commodities and
spending big bucks on inputs. Why do they do this? Another
big lie is that farmers produce commodities because they are
subsidized. Almost everyone in the food movement, people
that I love and respect, repeats this lie ad infinitum.
The truth is, commodities like grains and oilseeds are
storable-not perishable-and can be converted to cash
throughout the year. Raised on the vast motherlode of arable
soils we have in the US, much of it far from city populations,
FOOD, CAPITALISM, CRISES, AND SOLUTION'S 203
these commodities were traditionally stored and fed to

livestock. If just 10 percent of these commodity acres were
converted to fruits and vegetables, the production of these
foods would triple, and you'd see those farmers going
broke as perishable food rotted in the fields. We can use
a lot more produce raised locally, but to think that a corn
and soybean farmer could convert their land to fruits and
vegetables is unrealistic. Midwestern farmers plant corn and
soybeans fencerow-to-fencerow because there are really no
alternatives in the capitalist commodity system.
The subsidies paid to commodity farmers from the US
Department of the Treasury only partially make up for low
grain prices. It is important to understand that these subsidy
programs weren't designed to make farmers rich or create
the economic framework for diversified family farms; on
the contrary, these payments are only intended to keep the
commodity system itself from self-destructing.
In addition, cheap grain policy makes it very easy for
industrial livestock companies to order all the feed they need
over the phone. They don't need to grow the feed or take
any responsibility for the environmental and social damage
involved in producing mountains of corn and soybeans using
chemicals and genetically modified crops. It's simply not true
that most of the subsidies go to big farmers, and even mid-
sized family farms need subsidies to stay afloat. Diversified
farms that raise their own feed with sustainable crop
rotations-including hay and pasture along with responsible
use of manure-can't compete with this bifurcated system.
The subsidy system is an agribusiness scheme to have
our citizens pay for the destruction of the very kind of
sustainable farm we all want.
Under the current laissez-faire policy of planting fencerow-
to-fencerow, a farmer is always going to try to produce more
bushels to sell-either out of greed or fear of going broke. If a
chemical input can seemingly increase income over the cost,
they'll use it. But when all farmers follow suit, overproduction
results in low prices and our land and water are degraded.
What if each farm had a quota based on their history of
production and an assessment of how a good crop rotation
along with conservation plantings could regenerate the
soil and biodiversity? What if farmers were compensated
with a price that stabilized his or her income? Their thinking
and practices would be the opposite of the laissez-faire,
free market straightjacket. If a farm has a quota of 10,000
bushels of corn, that farmer would think, "How can I produce
10,000 bushels of corn with the least amount of chemicals
and fertilizer and the most amount of conservation? Maybe
I could use some of the other land for soil-saving hay and
pasture to feed a new herd for grass-fed beef or dairy." That
farmer would be well on the way to becoming organic.
We citizens of the United States, with a heritage of
democratic ideals, and today's food movement that values
farmers, well-paid farm workers, properly labeled healthy food,
and ecological food production, have a great responsibility
to make "Parity" our national policy. With "Parity" we
can achieve the kind of nutrition, farm communities, and
conservation within the agrarian traditions we desire. What we
all need for a well-nourished, democratic, and peaceful world
is food sovereignty. This will go a long way to establishing a
rational food system and to providing land access to those
who truly want to live a good life farming sustainably.
Agroecology: Lessons from the Awkward Science
A third of the world's people depend on smallholder agriculture that

produces three-quarters of the world's food on a quarter of the arable
land. Nearly 15 percent of the world's food is produced in small urban
farms and gardens. Contrary to conventional thought, and a lot of
corporate rhetoric, most poor people in the world are farmers or are
fed by poor farmers.
These simple facts are strong indications that the agrarian transi-
tion to capitalist agriculture is far from complete. For three hundred
years capitalism has colonized food up and down the value chain
in an attempt to turn every aspect of production and consumption
into a profit-generating commodity. In this massive historical transi-
tion, the research, practice, and politics of food have all been steadily
influenced and disciplined by the logic of capitalism. But twenty-first-
century capitalism has been stymied by decades of stagnant global
economic growth. Smallholder agriculture appears to capital both as
a sector for potential market expansion and as an opportunity for the
accumulation by dispossession ofland, labor, and resources. 41
Though global economic growth may be slow, the purchasing
power of the nearly 4 billion people at the economic "base of the pyra-
mid" is growing steadily at 8 percent a year. 42 This growth represents a
huge potential market for capital. But what can you sell people who are
too poor to buy smartphones, flat-screen televisions, and electric cars?
Processed food. What can you sell the 2.5 billion farmers who already
feed the poor? Seeds. Fertilizer. Pesticides. The base of the pyramid is
not just attractive to global capital, it is essential to its survival. The
unstated irony behind the push for a new, genetically engineered Green
Revolution is that it responds to the needs of the rich, not the poor.
But the food systems of the poor do not conform easily to the logic
of capital. Around the world, rural communities resist, contest, and
avoid the capitalist food regime while constructing new forms of pro-
duction and consumption. These communities sit precariously on the
blurry divide between the market economy and the moral economy,
employing different forms of production and consumption in ways
that provide them with a degree of autonomy from capital. Forms
of ownership may be individual, cooperative, communal, or collec-
tive; consumption may be local, extended, or mixed; labor may be
performed by family, paid, reciprocal, permanent, or temporary; pro-
duction may be rural, urban, organic, or not. The mix of farming and
consumption styles depends on the context of each local food system.
Capitalism assumes these communities are backward and in need
of development. Ignored is the fact that many are trying to recover
from the environmental destruction of the Green Revolution and the

devastation visited upon their livelihoods by global markets. That
they might choose to organize their food system differently, or would
want to pick and choose what aspects of capitalism to adopt or reject,
is irrelevant to capital expansion. Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman's
famous thesis that unfettered capitalism leaves people "free to choose"
does not allow for a choice against free-market capitalism. Nor does it
allow much choice for the poor, who have real unmet needs but lack
the money to exert "effective demand" in a capitalist system.
Agroecology has emerged as part of the agrarian contestation
against capitalism. Its principles are drawn from careful ecological
observations of millennia-old peasant farming systems and reapplied,
together with new knowledge based on scientific experimentation, and
farming innovations developed by today's smallholders.43 Agroecology
relies on farmer-led, ecosystem management that aims to develop
productive, healthy and resilient fields, farms, and regions. The aim
is to avoid agronomic and agroecological problems rather than apply
chemical inputs to solve farm system malfunction. Agroecology is
knowledge intensive rather than capital intensive, and tends toward
small, highly diversified farms. The practice of agroecology is largely
passed farmer-to-farmer with the help of farmers' organizations and
NGOs rather than through government extension services or corpo-
rate outreach. 44 Because it was originally developed in collaboration
with farmers who are fighting for land, water, and resource rights,
agroecology is both part of the resistance to capitalist agriculture and
the agricultural basis for the construction of a new food system.
Taken together, the planet's smallholders and the practice of agro-
ecology constitute a means and a barrier to the expansion of capitalist
agriculture. Smallholders subsidize capitalist agriculture with cheap
labor and offer a vast, low-end market for seeds and chemical inputs.
At the same time, family labor, small farm size, diversified farming,
and knowledge systems, and smallholders' diversified livelihood
strategies preserve smallholder farming systems (including growing
food for their families), presenting barriers to entry and competi-
tion for capitalist agriculture. 46 This is one reason why, despite being
A Brief Political Economy of Agroecology
If we apply the basic questions of political economy-Who

owns what? Who does what? Who gets what? What do
they do with it?-we can get an idea of why agroecology is
so widespread, despite the lack of resources dedicated to its
expansion.
Imagine the soil as a fertility "endowment" in which
wealth is made up of all the mineral and biotic components
of fertility-humus, biota, minerals, nutrients, water, clay,
silt, sand, pH, and so on. This makes up the "principal" of the
fertility endowment. Now imagine that the nutrients and
water used by plants represent debits to the endowment. As
long as plants rely on the interest rather than the principal,
they can be grown and harvested forever, especially if
the nutrients they use are returned to the soil through
decomposition or the manure of grazing animals. While this
happens in natural systems, in agriculture these nutrients
are taken out to feed people. Because of the metabolic rift,
(see chapter four), they are not always returned. Over time,
agriculture can consume both the interest and the principal
of the fertility endowment.
Conventional agriculture replenishes part of the "interest"
of the fertility endowment with synthetic fertilizer. Over time,
however, cultivation steadily draws from the "principal" by
depleting micronutrients, killing off the biota, burning up the
humus, and drying out the soil. On fragile, thin, or mineral soils,
this can happen in just a few years. The farmer must purchase
these inputs as commodities and will become dependent on
them as the principal of the soil steadily evaporates.
Rather than paying fertilizer companies for "interest,"
agroecology concentrates on building the principal,
through compost, green manures, biomass production
and management, and biological nitrogen fixation, so that
it continually replenishes the original interest. In Central
America, farmers in the Campesino a Campesino movement
grow the velvet bean (Muncna pruriens) in association with

maize. The velvet bean fixes nitrogen and produces a thick mat
of biomass that smothers weeds, thus reducing labor costs.
When the plant dies, the leaves decompose, adding to the
humus (principal) of the soil.
Agroecologists have discovered that the traditional practice
of polycultures (companion planting) increases agriculture's
net primary productivity. Three hectares planted to a mixture
of maize, beans, and squash yields much more than a hectare
of maize, a hectare of beans, and a hectare of squash. This
"over-yielding" can be calculated with the Land-Equivalent
Ratio or "LER." In this case, the agroecological labor process
yields a surplus beyond conventional methods. 45
The process of accumulation of agroecological
wealth-fertility, agrobiodiversity, soil and water
conservation-occurs largely outside the circulation of
commodities and is controlled by the farmer rather than
capital. The precondition for this is the long-term usufruct of
the land. Sharecroppers, renters, and squatters are unlikely
to make the labor investment in agroecological methods
because there is no guarantee they will reap the benefits of
these farm improvements.
marginalized to some of the planet's worst agricultural lands, small-

holders persist in agriculture today.47
When smallholder farms began crashing under Green Revolution
methods in the 1970s, many farmers turned to agroecology in an effort
to restore soil organic matter, conserve water, restore agro-biodiver-
sity, and manage pests. 48 Agroecology does not preclude small-scale
mechanization to eliminate drudgery, but it does require the constant
attention, skill, and inventiveness of the farmer. In the first stage of
development, agroecology reduces the needs for external chemical
inputs (commercial fertilizers and pesticides); in the second stage it
replaces these chemicals for organic and local inputs; and in the third
stage the ecological redesign of the farm organizes production on the

basis of internal ecological management.
Since the early 1980s, hundreds of nongovernmental organiza-
tions (NGOs) in Africa, Latin America, and Asia have promoted
thousands of agroecology projects that incorporate elements of tra-
ditional knowledge and modern agroecological science. 49 With the
food, livelihoods, and climate crises on the rise, the importance of the
social and environmental services provided by agroecological agri-
culture are becoming widely recognized. so
Corporate agriculture's champions have criticized agroecology's
alleged low productivity. These criticisms are based on low output per
farmworker, because much of the land farmed agroecologically is not
mechanized. But they ignore the evidence demonstrating the high
productivity per unit ofland and the strong resilience of agroecologi-
cally managed peasant agriculture, 51 and forget that the first Green
Revolution required the massive structural mobilization of state
and private-sector resources. 52 While agroecology has spread widely
through the efforts of NGOs, farmers' movements, and university
projects, it remains marginal to official agricultural development
plans and is dwarfed by the resources provided to genetic engineer-
ing and Green Revolution technologies. In contrast, the remarkable
spread of agroecology in Cuba stems, in large part, from the govern-
ment's strong structural support. 53 Asking "Why don't all farmers
practice agroecology?" begs the question "What is holding agroecol-
ogy back?" The simple answer is: capitalism.
A capitalist agrarian transition could conceivably concentrate
food production worldwide on some 50,000 industrial farms. 54 Given
the best land, subsidized inputs, and favorable market access, these
farms could potentially produce the world's food (although not very
sustainably) using relatively little labor. But how would 2.5 billion dis-
placed smallholders buy this food? A full global transition to capitalist
agriculture would condemn a third of humanity to unprecedented
unemployment, disruption, and suffering.
The challenge for our planet is not how to (over )produce food, but
how to keep smallholders on the land while sustainably producing
Figure 6.3: Vision of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for ~
0
Development (IAASTD)
:i'
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I
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Source: IAASTD, "Toward Multifunctional Agriculture for Environmental, Social and Economic Sustainability." 55 :s:
healthy food. The challenge is not to attempt to engineer "climate-

smart" commodities or nutritionally fortified crops, but to build
overall nutrition and resilience into the whole agroecosystem. This
will take more-not fewer-highly skilled farmers. For this to happen,
farmers need support from universities, schools, and government in
order to develop agroecology in the face of rapidly changing climatic
conditions. Markets need to be organized around the principles of
parity. The countryside itself needs to be a good place to live with
electricity, clean drinking water, sanitation facilities, roads, schools,
cultural activities, clinics, and social services. Above all, the world's
farmers need enough land and resources to be able to live well, what
indigenous people in Latin America call El Buen Vivir. This requires a
social investment in agriculture that capitalism is unwilling to make.
CONCLUSION
Changing Everything: Food, Capitalism,

and the Challenges of Our Time
Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various
ways; the point is to change it.
-KARL MARX 1
F ood, energy, the environment, and livelihoods are the urgent-

and inescapable-challenges of our time. Our food systems
should and could feed everyone equitably and sustainably while
providing dignified livelihoods and ensuring a good quality oflife. To
build a good, clean, and fair food system, we need to build an alterna-
tive to capitalism, a system designed to concentrate massive amounts
of wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands, no matter the cost to
people or the planet.
How we produce and consume determines how our society
is organized, but how we organize socially and politically can also
determine how we produce and consume. The implications of this
are profound: our food systems are vessels of unmatched social and
economic power and pivotal sites for systemic transformation.
When we assess the potential for different approaches to end

poverty, hunger, and malnutrition, or to reverse global warming and
environmental destruction, we must also ask how these strategies will
affect the relations of power in our food system. Do they challenge
the status quo or accommodate it? Are they regressive or redistribu-
tive? Will they concentrate power within the halls of unaccountable
corporate control, or work to decentralize and democratize our food
system in favor of the poor? Will they strengthen or weaken social
movements? Do these approaches mitigate the externalities of the
corporate food regime, or help us transcend the regime itself?
What kind of changes to the food system are desirable or will actu -
ally make a difference in the long run? Are we content to "tinker around
the edges" or can we introduce structural transformations? Do we need
incremental or drastic change? Should we simply try to improve condi-
tions within our own communities, hoping for the eventual evolution
of a better food system? Or should we, as the Black Panthers proposed
in the 1970s, pursue "survival pending revolution''?
It's easier to pose these questions than it is to answer them. But
that doesn't let us off the hook. In our current system, if you don't
set the menu, you're on the menu. Just as we need an understanding
of capitalism to know what to change in the food system, we need
an understanding of power to figure out how to bring about regime
change. As this book demonstrates, the power of social movements
is key to both resisting the ravages of capitalism and forcing reforms
upon the changing regimes. Can the food movement build enough
power to transform the food regime? Can the movement unite with
other groups seeking progressive social and economic change in
order to create the critical mass to make it happen? Perhaps. The task
is daunting, but history may be on our side.
Liberalization and Reform: Two Sides of the Capitalist Coin
As we saw in chapter l, the corporate food regime, like the capitalist

economic system, goes through periods of liberalization characterized
by unregulated markets and massive capital concentration, followed
CONCLUSION 215
Capitalism and Democracy

Capitalism and democracy evolved together. The particular
form of democracy associated with capitalism is "liberal
democracy," which is based on the rights of property and
the rights of the individual (or corporations, which are
treated as if they were individuals). While the combination
of capitalism and liberal democracy is frequently understood
unproblematically as "freedom," it harbors a core
contradiction because the inherent tendency of capital to
concentrate wealth is antithetical to the distribution of
power integral to democracy. In the early days of capitalism
this tension was managed by restricting suffrage to the
privileged economic classes and white, male property
owners. But as political democracy began to spread to
broader spheres of society, the tension between what
the majority of people wanted and what the captains of
capitalism wanted became harder to manage. The forms
of control became more sophisticated, but so did the
social forms of exercising democracy. What is important
to remember is that economic liberalism and political
liberalism are different but related aspects of capitalism.
This is reflected in the ways political parties link
economic issues with social issues. For example, in the
United States, starting with the Clinton administration, the
Democratic Party has linked a neoliberal economic agenda
to a progressive social agenda in a form of progressive
neoliberalism. According to Nancy Fraser:
"In its U.S. form, progressive neoliberalism is an alliance of
mainstream currents of new social movements (feminism, anti-
racism, multiculturalism, and LGBTQ rights), on the one side,
and high-end 'symbolic' and service-based business sectors
(Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood), on the other.
In this alliance, progressive forces are effectively joined with
the forces of cognitive capitalism, especially financialization.
However unwittingly, the former lend their charisma
to the latter. Ideals like diversity and empowerment, which

could in principle serve different ends, now gloss policies that
have devastated manufacturing and what were once middle-
class lives." 2
The Republican Party linked the same neoliberal
economic agenda to a reactionary social agenda in a form
of conservative neoliberalism. Billionaire candidate Donald
Trump's clever trick was to mobilize social discontent against
the political establishment by condemning both economic
neoliberalism and social progressivism in a virulent form of
reactionary neoliberalism.
by devastating financial busts and social upheaval. These are followed

by reformist periods in which markets are regulated in an effort to re-
stabilize the regime. Although these phases appear politically distinct,
they are actually two sides of the same capitalist coin. If unregulated
capitalist markets ran rampant indefinitely, they would eventually
destroy the social and natural resource base of capitalism itself.
However, necessary reforms do not result from the good intentions
of reformists. As liberal markets undermine society and environment,
social conditions deteriorate, giving rise to social counter-movements
that force governments to reform their markets and institutions.
The politics of these counter-movements-and the balance of power
within the regime-influences the nature of the reforms.
During a capitalist crisis, liberals, conservatives, populists, social
democrats, socialists, libertarians, and fascists will champion some
combination of social and economic issues based on their own
political calculus. They'll align with particular political parties, like
Democrats, Republicans, Conservatives, Labor, Nationalists, and
Greens. There are many possible combinations, confounded by the
fact that party names are rarely consistent with their politics. In the
United States, on social issues Republicans tend to align with social
conservatives and Democrats with social progressives; but both align
with the economic neoliberalism of the corporate food regime.
CONCLUSION 217
Today's counter-movement to neoliberalism has been growing

around the world as people struggle to defend their livelihoods, their
communities, and their environment from uncontrolled capitalist
markets. Women, ethnic minorities, people of color, family farmers,
peasants, workers, immigrants, indigenous peoples, and environ-
mentalists have steadily been organizing and advancing practical
and political alternatives to neoliberalism. There are other reactions
against neoliberalism as well, and some can be quite contradictory
or reactionary. Co-optation of anti-liberalization movements is to
be expected. For example, in the United States, the progressive neo-
liberalism of Democrats co-opts social progressives into accepting
economic neoliberalism. 3 The reactionary populism of the Tea Party
co-opts social conservatives into the neoliberal economic platform.
The irony of politics under capitalism is that forces that oppose eco-
nomic liberalization can often be persuaded to fight each other (rather
than capitalism) on the basis of opposing social agendas.
One of the prominent currents within the global counter-move-
ment to neoliberalism is the food movement. The food movement is
very broad, and there are plenty of people and proposals that align
with neoliberal, reformist, progressive, and radical economic trends.
However, by definition, the part of the food movement that can be
considered as part of the counter-movement falls within progressive
and radical trends.
There are neoliberal and reformist economic trends within the
corporate food regime. Both share a power base rooted in G-8 gov-
ernments (United Kingdom, United States, France, Italy, Germany,
Japan, Canada, and Russia), multilateral institutions, monopoly cor-
porations, and big philanthropy. The neoliberal trend is hegemonic,
grounded in economic liberalism, driven by corporate agrifood
monopolies, and managed by institutions such as the U.S. Department
of Agriculture, the Common Agricultural Policy, the World Trade
Organization, the private-sector financing arm of the World Bank
(International Finance Corporation), and the International Monetary
Fund. Big philanthropy, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
and the Rockefeller Fund, believe in the power of technology and
POLITICS, PRODUCTION MODELS,

Corporate Food Regime
POLITICS NEOLIBERAL REFORMIST
I Reactionary Neoliberalism I I Conservative Neoliberalism I I Progressive
Discourse Food Enterprise Food Security
Main Institutions International Finance Corporation International Bank for

{World Bank); IMF; WTO; USDA; Reconstruction and Development
Global Food Security Bill; Green {World Bank); FAO; UN Commission
Revolution; Millennium Challenge; on Sustainable Development;
Heritage Foundation; Chicago International Federation of
Global Council; Bill and Melinda Agricultural Producers; mainstream
Gates Foundation Fair Trade; Slow Food; some Food
Policy Councils; most food banks
and food aid programs
Orientation Corporate Development
Model Overproduction; Mainstreaming/

corporate concentration; certification of niche markets (for
unregulated markets and example, organic, fair, local,
monopolies; monocultures sustainable); maintaining Northern
(including organic); GM Os; agricultural subsidies; "sustainable"
agrofuels; mass global roundtables for agrofuels, soy, forest
consumption of industrial food; products, etc.; market-led land
phasing out of peasant and family reform
agriculture and local retail
Approach to the Increased industrial production; Same as Neoliberal but w/increased

food and unregulated corporate middle peasant production and
environmental monopolies; land grabs; expansion some locally sourced food aid; more
crises of GM Os; public-private agricultural aid, but tied to GM Os
partnerships; sustainable and "bio-fortified/climate-resistant"
intensification and climate-smart crops
agriculture; l iberal markets;
internationally sourced food aid
Guiding WB 2009 Development Report WB 2009 Development Report

document
CONCLUSION 219
AND APPROACHES
Food Movements
PROGRESSIVE RADICAL
Neoliberalism 11 Diverse, Re-Politicized Counter-Movement J
Food justice Food Sovereignty
Alternative Fair Trade and Slow Foods Via Campesina; International Planning
chapters; many organizations in the Committee on Food Sovereignty; Global
Community Food Security March for Women; many Food justice
Movement; CSAs; many Food Policy and rights-based movements
Councils and Youth-led food and
justice movements; many farmworker
and labor organizations
Empowerment Entitlement
Agroecologically produced local food; Democratization of food system;

investment in underserved dismantle corporate agri-foods
communities; new business models monopoly power; parity; redistributive
and community benefit packages for land reform; community rights to water
production, processing and retail; and seed; regionally based food
better wages for ag. workers; systems; sustainable livelihoods;;
solidarity economies; land access; protection from dumping/
regulated markets and supply overproduction; revival of
agroecologically managed peasant
agriculture to distribute wealth and cool
the planet
Institutionalizing the Right to Food; Human right to food sovereignty; locally

better safety nets; sustainably sourced, sustainably produced,
produced, locally sourced food; culturally appropriate, democratically
agroecologically based agricultural controlled focus on UN/FAO
development negotiations
International Assessment of
Agricultural Knowledge, Science and
Technology for Development
(IAASTD)
Table adapted from Eric Holt-Gimenez and A. Shattuck, "Food Crises, Food Regimes,
and Food Movements: Rumblings of Reform or Tides ofTransformation?"Joumal of
Peasant Studies 38, no. 1 (January 2011): 109-44.
entrepreneurship. They promote the Green Revolution, capital-

intensive agriculture, and global markets as an answer to poverty and
hunger.
The reformist trend is much weaker than the neoliberal trend and
is sometimes backed by subordinate branches of the same institutions,
such as the United Nations, the public-sector financing arm of the World
Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development), and
many large development NGOs. Though the mission of reform is to
mitigate the excesses of the market, its "job" is identical to that of the
neoliberal trend of maintaining and reproducing the corporate food
regime. Reformists call for mild reforms like food aid, social safety nets,
fair trade, organic niche markets, industrial-scale organic farms, Green
Revolution technologies for small farmers, and technology-focused
renderings of agroecology. They also appeal to (or fund) progressive
organizations within the counter-movement on the basis of social
rather than economic arguments.
Global food movements are characterized by two major trends:
progressive and radical. Many actors within the progressive trend
advance practical alternatives to industrial agrifoods, such as sustain-
able, agroecological, and organic agriculture, Community Supported
Agriculture, farmers' markets, farm-to-school programs, urban gar-
dens, and food hubs. Food justice movements calling for racially
equitable food access are found in this trend. The radical trend also
calls for practical alternatives like agroecology, but focuses more on
structural issues like agrarian reform, an end to free trade agreements,
and smashing the corporate power of food monopolies. Radical pro-
posals (as in "go to the root") address structural issues and include
food sovereignty, agrarian reform, and the democratization of food
systems in favor of the poor.
All of these general trends are blurry around the edges. People,
communities, and organizations can straddle different trends, oscil-
late between them, and build different kinds of tactical and strategic
alliances across trends. However, if history is any guide, effective coun-
ter-movements come about through powerful, broad-based alliances.
The progressive trend is pivotal in this regard. If progressives ally with
CONCLUSION 221
reformists (progressive neoliberalism), as they have for the last twenty

years, then the food movement is split, and there is little chance of
pushing through substantive reforms. But what if progressives ally
with the radicals? Would the food movement not be made stronger?
Because we happen to be in a thirty-year period of privatization
and deregulation, neoliberalism is much more powerful worldwide
than the reformist, progressive, or radical trends. Neoliberal policies
are currently supported by all mainstream political parties around
the world, regardless of their social agendas or political persuasions.
In the United States, both Republicans and Democrats champion
neoliberalism. There has been notable nativist, or neo-"populist;'
opposition to some parts of the neoliberal agenda, especially regard-
ing immigration and the international agreements like the European
Union, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP),
and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The Brexit vote in Great
Britain and Donald Trump's presidential election in the United States
are both a reflection of backlash against neoliberalism. Indeed, among
Trump's first executive actions was to remove the United States from
the TPP and announce a shift toward bilateral, rather than multilat-
eral, trade agreements. These events, as important as they may be, do
not threaten corporate power over the long term.
How will this affect the food system? In the first instance, through
labor. Though operationally unworkable, Trump's calls to deport 11
million undocumented immigrants and build an impenetrable wall
between Mexico and the United States reflect a move to both lower
the value of labor and secure a stable-foreign-workforce. Despite
xenophobic claims that "immigrants are taking our jobs;' the fact is
undocumented immigration into the United States is at a histori-
cal low. In part, this is because of improvements in the Mexican and
Central American economies. In part, it is because increased border
enforcement has prevented workers from going back and forth across
the border-immigrants simply stay in the United States rather than
risk a border crossing. The longer they are in the United States, the
more likely they are to move out of low-end agricultural work and
into better-paid sectors, like construction. Both Republicans and
Democrats propose guest-worker programs that tightly control the

flow of workers and the wages paid to labor. These programs also
control dissent. If participating workers try to organize or otherwise
stand up for their rights, their contracts are cancelled and they are
shipped home.
In summary, neoliberalism will continue managing the food system
as an unregulated corporate enterprise; right-wing nationalists seek to
limit immigration; reformism will include some safety nets; progres-
sive approaches seek incremental changes to the system; and radical
demands seek structural change. In this scenario, the progressive
trend is pivotal for the construction of a powerful counter-movement
to transform the food system. If progressives align with reformist
and neoliberal projects, the counter-movement (of progressives and
radicals) will split, weakening the transformative impact of the food
movement. If they align with radicals, the counter-movement can be
strengthened to force substantive reforms from the corporate food
regime. 4
The Challenges Facing the Counter-Movement
Historically, liberalization proceeds by privatizing and deregulating

capital, by concentrating massive amounts of wealth in fewer and
fewer hands, and continually building capacity to produce as if there
were no limits to consumption. A crisis of accumulation then results,
bringing a financial crash and a depression or recession, as in 1929
and 2008. Reforms that restrict speculation and capital accumulation,
control overproduction, and protect producers, workers, and national
industries are introduced for economic recovery. However, both the
nature and the success of reform depends on the strength of the coun-
ter-movement and its ability to create political will among politicians.
Although the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression ush-
ered in the many important reforms of the New Deal in the United
States, the 2008 financial crash ended up bailing out the banks rather
than homeowners, and ultimately reinforced neoliberal economic
politics. Why weren't reforms introduced?
CONCLUSION 223
The simple answer is that the counter-movement was simply not

strong enough to create the political will for reforms. Remember,
during the Great Depression, the streets were full of millions of unem-
ployed workers demanding food and jobs. The Communist Party and
the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) brought together
thousands of loggers, farmworkers, miners, shipbuilders, autowork-
ers, steelworkers, and others, in every sector of the economy, who
engaged in massive strikes and direct action. 5 Unions and progressive
political parties were able to channel dissent into powerful political
platforms-platforms that were a serious threat to the government
and to capitalism itself. Given the very real possibility of political
collapse-and the strong appeal of communism and socialism to
working men and women-reforms were introduced that lasted for
nearly half a century. (That wasn't the case in 2008, though ironically
many of the reforms introduced in the 1930s, like Social Security and
unemployment insurance, were instrumental in mitigating the degree
oflivelihood disruption and political dissent in 2008.)
But after the Second World War, New Deal reforms were followed
by an attack on the very social movements that had demanded these
reforms. In 1947, the U.S. Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act,
restricting the right to strike and boycott, and purging union leader-
ship of communists. 6 This set off a "Red Scare" that continued into the
1950s.7 Championed by Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy, politi-
cians took aim at alleged communists in government and the armed
forces. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
turned on the film industry, "blacklisting" writers, actors, and enter-
tainers, sending them to jail when they refused to testify. Many left
the country or went underground when they could no longer find
work. The Red Scare ruined the careers and lives of many prominent
American citizens-like Charlie Chaplin, Dalton Trumbo, and Paul
Robeson. It also helped catapult right-wing politicians-like Richard
Nixon and Ronald Reagan-into political power. 8
Capital's ability to use the raw power of the state to destroy its
opposition, even in a liberal democracy, and its sustained attacks
on labor and progressive politics, not only steadily undermined the
gains to farmers and labor under the New Deal, 9 it purged criticism
of capitalism from mainstream U.S. society, creating the illusion of
class harmony. Today, even talking about class, injustice, or the stag-
gering inequalities of capitalism is denounced by right-wing pundits
as fomenting "class warfare:' One of the richest men in the world,
Berkshire Hathaway's CEO Warren Buffet, agreed, sort of, when he
said, "There's class warfare, all right ... but it's my class, the rich class,
that's making war, and we're winning:' 10
The pushback by capitalists against the power oflabor and against
regulations that inhibit their ability to function as they wish; the force
used to destroy the left and trade unions; the attacks on civil rights,
human rights, liberation movements, and even environmentalists
have all served to intimidate and erode political opposition to capi-
tal. The results have been the decline of unions and the left, and the
spectacular growth of inequality of income and wealth. According to
a 2017 Oxfam report, eight people-you could fit them in a van-
control more wealth than the bottom half of the global population,
some 3.6 billion people." The weak political opposition to neoliberal-
ism follows on a half-century of systematic attacks against any and all
organizations that questioned capitalism. The hegemony of neoliberal
ideology, even within some sectors of the food movement, has been
secured by well-funded right-wing think tanks, which have been able
to shift the national dialogue in favor of the privatization of every-
thing. Things once unthinkable, like doing away with public schools,
are now a real possibility.
The counter-movement and the threats to capitalism are very dif-
ferent today than they were in the 1930s. Rather than being defined
and led by labor and left political parties, the counter-movement
is made up of a diverse range of interests representing indigenous
communities, environmentalists, feminists, peasants and family
farmers, food workers, farmworkers, people of color, immigrants,
and young people. Although food worker and farmworker organi-
zations fight for the majority of people working in the food system,
the strategic voice of labor is relatively quiet within the food move-
ment. Political parties are absent, or weakly involved. The biggest
CONCLUSION 225
threat to capitalism is no longer communism but climate change.

Globally, the possibility of widespread un-governability resulting
from a deadly combination of poverty, hunger, climate disasters,
and mass migrations is growing daily. Our capitalist food system
doesn't just need to be reformed, it must be transformed. And it
is not only the food system, but the entire way that production is
carried out. We need a new system in which the people doing the
producing make the critical decisions in ways that environmental
and social considerations can be put at the top of the agenda. The
purpose of production must change from growing commodities to
sell in markets to using ecologically sound regenerative practices to
produce healthy food to feed people.
Philanthropy, Depoliticization, and Fragmentation
All the ingredients are present to build a strong counter-movement

capable of advancing reforms-economic crisis, social discontent,
systemic threats-yet few substantive reforms are forthcoming. On
the contrary, extreme, right-wing "populism'' (read: neo-fascism)
is challenging neoliberalism. What needs to happen to catalyze the
counter-movement? What is holding it back?
The highly diverse agendas of today's social movements make it
challenging to unify forces, particularly when progressive neolib-
eralism has ideologically coopted many organizations into political
agendas that work against their economic interests. This has been
possible because of the depoliticization of social movements follow-
ing the decline of radical unions and political parties. This does not
necessarily mean that today's social movements do not vote or lobby
for their respective causes. Depoliticization is the cultural process
by which structural issues-like capitalism-are taken off the social
change agenda. There is no discussion of who should make economic
decisions, what should be the purpose of production, or how we
should meet human needs. With progressive neoliberalism, social
movements are seduced into accepting the status quo of capitalism in
exchange for the advancement of their respective social issues.
As neoliberalism privatizes public institutions and social services,

as it deregulates and prioritizes the interests of capital, it steadily
reduces the public sphere, the social arena where, ideally, people
can debate issues, take political action, and hold their governments
accountable to public opinion. Under neoliberalism, all important
decisions are turned over to the "magic of the marketplace:' While
this sounds like a free and unbiased way of allocating resources and
making decisions, what it means in practice is that whoever has the
most market power (transnational corporations, the wealthy elite,
and their political allies) gets to decide how society will address the
issues of food, energy, housing, employment, education, and the envi-
ronment. The use of force is always lurking in the background, ready
to be deployed should anyone refuse to go along with the market's
"magic:' As public institutions and public goods have either disap-
peared or been privatized, the public sphere itself has crumbled.
While wealth has steadily concentrated at the top, the role of
government in providing for the social welfare has diminished and
the political influence of big philanthropy has grown enormously.
Starting with the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations in the
early 1900s, philanthropy has grown to over 200,000 foundations,
worldwide, with 86,000 registered in the United States.U Once occu-
pied with building libraries, supporting the fine arts, and providing
emergency assistance, big philanthropy (organizations with $4 billion
to $40 billion in assets) now figures prominently in global develop-
ment financing. Its sheer size is instrumental in determining the social
agenda of development, which is the promotion ofliberal markets.
Smaller family foundations are active in the arena of social services
and social justice, where over the last twenty years they have created
thousands of community-based organizations (CBOs) and transna-
tional non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Even though there
is more foundation money than ever before, philanthropic founda-
tions have created so many community organizations that they can
only afford to dole out limited tranches of short-term project money,
rather than multi-year core funding. This makes it very difficult for
community organizations committed to social justice to actually
CONCLUSION 227
work for social change. Instead they work to provide services, build
self-esteem, or assert "rights" within the existing political structures
of capitalism. All of these are necessary activities and important to all
who are exploited, oppressed, and marginalized. However, these orga-
nizations rarely have the resources to address the structural causes of
the lack of services or injustice, and often place the responsibility for
solving social problems on individuals rather than the structures of
oppression.
Most CBOs and NGOs tend to rely on only one or two major
sources of grant funding. The loss of a major funder can mean the end
of the organization. Because they decide which kinds of projects and
organizations get funded, the charitable sector also ends up setting
the overall political agenda of the nonprofit sector. Despite an empha-
sis on "justice;' "empowerment;' "partnerships;' and "stakeholders;'
these arrangements pit local organizations against one another as
they compete for the scraps of capitalism's enormous wealth, offered
charitably (though not without conditions) by the foundations.
The net effect is to divide social movements into the "grassroots" -
the communities needing services-and the "grass shoots:' the NGOs
who provide them. The economic survival ofNGOs depends on antic-
ipating the latest trends in charitable project funding and convincing
funders they can implement these projects efficiently. This makes
NGOs institutionally accountable to funders. Politically and socially,
of course, NGOs are accountable to the communities they serve. These
two forms of accountability are politically very different and require
NGOs to develop distinct agreements, strategies, and competencies to
serve both funders and constituents. This difficult balance of account-
ability provides funders with tremendous political influence over the
relationships between CBOs/NGOs and their constituent communi-
ties. Many small and midsized foundations are genuinely progressive
and make a strong effort to maintain dialogue with the organizations
they fund. However, other than refusing to take their money, there
is no way for NGOs or communities to hold funders accountable for
what, who, or how they choose to fund. The reproduction of capitalist
structural relations within civil society-along with the ideological
confusion introduced by progressive neoliberalism-makes it diffi-

cult to build real grassroots political power, despite everyone's good
intentions. This would not be such a big problem if organizations
in the counter-movement were not so dependent on the charitable
sector for their institutional existence. Stronger unions and stronger
political parties, and stronger social movements (like Black Lives
Matter) could provide a larger framework for social and institutional
accountability, and help to create a better balance of power among the
different actors in the counter-movement.
Just like the rest of the world's social movements, the food move-
ment is subject to ideological confusion. The historical divisions of
racism, classism, and sexism have been exacerbated with the neo-
liberal shrinking of the state and the erosion of the public sphere.
Not only have the social functions of government been gutted; the
social networks within communities have been weakened, increas-
ing the violence, intensifying racial tensions, and deepening cultural
divides. People are challenged to confront the problems of hunger,
violence, poverty, and climate change in an environment in which
society has been restructured to serve global markets rather than
local communities. 13
To break this political impasse, the challenge for the food move-
ment is how to repoliticize its organizations while finding ways to
converge in all of its diversity. But how? The critical reconstruction
of the public sphere may be a good place to start. Since reactionary
and socially conservative neoliberalism has long celebrated the state's
withdrawal from health, education, and welfare, right-wing funders
see no need to provide safety nets to the poor, to women, immigrants,
or minorities whose lives are devastated by privatization and liberal
markets. They have channeled their funding directly to reactionary
social movements and to the right-wing think tanks, which have been
very successful in ideologically empowering conservative and reac-
tionary pressure groups. Unfortunately, most progressive foundations
exhaust their budgets funding community organizations to provide
social services, so there is very little money left over to fund progres-
sive think tanks. This has the effect of pulling politics and ideologies
CONCLUSION 229
strongly to the right, and of depoliticizing the language of progressive

social change. However, perhaps the time is ripe, as the horror of the
Trump administration's program begins to sink it, to build an alterna-
tive vision of the public sphere.
Building the Critical Public Sphere, Repoliticization,

and Convergence in Diversity
The public sphere was first conceived as a "sphere of public authority"

in which people came together freely to discuss social issues, develop
public opinion, and take political action to pressure national govern-
ments.14 But it was, and still is, much more than that. Nancy Fraser
writes:
The concept of the public sphere was developed not simply to

understand communication flows but to contribute a normative
political theory of democracy. In that theory, a public sphere is
conceived as a space for the communicative generation of public
opinion. Insofar as the process is inclusive and fair, publicity is
supposed to discredit views that cannot withstand critical scru-
tiny and to assure the legitimacy of those that do. Thus, it matters
who participates and on what terms. In addition, a public sphere
is conceived as a vehicle for marshaling public opinion as a
political force. Mobilizing the considered sense of civil society,
publicity is supposed to hold officials accountable and to assure
that the actions of the state express the will of the citizenry. Thus,
a public sphere should correlate with a sovereign power. Together,
these two ideas-the normative legitimacy and political efficacy of
public opinion-are essential to the concept of the public sphere
in democratic theory. 15
But just what was the "normative legitimacy" and "political efficacy"
of this public sphere?
In the early nineteenth century, the public sphere was generally
a white, masculine space, dominated by businessmen and property
owners who sought to influence national governments to favor their

own business interests. People active in the public sphere were cit-
izens of the same country who spoke the same language, read the
same newspapers, and utilized their social networks to advance simi-
lar class interests. These people determined what political behavior
was acceptable in a democratic society. They conferred normative
legitimacy on the government. They had the ear of parliaments and
congress, and were politically effective at "governing the governors:' 16
The rise of labor unions, populism (in the normal sense of this
word, which signifies movements leaning to the left), women's suffrage,
abolition movements, and radical political parties gave rise to feminist,
proletarian, and agrarian public spheres. Workers met in clubs, eat-
eries, and union halls; farmers met in Grange halls and coffee shops;
farmworkers met under trees in the fields. These labor-oriented public
spheres not only helped immigrants and people of different national
backgrounds influence labor conditions, they influenced social life in
general, from community associations and local government to work-
ers' and farmers' cooperatives and national political parties. Their
normative legitimacy came from strikes, boycotts, labor solidarity, and
their ability to articulate workers' desires for labor justice and farmers'
desire for parity. They had a critical analysis of capital and worked to
counter elite ideology with working-class norms and rights. By dint of
their ability to collectively withhold their labor and their products from
capital-essentially shutting down the market-they were also politi-
cally effective at "gaining the ear" of industry and government, forcing
reformists to institute substantive labor and agrarian reforms.
Today, new technical forms of communication, like television and
the internet, have replaced newspapers and meeting halls, removing
the direct human contact of the past. Globalization has transna-
tionalized both capital and labor, making national governments less
responsive to public demands. Nationalities, languages, customs,
and cultures in most countries today are fluid, and highly diverse.
In the face of a declining national public sphere, transnational public
spheres have emerged. Like before, these are dominated by elites on
the one hand and rapidly growing popular sectors on the other.
CONCLUSION 231
Corporate and philanthropic elites meet yearly in Davos,

Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum, the world's most exclusive
"public sphere:' Here Gates, Rockefeller, Exxon, Walmart, Monsanto,
and other philanthropic and corporate entities come together with
multilateral institutions like the IMF and the World Bank to discuss
the future of capitalism.
But social movements also have their own public spheres that are
increasingly crossing borders, languages, cultures, and classes. The
World Social Forum (WSF) was started in 2001 in opposition to the
World Economic Forum. The WSF has met fifteen times, preceded by
dozens of national social forums each year. Hundreds of thousands of
people attend from around the world. The international peasant federa-
tion, La Via Campesina and its 200 million members, hold national,
regional, and global gatherings to advance the cause of food sovereignty.
Consciously or not, in many ways the U.S. food movement, with
its hands-on, participatory projects for a fair, sustainable, healthy
food system, is rebuilding our public sphere from the ground up. Even
though it is impossible to replace the social functions of the state, the
ways in which NGOs and CBOs attempt to provide the "services of
survival" can and do make a political difference. But do they go far
enough? Do the projects for community gardens also result in politi-
cally organized community groups that pressure city councils for
redistributive forms of regulation? Do farmer-to-farmer workshops
train and link community leaders from underserved communities to
demand rights to agricultural extension services, water, and land? Do
food policy councils also provide social platforms to address labor
rights, racism, and sexism in the food system? Does the revival of the
Grange among young and aspiring farmers across the United States
also address the need for agrarian reform? Are fair food and workers'
rights groups linking their work with immigrant rights? While the
task of transforming capitalism may seem too daunting to consider, if
we first train our sights on building the critical public sphere through
the institutions and projects that already exist within civil society, we
will have taken back essential political territory from which to build
political power.
The challenge of building a public sphere for the twenty-first

century is not to re-create the past, but to build a new, transnational
public sphere that has a critical analysis of capitalism, builds social
legitimacy for movements for food justice and food sovereignty,
and connects them with the broad environmental and social jus-
tice movements. It is not enough to build an apolitical public space
in our food system. Creating alternative markets is not the same as
shutting down capitalist markets. Both actions are needed for regime
transformation. We need a movement that is able to forge a militantly
democratic food system in favor of the poor and oppressed globally
and locally, and that effectively rolls back the elite, neoliberal food
regime. In a critical transnational public sphere we not only need to
ask who owns what, does what, gets what, and what do they do with
it. We also need to ask, who will transform the food regime, how will
it be transformed, and in whose interests, and to what purpose?
But as many organizations have discovered, because of the tre-
mendous diversity of and within our social movements, we can't build
a critical public sphere without addressing the issues that divide us.
The food movement itself is not immune to the structural injustices
that it seeks to overcome. Because of the pervasiveness of white privi-
lege and internalized oppression in our society, racism, classism, and
sexism in the food system does resurface within the food movement
itself, despite good intentions. It does no good to push the issues
aside because this undermines the trust we need to be able to work
together. Understanding why, where, and how oppression manifests
itself in the food system, recognizing it within our food movement
and our organizations (and within ourselves), is not extra work for
transforming our food system. It is the work.
Changing Everything
Karl Marx wrote that people "make their own history, but they do
not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected
circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and
transmitted from the pasf' 17
CONCLUSION 233
A decade prior to the writing of this book, Michael Pollan's The

Omnivore's Dilemma pushed food to the forefront of the public con-
sciousness, ushering in a generation of "foodies" deliciously obsessed
with books, television, documentaries, conferences, and festivals
about food. Today more people than ever are fluent on the topics of
how food is grown, prepared, consumed, wasted, and how it impacts
our health and the environment.
In an era of unprecedented economic inequality, dim millennial
futures, and deep political disillusionment, food has also become a
surrogate for hope-and freedom. The alienation of people from the
products of their labor under capitalism does not stop at the paycheck.
Alienation is a part of capitalist culture and all aspects of the value
chain from production to consumption, alienating human beings from
nature, from community, and from themselves. No wonder so many
people try to reconnect to themselves, and with others, through food.
This is understandable and maybe even desirable, but at meal's
end, our food isn't allocated by choice, desire, values, or even by
need, but through market demand and through active creation of the
demand for highly processed junk food. Capitalism is the silent ingre-
dient in our food. It means that the 50 million people living in poverty
in the richest country on earth-many of whom grow, harvest, pro-
cess and serve our food-can't afford to be foodies because they're
too busy worrying where their next meal is coming from. It means
that contrary to the hopeful statistics presented by our governments
and the FAO, over a third of the world is going hungry. 18 It is also the
food manufacturers' quest for profits that pushes people to consume
unhealthy junk foods high in sugar, salt, fat, artificial flavors, and
other additives. If we care about people as much as we do about food,
and if we really want to change the food system, we'd better become
fluent in capitalism.
Political fluency has been the focus of this book. Much like an
intensive language course, I have introduced basic political-economic
concepts to explain structural and historical aspects of our food system
in order for readers to link things like slavery and patriarchy to super-
exploitation, the high price of organic food to socially necessary labor
time, and land grabs to differential land rent and to investment funds
looking for ways to diversify. The point of political fluency is to under-
stand, communicate, engage, and change the world for the better.
For much of the food movement, this doesn't necessarily mean
dropping what they are doing, but assuming the politics of what they
are doing. The progressive foodies, good food and food justice activ-
ists concentrating on the urban gardens, fair trade, farm-to-school,
workers' rights, and farmers' markets need to keep working to change
the practices of our food system. The radical food sovereignty orga-
nizations calling for an end to seed, chemical, and food monopolies
and agrarian reform need to continue their political work to change
the structures of our food system. When the work of progressives and
radicals comes together, the food movement will be a strong enough
counter-movement to force deep transformative reforms upon the
food regime. For this convergence, progressives and radicals need to
build strong strategic alliances within the food movement and between
the food movement and the multitude of groups in the environmen-
tal and social justice movements. What do these alliances look like?
Where can they be built? And what exactly is a strategic alliance?
Strategic alliances are those in which people and organizations
agree to a position or actions that share a basic political platform. For
example, La Via Campesina (LVC) and the World March of Women
(WMW) established a strategic alliance when WMW assumed food
sovereignty as a plank in the platform for women's liberation, and
LVC committed to an end to all violence against women as a nec-
essary condition for food sovereignty. The convergence of two of
the most powerful social movements in the world has far-reaching
political ramifications, particularly for women, who grow most of the
world's food.
Tactical alliances are also important, but they converge around
actions rather than positions, for example, a shared project or
campaign. People and organizations can work together, but don't
necessarily change their political position by doing so. This caveat is
needed because many organizations in the food movement depend on
grants from philanthropic foundations. This may begin as a tactical
CONCLUSION 235
alliance in which the organization implements food security projects

to better engage with the community and build community power to
address the causes of food insecurity. Over time, however, the need
for constant grant funding can draw the organization away from the
radical work of deep social change toward a more reformist, service-
oriented position. The tactical has defined the strategic.
Both strategic and tactical alliances are needed to build a strong
social movement. The trick is to understand the difference and to
make sure strong strategic alliances are not compromised by tactical
demands. This also does not mean that food justice and food sov-
ereignty organizations cannot build strategic alliances with funders.
They can and do. There are many progressive family foundations
and even consortia of progressive funders who support fairly radi-
cal organizations on the ground. The danger is when the strength of
an organization comes from its funders rather than its constituency
or its membership. Without a strong constituency, it is impossible to
effectively advance a political position.
The greater political challenge for the food movement is how
to build strategic and tactical alliances outside the food movement,
with labor, women, movements led by indigenous peoples, people
of color, environmentalists, progressive and radical political parties,
anti-growth movements, and popular social movements for radical
democracy, alternative economics, and others within the progressive-
radical trends of the world's growing counter-movements. The need
for cross-sector alliance responds to the centrality of food to society
and to capitalism. We won't be able to change the food system without
transforming our economic system. This means that to change the
food system, we have to change everything. That's a big order. But if
we build strategic alliances, we'll have plenty of help.
Never Waste a Crisis
Antonio Gramsci wrote: "The old world is dying and the new world
struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters:' 19 Today, neoliber-
alism, capitalism, and liberal democracy are in crisis. In the absence
of strong radical unions and progressive political parties, and when

most social organizations are funded not to be political, neoliberal
capitalism proceeds unchecked, wreaking havoc on society, the econ-
omy, the environment, and the culture of politics itself. Around the
world, right-wing, neo-fascist demagogues like U.S. president Donald
Trump are leaping into the vacuum of political leadership, channeling
the widespread frustration with mainstream politicians into a toxic
ideology that ostensibly denounces business as usual, but targets and
scapegoats Muslims, immigrants, people of color, feminists, and "lib-
eral elites:' Although U.S. presidential cabinets have typically been a
revolving door between business and government, with a net worth
larger than a third of all Americans combined, the present Trump
cabinet indicates that far from abandoning neoliberalism, Donald
Trump is privatizing the presidency by putting the country under
direct billionaire management.
The United States was founded by colonial elites who, at first, ran
the new republic themselves. With time, they turned management
over to professional politicians. True, most of the U.S. presidents have
been multimillionaires, or became rich after leaving office. But a crony
cabinet of billionaires with little to no understanding of, or respect
for, the mechanisms ofliberal democracy reflects a breakdown in the
model that has managed capitalism for the past two hundred years.
The billionaire capture of the White House is less a reflection of elite
power than of a crisis within elite power. Trump represents a break in
the political ranks of the rich, not their consolidation. We can expect
him and his cabinet to maintain the general mantle of neoliberalism
while seeking competitive advantages for themselves. What will be
much more difficult for the Trump administration is to manage the
tension between democracy and keeping the masses quiet while cor-
porate elites plunder the economy. We can also expect a lot of anger,
nativism, bigotry, and scapegoating as "crony neoliberalism" pushes
our health, housing, labor, energy, environment-and our food
system-over the edge.
But by calling for an end to free trade agreements, aren't the
new so-called "populists" against neoliberalism? What is important
CONCLUSION 237
to understand about neoliberalism is that it is not just a collection

of activities for privatization, deregulation, regressive taxation, and
financialization on a global scale. Neoliberalism is a class project,
designed to undermine the power of labor and to consolidate the
power of elites. 20 As free trade agreements cease to be useful to this
project, they will be happily abandoned, as will other agreements and
proposals.
Much like the 1930s, liberal democracy is finding it difficult to
resolve the contradiction between the voracious corporate appetites
of the 1 percent and the erosion of the social and environmental con-
ditions for the functioning of capitalism. At that time, the United
States ushered in the New Deal; Germany and Italy ushered in fas-
cism. The world is facing similar choices today.
The food movement cannot escape the political crisis of capital-
ism. Nor should it try. A political crisis is a moment of tremendous
social convergence and deep politicization of society. A crisis is
precisely what the food movement needs in order to mobilize the
tremendous power of the food system. At the time of this writing,
hundreds of thousands of people across the United States and around
the world have taken to the streets to protest the monstrous moves
on the part of the Trump administration to scapegoat Muslims and
people of color, dismantle due process, and consolidate power in the
hands of a small cabal of family members, "alt-right" zealots, and bil-
lionaire cronies.
Can the food movement reverse capitalism's ugly turn? Yes, but not
alone. The food movement is well positioned, however, to help build
the broad-based political alliance we will need to resist the fascist
trends gaining power within capitalism. The construction of alterna-
tive food systems already begun at the local level brings together a
wide array of farmers, communities, churches, social workers, educa-
tors, small entrepreneurs, restauranteurs, food and farm workers, and
local politicians. These relationships are part of a new public sphere
that is now challenged to change the system in which we produce
and consume our food. The food movement must continue to do the
practical, everyday work to build a new food system. But for these
alternatives to have a chance, we must also build a different food

regime by changing the rules and the institutions that govern our
food. This means we also need to invest in our political education:
studying, analyzing, and discussing the political-economic challenges
and contradictions of our food systems within the larger context of
capitalism and its devastating crises.
We cannot choose the circumstances for advancing social change,
only adapt our work to present conditions. For the food movement,
this means using the moment of crisis to build a powerful movement
for transformation, one that is capable of mobilizing resistance and
inspiring change. This in turn means constructing fierce alliances
with and supporting the leadership of women, people of color, immi-
grants, and others who are not only central to our food system, but
who have suffered the most under neoliberalism and are now bearing
the brunt of the attack on civil liberties.
We don't know what the outcome will be of such a struggle, but do
know the outcome if we don't struggle. It's time to organize and take
action to transform the food system. There never was a better time.
Postscript: The Secret Ingredient to Change the World
When I was a young agronomist working with peasant farm-

ers in the Campesino a Campesino (farmer to farmer) movement
in Mesoamerica, I got to know a lot of fine, hardworking men and
women who lived in grinding poverty and farmed on steep, eroded
hillsides. They were systematically subjected to oppression, economic
exploitation, and social derision by landowners, traders, agricultural
technicians, and government officials. These people had advised
me that the peasants were fatalistic, superstitious, and permanently
numbed by a life of tradition and drudgery. I quickly discovered
these impressions were an excuse to justify the status quo. Peasants
lived a very hard life that nonetheless had wonderful moments of
simple and spontaneous joy. Campesino a Campesino was a peas-
ant-led movement for sustainable agriculture. They used small-scale
experimentation to develop agroecological farming methods that
CONCLUSION 239
conserved soil and water, restored fertility, reforested their hillsides,

and improved their livelihoods. They shared their innovations with
others during farm visits and hands-on workshops. They had tri-
umphs (and plenty of failures), but always seemed convinced that
their movement was making their world a better place.
As a rural development worker, I accompanied the movement for
years, but knew that their vision of peasant-led sustainable agriculture,
and local economies stitched together by mutual aid, would never be
accepted by the ministries of agriculture, powerful agribusiness cor-
porations, the large landowners, and the agricultural development
agencies that were committed to eradicating the peasantry. I loved
the movement, but was not optimistic about its future.
One day in a farmer-to-farmer workshop, the farmer teaching
the session on soil and water conservation bent on one knee to clean
out a smooth surface on the hard red earth. Then, using the point of
his machete, he drew a stick figure. "This is our movement;' he said,
pointing to the ground. "It walks on two legs: solidarity and innova-
tion. It works with two hands: production and protection:' He drew
a head on the shoulders, and a mouth, then added two small stones
for eyes. "We have eyes to see a future-with us in it-in which our
soil is fertile, our land is productive, our rivers clean and our children
healthy. We have a mouth. We can speak for peasant justice and for
an agriculture that sustains us as it does nature:' Then, using his long,
slender index finger, he carefully drew a heart in the figure's chest.
"Compafleros;' he said, "farming is hard! To change the way we farm
is even harder. To convince others is harder still. But if you want to be
in this movement you must work harder than you have ever worked
in your life!"
I sighed inwardly. These subsistence farmers already worked
harder than anyone I had ever known. Telling them they had to work
harder didn't seem like a good recruiting strategy for the Campesino
a Campesino movement.
But then the farmer pointed to the heart drawn in the earth. "You
can't do this work if you don't love;' he said. "You must love the land,
love agriculture, love your family, love your village, and love peasant
people. You must love your God! If you don't love, you will never last,
it's just too hard. We must love to change the world!"
The group nodded in agreement and a lively discussion ensued
about love, hope, and peasant agriculture. I sat silently, a little over-
come as I listened to a group of poor, illiterate farmers on a desolate
hillside deep within the Mesoamerican countryside chat enthusiasti-
cally about changing the world.
Nearly thirty years later, I still ponder the meaning of that moment.
It led to the most strategic decision of my life-one that has helped
me overcome the pessimism that too much analyzing can bring. I
allied myself with those for whom giving up hope was not an option.
There are two lessons in this book that I hope stick with you. One
is that to change our food system we need to understand capitalism.
I've spilled a lot of ink trying to convince you of that. The other, which
you'll have to take on faith, is that love alone won't transform our food
system, but without it we'll never change the world.
Glossary
Agrarian: Relating to the cultivation of land, land tenure, and the division and
distribution ofland, labor, capital, and resources in the countryside.
Agrarianism: A philosophy promoting agrarian reform and rural life as the
foundation of society.
Agrarian reform: Policies and government intervention that promote land and
resource redistribution to increase land ownership by peasant farmers and
small-scale producers. A common example is Brazil's Land Statute of 1988,
which states that if land is not being used for its "social function" then it
can be redistributed to others who will fulfill this duty. The Landless Rural
Workers Movement (MST) takes advantage of this statute to take back land
for rural peasants and unemployed urban dwellers.
Agrarian transition: The transitioning from peasant/subsistence agriculture to
capitalist/industrial agriculture through market pressures, government inter-
ventions, and/or violent displacement. This process began in the seventeenth
century and continues.
Agrarian question: Addresses how to bring the peasantry's agricultural and
labor surplus out of the peasant sector and into the industrial sector (includ-
ing industrial agriculture) in a way that eventually moves the peasantry out
of agriculture; also addresses the issue of how to mobilize the peasantry in a
class war against the aristocracy and/or bourgeoisie.
Agroecology: The science, practice, and social movement for sustainable agri-
cultural systems; the application of ecological concepts and principles to the
design, development, and management of farming systems, landscapes, and
food systems.
Appropriationism: The process by which capital appropriates the labor process
on the upstream (production) side of agriculture by replacing agroecological
management practices (for example, the use of green manures, cover crops,
242 GLOSSARY
animal-based fertilization, biological and biodiverse forms of pest control,

and farm-grown seed stock) with synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and geneti-
cally engineered seeds.
Arbitrage: The purchase of a good or asset (land, commodities, financial instru-
ments, etc.) for sale at a higher price without adding any other value to the
good.
Biofortification: The addition of nutrients to crops by inserting genes into the
crop genome to improve nutritional content. Golden Rice is an example of
biofortification. This orange-colored rice contains beta-carotene that can be
transformed into vitamin A when consumed. The beta-carotene content of
Golden Rice is achieved by inserting genes from a soil bacteria and maize
into the rice genome.
Biofuels: Fuels derived from plant material. Crops that can be processed for fuel
(rather than food or feed) include maize and sugarcane that can be turned
into ethanol.
Biological speed-up: The selective breeding, genetic engineering, and use of
antibiotics and growth hormones to speed up the growing period of animals,
increase their size, and increase their productivity of meat and milk. Breeding
and genetic engineering can also be used to the same purpose with plants.
Bracero Program: Also known as the Mexican Farm Labor Program Agreement
of 1942, this U.S. government program brought millions of Mexican guest
workers to the United States to work as agricultural laborers during the
Second World War's labor shortage. Though workers were provided rights
and safeguards in their contracts, these were often violated and braceros were
often overworked, underpaid, and abused. Guest worker programs being
proposed today are modeled on the Bracero Program.
British Poor Laws: Also known as English Poor Laws, these originated in the
mid- l 300s in England and Wales during a prolonged labor shortage following
the Black Death. Decrees were issued to keep food and labor prices down and
force serfs and vassals to work. Poor Laws in the 1400s and 1500s legitimized
whipping of the able-bodied unemployed and placing them in stocks as pun-
ishment. Vagabonds were forced to return to their place of birth to work.
The disabled were cared for by their parish, and parishioners were bound by
law to contribute to their food, clothing, and shelter. Later, workhouses and
indentured servitude became the fate of the poor and unemployed.
Capital accumulation: The process of acquiring assets that can be used to acquire
more wealth.
Capital logic: The economic and political logic that obeys the tendency of capital
to invest, expand, expropriate, and accumulate wealth. The tendency of the
rate of profit to fall and the tendency toward monopoly follow a capitalist
logic.
Capitalist differentiation: In agriculture, differentiation leads to the formation
of stratified classes of farmers and agricultural workers. As capitalist invest -
ment in agriculture takes place, it tends to favor larger farmers who already
have some wealth. These farmers have an advantage in acquiring credit, new
GLOSSARY 243
technologies, and access to markets, and become wealthier and bigger over
time. Poorer farmers are not able to invest in this way and tend to fall behind
economically. This tendency results in smaller farmers being driven to become
farm laborers on larger farms and poor farmers becoming landless workers.
A poor working class, a middle worker-owner class, and a rich owning class
develop as capital penetrates further and further into agriculture.
Carbon markets: Develop when permits are traded that allow a certain amount
of carbon emissions, hence the term "emissions trading:' Permit trading is
combined with an obligatory cap on the amount of allowable emissions.
When a company exceeds the cap, it can continue to pollute by purchas-
ing emission permits from another entity that has not exceeded the cap on
carbon emissions.
Climate-smart agriculture (CSA): A set of guiding principles and management
practices that mitigate the effects of climate change and increase agriculture's
resilience to climate-related hazards, such as drought or flooding. The three
main objectives of climate-smart agriculture are to reduce carbon emissions,
increase agricultural productivity, and strengthen agricultural resilience.
Commodity: A good that can be specifically produced to be bought and sold
on the market for profit. During the agrarian transition, agricultural goods
shifted from being produced for subsistence or barter to being produced for
the main purpose of selling on the market. In the late nineteenth century,
there was a drastic global increase in commodity production as European
empires expanded.
Commons: A resource that is exclusively owned and managed by a specified
community in which all members share equal power over the resource.
Non-community members can be denied access to a commons. Traditional
commons are frequently pastures, forests, and fishing grounds. Things like air,
outer space, and the open ocean are not commons but open-access resources.
Common property rights: A form of property ownership in which a plot ofland
is collectively owned and managed. Before the Enclosures (see below), which
initiated the transition from feudalism to capitalism, most peasant land was
managed collectively through communal food cultivation and grazing.
Confined Animal Feedlot Operation (CAFO): Large, enclosed areas where
hundreds of thousands of animals (cattle, pigs, poultry) are raised on con-
centrated animal feed. Intensive use of hormones and antibiotics is required
to intensify production and manage ever-present diseases. Manure is often
channeled into large, open-air lagoons.
Cooperative model: A form of enterprise ownership based on the principle of
one person, one vote. Cooperatives can be formed for production, consump-
tion, or delivery of services and ideally follow seven principles: voluntary and
open membership; democratic member control; economic participation by
members; autonomy and independence; education, training, and information;
cooperation among cooperatives; and concern for community.
Conservation easement: A legal agreement between a private landowner and pri-
vate organization or public entity that limits certain types of uses or prevents
244 GLOSSARY
further development of the land. An easement does not affect the ownership
of the land, only its use. The owner either donates or sells the rights to sell,
subdivide, or develop the land. Easements are often used to conserve wet-
lands, forests, and other landscapes for environmental conservation.
Conservative neoliberalism: A form of economic neoliberalism (support for
free markets and the privatization of public goods and services) that usually
adheres to conservative social values, for example, anti-abortion, anti-same-
sex marriage, etc.
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR):
Founded in 1971, CGIAR, also known as Consortium of International
Agricultural Research Centers, is a member organization that directs fifteen
centers of international agricultural research around the world. Funded by
governments and big philanthropies, it has been the primary institution
advancing the Green Revolution.
Contract farming: A modern version of sharecropping and tenant farming, here
farmers give exclusive rights to a firm to buy their product using a fixed-
term agreement. In a market-specification contract, the firm guarantees the
producer a buyer, based on agreements regarding price and quality. With a
resource-providing contract the firm also provides production inputs (such
as fertilizer, hatchlings, or technical assistance). If the firm provides all the
inputs and buys all of the product, it essentially controls the production pro-
cess, while the farmer basically provides land and labor.
Corn Laws: English laws instituted in 1815 that placed steep tariffs on imported
grain thereby keeping the price of food-something most rural people had
previously been able to grow rather than buy-relatively high. The tariffs
favored large landholders, and thus were opposed by emerging industrialists
who wanted cheap food for workers so that they could keep wages low.
Cost-price squeeze: A situation in which the costs of production increase while
the price of the produced goods go down, a chronic condition for most of the
world's farmers.
Counter-movement: In Karl Polanyi's analysis, the broad alliance of classes
opposing economic liberalization. The food counter-movement is a reac-
tion against the severe deterioration in the social and economic conditions
of society as the result of privatization, liberalization of markets, and extreme
concentration of wealth.
Cover crop: Planted to enrich and conserve the soil and return nutrients to it that
were removed by prior crops. Common cover crops include annual cereals
(rye, wheat, barley, oats) and legumes (beans, peas, peanuts, clover).
Cost of reproduction of labor: The human cost of raising a child to productive
working age and of maintaining a functioning labor force. This includes all
household costs, including the physical and emotional care largely provided
by women. It also includes the public and private costs of health, education,
and welfare. When a worker migrates, the costs of raising them to working
age were already assumed by their country of origin and so are free to the
country receiving their labor (and lost to the home country).
GLOSSARY 245
Dead zone: Areas in oceans and lakes with extremely low oxygen concentration
(hypoxia) due to algal blooms caused by high nitrogen fertilizer runoff. When
algae die, they sink and decompose, a process that uses up all the oxygen, suf-
focating animal life. Dead zones grow and shrink with agricultural seasons.
Dead zones are found in the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Lakes, and on the
eastern seaboard.
Depoliticization: The process by which social movements, institutions, and
individuals fail to address the underlying capitalist structures of violence and
injustice.
Desertification: The process in which a landscape loses its plant life and organic
matter (trees, bushes, grasses, humus, etc.), rendering it a desert. This process
is often induced by unsustainable changes in grazing regimes, water use, and
deforestation. Desertification frequently takes place on the edges of existing
deserts or in fragile, semi-dry savannas.
Ejido system: In Mexico, commonly held land governed by a democratic assem-
bly and farmed cooperatively or individually is known as an ejido. Ejidos were
formed when estates (haciendas) belonging to large landowners were expro-
priated and distributed to the peasantry after the Mexican Revolution.
Enclosures: In seventeenth-century England, powerful lords began fencing off
common lands and claiming private property rights. This began the displace-
ment of peasants, who used the commons for many livelihood needs. The
Enclosures marked the beginning of a transition from a feudal to a capitalist
mode of production.
Encomienda system: Large land grants from the Spanish Crown, called enco-
miendas, were given to generals and lords in the New World. The recipients
gained the right to extract labor and resources from the indigenous inhabit-
ants and in return were expected to send a portion of their wealth to the
Spanish Crown.
Entrepreneurial farm: Midsized family farms that primarily produce commodi-
ties, and generally rely on family labor.
Environmental resiliency: The capacity of an environment to "bounce back;'
recover, or return to its original state after a major shock or disturbance.
Fair trade: A form of trade in which a price premium is paid to a producer that
has been certified by a fair trade organization. Fair trade is based on the
willingness of consumers to pay a higher price for the product (for example,
coffee) in order to improve farmer income.
Financialization: Refers to the growing power and influence of the finance sector
over the economy, politics, and society. The term reflects a tendency for
profits to derive more from extremely complex financial markets than from
productive activities. Increasingly, the financial value of something, such as
farmland, grows many times higher as a financial asset than as a source of
actual production.
Food regime: All of the institutions, treaties, and regulations shaping and gov-
erning food on a global scale. Food regimes developed in tandem with
capitalism.
246 GLOSSARY
Colonial Food Regime: Established in the nineteenth century, this was the first
regime to dominate the entire global food system. The flow of food and raw
materials was from the colonies of the South to the empires of the North.
The regime was instrumental in the transfer of wealth from South to North,
which allowed the North to industrialize.
Second Global Food Regime: A neocolonial regime established after the Second
World War in which resources continued to flow from South to North, but
increasingly, surplus grain from the North flowed to the South, destroying
local markets and making Southern urban populations more dependent on
food from the North. At the same time, the model of industrial food produc-
tion was exported from the Global North to the Global South, largely as part
of an anti-communist, Cold War development strategy.
Corporate Food Regime: After the fall of communism and the end of the Cold
War, economic development programs were largely abandoned in favor of
free markets. Structural Adjustment Programs opened the South to Northern
capital, globalizing Southern food systems and making Southern populations
dependent on global markets for their food. Also known as the Neoliberal
Food Regime.
Food sovereignty: The democratization of the food system in favor of the poor,
known as food sovereignty, was introduced by La Via Campesina in the 1990s
to counter the notion of food security. Whereas food security addresses access
to enough food to live a productive life-without addressing how, where, or
by whom it is produced-food sovereignty asserts the rights of farmers and
peoples to produce their own food and control their own systems of produc-
tion and consumption.
Functional dualism: A theory proposed by academic researcher Alain de Janvry
asserting that as part of a transition to capitalist agriculture (specifically in
Latin America), a relationship emerged in which peasant farmers, pushed to
ever smaller plots, were forced to work as wage laborers on industrial farms.
Because they continued to grow food to feed themselves-and sold extra food
cheaply in the market-they were able to work for very low wages and keep
the general price of food low. This provided a food and labor "subsidy" to
industrial agriculture.
Genome property: If a biological or genetic material is patented by an individual,
organization, or corporation it becomes a genome property. This has led to
the privatization and commodification of life itself.
GMO (Genetically Modified Organism): An organism in which the DNA has
been altered using genetic engineering technology. In agriculture, the most
common GMOs are herbicide-resistant maize and soy produced by chemi-
cal companies that sell herbicides. New technologies using RNA and DNA
"markers" that manipulate the genome without the introduction of foreign
DNA are making transgenic GMOs-organisms that receive DNA from
unrelated life forms-obsolete.
Great Migrations of 1910-1930 and 1940-1970: The periods when over six
million African Americans migrated out of the southern United States to
GLOSSARY 247
industrial cities in the North to escape racial discrimination and the violent
racial oppression of the Jim Crow South in search of economic opportunity.
The first wave consisted primarily of farming people from rural areas, and the
second wave included many urban migrants.
Green grabbing: Another form ofland grabbing, it occurs when so-called envi-
ronmental agendas legitimize the appropriation ofland. The green-grabbing
term also encompasses the many ways in which ecosystems are commodified,
underlying the idea that economic growth is compatible with environmental
sustainability. The appropriation of land for biofuels or for nature reserves
are examples.
Green Revolution: An agricultural development campaign initiated by the Ford
and Rockefeller Foundations in the 1960s to spread industrial agriculture
from the United States to the Global South. The Green Revolution was imple-
mented by the U.S. government, the United Nations, the FAO, and the publicly
funded Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)
which established International Centers for Agricultural Research (IARCs)
around the world. The IARCs developed high-yielding varieties of cereals
that required irrigation, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides. Beginning in
Mexico, massive government support spread the Green Revolution success-
fully to India and Asia where conditions were optimal. It was not successful
in Africa where conditions were much more difficult. The Green Revolution
became part of a Cold War strategy as a way to build agrarian support against
communism.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG): Gases that absorb solar radiation and trap
heat in the atmosphere, causing the greenhouse effect. The major GHGs
include carbon dioxide (CO,), methane (CH 4 ), nitrous oxide (N 20), and flu-
orinated gases (hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, sulfur hexafluoride,
and nitrogen trifluoride). The three sectors responsible for the most GHG
emissions are electricity and heat production, agriculture, and transportation.
Guest worker programs: Supplying agricultural and other industries with cheap,
temporary labor from abroad, these programs (like the current H-2A pro-
gram) make it possible for both the state and corporations to better control
migrant laborers. The immigration status of guest workers is often tied to
their jobs, meaning they are legally prevented from changing jobs if their
wages are too low or the conditions too terrible. In certain industries such
programs deliberately drive down wages and working conditions while
undermining unions for workers. See Bracero Program.
Hedging: A financial investment tactic in which an investor seeks to offset risk
by investing in a particular asset. After the financial meltdown in 2007-2008,
many investors sought what were perceived to be more stable investment
opportunities, such as oil, primary commodities, and land. Land assets are
seen as investments that, unlike purely financial assets, will continually
appreciate and not devalue with inflation.
Hegemony: Associated with the Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci, the term
hegemony describes when certain classes in a society dominate the values,
248 GLOSSARY
politics, and economic and military structures of that society, leading to con-
trol and subordination of all other classes. Hegemony can be exercised by
any privileged group to control others; for example, patriarchal hegemony,
colonial hegemony, or white hegemony.
Heirloom crop varieties: Heirloom food crops are open-pollinated or standard
varieties that, unlike hybrids (a cross between two varieties), "breed true:'
This means that seeds can be collected and replanted year after year and the
plant will continue to express the same characteristics, unlike hybrids that
frequently express regressive traits from a parent variety. Heirlooms were
originally bred by farmers and gardeners over many generations for their
taste, storage, or agronomic properties. In general, heirloom crops were
developed by traditional breeding methods before the 1950s.
High farming: A set of intensive farming techniques practiced by larger, wealth-
ier farms in nineteenth-century England that relied on imported guano for
fertilization.
Hybrid seeds: A seed produced by cross-pollinating two different varieties and
then backcrossing the new plant with one of the parent varieties. Hybrid
seeds are generally unstable and will lose "hybrid vigor" after the first year
of planting. This leads to purchasing new seeds each year, making farmers
dependent on seed companies for their seeds.
Inputs: In agriculture, inputs refers to the seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides,
and irrigation invested in crop production. Inputs can be either synthetic
(chemical) or organic; called "external inputs" if produced off-farm (like
chemical fertilizers and pesticides), and "on-farm inputs" if produced by the
farmer (like seeds or compost).
Input substitution: The substitution of organic inputs (usually fertilizers and pes-
ticides) for chemical inputs. Common on large, industrial, organic farms. This
can be an intermediary step toward redesigning the farm agroecologically.
Intercropping: The practice of planting different crops that complement each
other in the same bed or row, for example, plants with shallow roots beside
plants with a deep tap root. This is done in order to increase yields, mimic
natural symbiotic relationships, and return nutrients to the soil.
Jim Crow laws: Laws enacted in previously Confederate states after the Civil
War (1880s) that mandated racial segregation in all public spaces including
schools, buses, and libraries. Under the guise of states' rights, these laws led
to many more discriminatory and cruel practices such as political disen-
franchisement and arbitrary incarceration and labor exploitation of African
Americans. The last of the Jim Crow laws were struck down by the Supreme
Court in the 1960s through the efforts of the civil rights movement.
Land grabs: Viewed as a quick fix to the crisis of capitalist over-accumulation,
land grabs are large-scale acquisitions that bring land into global markets.
Although finance is seen as the major driving force behind recent land grabs,
many different actors, from extractive industries and the real estate sector,
to life insurance companies and wealthy individuals, have engaged in this
process.
GLOSSARY 249
Land reform: The act of changing the pattern of land ownership, usually through
distribution ofland titles (private or collective) to the landless. Land reform
may or may not include the breakup and redistribution oflarge landholdings,
and it may or may not be linked to more sweeping agrarian reforms affecting
markets and services.
Land justice: A term for equitable access to land in both urban and rural contexts.
Land sovereignty: The right of working people to occupy and have effective
access to, use of, and control over land and its benefits.
Latifundio: A component of the land tenure structure common in Latin America,
a latifundio is a large agricultural estate (over 500 hectares) farmed for com-
mercial purposes.
Marker-assisted breeding: Also known as marker-assisted selection (MAS),
this genetic engineering technique entails selecting for specific genetic traits
based on morphological, biochemical, or DNA markers that are linked to
the desired plant trait. MAS is much faster than conventional crop breeding.
Market economy: An economic system, also known as a "self-regulating econ-
omy;' in which goods and services are allocated based on supply and demand,
without government intervention.
Mass food: Highly processed, corporate-owned, GMO-laden foods that fill gro-
cery store shelves today are known as mass foods. They are associated with
many environmental and social costs, such as diet-related diseases and green-
house gas emissions.
Means of production: Excluding labor, all the inputs that generate use value (in
pre-capitalist and socialist societies) or both use and exchange value (in capi-
talist societies), such as machines, factories, resources, goods, and services for
society. In an agrarian society, the land and the tools used to work the land are
the means of production. In an industrial or contemporary society, the means
of production are the machines, factories, transportation, offices, stores, etc.
The means of production create wealth and provide the material foundation for
society, and under capitalism are privately owned.
Mercantilism: A colonial phase in capitalist development that subsidized
exports, kept wages low, and prohibited the colonies from industrializing,
forcing them to buy the ruling empire's own manufactured products.
Monoculture: The cultivation of one single crop in a field, a common prac-
tice of industrial agriculture and characteristic of the Green Revolution.
Monocultures require increased use of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides
to maintain soil fertility and control weeds and pests.
Neoliberalism: An ideology and set of policies implemented over the last thirty
years characterized by a transfer of power and assets from the public sector
to the private sector. This involves increasing privatization of government-
provided goods and services, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade, and the
reduction of top marginal tax rates. Consequences of neoliberalism include
high levels of global inequality and the disappearance of the public sphere
from political life.
Non-profit industrial complex (NPIC): A system of relationships among the
250 GLOSSARY
state/government, capitalist elites, foundations (for example, the Bill and

Melinda Gates Foundation), and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Because these NGOs are dependent on funding from foundations, corpora-
tions, or the government, their missions and actions are influenced by those
funding them.
Normative legitimacy: The legitimacy conferred on a regime, government, or
social movement that allows it to rule (or contest existing rule) based on
a set of shared beliefs regarding what is socially desirable, acceptable, or
unacceptable.
Nutritionism: An approach and ideology dominating food science that reduces
the understanding of healthy food to key nutrients alone, rather than on the
food system and well-balanced diets.
Open-access frontier: An area in which resources (land, water, minerals, etc.)
do not have clear ownership and/or are in dispute; for example, the air, the
oceans, and parts of the Amazon rainforest.
Over-accumulation: A cyclical economic crisis (recession) in which goods and
services pile up, unsold because the general population is suffering from
underemployment and unemployment.
Parity: The agrarian concept that farmers should be paid a fair price for their
product, a price that allows them to have a decent and dignified livelihood.
Parity prices paid to farmers rise commensurately with the rising costs of
production.
Peasant farms: Small-scale, subsistence-oriented farms that are less entrenched
in commodity relations and use on-farm inputs such as green manures,
animal traction, and family labor.
Peasantry: A term commonly used to refer to the world's approximately 1.5
billion poor and landless farmers. During the transition from feudalism
to capitalism, much of this population was displaced and dispossessed of
the land they farmed and became the cheap labor fueling the Industrial
Revolution in urban areas. This displacement and dispossession of the peas-
antry continues today.
Primitive accumulation: Also known as original accumulation or accumulation
by dispossession, this refers to the expropriation of land and resources for
privatization under a new regime. Imperial conquests of other territories for
raw materials and fertile lands are an example.
Progressive neoliberalism: A form of economic neoliberalism (support for free
markets and the privatization of public goods and services) that also supports
liberal social values such as racial equality, LGBTQ rights, and being pro-
choice, or pro-immigrant.
Proletariat: The class of workers in a capitalist society who, lacking ownership of
the means of production, must sell their labor in return for wages.
Purchase of Agricultural Conservation Easements (PACE) Program: Also
known as the Purchase of Development Rights Program, this program pro-
tects agricultural land from development when landowners sell portions of
land to public entities (for example, land trusts) that then hold the easement,
GLOSSARY 251
preventing development. The landowner still holds other ownership rights

such as the right to farm the land, transfer, or bequeath it.
Rational agriculture: A form of agriculture that does not overexploit people or
the planet. It is the opposite of capitalist "irrational agriculture:'
Reactionary populism: A virulent form of right-wing populism that relies on
nationalism, xenophobia, scapegoating, and white supremacist discourse to
appeal to working and middle classes, a form of neo-fascism.
Reformist: The tendency or positions within governance regimes that promote
social projects and reforms but do not challenge the basic political-economic
structures of the regime.
Relay cropping: Planting crops in the same field in a staggered sequence so that
one is in seedling stage while another is maturing. The objective is to make
optimal use of time and space. Many relay crop combinations are also advan-
tageous for pest control and/or fertility management.
Rent-seeking behavior: The practice of profiting without producing wealth,
through speculation, arbitrage, or accessing undeserved tax breaks or subsi-
dies. Also known as neo-rentism.
Resources:
Common pool resources, Common property resources (CPR): Held and
managed in common, these are different from public goods, because with
CPR, access and benefits are exclusive to the specific group rather than the
general public.
Open-access resources: These do not fall under a governance regime or private
property laws.
Slash-and-burn agriculture: A method used widely for thousands of years in
the tropics in which trees are cut down and remaining vegetation is burned,
forming a layer of nutrient-rich ash over a formerly forested area. This area
is then planted with crops for several years until weeds prevent cultivation.
Farmers then shift to a new wooded area and repeat the process, eventually
returning to the same areas they had previously farmed after new growth has
been established.
Socially necessary labor time: The average amount of labor required to accom -
plish a task by a worker of average skill, using generally available tools and
technologies.
Subsistence crop: A crop grown to be eaten by the farmer and their family and/
or community rather than sold on the market for a profit.
Substitutionism: A process whereby farm products are broken down to their
basic ingredients (protein, carbohydrates, fats, and oils) and reconstituted
into industrial products like soft drinks, processed foods, biodiesel, and
cosmetics.
Superexploitation: The non-wage, subsistence-producing labor of women and
others such as slaves, colonized subjects, contract workers, and peasants,
which make possible wage-labor exploitation.
Surplus mobilization: The transfer of wealth from one sector to another through
unequal terms of trade and exchange. For example, in 1914 in the United States,
a bushel of corn bought five gallons of gasoline. In 1921 it took two bushels of
corn just to buy one gallon of gasoline. The change in the terms of trade mobi-
lized agriculture's wealth out of the countryside and into industry.
Sustainable intensification: A broad term that describes increasing agricultural
productivity while lowering the amount of chemical and energy inputs used
for production. Sustainable intensification does not contemplate structural
changes to agriculture but seeks to fine-tune existing industrial systems.
Tenant farmers: Those who farm and live on rented land and, in turn, have
limited rights and temporary access to the land. In some cases, part of the
production must be turned over to the landowner.
Territorial restructuring: The restructuring of laws, regulations and infrastruc-
ture at a territorial scale in order to access resources and extract wealth.
Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPs): An international
agreement between all member nations of the World Trade Organization
(WTO) that created regulations for national governments to protect various
forms of intellectual property (such as genetic information in GMO seeds). It
was the first time intellectual property was introduced into the international
trade system.
Value:
Exchange value: The value a commodity holds when it is compared to another
object on the market, with money being the "universal equivalent" dictating
value.
Labor theory of value: A concept explored by Marx, Ricardo, and Smith (in
differing ways) that the economic value of a product or service is determined
by the amount oflabor required to produce it.
Use value: The usefulness of a commodity, meaning the direct value that it
serves, such as providing sustenance or shelter, or performing work.
Surplus value: The new value embodied in a commodity that results after the
cost of the workers' labor (labor-power) is taken into account. In a commod-
ity market, this surplus value is the profit the capitalist attains after a product
or service is sold.
Absolute surplus value: The increase in value that accrues to the capitalist
when the amount oflabor is increased in the production of a commodity (an
increase in hours or number oflaborers).
Relative surplus value: The increase in value that accrues to a product when
wages paid to workers are reduced for the same amount of work, or when
productivity is increased (intensified) without increasing wages.
Notes
Introduction
1. Nancy Fraser, "The End of Progressive Neoliberalism;' Dissent, January 2,
2017,
2. Henry Bernstein, Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change (Halifax: Fernwood,
2010), 22.
1. How Our Capitalist Food System Came to Be

1. Fukuyama, Francis (1989). "The National Interest" (16): 3-18. ISSN 0884-
9382. JSTOR 24027184.
2. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth ofNations
(London: W Strahan; and T. Cadell, 1776).
3. Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principles of Population (London: Fox J.
Johnson, 1798).
4. David Ricardo, The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (London:
John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1817).
5. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1, 3 vols. (New
York: International Publishers, 1967).
6. Ibid., 1:718.
7. Frederick Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1993). Engels had initially introduced the reserve
army perspective, though in less developed form, in his "Outlines of a
Critique of Political Economy" in 1843 (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels,
Collected Works, vol. 6 [New York: International Publishers, 1975], 438,
443).
8. P. J. Perry, "High Farming in Victorian Britain: Prospect and Retrospect;'
Agricultural History 55 (April 1981): 156-66.
254 N 0 TE S T 0 PA G E S 2 5 - 3 2
9. Robert L. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas
of the Great Economic Thinkers, 7th ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1999), 38,
http:/ I starbooksfeaa. weebly.com/uploads/ 5/ 4/8/ 6/ 54869709 /the_wordly_
philosophers. pdf.
10. Ellen Meiksins Wood, "Capitalism's Gravediggers;' Jacobin, December 5,
2014, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/ 12/capitalisms-gravediggers/.
11. David Harvey, The New Imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press,
2003) and in "The 'New' Imperialism: Accumulation by Dispossession;'
The Socialist Register. Vol 40: 64.
12. Sidney Mintz, Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating,
Culture, and the Past (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).
13. John Bellamy Foster, "Marx as a Food Theorist;' Monthly Review 6817
(December 2016), http://monthlyreview.org/2016/ 12/0 l/marx-as-a-food
-theorist/.
14. Charles Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created (New
York: Vintage, 2012).
15. Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-1849 (London:
Penguin Books, 1962).
16. Derek Byerlee and Carl Eiker K., Africa's Emerging Maize Revolution
(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1997).
17. Europeans who tried subsisting only on maize, as they did with barley,
potatoes, and wheat, contracted pellagra, a nutrient-deficiency disease.
Indigenous communities of the Americas didn't suffer from pellagra
because they combined maize with beans and other cultivars and prepared
their maize using the process of nixtamalization that uses lime and greatly
improves the nutrient content. Arturo Warman, Corn and Capitalism: How
a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2003).
18. Ibid.
19. Judith Ann Carney, "From Hands to Tutors: African Expertise in South
Carolina Rice Economy;' Agricultural History 67/3 (1993): 1-30; Judith
Ann Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the
Americas (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001).
20. Charles Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created (New
York: Vintage, 2012).
21. Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of
American Capitalism (New York: Basic Books 2014).
22. Sven Beckert, "Slavery and Capitalism;' The Chronicle of Higher Education,
December 12, 2014, http://chronicle.com/ article/SlaveryCapitalism/ 150787.
23. Judith Ann Carney, '"With Grains in Her Hair': Rice in Colonial Brazil;'
Slavery and Abolition 25/l (2004): 1-27.
24. Judith Ann Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins ofRice Cultivation in the
Americas (Cambridge and London: University of Harvard Press, 2001),76
25. Ibid.
26. Gail Meyers and Owusu Bandele "Roots" in Land Justice: Re-imagining
NOTES TO PAGES 32-45 255
Land, Food and the Commons in the United States, 2016 (Oakland: Food
First Books 2016), 25
27. Judith Ann Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the
Americas (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001).
28. Meyers and Bandele, 2016.
29. Philip McMichael, "A Food Regime Genealogy;' Journal of Peasant Studies
36/1 (2009).
30. Karl Kautsky, The Agrarian Question, vol. 1 (London: Zwan Publishers, 1988).
31. Alexander Chayanov, The Theory of Peasant Economy (Manchester, UK:
Manchester University Press, 1966).
32. E. Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper & Row,
1969).
33. T. Shanin, "Peasantry as a Political Factor;' Sociological Review 14/1 (1966):
5-27.
34. GRAIN, "Hungry for Land: Small Farmers Feed the World with Less than
a Quarter of All Farmland" (Barcelona: GRAIN, May 2014), http://www.
grain.org/ article/ entries/ 4929- hungry-for-land-small-farmers- feed- the-
world-with-less-than-a-quarter-of-all-farmland.
35. Janet Poppendiek, Breadlines Knee-Deep in Wheat: Food Assistance in the
Great Depression (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986).
36. Daniel Cryan, Sharron Shatil, and Piero, Capitalism: A Graphic Guide
(London: Icon Books, 2009).
37. Poppendiek, Breadlines Knee-Deep in Wheat.
38. George Naylor, "Agricultural Parity for Land De-Commodification;' in
Land Justice: Re-Imagining Land, Food and the Commons in the United
States (Oakland, CA: Food First Books, in press).
39. David W Galenson, "The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the
Americas: An Economic Analysis;' Journal of Economic History 44/1
(1984): 1-26.
40. James Ciment and John Radzilowski, American Immigration: An
Encyclopedia of Political, Social, and Cultural Change (London: Routledge,
2015).
41. Philip Martin and Elizabeth Midgley, "Immigration to the United States;'
Population Bulletin. Report, Vol 54, No 2 (June 1999).
42. Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern
America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 37.
43. Marcel Paret, "Legality and Exploitation: Immigration Enforcement and
the US Migrant Labor System;' Latino Studies 12/4 (2014): 503-26.
44. Center for History and News Media, "Bracero History Archive;' 2014,
http://braceroarchive.org/.
45. The co-evolution of agricultural chemicals and chemicals for warfare
dates from the turn of the twentieth century. For an in-depth account
see Edmund Russell, War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with
Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2001).
256 N 0 TE S T 0 PA G E S 4 6 - 5 6
46. U. Lele and A. A. Goldsmith, "The Development of National Agricultural

Research Capacity: India's Experience with the Rockefeller Foundation
and Its Significance for Africa;' Economic Development and Cultural
Change 3712 (1989): 305-43; Peter Wallersteen, "Scarce Goods as Political
Weapons: The Case of Food;' Journal of Peace Research 13 ( 1976): 277-98.
47. Eric Holt-Gimenez, Raj Patel, and Annie Shattuck, Food Rebellions: Crisis
and the Hunger for Justice (Oakland, CA, and London: Food First Books/
Pambazooka Press, 2009).
48. Ibid.
49. Frances Lappe, Joseph Collins, and Peter Rosset, World Hunger: Twelve
Myths, 2nd ed. (New York: Grove Press, Food First Books, 1986).
50. Cynthia Hewitt de Alcantara, Modernizing Mexican Agriculture (Geneva:
United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1976); Andrew
Pearse, Seeds of Plenty, Seeds of Want: Social and Economic Implications of
the Green Revolution, ed. UN Research Institute for Social Development
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980).
51. Mike Davis, "Planet of Slums: Urban Involution and the Informal
Proletariat;' New Left Review 26 (2004).
52. Alain de Janvry, The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America
(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).
53. With the help of the farmers' movement called Campesino a Campesino
(Farmer to Farmer), Gabriel and his family managed to restore fertil-
ity and reestablish production on the farm by painstakingly rebuilding
the organic matter in the soil, implementing soil and water conservation
practices, and replacing the hybrid maize and fertilizers with a traditional
corn-bean-squash polyculture. He introduced agroforestry and added a
complex mix ofleguminous and perennial plants and beehives to his farm.
Gabriel's experience of increasing investment and diminishing returns in
capitalist agriculture is a common one for peasants and small-scale farm-
ers in Latin America. His recovery-by using agroecological practices-is
less common, but growing. E. Holt-Gimenez, The Campesino a Campesino
Movement: Farmer-Led Sustainable Agriculture in Central America and
Mexico (Oakland: Food First Books, 1996).
54. Luigi Russi, Hungry Capital: The Financialization of Food (Winchester, UK,
and Washington, DC: Zero Books, 2013).
55. Heinz Sonntag, "Modernism, Development and Modernization;'
Pensamiento Propio 11(January-June2000): 3-30.
56. Charles Gore, "The Rise and Fall of the Washington Consensus as a Paradigm
for Developing Countries;' World Development 28/5 (2000): 789-804;
J. N. Pieterse, "My Paradigm or Yours? Alternative Development, Post-
Development, Reflexive Development;' Development and Change 29 (1998):
343-73.
57. Holt-Gimenez, Patel, and Shattuck, Food Rebellions: Crisis and the Hunger
for Justice.
58. Jennifer Clapp, Food (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012).
59. Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 2014).
2. Food, A Special Commodity

1. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1, 3 vols. (New
York: International Publishers, 1967). Marx's first volume of Das Kapital,
published in 1861 in Hamburg, Germany, was not translated into English
until after Marx's death in 1883-at the height of a continental depression
following an expansive free-market boom. Frederick Engels, Marx's col-
laborator, editor, and benefactor, called Capital "The Bible of the Working
Class:' Before Marx, political economists simply accepted the existence
of profit without asking how it was appropriated from the value of the
product. Marx's fundamental contribution to political economy of the
nineteenth century was to explore the nature of surplus value.
2. See, for example, David Harvey, A Companion to Marx's Capital, vol. 1, 2
vols. (London and Brooklyn: Verso, 2010).
3. Peter Rosset, Food Is Different: Why We Must Get the WTO out ofAgriculture
(London: Zed Books, 2006).
4. "Organic" refers to crops that are grown and animals that are raised
without the application of synthetic chemicals or the ingestion of hor-
mones or chemically treated crops. In the United States, the United States
Department of Agriculture inspects and certifies organic products. Though
a large percentage of the world's farmers grow food without synthetic
chemical inputs they sell their products in conventional markets without
organic certification.
5. Tanya Kerssen, "Quinoa: To Buy or Not to Buy ... Is This the Right
Question?;' Food First.org blog, February 15, 2013, http://foodfirst.org/
quinoa-to-buy-or-not -to-buy-is-this-the-right-question/.
6. Tim Weis, The Global Food Economy: The Battle for the Future of Farming
(London: Zed Books, 2007).
7. Much of capitalism's petroleum comes from the Middle East. Publicly
funded, trillion-dollar wars have (and are) being waged to ensure oil
access. These costs do not show up on the corporate balance sheet, nor at
the pump.
8. Peter Rosset, "The Multiple Functions and Benefits of Small Farm
Agriculture in the Conext of Global Trade Negotiations;' Food First Policy
Brief (Oakland, CA: Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy,
1999).
9. Harvey, A Companion to Marx's Capital.
10. William Kandel, "Profile of Hired Farmworkers, a 2008 Update;' Economic
Research Service (Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2008),
https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/ err60/ 12055_err60_report
summary_l_.pdf.
11. Karin Astrid Siegmann, "Reflections on the Fair Food Agreement between
the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and Retail Multinational;' Global
258 N 0 TES T 0 PA G E S 6 5 - 8 0
Labor Column, August l, 2015, http://column.global-labour-university.

org/2015/08/ reflections-on-fair-food-agreement.html.
12. CIW, "The Fair Food Program;' 2017, http://www.fairfoodprogram.org/.
13. CIW "The Anti-Slavery Program'' 2017, http://www.ciw-online.org/
slavery/.
14. Lorin Kusmin, "Rural America at a Glance, 2013 Edition'' (Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, 2013),
http:I/www.ers.usda.govI publications/ eh-economic-brief/ eb24. aspx#.
U072hfldWN2.
15. According to the USDA 2012 Census of Agriculture, of the country's 2.1
million farmers only 8 percent are farmers of color (Native American,
Asian, Latino, or African American), though their share is growing, par-
ticularly among Latinos, who now number over 67,000 farmers. The
percentage of women farmers is 14 percent. Three-quarters of them earn
less than $10,000 in annual sales. Seventy-five percent of farms in the
United States have sales of under $50,000, but the number of high-income
mega farms is increasing. The percentage of farmers under 35 years old
has declined 8 percent since the last census, while the number of older
farmers has increased. The average age for a farmer in the United States
is now 58. Although these statistics paint the picture of a stereotypically
white, male, aging farmer, they belie a growing movement of young, pre-
dominantly female and non-white beginning farmers. Eric Holt-Gimenez,
"This Land Is Whose Land? Dispossession, Resistance and Reform in the
United States;' Backgrounder (Oakland, CA: Food First/Institute for Food
and Development Policy, Spring 2014), http://foodfirst.org/publication/
this-land-is-whose-land/.
16. J. D. van der Ploeg, "The Peasantries of the Twenty-First Century: The Com-
modification Debate Revisited;' Journal of Peasant Studies 37 (2010): 1-30.
17. Nicholas Babin, "Agroecology Saves the Farm (Where Fair Trade
Failed): Surviving the Coffee Crisis in Costa Rica;' Backgrounder
(Oakland, CA: Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy,
December 10, 2014), http://foodfirst.org/publication/agroecology-saves
-the-farm-in -costa-rica/.
18. Raj Patel, The Value ofNothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine
Democracy (New York: Picador, 2010).
19. Martin Lindstrom, Buyology: Truth and Lies about Why We Buy, 2nd ed.
(New York: Broadway Books, 2010).
20. Harvey, A Companion to Marx's Capital, 1:79.
21. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 2: The Process of
Circulation of Capital (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 27.
22. Stefano Longo, Rebecca Clausen, and Brett Clark, "Capitalism and the
Commodification of Salmon: From Wild Fish to a Genetically Modified
Species;' Monthly Review 6617 (2014): 35-55.
23. Adapted from Fred Magdoff, ''A Rational Agriculture Is Incompatible with
Capitalism;' Monthly Review 66110 (March 2015): 9-11.
3. Land and Property

1. Epigraph: http://www.onthecommons.org/sites/ default/files/celebrating-
the-commons.pdf.
2. Henry Bernstein, Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change (Halifax: Fernwood,
2010)
3. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA,
London, England, Harvard University Press, 2014); Fred Magdoff and
John Bellamy Foster, What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about
Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 20ll).
4. Eric Holt-Gimenez, Raj Patel, and Annie Shattuck, Food Rebellions!: Crisis
and the Hunger for Justice (Oakland, CA: Food First Books, 2009).
5. Jeremy Waldron, "Property and Ownership;' The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), http://plato.
stanford.edu/archives/ spr2012/ entries/property/.
6. Environmental Commons, "History of the Commons;' 2015, http://www.
environmentalcommons.org/commons.html.
7. The Commons has not disappeared under capitalism, and millions of hect-
ares of common-pool resources (agricultural land, grazing land, forests,
rivers lakes) can be found around the world in developed and develop-
ing countries including sub-Saharan African (500 million people), Fiji,
Mexico, Taiwan, India, Nepal, Jamaica, the United States (lobster fisheries),
Scandinavian countries (wild forage mushrooms and berries), Spain (irri-
gated vegetable gardens), and pasture across Europe, as well as indigenous
lands in Mexico, Brazil, Honduras, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Jose Luis
Vivero Pol, "Reframing the Narrative of the Food System;' Social Science
Research Network, April 23, 2013, http://ssrn.com/abstract=2255447 or
http://dx.doi.org/ 10.2139I ssrn.225544 7.
8. Pierre Proudhon, "Property Is Theft!;' in No Gods No Masters: An Anthology
of Anarchism, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: AK Press, 1998), 1:30-40.
9. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for
Collective Action (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
10. Pierre Proudhon, What Is Property? An Inquiry into the Principles of Right
and Government (New York: Humboldt Publishing Company, 1840), https://
www.marxists.org/reference/ subject/economics/proudhon/property/.
11. Elinor Ostrom, "Revisiting the Commons: Local Lessons, Global
Challenges;' Science 284 (April 9, 1999): 278-82.
12. Elinor Ostrom, "A Behavioral Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of
Collective Action;' American Political Science Review 92/1 (1997): 1-22.
13. Ostrom's framework for common pool resources:
1) Clearly defined boundaries (effective exclusion of external unentitled
parties);
2) Rules regarding the appropriation and provision of common resources
that are adapted to local conditions;
3) Collective-choice arrangements that allow most resource appropriators
to participate in the decision-making process;
260 N 0 TE S T 0 PA G E S 9 0 - 9 8
4) Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the

appropriators;
5) A scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate
community rules;
6) Mechanisms of conflict resolution that are cheap and of easy access;
7) Self-determination of the community recognized by higher-level
authorities; and
8) In the case of larger common-pool resources, organization in the form
of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local common pool
resources at the base level.
14. Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons;' Science 162 (December
1968): 1243-48.
15. FUNDESCA, El Ultimo Despale . .. La Frontera Agricola Centroamericana
(San Jose, Costa Rica: Fundaci6n para el Desarrollo Econ6mico y Social de
Centro America, 1994).
16. Stefano Longo, Rebecca Clausen, and Brett Clark, "Capitalism and the
Commodification of Salmon: From Wild Fish to a Genetically Modified
Species;' Monthly Review 6617 (2014): 35-55.
17. Courtney Carrothers, "Tragedy of Commodification: Displacements in
Alutiiq Fishing Communities in the Gulf of Alaska;' VB Mast 9/2 (2010):
95-120.
18. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins
of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944).
19. In the dreams of economists, a true self-regulating "free market" requires
many buyers and sellers, thus allowing no one to dominate the market.
Prices reach their "natural" level depending on supply and demand.
However, when there are few buyers (as for commercial-scale agricultural
production) and/or few sellers (agricultural input industries as well as the
food retail sector), there cannot be any such thing as a "free market" in the
classical sense.
20. Polanyi, The Great Transformation, 73.
21. Ibid.
22. David Bacon, "Unbroken Connection to the Land: An Interview with
Farmworker Activist Rosalinda Guillen;' in Land Justice: Re-Imagining
Land, Food and the Commons in the United Stated (Oakland, CA: Food
First Books, 2017) 162-163.
23. E Holt-Gimenez, "Biofuels: Myths of the Agro-Fuels Transition;'
Backgrounder (Oakland, CA: Food First Books, 2007), https://foodfirst.
org/wp-content/uploads/2013/ 12/BKl 3_2- Biofuels2007_English. pdf.
24. World Bank, "World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for
Development" (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2007).
25. Rosamund Naylor et al., "The Ripple Effect: Biofuels, Food Security, and
the Environment;' Environment 4919 (2007): 35.
26. Madeleine Fairbairn, "When Farmland Meets Finance: Is Land the Next
Economic Bubble?;' Food First Policy Brief, Land & Sovereignty in the
Americas 5 (May 2014), http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/central/.
27. S. Varble, S. Secchi, and C. G. Druschke, "An Examination of Growing
Trends in Land Tenure and Conservation Practice Adoption: Results from
a Farmer Survey in Iowa;' Environmental Management 57, no. 2 (2016):
318-30.
28. Ibid., 319.
29. Ibid.
30. Michael Carolan, "Barriers to the Adoption of Sustainable Agriculture on
Rented Land: An Examination of Contesting Social Fields;' Rural Sociology,
no. 3 (2005): 387-413.
31. Tanya Kerssen and Zoe Brent, "Land & Resource Grabs in the United
States: Five Sites of Struggle and Potential Transformation;' Policy Brief
(Oakland, CA: Food First, 2014), https://foodfirst.org/publication/
land- resource-grabs-in -the-united-states/.
32. Susan Payne, Susan Payne Makes a Case for African Farmland (Des Moines,
IO: 2013 ), http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/22254-emvest-ceo-susan-
payne-makes -case-for-africa-farmland.
33. Camilla Toulmin et al., "Land Tenure and International Investments in
Agriculture;' High-Level Panel of Experts on Food and Nutrition (Rome:
Committee on World Food Security, July 20ll).
34. Eric Holt-Gimenez, "Territorial Restructuring and the Grounding of Agrarian
Reform: Indigenous Communities, Gold Mining and the World Bank;'
Working Paper, Land Policy (Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, 2008).
35. E. Holt-Gimenez, "Territorial Restructuring and the Grounding of
Agrarian Reform: Indigenous Communities, Gold Mining and the World
Bank;' in Land, Poverty, Social Justice and Development, ed. S. Sauer
(Brasilia: 2006); Eric Holt-Gimenez, "LAND - GOLD - REFORM: The
Territorial Restructuring of Guatemala's Highlands;' Development Report
(Institute for Food and Development Policy, 2007).
2003).
37. L. Solano, Guatemala: Petr6leo Y Mineria En Las Entrafias Del Poder
(Guatemala City: Infopress Centroamericana, 2005).
38. Holt- Gimenez, "LAND - GOLD - REFORM: The Territorial Restructuring
of Guatemala's Highlands:'
39. E. Holt- Gimenez, "The Campesino a Campesino Movement: Farmer-Led
Sustainable Agriculture in Central America and Mexico:' Development
Report No. 10. June 1996. (Oakland, CA: Food First, 1996), 121.
40. Miguel Carter, Challenging Social Inequality: The Landless Rural Workers
Movement and Agrarian Reform in Brazil (Durham: Duke University Press,
2015).
41. Angus Wright and Wendy Wolford, To Inherit the Earth: The Landless
Movement and the Struggle for a New Brazil (Food First Books, 2003).
262 N 0 TES T 0 PA G ES 11 6-1 2 6
4. Capitalism, Food, and Agriculture

1. Fred Magdoff, "A Rational Agriculture Is Incompatible with Capitalism;'
Monthly Review 66/10 (March 2015): 1-18.
2. M. Edelman, "The Persistence of the Peasantry;' North American Congress
on Latin America 33/5 (2000): 14-19.
3. GRAIN, "Hungry for Land: Small Farmers Feed the World with Less than
a Quarter of All Farmland" (Barcelona: GRAIN, May 2014), http://www.
grain.org/ article/ entries/ 4929-hungry-for-land-small-farmers- feed-the-
world-with-less-than -a-quarter-of-all-farmland.
4. Frank Bardacke, Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two
Souls of the United Farm Workers (New York: Verso, 20ll).
5. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 2: The Process of
Circulation of Capital (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 238.
6. S. A. Mann, "Obstacles to the Development of a Capitalist Agriculture;'
Journal of Peasant Studies 5/4 (1978): 473.
7. Peter Rosset, "The Multiple Functions and Benefits of Small Farm
Agriculture in the Context of Global Trade Negotiations;' Food First Policy
Brief (Oakland, CA: Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy,
1999).
8. James MacDonald, "Family Farming in the United States;' Amber Waves,
March 2014.
9. Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, "The Peasantries of the Twenty-First Century:
The Commodification Debate Revisited;' Journal of Peasant Studies 37/1
(2010): 1-30.
10. Richard Levins and William W. Cochran, "The Treadmill Revisited;' Land
Economics 7414 (1996).
11. John Ikerd, "The New Farm Crisis Calls for New Farm Policy;' Missouri
Farmers' Union Annual Conference, Jefferson City, MO, 2002, http://web.
missouri.edu/ikerdj/papers/Farm Union. pdf.
12. Richard A. Walker, The Conquest of Bread: 150 Years of Agribusiness in
California (New York: New Press, 2004).
13. Madeleine Fairbairn, "When Farmland Meets Finance: Is Land the Next
Economic Bubble?;' Food First Policy Brief, Land & Sovereignty in the
Americas 5 (May 2014), http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/central/.
14. "Casino of Hunger: How Wall Street Speculators Fueled the Global Food
Crisis" (Washington, D.C.: Food and Water Watch, November 2009),
https:/ /www.foodandwaterwatch.org/ sites/ default/files/ casino _hunger_
report_dec_2009.pdf.
15. Jennifer Clapp, Food (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012).
16. Food and Water Watch, 2009.
17. D. Goodman, B. Sorj, and J. Wilkinson, From Farming to Biotechnology: A
Theory of Agro-Industrial Development (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).
18. Walker, The Conquest of Bread: 150 Years of Agribusiness in California.
19. S. R. Gliessman, Agroecology: Ecological Processes in Sustainable
Agriculture (Chelsea MI: Ann Arbor Press, 1998); M. Altieri, "Why Study
Traditional Agriculture?;' in Agroecology, ed. P. Rosset, Biological Resource

Management (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990), 551-64.
20. Daniel Charles, "The System Supplying America's Chickens Pits Farmer
vs. Farmer;' The Salt, February 20, 2014, http://www.npr.org/sections/
thesalt/2014/ 02/20/2 79040721 /the-system -that-supplies-our-chickens
-pits-farmer-against-farmer.
21. From: National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, "What's All the Flapping
About: What Do HBO's John Oliver, Chicken Farmers, and Congress Have
in Common?;' NSAC blog, May 29, 2016, http://sustainableagriculture.net/
blog/whats-all-the-flapping-about/.
22. Martin Prowse, "Contract Farming in Developing Countries: A Review;'
(Paris: Agence Frarn;:aise de Developpement, 2012), 9.
23. World Bank, "World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for
Development" (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2007).
24. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1 (New York:
International Publishers, 1967), 637-38.
25. K. Kautsky, The Agrarian Question (London: Zwan, 1988), 214-15.
26. Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster, "Liebig, Marx and the Depletion
of Soil Fertility: Relevance for Today's Agriculture;' in Hungry for Profit:
The Agribusinss Threat to Farmers, Food and the Environment (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 2000).
27. Magdoff, "A Rational Agriculture Is Incompatible with Capitalism:'
28. Working Group III contribution to the IPCC 5th Assessment Report
"Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change;' April 12,
20 l 4,http://report.mitigation2014.org/ drafts/final-draft-postplenary/
ipcc_wg3 _ar5 _final-draft_postplenary_chapter 11. pdf.
29. Brenda B. Lin et al., "Effects of Industrial Agriculture on Climate Change
and the Mitigating Potential of Small-Scale Agro-Ecological Farms;'
Animal Science Reviews 2011 (2012): 69.
30. EPA, "Climate Impacts on Agriculture and Food Supply;' September 27,
2014, http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/impacts-adaptation/agriculture.
html#impactslivestock.
31. Oakland Institute, "Down on the Farm-Wall Street: America's New
Frontier;' September 26, 2014, http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oak-
landinstitute.org/files/OI_Report_Down_on_the_Farm.pdf, 4.
32. Magdoff, "A Rational Agriculture Is Incompatible with Capitalism:'
33. Altieri, "Why Study Traditional Agriculture?"; S. R. Gliessman, "The
Ecological Basis for the Application of Traditional Agricultural Technology
in the Management of Tropical Agroecosystems;' Agro-Ecosystems 50
(1981): 24-31.
34. J. Pretty, Regenerating Agriculture; Policies and Practice for Sustainability and
Self-Reliance (London: Earthscan Publications, 1995); E. Holt-Gimenez,
"The Campesino a Campesino Movement: Farmer-Led Sustainable
Agriculture in Central America and Mexico" (Oakland, CA: Food First,
Development Report No.19, June 1996, https://foodfirst.org/publication/
264 N 0 TE S T 0 PA G E S 1 3 7 -1 4 2
the-campesino-a-campesino-movement/); R. Bunch, Two Ears of Corn:

A Guide to People-Centered Agricultural Improvement (Oklahoma City:
World Neighbors, 1985).
35. Beverly Mcintire et al., ''Agriculture at a Crossroads: International
Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for
Development:' Report Synthesis (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2009),
http://www.agassessment.org/.
36. Olivier de Schutter, ''Agroecology and the Right to Food:' Report of the
Special Rapporteur (Geneva: United Nations, December 2010), http://www.
srfood.org/ en/ report-agroecology-and-the-right -to-food.
37. Eric Holt-Gimenez, Raj Patel, and Annie Shattuck, Food Rebellions: Crisis
and the Hunger for Justice (Oakland, CA, and London: Food First Books,
Pambazooka Press, 2009).
38. E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular
Culture (New York: New Press, 1991), 338.
39. E. Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper &
Row, 1969); E. Wolf, Peasants, ed. M. Sahlins, vol. 4 (Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966); J. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976); J. C. Scott, "Everyday
Forms of Resistance:' in Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, ed. F. D.
Colburn (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1989), 3-33.
40. Larry Yee and James Cochran, "The Food Commons:' Summary, 2015,
http://www.thefoodcommons.org/summary/; Jose Luis Vivero Pol, "Food
as a Commons: Re framing the Narrative of the Food System:' Social Science
Research Network, April 23, 2015, http://ssrn.com/abstract=2255447 or
http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2255447; Jose Luis Vivero Pol, "Reframing
the Narrative of the Food System:' Social Science Research Network, April
23, 2013, http://ssrn.com/abstract=2255447 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/
ssrn.2255447.
41. Brian K. Obach and Kathleen Tobin, "Civic Agriculture and Community
Engagement:' Agriculture and Human Values (2014): 307-32, doi:l0.1007/
sl0460-013-9477-~
42. Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, "Peasant-Driven Agricultural Growth and Food
Sovereignty:' Journal of Peasant Studies (2014), 10, doi: 10.1080/03066150.2
013.876997.
43. Rosset, "The Multiple Functions and Benefits of Small Farm Agriculture in
the Context of Global Trade Negotiations:'
44. Van der Ploeg, "Peasant-Driven Agricultural Growth and Food
Sovereignty:'
45. Ibid.
46. E. Holt-Gimenez, "Measuring Farmers' Agroecological Resistance to
Hurricane Mitch in Central America'' (London: International Institute for
Environment and Development, 2001).
47. Eric Holt-Gimenez, ''Agrarian Questions and the Struggle for Land Justice
in the United States:' in Justine Williams and Eric Holt-Gimenez, editors,
Land Justice: Re-Imagining Land, Food and the Agrarian Question (Oakland,
CA: Food First Books, 2017).
5. Power and Privilege in the Food System

1. Margaret Wallhagen and Bill Strawbridge, "When Women Flourish ... We
Can End Hunger;' Hunger Report (Washington, D.C.: Bread for the World,
2015).
2. Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom (Palo Alto, CA: Cheshire Books,
1982).
3. Sharon Smith, "Engels and the Origin of Women's Oppression;'
International Socialist Review 2 ( 1997), http://www.isreview.org/issues/02/
engles_family.shtml#top.
4. Friederich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
(Hottingen-Zurich: 1884), https://www.marxists.org/ archive/ marx/works/
download/pdf/origin_family.pdf, 30.
5. Cheryl Doss, "If Women Hold Up Half the Sky, How Much of the
World's Food Do They Produce?" (New York: UN Food and Agriculture
Organization, 2011), http://www.fao.org/3/a-am309e.pdf.
6. Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and
Feminist Struggle (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012).
7. Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the
International Division of Labor (London: Zed Books, 1986), 46.
8. Ibid., 48.
9. FAO, "Women in Agriculture: Closing the Gender Gap for Development;'
State of Agriculture yearly report (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO ), 2012), http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/i2050e/i2050e.pdf.
10. Mary Bauer and Monica Ramirez, "Injustice on Our Plates: Immigrant
Women in the U.S. Food Industry" (Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty
Law Center, 2010), https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/d6_
legacy_files/ downloads/publication/Injustice_on_Our_Plates. pdf.
11. On the new regime of women's impoverishment and exploitation, Silvia
Federici writes, "[A] new international division of reproductive work has
been organized that has redistributed significant quotas of housework on
the shoulders of immigrant women, leading to what is often defined as the
globalization of care work. ... But these developments have not signifi-
cantly affected the amount of domestic work which the majority of women
are still expected to perform, nor have they eliminated the gender-based
inequalities built upon it. If we take a global perspective we see that not
only do women still do most of the housework in every country, but due
to the state's cut of investment in social services and the decentralization
of industrial production the amount of domestic work paid and unpaid
they perform has actually increased, even when they have had an extra-
domestic job:' Federici, Revolution at Point Zero, 18.
12. This section is taken from an article co-written with A. Breeze Harper,
Executive Director of the Sistah Vegan Project, http://www.sistahvegan.com.
266 N 0 TE S T 0 PA G E S 1 5 6 -1 5 9
13. From David Bacon, "Unbroken Connection to the Land: An Interview with
Farmworker Activist Rosalinda Guillen;' in Land Justice: Re-Imagining
Land, Food and the Commons in the United Stated (Oakland, CA: Food
First Books, 2017).
14. Alison Hope Alkon, Black, White and Green: Farmers Markets, Race, and
the Green Economy (Atlanta: University of Georgia Press, 2012).
15. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness, rev. ed. (New York: New Press, 2011).
16. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous People's History of the United States
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2014).
17. Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of
American Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 2014).
18. Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People: (New York: W. W. Norton,
2010).
19. Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York, London: Routledge,
1995).
20. Alexander, The New Jim Crow.
21. Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the
southern United States. Enacted after the Reconstruction period, these
laws continued in force until 1965. They mandated de jure racial segre-
gation in all public facilities in states of the former Confederate States of
America, starting in 1890 with a "separate but equal" status for African
Americans. Facilities for African Americans were consistently inferior
and underfunded compared to those available to European Americans;
sometimes they did not exist at all. This body of law institutionalized a
number of economic, educational, and social disadvantages. De jure segre-
gation mainly applied to the southern states, whereas Northern segregation
was generally de facto-patterns of housing segregation enforced by pri-
vate covenants, bank lending practices, and job discrimination, including
discriminatory labor union practices. Jim Crow laws-sometimes, as in
Florida, part of the state constitution-mandated the segregation of public
schools, public places, and public transportation, and the segregation of
restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains for whites and blacks. The
U.S. military was also segregated, as were federal workplaces, initiated in
1913 under President Woodrow Wilson. By requiring candidates to submit
photos, his administration practiced racial discrimination in hiring. These
Jim Crow laws followed the 1800-1866 Black Codes, which had previ-
ously restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans.
Segregation of public (state-sponsored) schools was declared unconstitu-
tional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in Brown v. Board
of Education, although in some cases it took years for this decision to be
acted on. Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but years of
action and court challenges were needed to unravel numerous means of
institutional discrimination.
22. Center for History and News Media, "Bracero History Archive;' 2014,
http://braceroarchive.org/.
23. Pete Daniel, Dispossession: Discrimination Against African American
Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2013).
24. Anuradha Mittal and John Powell, "The Last Plantation'' (Food First, 2000);
John Powell, "Poverty and Race through a Belongingness Lens;' Policy
Matters 1 (April 2012).
25. Eric Holt-Gimenez, "This Land Is Whose Land? Dispossession, Resistance
and Reform in the United States;' Backgrounder (Oakland, CA: Food First/
Institute for Food and Development Policy, Spring 2014), http://foodfirst.
org/publication/this-land-is-whose-land/.
26. Of the total land rented out by operator and non-operator landlords, 97 per-
cent of principal landlords are white. Landlords who are white accounted
for 98 percent of rent received, expenses, and the value ofland and build-
ings in 2014. From U.S. Agricultural Census total survey results 2014.
27. Food First, "Food Insecurity of Restaurant Workers;' Food Chain Workers
Alliance, Restaurant Opportunities Center, 2014, http://foodfirst.org/
publication/food-insecurity-of-restaurant-workers/.
28. Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette Proctor, and Jessica Smith, "Income,
Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States;' in The U.S.
Farm Bill: Corporate Power and Structural Racialization in the United States
Food System, Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, UC Berkeley,
2015, http://www.hassinstitute.berkeley.edu.
29. Elsadig Elsheikh and Nadia Barhoum, "Structural Racialization and
Food Insecurity in the United States; A Report to the U.N. Human Rights
Committee on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights;'
Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, UC Berkeley, August 2013.
30. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "National Diabetes Statistics
Report: Estimates of Diabetes and Its Burden in the United States:' U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, 2014, http://www.cdc.gov/dia-
betes/pubs/statsreportl 4/ national-diabetes-report-web. pdf.
31. Julie Guthman, "If They Only Knew: Color Blindness and Universalism in
California Alternative Food Institutions;' in Taking Food Public: Redefining
Foodways in a Changing World (New York, London: Routledge, 2012),
211-23.
32. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Herder and Herder,
1970).
33. Tim Flannery, The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America
and Its Peoples (London: Penguin Books, 2001).
34. These hierarchies are so well documented that we tend to forget that the
food and farming systems of the indigenous societies of North America
and the Andes, of Polynesian and Arctic peoples, of aboriginal Australians,
and many other societies were highly productive, sustainable and, despite
social, political, and cultural divisions, largely egalitarian.
268 NOTES TO PAGES 167-186
35. T. Shanin, The Awkward Class: Political Sociology of Peasantry in a

Developing Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).
36. Karl Marx and Friederich Engels, "The Communist Manifesto;' in The
Marx Engels Reader (New Yok: Norton, W.W. & Company, Inc., 1978).
37. Hudis Peter and Kevin B. Anderson, The Rosa Luxemburg Reader (New
York: Monthly Review Press, 2004).
38. Alix Kates Shulman, Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader, 3rd ed.
(New York: Humanity Books, 1996).
39. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. Q. Hoare (New
40. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The
Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988).
41. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks.
42. Rachel Slocum and Kirsten Valentiine Cadieux, "What Does It Mean to
Do Food Justice?;' Journal of Political Ecology 22 (2015), http://jpe.library.
arizona.edu/volume_22/Cadieuxslocum.pdf; Guthman, "If They Only
Knew: Color Blindness and Universalism in California Alternative Food
Institutions;' 211-23.
6. Food, Capitalism, Crises, and Solutions

1. George Naylor, "Agricultural Parity for Land De-Commodification;' in
Land Justice: Re-Imagining Land, Food and the Commons in the United
States (Oakland, CA: Food First Books, 2017)
2. Adapted from E. Holt-Gimenez, "The True Extent of Hunger: What the
FAO Isn't Telling You;' Backgrounder (Oakland, CA: Food First/Institute
for Food and Development Policy, 2016), https://foodfirst.org/wp-content/
uploads/2016/06/Summer20 l 6Backgrounder. pdf.
3. Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (London: Cleave Books,
1865), http://www.cleavebooks.co.uk/grol/alice/won02.htm.
4. T. Garnett and J. Godfray, "Sustainable Intensification in Agriculture:
Navigating a Course through Competing Food Systems Priorities;' Report
from Food Climate Research Network and Oxford Martin Programme on
the Future of Food workshop, January 2012, 17, http://www.futureoffood.
ox.ac.uk/sites/futureoffood.ox.ac.uk/files/Sl%20report%20-%20final.pdf.
5. Ibid., 8.
6. Naylor, ''Agricultural Parity for Land De-Commodification:'
7. E. 0. Wilson and Robert MacArthur, The Theory of Island Biogeography
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967).
8. John Vandermeer, Ivette Perfecto, and Angus Wright, Nature's Matrix:
Linking Agriculture, Conservation and Food Sovereignty (London:
Earthscan, 2009).
9. James O'Connor, Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism (New York,
London: Guilford Press, 1998).
10. Leslie Lipper et al., '"Climate-Smart' Agriculture Policies, Practices and
Financing for Food Security, Adaptation and Mitigation'' (Rome: Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 2010), ii, http://

www.fao.org/docrep/013/i188le/il88le00.pdf.
11. "Climate-Smart Agriculture" (Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations, n.d.), http://www.fao.org/climate-smart-agriculture/
overview/en/.
12. See La Via Campesina https://viacampesina.org/en/.
13. E. Holt-Gimenez, Justine Williams, and Caitlyn Hachmyer, "The
World Bank Group's 2013-15 Agriculture for Action Plan: A Lesson in
Privatization, Lack of Oversight and Tired Development Paradigms;'
Development Report (Oakland, CA: Food First/Institute for Food and
Development Policy, October 2015), https://foodfirst.org/publication/
the-world-bank-groups- 2013-15-agriculture-for-action -plan -a-lesson-in-
privatization -lack-of-oversight-and-tired-development-paradigms/.
14. Rajan Sunder Kashik, Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006).
15. Nicole Barreca, "Biofortification Pioneers Win 2016 World Food Prize to
Fight Against Malnutrition;' Press release. World Food Prize. Ames, IA.
June 28, 2016, https://www.worldfoodprize.org/index.cfm/87 428/40322/
biofortification_pioneers_ win_2016_ world_food_prize_for _fight_
against_malnutrition.
16. Sally Brooks, Rice Biofortification: Lessons for Global Science and
Development (London: Earthscan Publications, 2010).
17. Klaus von Grebmer et al., "The Challenge of Hidden Hunger;' Global
Hunger Index (Bonn/Washington D.C./Dublin: International Food Policy
Research Institute, October 2014), 3.
18. Elizabeth C. Dario, "Biofortification: Trojan Horse of Corporate Food
Control?;' Development 5712 (2014): 201-9.
19. Sally Brooks, Rice Biofortification: Lessons for Global Science and
Development. (London: Earthscan Publications, 2010).
20. Dario, "Biofortification: Trojan Horse of Corporate Food Control?"
21. H. Bouis, "The Dual Global Challenges of Malnutrition and Obesity;' World
Food Prize International Symposium, Des Moines, Iowa, October 13, 2005,
4, https://www.worldfoodprize.org/documents/filelibrary/images/borlaug
_dialogue/2005/Bouis_transcript_31DE91D659E2F.pdf;
22. Dario, "Biofortification: Trojan Horse of Corporate Food Control?"
23. GAIN, "Public-Private Partnership Launched to Improve Nutrition in
Developing Countries;' Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, First
Annual Forum of the Business Alliance for Food Fortification, 2005, http://
www.gainhealth.org/knowledge-centre/first-annual-forum-business
-alliance-food-fortification/.
24. George Scrinis, Nutritionism: The Science and Politics of Dietary Advice
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).
25. Chase Purdy, '"Nature Is Not Good to Human Beings': The Chairman
of the World's Biggest Food Company Makes the Case for a New
Kind of Diet;' Quartz, December 27, 2016, http://qz.com/856541/
the-worlds-biggest-food-company-makes-the-case-for-its-avant-garde-
human-diet/.
26. "Waste;' Oxford Living Dictionary, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/
definition/waste.
27. "USDA and EPA Join with Private Sector, Charitable Organizations to Set
Nation's First Food Waste Reduction Goals;' https://www.usda.gov/oce/
foodwaste/.
28. Dana Gunders, "Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its
Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill;' National Resources Defense Council,
August 2012, https://www.nrdc.org/ sites/ default/files/wasted-food-IP. pdf
29. Dana Gunders, "Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent oflts Food
From Farm to Fork to Landfill;' National Resources Defense Council, August
2012, https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd
= l&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=OahUKEwjmnpXhlaLRAhXhlVQKHTGFCOUQ
FggcMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nrdc.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffile
s%2Fwasted-food-IP.pdf&usg=AFQjCNGQByTwl4jY7R-9EryXFloSYw57cg.
30. Brian Lipinski et al., "Reducing Food Loss and Waste;' Working Paper,
World Resources Institute, May 2013, http://www.wri.org/sites/default/
files/reducing_food_loss_and_ waste. pdf.
31. Julian Parfitt, Mark Barthel, and Sarah MacNaughton, "Food Waste within
Food Supply Chains: Quantification and Potential for Change to 2050;'
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 385 (2010): 3065-81.
32. Gunders, "Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food
from Farm to Fork to Landfill;' 12.
33. Ibid.
34. Linda Scott Kantor et al., "Estimating and Addressing America's Food Losses;'
Food Review 3 (1997), http://gleaningusa.com/PDFs/USDA-Jan97a.pd£
35. Emily Broad Leib et al., "Consumer Perceptions of Date Labels: National
Survey;' Consumer Survey, Johns Hopkins Center for a Liveable Future,
Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, National Consumers League, May 2016,
http://www.chlpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/ 12/Consumer-Perceptions-
on-Date-Labels_May-2016. pdf.
36. Caitlyn Hachmyer, "Notes from a New Farmer: Rent-Culture, Insecurity,
and the Need for Reform;' in Land Justice: Re-Imagining Land, Food and
the Commons in the United States (Oakland, CA: Food First Books, 2017).
37. Michael Specter, "How the DNA Revolution Is Changing Us;' National
Geographic, August 2016, http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/
2016/ 08/ dna -crispr-gene-editing-science-ethics/.
38. Pat Mooney, "The Corporate Strategy to Control the Food System;' public
presentation, World Social Forum. Montreal, Canada. August 13, 2016.
39. Allan Boyle, "The End of Grocery Checkers? Amazon's High-Tech Store
Points to the Future of Physical Retail;' GeekWire, December 5, 2016,
http://www.geekwire.com/2016/ the-end-of-grocery-checkers-amazons
-high-tech-convenience-store-points-to-future-of-physical-retail/.
40. George Naylor, "Agricultural Parity for Land De-Commodification;'
in Justine M. Williams and Eric Holt-Gimenez, editors, Land Justice:

Re-Imagining Land, Food and the Commons in the United States (Oakland,
CA: Food First Books, 2017).
41. David Harvey, A Brief History ofNeoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2005).
42. Boston Consulting Group, "The Next Billions: Business Strategies to
Enhance Food Value Chains and Empower the Poor" (Geneva: World
Economic Forum, 2009), http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_FB_
FoodValueChainsAndPoor_Report_2009.pdf.
43. Miguel. A. Altieri, Agroecology: The Scientific Basis ofSustainable Agriculture
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987); Stephen.R. Gliessman, Agroecology:
The Ecology of Sustainable Food Systems (New York: Taylor and Francis,
2007).
44. Eric Holt-Gimenez, Campesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America's
Farmer to Farmer Movement (Oakland, California: Food First, 2006).
45. Gene Wilken, Good Farmers: Traditional Agricultural Resource Management
in Mexico and Central America (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1988); R. Netting, Cultural Ecology, Second Edition (Prospect Heights:
Waveland Press, 1986).
46. Sylvia Kantor, "Comparing Yields with Land Equivalent Ration (LER);'
Agriculture and Natural Resources Fact Sheet, Washington State University,
2017, https://ayl 4-15.moodle.wisc.edu/prod/pluginfile.php/59463/mod_
resource/content/0/LERfactsheet.pdf.
47. M. Edelman, "The Persistence of the Peasantry;' North American Congress
on Latin America 33/5 (2000): 14-19.
48. Miguel Altieri, "Linking Ecologists and Traditional Farmers in the Search
for Sustainable Agriculture;' Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment,
2004, 35-42.
49. Jules Pretty, Regenerating Agriculture; Policies and Practice for Sustainability
and Self-Reliance (London: Earthscan Publications, 1995); Norman Uphoff,
Agroecological Innovations: Increasing Food Production with Participatory
Development (London: Earthscan, 2002).
50. Olivier de Schutter, ''Agroecology and the Right to Food;' Report of the
UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (Geneva: United Nations,
December 2010 ), http://www.srfood.org/ en/report -agroecology-and-the
-right-to-food.
51. C. Badgley et al., "Organic Agriculture and the Global Food Supply;'
Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 2212 (2007): 86-108; Jules Pretty and
Rachel Hine, "Feeding the World with Sustainable Agriculture: A Summary
of New Evidence;' Final Report from SAFE-World Research Project
(Colchester: University of Essex, 2000); E. Holt-Gimenez, "Measuring
Farmers' Agroecological Resistance after Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua:
A Case Study in Participatory, Sustainable Land Management Impact
Monitoring;' Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 93 (2002): 87-105.
52. Bruce Jennings, Foundations of International Agricultural Research: Science
and Politics in Mexican Agriculture (Boulder, CO, and London: Westview

Press, 1988).
53. P. Rosset, "Cuba's Nationwide Conversion to Organic Agriculture;'
Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 5/3 (1994): 20.
54. Samir Amin, "Food Sovereignty: A Struggle for Convergence in Diversity;'
in Food Movements Unite! Strategies to Transform Our Food Systems
(Oakland, CA: Food First Books, 2011), xi-xviii.
55. Beverly Mcintire et al., ''Agriculture at a Crossroads: International
Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for
Development;' Synthesis (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2009), http://
www.agassessment.org/.
Conclusion: Changing Everything

1. Epigraph: Karl Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach;' in Ludwig Feuerbach and
the End of Classical German Philosophy (Peking: Foreign Languages Press,
1976), https://msuweb.montclair.edu/-furrg/gned/marxtonf45.pdf, 65.
2. Nancy Fraser, "The End of Progressive Neoliberalism;' Dissent, January 2,
2017, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/progressive-neo-
liberalism -reactionary-populism-nancy-fraser.
3. Ibid.
4. E. Holt-Gimenez and A. Shattuck, "Food Crises, Food Regimes and Food
Movements: Rumblings of Reform or Tides of Transformation?;' Journal of
Peasant Studies 38, no. 1 (January 2011): 109-44.
5. Howard Zinn, "Eugene V. Debs;' in A Power Governments Cannot Oppress
(San Francisco: City Lights, 2007).
6. David Macaray, "Labor Unions and Taft-Hartley;' Counterpunch, January
1, 2008, https://www.counterpunch.org/2008/01/02/labor-unions-and-taft
-hartley/.
7. Regin Schmidt, Red: FBI and the Origins of Anticommunism in the United
States, 1919-1943 (Copenhagen, DK: Museum ofTusculanum Press, 2000).
8. Eric Bentley, Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings before the
House Committee on Un-American Activities 1938-1968, 1st ed. (New York:
Penguin Books, Ltd., 1973).
9. Poppendiek, Breadlines Knee-Deep in Wheat: Food Assistance in the Great
Depression.
10. Ben Stein, "Jn Class Warfare, Guess Which Class Is Winning;' New York
Times, November 26, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/l l/26/busi-
ness/yourmoney/26every.html.
11. Gerry Mullvany, "World's 8 Richest Have as Much Wealth as Bottom Half,
Oxfam Says;' New York Times, January 16, 2017, https://www.nytimes.
com/2017/01/ 16/world/ eight-richest-wealth-oxfam.html.
12. Jens Martens and Karolin Seitz, "Philanthropic Power and Development;
Who Shapes the Agenda?" (Aachen/Berlin/Bonn/New York: Miserior,
Global Policy Forum, November 2015), https://www.globalpolicy.org/
images/pdfs/GPFEurope/Philanthropic_Power_online.pdf.
13. E. Holt-Gimenez, "Racism and Capitalism: Dual Challenges for the

Food Movement;' Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community
Development (2015), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.530 4/jafscd.2015.052.014.
14. Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An
Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1989).
15. Nancy Fraser, "Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitimacy
and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World;' in
Transnationalizing the Public Sphere (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014), 1,
http://journals.sagepub.com/ doi/pdf/10.1177 /0263276407080090.
16. Ibid.
17. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: Marx-
Engels Internet Archive, 1995), https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/
works/1852/18th-brumaire/.
18. Jason Hickel, "The True Extent of Global Poverty and Hunger: Questioning
the Good News Narrative of the Millennium Development Goals;' Third
World Quarterly 37/5 (May 3, 2016): 749-67, doi:l0.1080/01436597.2015.l
109439.
19. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. Q. Hoare (New
2003).
Index
Absolute surplus value, 149 Anti-Slavery Campaign, 66

Affirmative action programs, 162 Appropriationism, 125, 135
Africa: climate-smart seeds in, 187 -90; AquAdvantage salmon, 79
crops of, 31; price of farmland in, 102-3 Aristotle, 86
African Agricultural Technology Asian Americans: as farmers and as
Foundation (AATF), 187-88 market, 68; as immigrants, 44
African Americans, see Blacks
Agency for International Development, "Back to the land" movement, 17
U.S. (USAID), 52, 177 Beckert, Sven, 30
Agrarian Question, 37-38 Berkeley (California), 83-84
Agrarian transition, 34-36 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 192
Agribusiness: climate-smart, 186-87; con- Biocapital, 188-90
centration in, 126 Biofortification, 191-93, 195
Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), 41 Biofuels, 97-98
Agricultural labor, 64-66; family labor as, Black Panther Party, 214
120; guest-worker programs for, 222; Blacks: Africans, 31-32; farmland owned
immigrant, 42-45, 74, 160; land and, by, 160-63; poverty among, 163; as
94-95; racial disparities among, 163; slaves, 30, 158, 159
superexploitation of, 152; Trump poli- Borlaug, Norman, 47
cies on, 221; of women, 152-54 Bouis, Howarth, 191
Agricultural land, 93-101; investments in, Bourgeoisie, 166-67
102-3; land grabs of, 93-101; owned by Bracero Program, 42, 45, 152
blacks, 160-63; sparing, 181 Brazil: Landless Workers Movement in, 83,
Agriculture: capitalist agriculture, 115-16; 84, 111; rice in, 31-32
in capitalist development, 24; climate- Britain, see Great Britain
smart agriculture, 186-87; under Buffet, Warren, 224
colonialism, 150; as contributor to Business Alliance for Food Fortification
climate change, 186; early history (BAFF), 193
of, 23; golden age of, in Britain, 26;
during Great Depression, 41-42; Green Campesino a Campesino movement,
Revolution in, 47-51; on large and 207-8,238-40
small farms, 67; rational, 135 Capital, 35-36, 74-75; biocapital, 188-90;
Agriculture, U.S. Department of: on food contradictions between labor and,
wastes, 195, 196; National Organic 183-84; markets and, 92-95
Standards Board of, 67 Capitalism, 13-18, 35-36; Agrarian
Agrifoods transition, 199-200 Question under, 33-39; agriculture
Agroecology, 72, 74, 131, 136-38, 204-11; in in development of, 24; agroecology
Brazil, 111; on climate resilience, 190-91 versus, 209; capital in, 35-36; classes
Alienation, 76, 233 in, 166-67; climate change tied to,
Amazon (firm), 199 56; Commons manipulated by, 112;
Anderson, James, 130 contradictions in, 183-86; crisis in,
Andrade, Maria, 191 235-37; democracy and, 215-16; food
Animals: Concentrated Animal Feedlot as commodities under, 57; food regime
Operations for, 19, 79, 183; inhumane under, 32-33; frontiers under, 91-92;
treatment of, 80-81; separated in farm- liberalization and reform of, 214-22;
ing process, 132 Marx on, 58; metabolic rift in, 129-30;
IND EX 275
moral economy and, 138-39; non-cap- Community Supported Agriculture

italist production existing with, 23-24; (CSAs), 67-68, 169
overproduction in, 196-98; patriarchy Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operations
under, 147; poverty under, 233; private (CAFOs), 19, 79, 183
property in, 84-85; public property in, Congress of Industrial Organizations
88; slavery and, 28-30; social reproduc- (CIO), 223
tion in, 148-51; surplus value in, 75-78; Conservative neoliberalism, 216
world hunger and, 177 Consultative Group on International
Capitalist agriculture, 115-16, 141-42; Agricultural Research (CGIAR), 52
agroecology versus, 137; as farming Contract farming, 126-28
style, 140; Marx on, 129; obstacles to Corn: fed to livestock, 203; used in biofuels,
investment in, 116-20 97; see also Maize
Carbon markets, 107 Corn Laws (U.K., 1815), 25
Cardenas, Lazaro, 109 Corporate food regime, 51-54
Central America-Dominican Republic- Corporations: benefiting by corporate food
United States Free Trade Agreement regime, 54; digital agriculture used by,
(CAFTA-DR), 53 199
Chaplin, Charlie, 223 Costa Rica, 72
Chayanov, Alexander, 36-37 Cotton, slavery used for, 28
Chemical treadmill, 121-22 Counter-movements, 216-17, 220-21;
Chickens, 80-81; contract farming of, 127 challenges facing, 222-25
Childcare, 153 Cows, 81
China, 178 Crop insurance, 117
Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 44 Cuba, 209
Chinese immigrants, 44
Chomsky, Noam, 168 Dates on foods, 198
Class, 166-68; food and, 168-71 Davis, Mike, 48
Climate change (global warming), 56, Democracy, 215-16
134-35, 186, 225 Democratic Party (U.S.), 215
Climate-smart agriculture (CSA), 186-87 Depoliticization of social movements, 225
Climate-smart seeds, 187-91 Detroit Food Policy Council, 164
Coalition oflmmokalee Workers (CIW), Development banks, 105
65-66 Diabetes, 163
Cochrane, Willard, 121 Dickenson, James, 119-20
Coffee, 72 Digital agriculture, 199
Cold War, 47 Division oflabor, 145-46, 150, 185
Collective consciousness, 167 Durkheim, Emile, 167
Colonialism, 150, 185; colonial food regimes,
32-33, 143; mechanisms of oppression in, Effective demand, 61
165; racial castes in, 157-58 Ejido system (Mexico), 108-10, 113
Commodities, 93; exchanged for money, Emancipation Proclamation (U.S., 1863),
75; farmland as, 96; food as, 58-59; land 158
as, 104-8; Marx on, 57 Enclosures, 24-25, 77
Commodity futures, 123-24 Energy, biofuels for, 97-98
Common property, 85-86 Engels, Friedrick, 147
Commons, 87-88; defenses of, 89-92; loss England, see Great Britain
of, 108-1 O; rebuilding of, 110-13 Entrepreneurial farms, 140
Communist Party (U.S.), 223 Environment, impact of neoliberal policies
Community-based organizations (CBOs), on, 54
226-27 European Union, 95, 96
276 IND EX
Exchange value, 60-70, 74; of farmland, Food proletariat, 168, 170-71

96, 101 Food regimes: colonial, 32-33, 143; corpo-
rate, 51-54; liberalization and reforms
Fairbairn, Madeleine, 98 of, 55; second, 39-47
Fair Food Program (FFP), 65-66 Food sovereignty, 201-4
Fair trade products, 71-72, 171 Food system, 213-14; under capitalism, 18;
Family farmers, 120, 201; peasant farms class in, 166-68; equality in, 164-66;
and, 140; self-exploitation by, 70-71 gender, patriarchy, and, 144-48; inequi-
Farm Bill (U.S.), 112, 169 ties in, 144; liberalization and reform
Farmers, 95, 168-69; Asian Americans as, of, 214-16; private property and, 85;
68; family farmers and smallholders, racism in, 154-56, 160-63; slavery in
120; farming styles of, 139-41; Green basis of, 30; social relations of, 80; in
Revolution's impact on, 91; race and social reproduction, 148-49; transform-
ethnicity of, 162-63; self-exploitation ing, 172; work on women in, 148
by, 70-71 Food wastes, 195-98
Farmers' markets, 68, 139, 164, 169; over- Fortified foods, 193-95
production and wastes tied to, 198 Fraser, Nancy, 16, 215-16, 229
Farming: contract farming, 126-28; food Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), 53-54
waste in, 197; history of, 23; land used Freire, Paulo, 111, 165
for, 93-95; on large and small farms, 67; Friedman, Milton, 206
rational agriculture for, 135; styles of, Frontiers, 91-92
139-41; see also Agriculture Futures (investments), 123-24
Farm labor, see Agricultural labor
Farmland, see Agricultural land Gender, 144-48
Federici, Silvia, 149 Genetically modified organisms (GMOs),
Fertilizers, 121-22; guano as, 28, 29, 130; 125-26, 134
synthetic, 131 Genetic engineering, 191, 199; of salmon,
Feudalism, 92 79, 119;ofseeds, 125-26
Financialization: of farmland, 99, 101; of Genome property, 86
food, 123-24 German immigrants, 44
Food: class and, 166-71; as commodity, Gill Tract (Berkeley, California), 83-84
57-59; end of oppression in, 171-73; Glamis Gold Corporation, 107
financialization of, 123-24; in inter- Globalization, 15, 55, 230; of exploitation,
national markets, 108; price of, 98; use 154
value and exchange value of, 60, 68-69, Global North, food exports from, 47
74 Global South: dependent on Global North
Food and Agriculture Organization, United for food, 47; farmers in, 95; foreign
Nations (FAO), 52, 178 debt of, 52-53; Free Trade Agreements
Food Chain Workers Alliance, 164 between North and, 53-54; Green
Foodies, 233 Revolution in, 47-48
Food industry, fortification of foods by, Global warming, see Climate change
193-94 Gold, 106-8
Food insecurity, 163 Goldman, Emma, 167
Food intellectuals, 169-70 Goldsmith, Oliver, 23
Food justice movements, 220 Good-food movement, 154-56, 171
Food movements, 17-18, 69-70, 171, 232; Gramsci, Antonio, 167-68, 235; on intel-
as counter-movement to neoliberalism, lectuals, 169-70
217; crisis of capitalism and, 237-38; Grange (organization), 231
ideological divisions in, 228; public Great Britain: Brexit vote in, 221; enclo-
sphere rebuilt by, 231; trends in, 220-21 sures in, 24; golden age of agriculture
IND EX 277
in, 26; moral economy developed in, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

138 Change, 97
Great Depression, 40-42, 222, 223 Internalized racism, 161
Great Recession (2007-2009), 78-79, 102 International Finance Corporation (IFC), 107
Green, Jonathan, 32 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 52-53
Green grabbing, 103 Interpersonal racism, 161
Greenhouse gas emissions, 134, 186 Investments: in agricultural land, 102-3; in
Green Revolution, 25, 47-52; agroecol- agriculture, obstacles to, 116-20; non-
ogy versus, 136, 208; displacement of farming, 122-26
peasant farmers by, 91; environmental Iowa, 99-100
destruction caused by, 206 Irish-Catholic immigrants, 159-60
Guano, 28, 29, 130 Irish immigrants, 44
Guano Islands Act (U.S., 1856), 29 Iroquois Nation, 147
Guatemala, 106-8 Island biogeography, 181
Guest-worker programs, 222
Guillen, Rosalilnda, 94-95, 155-56 Jim Crow laws, 158
Junk foods, 184
Hacienda system, 109
Hall, Gwendolyn, 31 Kautsky, Karl, 34-35, 131
Hardin, Garrett, 90-91 Keynes, John Maynard, 88
Hart-Celler Act (1965), 45 Klein, Naomi, 56
Harvey, David, 26, 61 Kristof, Nicholas, 81
Hegemony (ideological), 167-68
Herman, Edward, 168 Labor, 61; contradictions between capital
High farming, 25, 48 and, 183-84; markets and, 92-95
Hogs, 81, 127 Labor-power, 76
House Un-American Activities Committee Labor theory of value, 61-64
(HUAC), 223 Labor time, 118
Hunger, 175-80; hidden, 191-93 Labor unions: Coalition oflmmokalee
Hunter-gatherer societies, 145-46, 166 Workers, 65-66; during Great
Depression, 223; Irish-Catholic immi-
Ignatiev, Noel, 159 grants in, 159-60
Ikerd, John, 121 Land: farmland, 96-101; as investment,
Immigrants and immigration: for farm 102-3; investments in, 122-23; Locke
labor, 42-45, 74; Irish-Catholic immi- on, 88; markets and, 92-95; as private
grants, 159-60; superexploitation of, property, 84-85; Proudhon on, 89;
152; Trump policies on, 221; undocu- restructuring of, 110-13; sparing, 181;
mented workers as, 64-66 territorial restructuring of, 104-8; see
Immigration Acts (U.S.): of 1917, 44; of also Property
1924, 44-45; Hart-Celler Act (1965), 45 Land grabs, 103-4
Imperialism, guano and, 29 Land justice, 84
Indentured servants, 43 Landless Workers Movement (MST;
India, 46 Brazil), 83, 84, 111
Indigenous peoples, 164-66 Land reform, 105-6, 130; in Brazil, 111
Industrial Revolution, 24-28, 149 Land rent, 96-101, 104-5
Infrastructure, 105 Latifundios (Brazil), 111
Inheritance, 146-47 Latinos, 163
Institutional racism, 161 La Via Campesina (LVC; organization),
Intellectuals, 169-70 231,234
Interest, 93, 101 Liberal democracy, 215, 235-37
278 IND EX
Liebig, Justus von, 28, 130, 131 Department of Agriculture), 67

Livestock, 119, 132; contract farming of, Natural laws, 168
127; as contributor to climate change, Natural resources, 93
186; corn and soybeans fed to, 203; in Naylor, George, 42, 175, 180-81, 201-4
hunter-gatherer societies, 146; relative Neofascism, 17
surplus value in, 79 Neoliberalism, 15-17, 53, 226; counter-
Locally-grown food, 71 movements to, 216-17, 220-25; crisis
Locke, John, 88 in, 235-37; environmental costs of, 54;
Low, Jan, 191 on food supply, 176; in Mexico, 109-10;
Luxemburg, Rosa, 167 progressive neoliberalism, 215-17
Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, 147
MacArthur, Robert, 181 Neo-rentism, 103
Magdoff, Fred, 80-81, 132-35 Nestle (firm), 200
Maize (corn), 27; Green Revolution in, 47; Netherlands, 141
Water-Efficient Maize for Africa project New Deal, 41-42, 222
for, 187-88 Ngai, Mae, 44
Malthus, Thomas Robert, 130 Nixon, Richard M., 223
Mann, Charles, 28 Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),
Mann, Susan, 119-20 209,226-27
Markets, 92-95; as part of natural laws, North American Free Trade Agreement
168; private property exchanged on, (NAFTA), 53; ejido system abolished
113; for smallholders, 120 under, I 09-10
Marshall Plan, 46 Norway, 68
Marx, Karl, 24, 213, 232; on capitalism, 58; Nutritionism, 194-95
on capitalist agriculture, 129; on class,
167; on commodities, 57; Mies on, 151; Obesity, 163
on purchase oflabor-power, 76; on "Occupy the Farm'' movement, 83-84
surplus value, 75 Oil crisis (1972), 51
McCarthy, Joseph, 223 Open-access resources, 85-86, 89-90; fron-
Men: in hunter-gatherer societies, 146-47; tiers as, 91-92; privatization of, 112-13
hunting by, 145 Oppression, mechanisms of, 165
Mercantilism, 26, 92 Organic foods, 64, 71-72; farms producing,
Metabolic rift, 129-34; global warming as 66-67
consequence of, 134 Ostrom, Elinor, 89, 91
Mexican Farm Labor Program Agreement Over-accumulation, 101-3
(1942), 42 Overproduction of foods, 196-98, 204
Mexico, 52; agricultural labor from, 42-45,
152, 160; agricultural labor in, 94-95; Pareto optimality, 77 -78
ejido system in, 108-10, 113; Trump Parity, 40, 42, 204
policies of, 221 Patriarchy, 144-48
Mies, Maria, 150-52 Payne, Susan, 102
Mill, John Stuart, 88 Peasants: Agrarian Question on, 37-38;
Millennium Declaration (2000), 177-78 agriculture of, 24-25, 34, 36-37;
Money, 74; capital distinguished from, 35 agroecology practiced by, 136-37;
Monsanto (firm), 125-26, 188 Campesino a Campesino movement of,
Moraleconom~ 138-40 238-40; in capitalist class structure, 167;
Morgan, Lewis Henry, 147 ejido system ofland for, 108-10; during
Mwanga, Robert, 191 Green Revolution, 48-49; in Mexico, 42;
non-wage labor of, 151; peasant farms,
National Organic Standards Board (U.S. 140-41,168-69
IN DEX 279
Perfecto, Ivette, 181 Radical food movements, 220-21

Pesticides, 121-22, 132 Rainforests, 91-92
Petrini, Carlo, 171 Reactionary neoliberalism, 216, 217
Philanthropy, 217-20, 226-27 Reagan, Ronald, SS, 223
Phytonutrients, 200 Red Scares, 223
Plato, 86 Reformism and reformists, SS, 216-21;
Polanyi, Karl, 89, 92, 93, 170 during Great Depression, 223
Political economy, 84, 139, 140; of agro- Relations of production, 185
ecology, 207-8 Relative surplus value, 78-79, 149-50
Pollan, Michael, 233 Rent, 93
Pollution, 131 Rented farmland, 99-100
Poor Laws (Britain), 77 Rent-seeking behavior, 103
Population growth, 184 Reproduction, 148-54
Populism, 225 Republican Party (U.S.), 216
Potatoes, 27 Restaurant workers, 163
Poultry, 80-81; contract farming of, 127, Reverse racism, 162
128 Ricardo, David, 24, 130, 167
Poverty, 163, 233 Rice, 27-28; in Brazil, 31-32; Golden Rice,
Primitive accumulation, 26 192; Green Revolution in, 47
Primogeniture, 147 Robeson, Paul, 223
Private property, 84-85; class tied to, Roman Empire, 87-88
167; creation of, 146-47; public and Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 41
common property versus, 85-86; state
and, 88 Salinas de Gortari, Carlos, 109
Privatization, 112-13 Salmon, 79, 119
Production, 148-54 Sanchez, Gabriel, 49-SO
Productivity, 59, 62 Sarmientos, Alicia, 110
Profits, 75, 184-85 Seeds: climate-smart seeds, 187-91;
Progressive food movements, 220-21 genetically engineered, 126; of Green
Progressive neoliberalism, 16-17, 215-17, Revolution crops, 48
225 Sharecropping, 30, 126
Proletariat, 166-67 Slaves and slavery: of agricultural workers,
Property: Commons, 89-92; private, 66; capitalism and, 28-30; colonial-
8S-86; public, private, and common, ism and, IS7-S8; for farm labor, 43; in
8S-86; restructuring of, 110-13; state rice production, 27-28; Virginia Slave
and, 86-88 Codes on, 159
Proudhon, Pierre, 89 Smallholders, 120, 20S; agroecology prac-
Public property, 85-86; state and, 87 ticed by, 137, 206, 208; climate-smart
Public sphere, lS, 89, 229-32; loss of, agriculture for, 187
108-1 O; rebuilding of, 110-13 Smith, Adam, 24, 90-91
Social contracts, 87
Quinoa, S8-S9 Socially necessary labor time, 62-64, 69, 70
Social movements, lS-16; depoliticization
Race, shifting definitions of, 159 of, 225
Racial castes, 156-62 Social relations, 79; property as, 113
Racialization, 161-62 Social reproduction, 148-51
Racial justice, 162 South Carolina, 31-32
Racism, 154-56; definitions of types of, Soybeans, 97-98; fed to livestock, 203
161-62; in food system, 160-64, 166; of State, property and, 86-88
racial castes, l S6-60 Structural racism, 161
Subsidies, 96-97, 117, 203 slavery abolished in, 158; wealthy elites
Substitutionism, 125, 135; agroecology and, in, 236; during World War I, 40
137-38 Use value, 60-70, 74; of farmland, 101; in
Suret-Canale, Jean, 31 Pareto optimality, 78
Surplus value, 75-78; in agricultural pro- US Food Waste Challenge, 195
duction, 119; relative surplus value,
78-79; in social reproduction, 151 Value, 73; of farmland, 96; use value and
Sustainability: agroecology and, 136-38; of exchange value, 60-70
large-scale organic farming, 67 Vandermeer, John, 181
Sustainable intensification, 180-83; cli- van der Ploeg, Jan Douwe, 140
mate-smart agriculture and, 186 Velvet beans, 208
Virginia Slave Codes (1705), 159
Taft-Hartley Act (U.S., 1947), 223 Vitamin and mineral deficiencies, 191
Taxation, 15
Tea Party (U.S.), 217 Wages, 93
Technology, 38-39; ofbiofortification, Walker, Richard, 125
191-93; favored by reformists, 220; Washington Consensus, 53
of genetic engineering, 199; of politi- Wastes, 195-98
cal communications, 230; sustainable Water-Efficient Maize for Africa project
intensification and, 180-83; as tread- (WEMA), 187-88
mill, 121 Weber, Max, 167
Tenant farming, 126 Whites, 158; as farmers, 163; food alter-
Territorial restructuring, 104-8 natives used by, 164; Irish becoming,
Thatcher, Margaret, 55 159-60; reverse racism and, 162
Thompson, E. P., 138 Wilde, Oscar, 73
Tomato industry, workers in, 65-66 Wilson, E. 0., 181
Trade-related aspects of intellectual prop- Women: as farmworkers, 152-54; in
erty rights (TRIPs ), 53 hunter-gatherer societies, 145-47; in
Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Mexico, 11 O; under patriarchy, 145-48;
Partnership (TTIP), 54 reproductive work of, 149-51
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), 54, 221 World Bank, 52, 101; Business Alliance for
Trumbo, Dalton, 223 Food Fortification of, 193; on contract
Trump, Donald, 216, 221, 236 farming, 128; in Guatemala, 106-7
Twain, Mark, 102 World Economic Forum, 231
World Food Summit (1996), 177
Undocumented workers, 64-66 World March of Women (WMW), 234
United Kingdom, see Great Britain World Social Forum (WSF), 231
United Nations, 175 World Trade Organization (WTO), 53
United States: farmland ownership in, World War I, 40
99-100; farm workers in, 94; Free World War II, 42, 45, 152
Trade Agreements of, 53; during Great Wright, Angus, 181
Depression, 41-42; land in political
philosophy of, 88; progressive and con-
servative neoliberalism in, 215-17, 221;
CURRENT AFFA I RS I FOOD STUD I ES
"Lively, timely, and engrossing, this is the only book you need to understand
everything thafs wrong with our industrial, capitalist food systems. A capsule
history; a novice's guide or refresher course on Marx, deep theoretical
and practical understanding of food and farming, all in straightforward,
understandable language; Eric Holt-Gimenez is a national and international
treasure. He should be read even-or especially-by people who aren't foodies."
- Su SAN GEORGE , author, How the Other Half Dies: the Real Reasons for World
Hunger; President of the Transnational Institute
"A necessary book that reveals the indissoluble link between the capitalist
system and the .ills of the food system . An illuminating read for anyone who
wants to understand the forces in the field, and the dynamics in action. A book
for change, a book for the future."-(ARLO PETRINI , author; gourmet; and
founder of Slow Food International and the University of Gastronomic Sciences
"It is high time that everyone concerned about food takes a cold, hard look at
the ugly underside of our food system. That means addressing unequal relations
of wealth and power, looking capitalism in the eye, and taking it on. This is the
book to help us do that."-PETER Ross ET, author, Food is Different; professor of
agroecology at the ECOSUR Advanced Studies Institute in Chiapas, Mexico
"Shows how food has been transformed into commodity, destroying farmers'
livelihoods, destroying the health of the planet and the health of people.
Holt-Gimenez calls on each o(us to become the change we want to see in the
food system, so it nourishes the Earth and all beings." - VAN DANA SHIVA,
environmental and food activist; author, Who Really Feeds the World? The Failures
ofAgribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology
"Through the food lens, Eric Holt-Gimenez offers an arresting account of

the historic workings of capitalism, with its massive social deprivations and
environmental costs." -:-PHILIP McM1cHAEL, Cornell University; author, Food
Regimes and Agrarian Questions .
ER I c Ho LT-G I MEN Ez is the director of the Institute for Food and

Pevelopment Policy, known as Food First, a "people's think tank" dedicated to
ending the injustices that cause hunger. ·
Cover design by Leonor Hurtado and Ma rites D. Bautista ISBN 978-1-5836765-9-2

. Cover photograph by Ahna Kruzic
MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS

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What is the author's background and area of expertise?

What is the author's background and area of expertise?

What is the book about?

What is the book about?

"A book for change, a book for the future .

"- CARLO PETRIN 1

Eric Holt-Gimenez, Ph.D., is the executive director of Food

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN paper: 978-1-58367-659-2

This book is a copublication between Monthly Review Press and Food

Text is typeset in Minion Pro and Bliss

Monthly Review Press, New York

1. How Our Capitalist Food System Came to Be I 23

CONCLUSION: Changing Everything: Food, Capitalism,

WHEN ERIC HOLT-GIMENEZ ASKED ME to introduce his

We need food to live. But the purpose of food companies is not to

It doesn't matter if the food is fresh organic arugula or a Big

How did something as basic to our existence as food get trans-

though I rarely use the term. In my experience, the C word makes

A Foodies Guide to Capitalism takes you through the capitalist

T he answer of course is yes. Everyone trying to change the food

food regime. If you are unfamiliar with this approach to understand-

as undemocratic and unresponsive to the politics of identity and

Throughout the years when manufacturing cratered, the country

The fragmentation, depolitization, and neoliberal co-optation of

of progressive neoliberalism. The rise of racial intolerance, xenopho-

in chapter 3, we will look at the interrelated role that public, private,

The list of social and environmental problems caused by capital-

How Our Capitalist Food System

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,

F arming began in separate locations around the world as people

The Industrial Revolution and Northern Imperialism

The particular role of agriculture in capitalist development was

people to feed themselves and created a destitute landless class that

Slavery and Capitalism

Although slavery was commonly thought of as a pre-capitalist form of

During the mid-nineteenth century, the capitalist world

projects for westward expansion. The centrality of slavery and dispos-

Slavery had a tremendous influence on food systems around the

Jonathan Green conveys the ingenuity of Africans coming

The Food Regime

By the end of the nineteenth century, mercantilism, colonialism, and

Capitalism's Agrarian Question

Capitalism is a system in which most goods and services are produced

What Is Capital Anyway?

the capital being produced! What's important to note is that

the inevitable disappearance of the peasantry was a statistical illu-

The hotly contested Agrarian Question of the nineteenth and

industrial agriculture into the 70 percent of the world's food that is

The Second Global Food Regime: "Breadlines Knee-Deep in Wheat"

Throughout the nineteenth century most people in the world were

between food, agriculture, government, and capitalism for the next

New Deal farm programs involved conservation-supply man-

FIRST WAVE: 1600-1800

SECOND WAVE: 1820-1880

More than seven million newcomers, mostly from Western

period: about a third were Irish, many of whom were fleeing

THIRD WAVE: 1880-1920

Over roughly four decades, more than 24 million so-called