Thinking Like a [Political] Movement

When we pulled out of Toronto as the developers moved in, back in 1971, and took up farming in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, we found ourselves among a number of back-to-the-land families, a number of them from the USA. They were a good bunch, appropriately romantic and, I would say, looking for some integrity to their lives. But their quest was personal, not political. It wasn't based on a Big Picture, a bold critique of capitalism.

Our move was for very different reasons. We had a good life in Toronto, politically engaged in issues big and small, from Stop the Spadina Expressway to saving local parks and playgrounds from developers destruction and organizing parent-run co-op day cares. I was also the hired hand/mind for the Centre for the Study of Institutions and Theology, the first group in Canada to denounce Trudeau's invocation of the War Measures Act in 1970 to put down, as forcefully as he thought required, the 'insurrection' in Quebec.

Watching the destruction and rebuilding of the city's core by the development industry, backed by the insurance industry, I could not help but think about where the money was coming from. Clearly the insurance companies don't make anything, or provide any valuable social services. Could it be that the metropolis was sucking the blood out of the hinterland? As a student of development economics, I needed to understand this first-hand, but it was too late to go to the Third World. The problem, I felt (and still do) is here, not there, the wealthy, not the deprived. So we headed for Canada's own 'Third World' hinterland in central Nova Scotia to be involved in some primary economic activity, which turned out to be a marginal farm with a dozen beef cows in the gravelly hills left by the glaciers.

All of which is to say that unlike our other friends 'from away', we started with a Big Picture and a political motivation, although I have to hastily add that I deeply enjoyed the hard physical labour and our life on the land. We raised beef cattle, then sheep, most of our own food, and two children, who learned to speak for themselves, as many of you know. When our back-to-the-land neighbours began to face the prospect of their kids attending the local schools, with all the cultural trappings that implies, they began to reconsider their location and by and large moved back to more 'civilized' places. We stayed, farmed, agitated and organized. For Cathleen the organizing included the Pictou County Women's Centre and the annual Sheep Fair; for me it was the Northumberland Lamb Marketing Coop and the Brookside Cooperative Abattoir, both owned and operated by sheep farmers and supplying the major food retailer in the province, Sobey's, with fresh lamb year round.

When our children deserted us for university and we could no longer count on their labour (we have often facetiously, though not inaccurately, referred to them as our 'indentured' labour), we moved back to Toronto to carry on the political program. That's when I wrote From Land to Mouth - Understanding the Food System, which is all about the visible parts of the system and the larger picture they compose.

Many years later (embarrassingly many) I got to wondering why I had studied theology in the late 1950s. I had never intended to become a priest or pastor, but I wanted, as I thought about it at the time, the discipline. But 50 years later I realized that it was really that theology, particularly with Reinhold Niebuhr, the dean of 'Christian realism', at Union Theological Seminary in New York, was where global politics were being taken most seriously. The Cold War was at its height, and nuclear deterrence – Mutually Assured Destruction, MAD) – was a top subject of debate, which encouraged my pacifism.

Now, as readers of The Ram's Horn know, I'm still preoccupied with putting the pieces of the puzzle together to see, and question, the composition that emerges.

Where does the food movement fit in? Is it just a larger and more complex version of the 1970s back-to-the-land individualism and romanticism (or idealism)? or is it – or might it become – a political movement with a vision – and even hope – for society based on equity, sufficiency, and respect? Might the food movement even revive a 1960s-style utopian vision?

In the early 1960s there was a strong international peace movement and a very strong New Left political movement. Socialism was not a bad word and there were many dynamic and creative movements in a number of communist states (Czechoslovakia, Cuba, and Yugoslavia come to mind). But the Soviets got scared and forcefully smashed the 'Prague Spring' in 1968. The utopian dreams dissolved into disillusion – rightly or wrongly – and individualism replaced a social identity as the focus of activism. The founding document of the New Left in the USA, the Port Huron Statement of 1962, states:

" . . . we seek the establishment of a democracy of individual participation governed by two central aims: that the individual share in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life; that society be organized to encourage independence in men [sic] and provide the media for their common participation . . . "

As Tony Judt put it, "The politics of the '60s thus devolved into an aggregation of individual claims upon society and the state." (Ill Fares the Land, Penguin Press, 2010) Judt wrote very much as an American, but his analysis – with which I agree – about what was happening at that time really defines the challenge we face today if the food movement is going to become a political movement.

". . . the example of the anti-politics of the '70s, together with the emphasis on human rights, has perhaps misled a generation of young activists into believing that, conventional avenues of change being hopelessly clogged, they should forsake political organization for single-issue, non-governmental groups unsullied by compromise. Consequently, the first thought of that occurs to a young person seeking a way to 'get involved' is to sign up with Amnesty International or Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch or Doctors without Borders."

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet empire and its constituent states left, for a while, a unipolar world dominated by the USA and its military might. Capitalism, it was proclaimed, had won. There was no longer any place in the world for utopian visions. In the words of British PM Margaret Thatcher, There Is No Alternative. Now Stephen Harper wants us to believe this as well, so he can carry on with his right-wing agenda, systematically eroding and privatizing the public realm, without undue resistance. Jail and exile will await those who resist. Needless to say, we find this unacceptable.

So, what of the food movement? Just as in the '70s, the runaway growth of the food movement derives from a deep personal commitment to change. The characteristics of the contemporary industrial food system that I described in From Land to Mouth – distancing, monoculture/uniformity, and linearity – are being challenged by a raft of initiatives to reduce the distance between food providers and eaters and to encourage diversity in every aspect of the system. These are the seeds of a different model of a food system.

The food movement is clearly a cultural phenomenon of great significance. With the publication in April of the People's Food Policy (Resetting the Table: A People's Food Policy for Canada – available at www.peoplesfoodpolicy.ca) it has now become a political phenomenon as well, as more than 3,500 people participated over two years in the framing of their work – and their frustrations – in policy proposals to support resilience, ecological and economic sustainability, and social justice in the food system. These policies, and the multitude of interventions, comments and ongoing debates on which they are based, are rooted in the concepts of food sovereignty, a concept brought to international forums by the global peasant movement La Via Campesina. Food sovereignty "puts those who produce, distribute and need wholesome, local food at the heart of food, agricultural, livestock and fisheries systems and policies, rather than the demands of markets and corporations that reduce food to internationally tradable commodities and components" (Nyéléni, 2007).

In adopting the People's Food Policy process, Food Secure Canada recognizes that the food movement needs a political program in addition to the practical work of building diversity and resilience. At some point, though, this needs to make the connections between the food system and the increasing inequity in our society, corporate definition and control of the economy, and the criminalization and militarization of society as a whole. The People's Food Policy calls for a political program committed to the public good and equity for all, both within Canada and globally. Are we ready to call for a restructured economy of enough, not growth; equitable and progressive taxation, including of corporations; a revived democracy? Do we dare to talk about a new socialism with a global policy of peace and social justice?