A special thanks to the folks on the Discord community, particularly Science, who took the time to transcribe the episode!
Andy: Hey folks, welcome back. This is Andy, and this is the Poor Prole’s Almanac. In this episode, we're talking about food sovereignty and imagining utopias around what food sovereignty looks like in a post-capitalist state. Dr. Bryan Dale is a faculty member at Bishops University's environment and geography program. There he focuses on food sovereignty, institutionalizing ecological farming, and agroecology practice in a capitalist setting. We have a great conversation discussing what it looks like to try to imagine a more resilient world, in which our communities are framed within an agro-ecological understanding. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do too.
Bryan’s Background
Andy: So Bryan, thanks for taking some time to chat with us. Could you tell us a little bit about your background?
Bryan: Sure. So right now I'm speaking to you from Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, which is Abenaki territory and a relatively new arrival to this area. I am now teaching at Bishops University, which is an Anglophone university in Quebec and I started with Bishops this summer, so it's with the environment and geography department and we have a lot of exciting things going on, which I'd be happy to chat about if you'd like, but we have a new sustainable agriculture and food systems program, and an educational farm which is 140 acres, so for the the department and folks involved in the program there's a big big playground that we're working with in terms of research and teaching and such. Before Bishops though, I was doing a postdoctoral fellowship with the University of Toronto Scarborough and that was a project specifically I was involved with Dr. Joe Sharma called Feeding the City, Pandemic and Beyond and prior to that I did a Ph. D. in Human Geography at the University of Toronto where I was looking at issues around climate change, food sovereignty, and agroecology.
Andy: Yeah it's an interesting triangulation of those things, and actually I'm so jealous of you that you have this essentially like you said, a playground to try stuff out and to integrate a lot of these ideas into. One of the terms that you use in particular “agroecology” is not very popular here in the United States. I don't know if it is over there at all, but I think it's a really good term that once I found it, I was like, okay, that's the term I've been trying to figure out that I think at least here in the United States a lot of people use the term “permaculture” and that has its own implications, and I think shortfalls in terms of that, versus agroecology. So I started reading some of your work and I was like oh, this makes so much sense, and articulates a lot of the concerns I had had, and highlights a couple of issues and thoughts that, you know, hadn't even occurred to me. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about agroecology, and then what you're talking about specifically with this idea of food sovereignty in Canada.
Bryan: Sure. So first of all I mean I wouldn't say that agroecology is necessarily a lot more popular in Canada by any means. I think that it's still quite an emerging concept and that's, you know, part of the reason I'm talking about it is because I think that there's a lot of value in using this concept. So in the States people use different terms here including farmers themselves when they're talking about the practices they use on their farms. Of course organic is popular, people use broader terms ecological farming, and I do use that as kind of a catch-all phrase too. There's specific kind of trends around biodynamic farming, permaculture, regenerative agriculture, so a lot of these concepts overlap, but I feel that what agroecology often does more so than some of the others is it kind of zooms out a bit, and agroecology looks at food systems more broadly and how an on-farm ecosystem functioning essentially has to work effectively and try to limit external inputs and that kind of thing, and close ecological loops which is consistent with a lot of those other terms I just mentioned, but agroecology also links up in many ways with an overlap with food sovereignty if it's interpreted effectively. So it thinks about not just closing ecological loops, but closing economic loops, thinking about more just food systems, and so there's a whole social movement dimension to agroecology that some academics talk about, the fact that agriculture can be seen as on-farm practices. Another pillar is agricology as a science which has been ongoing since around the 1920s, but then also as this you know the social movement dimensions of it. So if you bring those things together, that's kind of effective when you hit the sweet spot of agroecology, and so that's in many ways kind of how there's overlap with food sovereignty and how agroecology kind of does that more than some of those other concepts.
Visions of the Food System
Andy: Well said. So as somebody that is very focused on this idea of food sovereignty as a necessary catalyst for, I don't want to say food waste but just--just sustainability. Like, our ability to continue existing on the Earth without destroying it anymore. That process I think is inherently political, and I think might explain some of the pushback that might exist around the term agroecology. Not that necessarily there has been pushback, but I think maybe why terms such as permaculture have continued to flourish is because it can be it can be understood under a multitude of lenses, for better or worse, whereas once you tie in these ideas of food sovereignty and justice, it becomes a little bit more complicated.
Bryan: Mm-hm.
Andy: So you had actually written a piece, or you were one of the writers for a piece, called Visions of the Food System to Come which is a utopian vision for a better future, and one of the things that I think is really important for us to do as we try to paint these types of pictures of what--well--in that process of painting pictures, we're providing an alternative to the way we live and the past, which I think sometimes can be a little distracting, but oftentimes what you're doing is actually really important. Because the right can always point to the 1950s or something, say “we want to go back to that” and people--at least white people--will generally say those were better times, and we don't have that as an alternative. We can't really point to a time and say “hey this was better,” so the only thing we can do is do more of this utopian type work and say “this is what we envision.” It has to be pragmatic and based on something that people can really grapple with and visualize, and I think that piece does that. So could you talk a little bit about it?
Bryan: Absolutely yeah, happy to. So Visions of the Food System to Come was a report that we finished in the springtime, so April 2021. The full title of it is Visions of the Food System to Come: Agriculture Eating and Ecological Justice in 2050 and I say the full title in part because you know that we were kind of projecting ourselves out in 2050, and I say “we” because I worked on this with some students who did excellent research and writing for the report. Three students from the University of Toronto--Scarborough University of Toronto more broadly--and we were trying to think about how the pandemic could give us collectively, not just us in the team but you know how in many ways already the pandemic was forcing us to kind of sit back and reevaluate our food system. Suddenly there was a big focus on you know what is essential and how food systems are a big part of that.
But also, how many people were pointing to how food systems contributed to not just the COVID-19 pandemic, but the COVID-19 pandemic as the latest in a whole string of these zoonotic diseases that have been emerging because of largely how we're practicing industrial monocultural agriculture, and encroaching onto wild spaces where we haven't been before. So we were trying to you know I think you know write something that was based in research, but also would be interesting for people to check out more broadly not just you know researchers because often you prepare academic articles, and they're behind paywalls and they're hard to access and things like that and so we thought, okay, part of actually the initiative of the feeding the city project was to have it as more of a public-facing project and to document what was going on, especially in kind of Toronto--in Ontario's context around food and food system changes um as a result of the pandemic. But we wanted to document some of the advocacy and some of the changes and struggles that were happening through COVID-19.
So if people want to see the report, it's at feedingcity.org under our resources section. But we essentially were you know trying to you know to go back to what we're talking about around kind of the ideas around agroecology and food sovereignty tie together some of these ideas in a way where the narrator is speaking from the position of okay the way things have changed in 2050, and essentially what we were trying to document is a lot of these you know really good ideas around food system change that can be complementary and link up together uh from a whole bunch of different perspectives right. Not instead of thinking about things in isolation uh think about how things are are related, and often you know when we talk about things such as permaculture, regenerative farming, organic farming, you know those mean something to to people farming uh and farmers are busy you know doing a lot of work trying to make ends meet and such but you know often you know especially consumers people who are not involved with food production which is the majority of the population in North America they only understand things in a very limited limited way which you know allows for things like industrial organics to proliferate and corporate retail to just capitalize on these things. So we wanted to go into details about how we talk about land relations about trade about knowledge production and how that needs to change at various different levels if we're going to have a more ecological food system and agricultural system governance labor issues social economies so as we go over in each chapter, we try to chunk it out and take on a different topic and demonstrate how these things can be connected from the perspective of the narrator is someone who's farming in a collective approach at a farm, and thinking about all of these changes, and how they've been how they've been made possible.
Andy: Yeah, one of the things I think that stood out to me is that you go through all these things that you're talking about, these different chapters, and these different observations, about how things need to change, and the narrator is very accepting of the fact that it's not a final solution. There's still work to be done. And I think that's really important to understand, that we don't need to have all the answers, we just have to have a good framework. We can't predict everything that's going to happen as we try to make things better. We've lost thousands of years of knowledge in terms of sustainable foodways, and this is just that first step. And in it you talk a bit about food sovereignty within the context of land back, and you know how do indigenous people reclaim rightful ownership of land, and that it is a messy and complicated topic. While on the internet it's easy to just be like “XYZ this is the solution,” and you know get those woke points or whatever, it's far more complicated than that. And even in those scenarios it assumes that everyone's on the same page for that to happen, and the reality is that this vision of the food system to come isn't just for people that are like-minded politically, and I think it's really easy to get caught up in that echo chamber and to just erase those people that we don't agree with. I think it does a really good job of trying to pair all those nuances together and a really useful visionary perspective.
Bryan: Thanks. Well I mean, you know as part of what inspired us is some of the conversations around real utopias. That's a theoretical perspective that Eric Owen Wright and others have been pushing forward. I think that the thing about utopian thinking, is often that people assume that it's idealistic, or that utopia in general has a bad name in part because they associate the actual term with the idea of there being “no place” with from utopia, when utopia in terms of the the origin of the term could actually mean “good place.” So when people point to things that have worked in specific places, those real utopias are sources of inspiration, and so I think that it's one of the things that's inspiring about thinking through this is you know in in a way it provides kind of an in so that people understand that you don't just have to think about changing the whole system outright you can realize that people are already changing the system in some ways it's just a matter of replicating things that are already working and there's all kinds of different examples of that but you know when I've talked to farmers and others about what kind of system change might look like it's an overwhelming kind of proposal right when you have the idea of system change or thinking about specifically thinking about oh well what would replace the capitalist system if we're to challenge capitalism as a system it's overwhelming so you know there's feminist marxists and others who have you know kind of documented the fact that we don't need to just think about you know revolution as something that's quite dramatic, and maybe violent as like the only uh way to bring about change not to say that a lot of the tensions and a lot of the challenges are going to be easy to overcome but I'm glad you highlighted the fact that you know it is a process and people have written about how the utopianism of process is so important that it's not just about those end goals so even in writing this as we as you'll see if you look at the report in the introduction we mentioned that we welcome comments that we would be happy to revise the report moving forward and based on people's feedback if we've made mistakes you know we're not perfect we're happy to incorporate other things or other perspectives and so there's a google form on the website and there's an email address that people can contact us with ideas about kind of how to change things up and improve upon things so even we thought okay in writing this you know this can be a process itself right and envisioning these real utopias.
Cooperatives
Andy: Yeah. It's funny that what popped up in my head as you were talking about that, is a couple of friends I know (I'm in my 30s) that unabashedly hated like, Richard Wolff for cooperatives in their late teens, early 20s, now are like “you know what I get it now,” and it's that growth of the purity versus the pragmatism, and trying to find that common ground of saying, all right we're not going to have that revolution, or if we do we don't really want to, and in that process there is that whole idea of, all right well what about everyone who doesn't agree with us? You know the cooperative models and things like that. Even if they might not be my personal ideal, they're an incredibly necessary and useful tool for helping imagine a different way of living, and you know that that can be a really good first step.
Bryan: Yeah, and I think in some ways if you kind of combine the practical steps to doing things differently with a broader analysis of what system change needs to be, and keeping those things in tension, then that can drive change. As opposed to just saying, it's got to be one or the other, right? If you just say, no we can't pursue incrementalism, we can't pursue things such as cooperatives, or other things that might just be kind of isolated, and we need to think about broader scale change, or more structural change. You can do one while having an eye on the structural change that needs to happen, but I think if you don't act, and you only keep discussing the structural change, then you're not demonstrating what else is possible. So this that's you know that's true broadly, but I think the food system is a good kind of inroad to think about system change because it touches on so many different aspects of life and some of the most essential things because it's about feeding ourselves.
Andy: And agroecology is grounded in essentially mutualistic relationships with the environment around us.
Bryan: Yep, and if and if people interpret it effectively then you know mutual approaches to making sure that there's community community well-being and such as opposed to just saying okay well this is great what we're doing we've got you know people signed up to a community supported agriculture program but that's the end of that as opposed to tackling broader issues around fair labor practices and so on.
Andy: Bringing up fair labor, I do want to talk a little bit about how here in the center of the storm of capitalism in North America it's really easy to think about you know, a lot of these projects that we're talking about, regenerative farming and permaculture, as offering solutions that haven't really been thought of before. You've covered La Vía Campesina quite a bit in your work. Could you speak a little bit about this, for folks not familiar with the organization?
Bryan: Sure. So La Vía Campesina, for people who aren't familiar with it, it's what some people described as the largest social movement in the world. It is a grouping or a network or movement of largely peasants and small-scale farmers although over the years they've expanded that definition to include indigenous peoples fisher folk and when people talk about it as being one of the largest social movements in the world if not the largest social movement in the world it encompasses a lot of people and a lot of different kinds of people. La Vía Campesina has 182 member organizations that are located in 81 different countries and this keeps expanding when they have international conferences and bring on new members so people don't sign up as individuals but rather as member organizations so if I recall there's I believe four member organizations in the United States, two in Canada are two that I focused on with my Ph. D. research, and I'm still doing some work with. So in Canada it's the National Farmers Union which is across the country and Union Paysanne which is based in Quebec where I am. La Vía Campesina really has been kind of pushing the conversation forward on food sovereignty since it was formed in the early 90s. It's also making sure that people understand what these links are between food sovereignty and agroecology because you've got the United Nations, FAO, and other people who are starting to talk about agroecology, but they're making sure that these terms aren't watered down or misinterpreted or co-opted, and that's ongoing work that they're doing. So there's a quote from a La Vía Campesina representative that I often go back to and that is that I'm paraphrasing a bit but it's “without agroecology, food sovereignty is a slogan, and without food sovereignty, agroecology is a technology,” and that's especially true when people sometimes can interpret food sovereignty as just meaning like eating locally, or you know, agroecology is strictly being about the science of agriculture or the on-farm practices. So La Vía Campesina is active around the world they, had a delegation that was just a COP 26 in Glasgow I know some farmers from from Canada were there as part of that and you know making sure that they were calling it the false solutions especially those that pertain to climate change so-called solutions and agriculture and the food system. The La Vía Campesina kind of was partially what inspired me to get working on some of these issues that link climate change and system change around our food system. So they're really inspiring and I believe it's viacampesina.org if people want to check them out.
Andy: There are one of these organizations that I wasn't really familiar with until maybe a couple years ago despite being around the permaculture and regenerative agriculture movement for like 15 years which I again I think speaks to the point that I made earlier that those terms aren't usually fully cohesive and easily manipulated because they they become very apolitical and what they're doing with La Vía Campesina is really helpful in not only de-centering the anti-capitalist agricultural agroecological praxis outside of the U.S. it's also really helpful in understanding how to organize in spaces that here in the U.S. and Canada might not seem really ready or likely to have that radical change that that we're talking about. And while I might disagree with that, because I think with the right terminology a lot of these ideas are really accessible. It's something I know you did a series of interviews for some research, and I think you probably agree based on what I read from those interviews, that there's definitely a thread that people get as long as you use the right words. So I'd love to hear a little bit about that research, and your thoughts on why radical foodways haven't really taken root in a lot of rural communities.
Bryan: Yeah I mean that was one of the most interesting parts of this research that I was doing over the span of a few years, and talking to farmers and visiting farms, because I was talking to them about what some of the discourses that La Vía Campesina, or the discourses that they bring forward around the need for food sovereignty and how in order to have food sovereignty we need system change. But a lot of La Vía Campesina members are quite open to critiquing capitalism outright and saying that's what system change means. You can't have food sovereignty within the capitalist system and so on, and by extension of that then you can't have agroecology within a capitalist system as well if you're going to you know be true to you know what these terms really should be about. And so when I talked to farmers about that in the Canadian context I got mixed responses, and there's a lot of good reasons for there to be some hesitation I think around just embracing an anti-capitalist politics. That's part of the reason why when we wrote this report on visions of the food system to come in a way that's talking about system change, but it's doing it without kind of hitting people over the head with kind of a “here's our anti-capitalist platform” or you know manifesto or whatever. Part of that is because of I guess to use Gramscian terminology (I always go to the the work of Antonio Gramsci in my in my own writing, or often at least) you know we've grown up many of us within the North American context with the mainstream education system that is certainly not critiquing capitalism, and if anything it is you know pointing a finger at any alternatives as being not possible, or anti-democratic, whereas you know capitalism is associated with democracy etc etc etc. And so when I talk to farmers sometimes, I got responses from them like suggesting that, okay, the only alternative to capitalism is communism and that means lineups of the grocery store, and big state farms where you have to have no autonomy, etc. You know, you don't get to own your own toothbrush or whatever. So it's really interesting to hear farmers kind of reflect on that, whereas you know at the same time though I mean you had farmers who were involved with La Vía Campesina organizing and had been to these international conferences, and had and are quite open to critiques of capitalism. At the same time even those farmers are saying okay well we also have to talk about what the alternatives are and how we get there if we're thinking about food system transformation and transformation more broadly, you know what does this mean for me when I have to pay a mortgage or rent or whatever else? When I'm worried about the fact that I'm deeply indebted in my farm? I still need to be purchasing seeds externally? Whatever it might be, people have very practical concerns, and so I think that you know this speaks to the need for some kind of radical pedagogy or radical education around what is it to understand capitalism, and also what is it to understand what the possible alternatives are. And sometimes we get caught up in this way of thinking where we assume that all of the alternatives have been tried, and they've all failed miserably. Which we also have to appreciate is true in some ways that a lot of the alternatives have failed you in part because of geopolitics and imperialism and such too but we have to do better than we've done in the past build and work against capitalism and show that you know progression is possible without make sure that there's essentially a just transition that's possible and demonstrate that that is not unrealistic without compromising on some of the things that people enjoy like importing food. You know, having a certain quality of life, having access to do things that they want to do including farming and food production, if they're farmers we're talking about. So there's a lot going on there but it was a lot of fun kind of doing that research and reflecting on that as I spoke with farmers.
Starting from where people are
Andy: Yeah I think that was the really interesting part for me was the conversations around people that would admit the failures of capitalism. Like a part of me was reading and just being like, I just want you to understand that markets don't equate capitalism, and that like smashing that first I feel like a lot of times is like, okay once you've disconnected from “capitalism” as in the very vulgar understanding of it, and the investment component, it opens up people to those conversations of what are the alternatives. I think personally I'm of the belief that it's not my place to tell people what's right and wrong, but to just make them aware of what the alternatives are and let those communities decide what's best for them. And that again, there's so many people that are very clear in their understanding that what works, what exists today, doesn't work, and just painting a possibility of what else could be is really powerful. Reading that research piece next to the utopian piece was really interesting. Together I think I got a little bit more out of it from reading those back to back, and it's just one of those things that just really stood out to me, and I think opens the door for a lot of possibilities, and taking their lived experiences to try to figure out a new way forward.
Bryan: Yeah thanks! I mean it's about starting from where people are in many ways, and I think that I talk in a couple of these articles that I've written recently about Antonio Gramsci's thinking which he was interested in kind of thinking about education and counter-hegemonic change through education and not just kind of mainstream education but political education as well. And I talk about thinkers like Paulo Ferreira who came after who also kind of established some of these ideas. But when you talk about starting where people are, that means making sure that you're sensitive to people's lived experiences, and you know where they're coming from, and that people are going to lean towards solutions based on kind of what seems to be natural to them, or what seems to be kind of possible for them. And of course you know sometimes that means you need to challenge some of those assumptions, but you know that you need to do it in kind of a delicate way. In many cases if you're going to actually try to build some kind of movement or have you know a real process or a real conversation--and of course it's not to say that you or I or anyone else is an expert and has all the answers. Like as we're saying about things being a process, you have to work through those those conversations.I think that even thinking about another theme that came up in that one article, we're just talking about the idea that capitalism can be reformed, and that is something that a lot of non-profit organizations etc and people are pushing for at so many different levels. That's what a lot of our kind of food system solutions and things point at (apart from just individualized consumption, responsible consumption or whatever); a lot of people focus on “okay well let's try to make sure that we have better policies from our government” and so on. As opposed to how do we make sure that we don't have an anti how would we make sure we don't have just you know a perpetuation of this kind of structurally racist colonial kind of system of governance or government that we have existing, right? How do we change things more broadly? Those things have to happen, I think, through conversations and processes and beginning from where people are at in terms of their own kind of lived realities.
Using the right language
Andy: Yeah, and I always kind of fall back as somebody that does spend a lot of time in farmer communities, and working with farmers, that it comes down very often to the language and the perception and a lot of things can become very accessible to people that might be completely on the other end of the spectrum. For example the one example I always tend to use is talk to farmers or tradesmen or whatever (usually boomers) they'll say when I was a kid it used to be really cold around here, it wasn't like this. I'm like, yeah, if you don't use the word “climate change,” they're already telling you that they see the difference, but the second you say “climate change” then they're like, “no it's not that it just used to be colder.” And it's like well what do you think that is? And they don't want to go through that mental gymnastics of accepting that they've been wrong about this very politicized topic. But again, much like your research a lot of people would very explicitly point out the failures of capitalism, in terms of making their livelihoods sustainable, or even just taking care of their community. And a lot of folks would talk about the importance of that community, while also then not being able to fully shake the idea of capitalism which is very explicitly outside people investing money and manipulating through money, and all these things, that are by definition the antithesis of their values around their community and resilience and sustainability.
Bryan: Mm-hm.
Andy: So a lot of this really does come down to utilizing the right language and making it accessible. That's something I think we need to do a better job on the left, and to circle back to La Vía Campesina, one of the things I think is interesting about how they've placed themselves as something that's really hard to imagine existing in the United States. And of course there's a whole conversation that could be had about why that is. Although I am curious, since you've worked with them in Canada what was your experience with that?
Bryan: La Vía Campesina in those member organizations here?
Andy: Yeah, like how did that relate to the politics that we're talking about, and did they approach it in a different way, or was it already people predisposed to this type of politics?
Bryan: Well, as I mentioned the two member organizations of La Vía Campesina in Canada are the National Farmers Union, which has members from B.C. to the Maritime, so across the country, and Union Paysanne is focused here in Quebec, so it's a smaller organization. Both Union Paysanne and NFU have what are called non-farmer memberships, so I'm a non-farmer member of both organizations, an associate member of the NFU and a citizen member of Union Paysanne.
As I was doing research and thinking about food sovereignty in Canada, I've wanted to be involved with these organizations to contribute beyond my research. But then also to understand their struggles as well. So you know my involvement with those two organizations have been kind of at different levels and in terms of different committees, like different geographic levels. I've been involved with the NFU quite locally when I was living in Toronto, but then they also have an international committee, a migrant worker solidarity committee, and an indigenous solidarity working group, for example. So there's a lot of interesting things going on within both organizations, and now that I'm in Quebec it's easier to participate in Union Paysanne activities. I would say that I've had conversations with farmers who are members of these organizations, and then farmers who are not members of these organizations, but what's interesting in many ways is how both Union Paysanne and the NFU are grappling with some of these tensions around recognizing the need for real systemic changes, but then also trying to see what they can push for and get done with the relative power that they have, or voice that they have, on in terms of policy. And I should mention that both of these (without getting into too many details), both organizations are fairly marginal.
There are larger, more mainstream agricultural organizations that represent more farmers, and also more mainstream farmers, or more so-called “conventional” farmers. But even within say, the NFU, which is across the country, there are large farmers who are members of the NFU. You know, thousands of acres out in the prairies and such, and there's a lot of ideological diversity.
This has only deepened my appreciation of thinking about how these things operate when we talk about system change, and how we think about kind of political education starting with, from where people are thinking about policy change in the context where it seems like incrementalism is the best that could be accomplished within the Canadian context, and also different provincial levels. So yeah, I would say I've been really appreciating what that diversity means, and what it means to effectively listen. The importance of effectively listening to people in terms of their lived realities. Because, I mean, I'm not a farmer, I grew up in the city, so one of the most important things for me to appreciate is that I'm not some know-it-all just because I've done some reading about capitalism, or political economy, or climate change and system change, or whatever it might be, right?
There's a lot of of built-in wisdom among farmers, who are part of these organizations, and to go back to something you were just saying, as you were leading into that question: I was thinking about some conversations I had with folks with your example of talking about climate change, but not using the words “climate change.” When Antonio Gramsci talks about hegemony, he talks about “common sense,” which is what he would call being, you know, quite consistent with the dominant hegemony.
We could give all kinds of examples of what that would be, but what he stresses is that there's also what he calls “good sense,” and there's a potential for counter-hegemony, even though he didn't use that term. There's a potential for counter-hegemony, or good sense within the common sense. And so if you're talking about weather changes, and how your weather patterns have been changing over time, and how you're seeing these patterns increasingly, and repeating themselves and such. You know that's an inroad to possible other solutions. When we talk about policy change, you've got some people who are very much dedicated to thinking about policy change, and maybe even deliberately incrementalist approaches as the best strategy. Then you've got some people, including within the NFU, and Union Paysanne who would say “forget the government, we just need to do things our own way,” and there's wisdom in both. There's good sense in both, but you need to start with that listening, and those conversations I think, to tease it out. Okay, well you know how we appreciate that sometimes government bureaucracy gets in the way, and that's absolutely true. Sometimes, the government is not out to do anything really in the favor of farmers who are struggling against climate change, and for livelihoods and social justice and so on. When we've had in the Canadian context (and obviously similar patterns have happened in the U.S.) where it's policy changes that have led to the food system that we have right now, which is dominated by corporations and industrial agriculture.
Teasing out some of those kind of sentiments or those feelings that people have, and understanding where they're coming from I think is important, because there's a lot of truth or as I said, good sense, within some of those common sense ideas. Where you can think about maybe even though of course people who argue for policy change as a way to drive things and drive more systemic changes, yeah policy change can't agree with the sentiment, also that policy change can be quite instrumental in changing things if it's done right. But you kind of have to pair those two things, right? How do you make sure that you're gonna have some kind of policy change approaches without just relying on things as they've been done, and appreciate that in some cases the bureaucracy is going to get in the way. So how do we think about policies or demonstrating policies through things like what we were talking about, real utopias and such? How do you kind of blend some of these things as you're you know linking up kind of political education and thinking about structural changes, and not just kind of zeroing in on okay, what are the exact laws that need to change in this particular context, and can we only just push the needle a tiny little bit?
Political education
Andy: Yeah and I think to pair with that, it also gives us the opportunity, as through that political discourse of pointing to those policy changes, and how very often policy changes will end up being a shortfall to what we imagine they’ll be, and being able to point to that and say “see it's a systemic issue.” There's no real incrementalism that's going to fix the systemic problems of capitalism. And I think that whole process in itself can also be a necessary part of that education. I'd really love to actually just know a little bit more about, I guess, how to build these types of movements in places where the politics aren't what we want? Like if I were to say today and we wanted to start an organization in the U.S. that was left leaning in rural communities with farmers, what is the magic fix in that process to change those politics? And I know there's no answer, but I feel like what La Vía Campesina is doing is kind of providing--it might be in very, very broad strokes, because obviously the conditions are so different in most of the countries where they're organizing--but to kind of figure out what that formula, is and how that can be not necessarily replicated, but understood the basic components, so that it could be similarly made here in North America.
Bryan: Mm-hmm.
Andy: I don't know if there's really an answer, and I'm not really asking you it's more rhetorical I guess, because that like [laughs] fix rural capitalism! That's all.
Bryan: I will say that what La Vía Campesina in many ways offers is kind of this built-in political education for people that are involved or exposed to kind of what they're struggling for as an international movement, and part of this is about understanding the importance of solidarity and international solidarity, and how our food system can't just have happened in an isolated context. In the context of Quebec, or New England, or Canada, or the U.S., or whatever. That we need to think about these struggles in relational ways, and that they happen at different scales. You mentioned left politics, and some of the things that constrain that. You know there's a lot to be said for organizing around food and better food systems as an organizing principle, because it touches on so many different things around environmental justice, and climate justice, and so on and so forth. And I think that if rather than having those strategic conversations around the need for system change, and capitalism, and the problems associated with it, and the possibilities for other ways forward, all of those things I think can happen, but sometimes the best way to start is to say like, okay well how do we change the food system? How do we organize around that as a principle, because it affects so many different things, and also make sure that you're not forgetting to talk about the solutions that are possible--not only possible, but already being demonstrated in many cases, right?
Diet change
Andy: Yeah. I do want to ask one question that's a little bit outside of the scope of what we've been talking about. One of the things I kind of picked up on in the utopian piece is around this idea of food crops, and specifically the idea of rethinking our diet, and the the relation with seasonality, and incorporating things that are not staples of our food ways that probably should be because they're native and require very little insecticide, and pesticide, and whatever other things they might need. Things such as American groundnuts, Jerusalem artichokes, and a lot of tree crops, that we don't utilize. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on how to change that? I guess you could call it a diet infrastructure?
Bryan: Yeah [laughs] it's a good question. In the Visions of the Food System to Come report we talk about some of these issues around diet change. Of course it is important if we're gonna not have exclusively localized food systems, but more localized food systems, we need to think about eating differently, and that's going to be challenging in a context where people really prioritize their individual rights, as opposed to our collective well-being right, and their rights as consumers. We're kind of taught to be consumers first and foremost and everything else is secondary in our societies. But I think that we need to have those conversations in relation to health and people's well-being, and the fact that we would have a much more diverse and interesting food system I think if we ate more locally. You mentioned Jerusalem artichokes in the interview, didn't you?
Andy: Yeah.
Bryan: Yeah so I was at a farm where we were harvesting Jerusalem artichokes, and as I was helping with some of this work I was like, this is why I haven't had Jerusalem artichokes before now, because they're really hard to harvest, right?
Andy: Yeah.
Bryan: It's not just about what can grow where, or what's local but we don't even understand what's local and possible in some cases, because you know the the systems that are feeding our grocery stores and are what appears to be a lot of diversity and abundance, what's actually feeding into those systems, is what's easiest for for keeping labor costs down, and keeping things mechanized on farms, and what is possible in terms of transporting things long distances, right? So we end up having fairly bland food that is not very nutritious in terms of the depletion of the vitamins and nutrients in the soils. So you end up having a fairly restricted diet, even for those who can you know afford to eat pretty well, and go and buy you know organics from the grocery store.
So I think that's part of this educational process, and also this kind of governance process if we're talking about having conversations around a utopianism of process. We need to work on these things together, and think about localizing food systems, and more seasonal eating, but also appreciating that culturally there are people who are relying on diverse foods that are quite important to them in terms of their ethnic preferences. So you know a lot of imported food we just can't grow in Canada or the U.S. Especially Canada, we're restricted because of our shorter growing seasons, the lack of heat units and such that drive our agriculture differently in different places.
So I want to, you know, keep being able to drink coffee for example, and I don't think we're going to have coffee trees growing in Canada anytime soon--
Andy: Give climate change a chance!
Bryan: Yeah that's right that's--some people are optimistic about those things. But you know I think that it's there's there's a lot of people who will say that, okay well we need to make sure that we have more localized food systems, but also food sovereignty doesn't just mean seasonal eating and localized food systems, it also means fair trade relationships, and making sure that that's organized in ways that are more direct in terms of the relationships. And I know people talk about direct trade specifically, but you know moving away from more broadly just relying on a fair trade label, just like we should be moving away from relying on things like you know, organic labels as like a be all and end all kind of solution
Andy: Bryan so for folks that have listened to you and want to check out more of your work do you have a website or is there anything exciting that folks should be on the listen for?
Bryan: Well I'm continuing to work on some of these issues and think them through and learn a lot as we're talking about all these issues. I mean I realize how much I have to learn, at the same time as I've been thinking about them already. So if people want to check out my profile, they can visit the Bishops University website which is Ubishops.ca. I do have a website that is starting to get up and running which is bryandale.ca, and I'm on social media if people wanted to look me up as well.
Andy: Bryan, this has been great. Thanks so much for your time!
Bryan: My pleasure, thanks.
To listen to this interview, tune into the Poor Proles Almanac episode 77 “Shaping an Eco-agricultural Future with Dr. Bryan Dale”.
Check out Dr. Bryan's work:
https://www.bryandale.ca/
The report "Visions of Food Systems to Come" https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/projects/feedingcity/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2021/04/Visions-of-the-Food-System-to-Come_Version-1.0.pdf
The Feeding the City Lab: https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/projects/feedingcity/