Food democracy as radical political agroecology: securing autonomy (alterity) by subverting the state-capital nexus

Abstract

Food democracy and political agroecology, as closely allied social movements, have become associated in the main with what may be termed ‘agrarian populist’ and postcolonial problematics. While certainly ‘radical’ in relation to hegemonic neoliberal, or sub-hegemonic ‘national developmentalist’, framings of contemporary agricultural and ecological crises and their mitigatory responses to them, populist food democracy and political agroecology, it is argued here, fail convincingly to identify causality underlying the ‘political’ causes of these capitalogenic contradictions. While more convincing in identifying such causality in the ‘ecological’ domain in terms of the need to ‘localize’ and ‘re-territorialize’ food production and consumption networks, in its ‘political’ aspect populist food democracy and political agroecology demonstrate a failure to specify key ontological drivers of capitalogenic contradiction in terms of state, capital, class, and, more generally, power relations in their historical particularity. These shortcomings of ‘populist’ food democracy and agroecology in their ‘political’ aspect are exemplified by reference to key academic texts arising from the movement. The paper then proceeds to identify how these populist assumptions differ from a Marxian derived understanding of contradiction and the resulting proposal for a ‘radical’ political agroecology as substantive food democracy.

Transforming food systems in the Global South: a radical approach

“…the Global North pressures the socio-natural systems of the Global South (Tilzey, 2020). Large-scale corporations (supported by the state-capital nexus), wielding immense power, spearhead the production and commercialization of commodities (Tilzey, 2024). The deeply rootef historical legacy of colonization lingers, perpetuating extractive activities in the agricultural sector (McKay et al, 2021;Petras and Veltmeyer, 2023).…”

“…In order to outline pathways toward a radical FS transformation, our approach must be based on aspects that support such radicality. Thus, our positionality is based on a counter-hegemonic approach (Tilzey, 2016(Tilzey, , 2024, which differs from other positions that also embrace agroecology as a transformative strategy (c.f. Tilzey, 2024).…”

“…Thus, our positionality is based on a counter-hegemonic approach (Tilzey, 2016(Tilzey, , 2024, which differs from other positions that also embrace agroecology as a transformative strategy (c.f. Tilzey, 2024). Following Tilzey (2024), we stress that FS transformations needed in the four-planar social being could be rooted in radical political agroecology.…”

“…Tilzey, 2024). Following Tilzey (2024), we stress that FS transformations needed in the four-planar social being could be rooted in radical political agroecology. Here, reversing the causal mechanism of unsustainable FS embodied by the state-capital nexus depends on "class struggle" acting as a structured agency that challenges both the discursive and material predicates of capitalism (Tilzey, 2016(Tilzey, , 2018.…”

“…3 One of Tilzey's (2024) criticisms of other approaches promoting agroecology is the lack of differentiation of the peasant class. There, Tilzey proposes low, middle and upper peasants that have different characteristics and positions in resisting the state-capital nexus.…”