The Climate Crisis, COP26 and Small-farmer Solutions.

The Climate Crisis, which sits at the intersection of many social and environmental justice issues, is one of the biggest issues facing the world today. As the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) gears up to start in Glasgow on October 31st, there is still a large gap in the conversations about the role food and agriculture play in the climate crisis. It is calculated that agriculture, forestry and land use account for approximately 24% of greenhouse gas emissions. But this analysis is incomplete, as it focuses primarily on emissions generated on the farm and does not include ongoing land conversion, agricultural driven deforestation, food waste, input production (fertilizers and pesticides) and the global transportation network that facilitates industrial agriculture.  

How Did We Get Here? 

Small farmers, including fishers, pastoralists and indigenous people and farmworkers are on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Agriculture has a long history of negative social and ecological impacts, from forced labor and slavery, Indigenous land theft, and colonialism to the destructive nature of rapid industrialization. Modern industrial agriculture is rooted in colonial models, where intensive plantation economies were set up with the goal to extract as much wealth and resources as quickly as possible, relying on slave labor theft of Indigenous land and draining natural resources.

The 1950s and 60s began a period of industrialization of agriculture around the world by developing high-yielding varieties of cereal grains that are grown with modern scientific methods of utilizing synthetic fertilizers, agrochemicals, and pesticides. This period, dubbed as the Green Revolution, was often promoted under the guise of poverty and hunger reduction but despite creating huge surpluses, hunger actually increased, genetic diversity declined, and farmers were further impoverished. Largely due to the monopolies and control of agricultural mega corporations like Monsanto (now Bayer), peasant farmers and social movements have resisted the Green Revolution’s advance since its inception, most recently with the massive 2020 Farmer Protest in India.   

Agriculture as Extraction

The expansion of the global agricultural footprint is the cornerstone of extractive agricultural practices. Agriculture land becomes increasingly degraded due to industrial practices, threatening the global insect population and destroying biodiverse ecosystems. As land gets degraded, those profiting continually look to convert more productive land through deforestation and burning, displacing local, Indigenous and rural communities.

Built upon years of exploitation, agriculture’s legacy is one of deep structural human rights abuses. Farmworkers and workers across the food system are saddled with low wages, lack legal protections, retaliation for organizing and unionizing, health hazards due to pesticides and fertilizers and exacerbated dangers from climate change effects of high heats, massive flooding and hazardous air quality. Women farmers are regularly excluded from holding land rights and accessing credit, limiting their agency over their livelihoods, children and homes. Farmers and indigenous people are stripped of land and territory rights and those who fight against extraction are targeted and killed, with 227 Land Defenders killed in 2020. The symptoms of the extractive model are visible  on the farm and plantation--and they extend the conversion of national agricultural economies to export-led growth, trapping poor countries in an underdevelopment cycle. 

Former colonies have remained trapped in cycles of dependence to rich countries, replicating colonial economic structures, including forced and child labor, poverty wages and unfair payments farmers’ production. Unequal free trade agreements, gutting of local and regional economies and production, transnational corporation control and exploitative development policies shackles former-colonies to global systems dominated by wealthy countries.

Agroecology and Climate Change

Although the pressure from the Green Revolution models of thinking and global capitalist economies in market and policy pushes agriculture towards monocultures and large farms, small farmers continue to feed the majority of the world. Known as the “productivity paradox,” small farmers produce more food on less land with small farmers feeding 70% of the world using only 25% of the agricultural resources.

Small, peasant and indigenous farmers practicing agroecology are building off of traditional knowledge, protecting biodiversity, and farming in ways that mimic natural land. All this while feeding the world. Agroecology is an integrated approach to integrate relationships between plants, animals, humans and the environment while taking into consideration the social aspects that need to create a sustainable and fair food system.  Unlike other concepts like “sustainable” and “organic,” which focus exclusively on practices and prohibitions, agroecology is a holistic approach that combines indigenous knowledge with academic research, farmer livelihoods and economic & social components to address the root causes of problems and seek long-term solutions. 

While agroecology is highly specific to localized contexts, the various practices of agroecology (such as intercropping, traditional fishing and mobile pastoralism, integrating crops, trees, livestock and fish, manuring, compost, local seeds and animal breeds, etc.) are grounded in the same ecological principles of managing biodiversity, building life and nutrients in the soil, restoration of water, and energy conservation.

False Promises and Corporate Capture 

Corporations and institutions are working to greenwash conventional agriculture as “regenerative” or “climate-smart” or “carbon farming”, all while ignoring the power inequity in the food system and the material conditions of farmers, farmworkers and other workers from the global majority. “Carbon Markets” are emerging in the agriculture sector as dirty industries look to “offset” their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through schemes that purport to enhance agricultural soil’s capacity to sequester carbon. Commoditizing carbon only enriches wealthy landowners, all while incentivizing and rewarding activities that violate human rights, like land grabbing and displacing Indigenous, rural and forest communities from their land.

Despite consensus on the destructive impacts of industrial agriculture, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other bodies of the United Nations continue to prioritize the interests of transnational corporations and agribusiness over significantly investing in community-driven agroecological solutions.

Peasant and Farmer Movement Solutions 

Global movements of peasants, smallholder farmers, Indigenous people and farmworkers are not just pushing back on the industrialized food system that is fueling the climate crisis, destroying local ecosystems and biodiversity and violating human rights. Instead, they are actively putting into practice a vision that supports people and the planet. 

 La Via Campesina, a movement of  millions of peasants, small and medium-size farmers, landless people, women farmers, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers, has been organizing for food sovereignty since the 1990s. Food sovereignty is defined as “the right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through sustainable methods and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It is based on a model of small-scale sustainable production benefiting communities and the environment. It includes the struggle for land and genuine agrarian reform that ensures that the rights to use and manage lands, territories, water, seeds, livestock and biodiversity are in the hands of those who produce food and not of the corporate sector.” Smallholder farmers and peasant communities are already building off of a strong history of practicing alternatives to our industrial, corporate dominated food system that prioritize life over profits.