The Colloquium on Hunger, Food & (Agroecological) Alternatives[1] sought to tackle questions of how to feed the world while addressing the environmental crisis and creating just, equitable development and strong food movements.

The speakers did not directly address the question of rural-urban linkages and development as a subject area.  However, this theme is an important strand that ran throughout the day and appeared with varying strength in all of the presentations.  This paper loosely groups the speakers’ contributions as follows: Tony Weis and Frances Moore Lappé explained the current conditions and factors in the food system at a macro level.

The next four speakers presented case studies, practical examples, and links from local initiatives to international movements.  The last speaker and the talk by UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food framed how these alternatives could be achieved.

Michael Lipton’s aspect of urban bias (Kay 2009: 110) is prevalent in the talk by Tony Weis in his argument on production of meat set against the global food crisis. The growing demand for meat leads to a disproportionate increase in the demand for grain, in protein feed needed to produce meat. There is now massive production of meat globally – as Weis noted there has been a four-fold increase in meat production in only fifty years.  A “vector of inequality” is created where there is huge consumption of meat in the United States while there are hunger hotspots in the Global South where the rural areas are the most food insecure population. The animals are fed by grain, which could be shifted to human consumption. The production of meat has become an “ecological hoofprint”, a concept where Weis includes inequality as well as inter-species relations (for example, the distance between the lives of animals and those that consume them).  The production of meat has become a central point instead of production for the hungry. Meat is regarded as a reflection of development but this is development that only exacerbates the food crisis the world is having.

The world is being encouraged to change the way we think about meat and, more broadly, the entire food system as shown by Frances Moore Lappé’s presentation.“To change the course we have to change the discourse”, Lappé stated. To end the food crisis, it all starts with the way we think and the way reality is framed.  Lappé says that the mental map is the root of our crisis because it gives us dangerous messages that alarm us and cause us to act without thought and in a limited framework. For instance, regarding the issue of the food crisis, the mental map says that we have hit nature’s limit and then the solution is to go for GMO’s, which is problematic.

Focusing on rural-urban linkages, there are several important aspects to take into consideration. The first aspect is, Miguel Altieri argues, formulation and implementation of agroecology concepts in several areas and the link between them. Second, the interaction between areas is needed to build the specific network for markets, which is what Jan van der Ploeg described as the ‘nested market’. To accelerate performance of the two aspects, it is important to see the role of peasant initiatives as the third aspect, as explained by Robin Broad. Further, Martha Robbins’ discussion of La Via Campesina highlights the youth as key actors to construct a broader movement.

Agroecology as a concept cannot be generalized and duplicated in just any area. It is an exclusive concept aimed to alleviate the food problem. Agroecology concepts derive from peasant/local knowledge combined with a scientific approach that generates the specific principle of agroecology in a specific area. The agroecology concept is related to the ‘nested market’ concept as an instrument to solve the post-harvest problem, which also requires a systematic relationship within a community or communities.  In the ‘nested market’, unlike niche markets, it is necessary to invite the involvement of external groups. The challenge is how this market can engage in a broader market system that consists of actors who can connect urban and rural.

For the third aspect, the two concepts necessarily spread over a larger area and effectively become a hybrid concept in the development of urban-rural linkages. The Philippines experience demonstrated where a peasant – Danilo – should not surrender to agricultural mainstreams when he believes that the organic method is better able to compete with chemical methods economically. The crucial issue is, can Danilo’s act and belief be replicated in other places of the world? The youth group initiatives could be one essential element in the effort of duplicating Danilo’s conduct so that the knowledge will be passed across generations. An individual initiative in a rural area like Danilo’s, the youth initiatives either in rural or urban areas (such as the youth movement in Canada), and La Via Campesina as an international peasant movement, ought to be able to become an initiator and motor for agroecology and the ‘nested market’ concepts.

Eric Holt-Gimenez’s description of the ‘corporate food regime’ highlighted the nexus of the Green Revolution, structural adjustment programs and free trade in the formation of the current world food system.  He noted that companies such as Monsanto profit when food prices rise while the vulnerability and dependence created by the industrial agri-food system results in hunger, poverty and migration that cannot be solved by simply increasing production or buying more of Monsanto’s seeds.  The rural-urban connection in the food crisis is centered on the lack of access to quality food rather than lack of food itself.  The rural and urban areas are linked by the creation of rural migrants seeking better economic opportunities in the urban centers where they often join the ranks of urban poor.

Olivier de Shutter presented four pillars to address what he termed the joint poverty, ecological and nutrition crises.  His proposals focused on rebuilding local food systems, strengthening support for farmers, shifting to more “resource effective” methods and democratizing the food system to address the impact of the global food crisis (and, more broadly, the vulnerability of the entire food system) on both rural and urban populations.  These pillars include strategies to keep peasants and small-scale farmers on the land in an economically and ecologically viable way and to shorten the globalized food chains between rural producers and urban consumers.  De Shutter also argued that citizens need to regain control of the food system, which will necessarily require building alliances.

Holt-Gimenez discussed the possibilities of uniting various food movements, which he categorized as “progressive” or “radical”.  He defined the “progressive” food movements as the “doers”, those that are on the ground dealing with issues of access to food, nutrition, etc. in the Food Justice framework.  The “radical” food movements were defined as those seeking structural change and democratization of the food system in the Food Sovereignty framework.  Interestingly, de Shutter suggested that Holt-Gimenez’s dichotomy between progressives and radicals may in fact be a divide between urban food movements concerned with survival work and rural food movements concerned with transformative work.

The theme of rural-urban linkages and development is important for examining issues of hunger, food production and environmental impact. According to Tacoli (cited in Joachim von Braun 2007: 3), there are two types of flows between rural and urban areas.  The first is spatial (people, goods, money, etc.) and the second is sectoral (agricultural goods to urban areas and manufactured goods going back).The contributions of the speakers provided insights connecting the rural to the urban through these types of linkages. ‘Nested markets’, shortening the global food chain, addressing rural poverty and environmental degradation via agroecology and changing the conversation about how to solve hunger to one that re-imagines the problematic can all be examples of linkages between rural and urban and provides a new framework for discussing development in relation to the food system.

The current global food and agriculture system that relies on ever increasing production while at the same time poverty is increasing has proved a failed food regime.  The analysis of the Colloquium reinforced that this is a political problem not a technical problem about how to grow more food or fix environmental degradation with technological solutions.  The solutions will only come through strong, united social movements originating in both rural and urban contexts and mobilizing together.  Social movements can bring the idea of changing the discourse and may be the only way to achieve it.  People need to take back control of the food system through the creation of strong policy that favors agroecological, small-scale production and the viability of peasant agriculture.  As Frances Moore Lappé said, we should see ourselves as drops in a bucket rather than drops that evaporate before they hit the ground – the bucket can fill up through collective action to create political change.

Hilma Safitri

List of References
Braun, J. von (2007), “Rural-Urban Linkages for Growth, Employment and Poverty Reduction”, Keynote Speech for Ethiopian Economic Association, International Conference 7-9 June, Addis Ababa: IFPRI.

Kay, Cristóbal(2009),“Development Strategies and Rural Development: Exploring Synergies, Eradicating Poverty”, Journal of Peasant Studies, 36 (1), January 2009, pp. 103-137.

[1]All references in this paper to the ideas of Tony Weis, Frances Moore Lappé, Jan van der Ploeg, Robin Broad, Martha Robbins, Miguel Altieri, Eric Holt-Gimenez and Olivier de Shutter are based on their presentations at the Critical Agrarian Studies Colloquium #3 on December 12, 2011.