Alex Heffron's The Struggle for Land substack is a reliable source of sophisticated and lucid thinking around land and agroecology. This post is an excellent argument for why you should subscribe.
I think i need a grant or some subsidies to support my class suicide programme on the farm, know any donors up for funding that 🤔 Seriously yhough I really appreciate this thinking by Alex Heffron, whose writing I am always stimulated by. What is the pathway to this revolutionary methodology for real Agroecological Food Sovereignty? Convincing the northern Europe neopeasants and small organic farmers to give their farms away, and sacrifice their families well being? Convincing working class urban dwellers to sacrifice secure low income precarious employment on new agroecological farms? Transition can only happen from where we are right now, and by building a real movement of people who actually do things. Surely organic local food systems with social justice on access to the food upfront, within actually existing capitalism is the only start point we have, and the main available people to join the movement are for the most part trapped in intergenerational livelihoods based on private land ownership?
Perhaps we need a modern equivalent of the utopian vision like Ivan Kremnev (1920) The Journey of My Brother Alexei to the Land of Peasant Utopia. Combined with pragmatic transition options to work with the actually existing northern agroecology movement?
Tried to read the article. Didn't get far. Too many big words. Too much academic slop. Back when I was a market gardener I could have made a decent living if more people would have bought from me. It wouldn't have taken much.
You are missing the boat. Small-scale farmers are being driven off the land because their neighbors won't buy from them. Duh!
I get what you were saying and maybe you didn’t mean to be so sharp, but calling someone’s contribution intellectual slop is unnecessary and insulting. Mr Haugen is a well versed and concise writer who is sharing his knowledge for public use at no charge. Needing to be nasty because you struggle with the vocabulary is childish and haven’t we all had enough of that yet?
You obviously DON'T get it when you attack me - the ad hominem argument. I don't NEED to be nasty. Stop implying the fault is mine. In fact, what you call "nasty" and "sharp" is just proper argument. There are no faults on my part. So . . . Are there too many words? Yes. Is there too much academic slop? Yes. Is Raj Patel missing the boat by not addressing the problem of lack of community support and only focusing on the macro political environment? Yes.
You seem to be easily wounded and for that I apologize. I was merely pointing out how it came across, just as you seem to have done with my comment. May your day only improve.
I am not easily wounded. You just made a bullshit comment. If you want to make an apology, then do so. Do NOT try to save your pride by two steps forward and one step back. I go to bat with rightwing dumbshits every day and they often use the same ad hominem argument you just attempted - twice. Get a grip and use better arguments if you are trying to make a point.
wonderful piece, Raj. curious what agroecology co-optation piece you are citing? The link is broken. I love this framing but am curious to what extent 'agroecology in the north' is even operational, the alt. food movement in general is hardly a movement, and its alignment with petty bourgeois interests seems foundational in its beginning (and in U.S. agrarian history) rather than an emergent issue w/in agroecology. Landlessness does support a potentially far greater politic to organize around, connected with indebtedness, renters, the precarious ... w/ agroecology as class suicide, we'd focus just as much on destruction as (re)production and land and capital access would need to be primarily through the occupation and expropriation (stop paying for stuff!), urban-rural linkages to connect lack of housing, labor precarity, spiraling inflation to shared agrarian revolution (not reform) ...
I think i need a grant or some subsidies to support my class suicide programme on the farm, know any donors up for funding that 🤔 Seriously yhough I really appreciate this thinking by Alex Heffron, whose writing I am always stimulated by. What is the pathway to this revolutionary methodology for real Agroecological Food Sovereignty? Convincing the northern Europe neopeasants and small organic farmers to give their farms away, and sacrifice their families well being? Convincing working class urban dwellers to sacrifice secure low income precarious employment on new agroecological farms? Transition can only happen from where we are right now, and by building a real movement of people who actually do things. Surely organic local food systems with social justice on access to the food upfront, within actually existing capitalism is the only start point we have, and the main available people to join the movement are for the most part trapped in intergenerational livelihoods based on private land ownership?
Perhaps we need a modern equivalent of the utopian vision like Ivan Kremnev (1920) The Journey of My Brother Alexei to the Land of Peasant Utopia. Combined with pragmatic transition options to work with the actually existing northern agroecology movement?
Tried to read the article. Didn't get far. Too many big words. Too much academic slop. Back when I was a market gardener I could have made a decent living if more people would have bought from me. It wouldn't have taken much.
You are missing the boat. Small-scale farmers are being driven off the land because their neighbors won't buy from them. Duh!
I get what you were saying and maybe you didn’t mean to be so sharp, but calling someone’s contribution intellectual slop is unnecessary and insulting. Mr Haugen is a well versed and concise writer who is sharing his knowledge for public use at no charge. Needing to be nasty because you struggle with the vocabulary is childish and haven’t we all had enough of that yet?
You obviously DON'T get it when you attack me - the ad hominem argument. I don't NEED to be nasty. Stop implying the fault is mine. In fact, what you call "nasty" and "sharp" is just proper argument. There are no faults on my part. So . . . Are there too many words? Yes. Is there too much academic slop? Yes. Is Raj Patel missing the boat by not addressing the problem of lack of community support and only focusing on the macro political environment? Yes.
You seem to be easily wounded and for that I apologize. I was merely pointing out how it came across, just as you seem to have done with my comment. May your day only improve.
I am not easily wounded. You just made a bullshit comment. If you want to make an apology, then do so. Do NOT try to save your pride by two steps forward and one step back. I go to bat with rightwing dumbshits every day and they often use the same ad hominem argument you just attempted - twice. Get a grip and use better arguments if you are trying to make a point.
wonderful piece, Raj. curious what agroecology co-optation piece you are citing? The link is broken. I love this framing but am curious to what extent 'agroecology in the north' is even operational, the alt. food movement in general is hardly a movement, and its alignment with petty bourgeois interests seems foundational in its beginning (and in U.S. agrarian history) rather than an emergent issue w/in agroecology. Landlessness does support a potentially far greater politic to organize around, connected with indebtedness, renters, the precarious ... w/ agroecology as class suicide, we'd focus just as much on destruction as (re)production and land and capital access would need to be primarily through the occupation and expropriation (stop paying for stuff!), urban-rural linkages to connect lack of housing, labor precarity, spiraling inflation to shared agrarian revolution (not reform) ...