Happy Holidays Canada!

Implicating Capital: Examining the Dimensions of Food Security Discourse

Introduction: Balancing the Scales

In order to conduct research into food security, researchers need to start with a broad conceptual framework for what constitutes that security and what characterizes its absence. Not only that, but researchers must also decide the scale at which to locate their investigations: food security can be examined from a global perspective, with a national focus, at the community level, or through the lens of individuals within households. While there are probably well over 200 competing definitions for food security, only two organizations have, since the late 1970s, defined the boundaries of that debate while simultaneously providing major funding for worldwide food security research, policy, and practice: the World Bank (WB) and the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

These international and multilateral bodies, along with bit players like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO), and various other multinational agricultural interests, have formed the collective force behind which governmental and non-governmental food security policies have been historically transformed.

Through annual reports, research journals, conferences, and funding decisions, these institutions have framed food security discourse at various scales, starting in the 1970s at the global/national macroeconomic level, and subsequently transitioning to a position that today views food security as best examined at the local, microeconomic level. The question of whether or not these changes have been the result of a natural progression defined primarily by research/policy successes and failures, or whether they are in fact simply theoretical readjustments necessary to serve prevailing neoliberal economic practice, will be the focus of this paper.

Hypocritical Much?

Isn't it strange how the West expects other world leaders to take the fall for the behaviour of their security forces...

Month Two

Pigs Backing the Fuck Up

There Goes Democracy

The death of a nation.

Weekly Link Roundup

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The Concentration of Capital

Click to enlarge.

Thuggery

You don't see this on the news every day. Or, ever. Wow.

Weekly Link Roundup

FBI Teaches Agents: ‘Mainstream’ Muslims Are ‘Violent, Radical' | Council rebellion could halt Ford revolution | Supercomputer predicts revolution | Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight on ‘Lost Decade’ | Internet customer names sought for Hurt Locker suits | KenneyWatch: If a minister campaigns for a provincial party leader on his private time and no one notices... | The world after 9/11: Naomi Klein prevails again | TTC proposes fare hike, job cuts and longer wait times | Canadians living paycheque to paycheque

Copying Is Not Theft

Renderings Are Artist's Interpretation

Against the Grain: Agency & Urban Agriculture in Toronto

Introduction – Imagining a Food Secure Future in Toronto

Over the past decade, Canada has seen a dramatic rise both in local food awareness and urban agriculture projects, while simultaneously witnessing a growing dependence on food banks by its most vulnerable citizens. “In March 2010, 867,948 people were assisted by food banks in Canada. This is a 9% increase over 2009 – and the highest level of food bank use on record.” Time and again, statistics point to a relatively uniform segment of the population requiring annual food aid: the un- and under-employed, single mothers, seniors, visible minorities, students, recent immigrants, and people with physical disabilities.

Unfortunately, with the election of the Rob Ford administration to Toronto’s City Council in October 2010, the future development of a municipally-led and legislated urban agriculture movement has never looked so bleak. The Ford agenda presents an enormous challenge for food and poverty activists in the city. Policies which benefit high income earners and property owners (e.g., tax breaks) have already created budgetary shortfalls which the administration has indicated a willingness to remedy with massive cuts to social spending, the elimination of grants and regulatory oversight, and the privatization and elimination of many city services. Within this toxic policy and financial environment, the likelihood of leadership from City Hall on issues such as short-term investment designed to secure long-term quality of life improvements is slim. Nevertheless, it also creates a perfect opportunity to draw attention to the linkages between food security and income security and to imagine the genuinely radical ways in which supporting urban agriculture in Toronto can create alternative spaces in which resistance to the types of neoliberal policies mentioned above can flourish.

The relationship between hunger and income insecurity is well-established and thus forms the philosophical foundation upon which most food security organizations guide their policy, research, outreach, and community engagement. The development of urban agriculture is a symbiotic solution to both cause and effect. Urban and semi-urban food production is uniquely situated as a means to promote income security through sales and directly confront food insecurity by providing food for household and community consumption. In general terms, any comprehensive urban agriculture policy framework would be created with the input of direct and indirect stakeholders and local communities, would take into account food safety and health risks, and would focus on projects which could be instituted in a sustainable manner with organic and locally-derived inputs and little reliance on industrial production methods. The foundation for such a progressive transformation of Toronto’s foodscape could easily be appropriated from other cities with similar characteristics and already-existing urban agriculture frameworks and further developed within a local context. Additionally, provincial and federal policy could directly support programs in Toronto by, for instance, making access to safe, nutritious, and culturally-appropriate food a fundamental and constitutionally-inalienable human right.

Most importantly, urban agriculture allows for the development of agency in the very communities most likely to be affected by Rob Ford’s austerity measures, and agency comprises one of the most radical ingredients in any revolutionary reorganization of socio-political and economic systems. Forming zones of resistance to capital – zones which exist outside of its logic (i.e., co-ops, non-monetized community gardens and orchards, food shares, non-profits, etc.) – is an integral part of creating viable alternatives to the ultimately unsustainable and dis-empowering neoliberal market. By situating urban agriculture as one such site of struggle and allowing vulnerable groups to empower themselves, a future vision of a food and income secure Toronto is also a radical future vision of a Toronto where human lives and the environment come before tax breaks and profits. “In the food system […] the possibility of achieving a more equitable path of development and the social stability that only greater equity can secure requires a successful challenge of the powerful interests that have captured the economic and political agenda.”

A Framework for Building an Alternative

For most food-focused charities, agencies, and non-governmental organizations, the difference between providing short-term solutions to food insecurity and finding long-term solutions to the systemic causes of that insecurity can be found within the gap between a radical analysis and critique of neoliberal market mechanisms and its acceptance. The very structure of such organizations needs to be built upon a foundation which consists of ultimately eliminating the need for their future necessity.

To advance beyond mere food aid, food-based organizations need to actively engage in a series of multifaceted activities with the goal of one day securing a sustainable and equitable food system. The first of these activities is an active engagement in research and policy analysis (e.g., questionnaires, stakeholder interviews, etc.), the second is the fostering of client and community agency (e.g., the development of a robust urban agriculture plan), and the third is in the formation of alliances with other (non-food-based) organizations and agencies that also explicitly link poverty and class to arrive at an equally damning critique of capital. A combination of all three of these activities can challenge capital even more effectively than one or two in isolation.

Crushed

It took decades for progressives to coalesce around an alternative to Canada’s de facto two-party federal system in numbers sufficient to catapult the NDP into the role of Official Opposition. Shamefully, it took only until the conclusion of the first vote in the new House of Commons to crush any hopes that the NDP would prove to be any better than the rest of parliament.

Support for the Libyan intervention by the NDP was at least marginally understandable in the lead up to the May 2nd election. The very language of ‘humanitarian’ interventions purposefully frames any discussion and debate as being ‘against the clock’ and certainly no one wants to be seen to be responsible for civilian deaths that might have been prevented had bombs only started dropping sooner. A federal election was looming large and the NDP needed to begin the delicate process of courting liberal voters through subtle shifts in policy. Perhaps it was the case that the NDP’s historical memory was a bit hazy as to the sad legacy of such interventions and the numerous critiques of the myth of humanitarian intervention were lost on MPs with no time to read the latest analysis. And perhaps it was even the case that at the time, an entirely defensive, NATO-enforced no-fly zone, genuinely seemed like the best way to safeguard innocent lives in Benghazi.

But to support the Harper government and recommit to the Libyan mission three months later as the NDP’s first act as the Official Opposition is nothing short of criminal.

Sure, the real blame here might fairly be levelled at Harper, as the NDP and other opposition parties don’t even have enough seats to disrupt the Conservative agenda. But here’s the thing: no one expects Harper to do the right thing on Libya. Harper and his cronies are committed to purchasing new fighter jets and support continued Israeli war crimes like a badge of honour. The NDP, on the other hand, should know better, and to me, that makes them even more disgusting. They were elected with the expectation that they would at least try to do the right thing, not only because they owe it to the progressive base that mobilized to elect them in the first place, but also because until Libya, their (admittedly meagre) history of opposing ill-conceived and illegal military invasions by Canada set a refreshing precedent. It was also the perfect opportunity to quickly and confidently define a truly alternative voice with which to map the future of an NDP-led opposition. Instead, the NDP squandered the hopes and dreams of a new generation of progressive Canadian voters and then swiftly made them complicit participants in continued war crimes and crimes against humanity.

You might think it would have been even easier for the NDP to vote with a conscience when the outcome of the debate was already decided before any yeas or nays were recorded. You might think that the growing evidence of the sticky influence of oil politics on the decision to invade Libya would give cause for pause, as Wikileaks cables recently confirmed what we all knew anyway, which is that Libya is a country that has historically never played nice with the West with regards to its oil reserves. (The rebel opposition, on the other hand, which the NDP was happy to recognize officially yesterday, has already begun oil shipments to the United States.) You might be right to imagine that since the campaign has murderously and unequivocally morphed from defensively protecting airspace around rebel-held territory to offensively terrorizing Tripoli in a massive wave of bombings -- which recently included killing staff and students at a university and using helicopter gunships which continue to damage civilian targets such as hospitals, homes, and other essential, non-military infrastructure -- it would be easy to vote against the continuation of the mission in Libya. You would be wrong, however, if you assumed the NDP would see it that way.

Because the NDP has gone from supporting a neutral no-fly zone to openly supporting an increasingly clear – yet entirely illegal – mandate for violent regime change at the hands of NATO. More ominously for party faithful, perhaps, is the signal that any rhetoric by Jack Layton about shaking up the status quo in Ottawa has been decisively put to rest at the cost of thousands of innocent lives.

The Situation