No One is Coming to Feed Us
Reader Submission - Author: @SettleIt [Twitter/X]
It's January 2025, LA is burning, Richmond has no water, Helene survivors are getting kicked out of hotels by FEMA. The level of government response you grew up with is gone. This has left millions wondering; what is it going to take for Americans to say enough is enough?
The missing piece of the puzzle is food. If we can't feed ourselves, we can't disrupt the system that feeds us. If we don't source our food locally, we won't fight to stay. We urgently need communities that can feed themselves while withholding labor, communities that trust and rely on each other, and communities that understand the vital importance of the land they're living on.
A lithium battery plant went up in flames in Monterey County, CA, which happens to be the county with the largest crop output in the country. Whether it's the threat of bird flu upending the egg, poultry, dairy, and beef industries, or mass deportations brutalizing skilled farm workers, or the gradual impact of a changing climate on crop production, the era of viewing food as simply a product to be consumed is ending. We have to understand how food is produced.
In the US, forced or exploited labor is what drives agriculture. At the beginning of the ongoing covid pandemic, travel restrictions threatened the availability of migrant farm workers. When they tried to hire Americans most of them quit with some plainly saying “the work is too hard”. The same thing happened in the 60s when the US tried using high schoolers to replace migrant farm workers. Farm workers are 35 times more likely to die of heat exposure than workers in other industries, and the planet is getting hotter. We can't just pay people more, we have to radically improve the working conditions.
The structural violence that puts people in the position of producing our food is the result of capitalism, and that capitalist system is collapsing. Will we slide into ecofascism's plan to eat the bugs and own nothing? Or are we coming up with our own plan to implement ecosocialism? Where do we start?
What is ecosocialism?
Ecosocialism aims to expand on socialist and communist theory by including no contract labor. Most notably, the labor of nature that provides the material conditions for human life. In the era of global warming, we cannot ignore the conditions of our planet. Instead of letting this great task overwhelm us, now is the time to focus on what all humans must consume: food.
The short term steps towards ecosocialism are:
Grow your own food as much as possible to get a functional understanding of what your local ecosystem can produce
Support the food sovereignty of indigenous communities by learning about what they are already doing
Support migrant farm workers by learning about what they are already doing
Organize to end child labor and prison labor through boycotts, advocacy, and direct action
Support local farms with an emphasis on perennials and orchards. Trees take YEARS to replace, these are the farms we can't afford to lose
Recognize that “farmer” is not a specific term that automatically means petit bourgeois. Focus on the ownership class of agribusiness or Big Ag.
1) Grow your own food as much as possible to get a functional understanding of what your local ecosystem can produce
Please look at what our government has done to the Palestinian people, and ask yourself “if my government decided to eradicate me, what would I eat?” I want you to get garden-curious. Start at your fridge. What produce is in there? Does it grow in your area? What season? What part of the plant are you eating? Can you regrow the plant? Can you save the seeds? Is it easy to grow?
Visit a farmer's market. Notice what's available and when the season starts and ends. Ask how long they've been farming. Follow gardeners in your growing zone on social media. Post a message asking gardening friends if they need any help this season.
Try to grow a garden. Take note of what's already growing around you. If you don't have space, think about container gardening, guerilla gardening, or finding a community garden. Check out the WWOOF program to volunteer on an organic farm.
Circle back to your kitchen and learn how to preserve food through canning, fermenting, and dehydration. Learn how to cook meals from scratch for large groups. Take that kitchen job and pay attention.
At the very least start looking at your meals in terms of labor. How many people planted, harvested, processed, and transported each ingredient? What are the working conditions like? Do you know enough about an ingredient to map it?
2) Support the food sovereignty of indigenous communities by learning about what they are already doing
If you tell an American to grow their own food they tend to have two responses: you can't make me or I'll start my own “homestead” in isolation. Neither option is building food sovereignty. Instead of wasting time trying to explain to settlers why food sovereignty is valuable, focus your energy on supporting the indigenous communities already doing the work.
At the 1996 World Food Summit, in a debate about how we organize our global food systems, La Via Campesina coined the term food sovereignty; to insist upon the centrality of the small-scale food producers, the accumulated wisdom of generations, the autonomy and diversity of rural and urban communities and solidarity between peoples, as essential components for crafting policies around food and agriculture.
In the ensuing decade, social movements and civil society actors worked together to define it further “as the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations.”
The work is already happening. You just need to find what is happening near you.
Start by looking up the indigenous groups in your area. Find a reliable news source and follow it to stay up to date. Do what you can to shift your mindset to default the authority on agriculture and land management away from profit-driven science and towards indigenous knowledge.
3) Support migrant farm workers by learning about what they are already doing
This article focuses primarily on farms instead of ranches because the bird flu situation is evolving quickly. We're watching the price of eggs increase, but we're not talking about how flu vaccines are manufactured using eggs. We're watching a massive distribution of masks in the wake of the LA fires, but we're not watching a massive distribution of masks to dairy and poultry workers. This is a very dangerous situation, and it's impossible to predict exactly what's going to happen next, but there is an urgent and unmet need for PPE. The entire state of Georgia is suspending all poultry activities. Expect this to escalate.
The struggle for improved working conditions is nothing new.
When Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, establishing a minimum wage, they excluded most farmworkers and domestic workers from its protections. These workers were largely excluded again when Congress passed the Occupational Health and Safety Act in 1970. “These spaces that were once filled by slaves are now filled by immigrants,” Anita Sinha, a professor of law at American University told me. “They are exploitative by design.”
United Farm Workers was established in 1962 in response to these exploitative conditions, and remains the industry leader in labor organizing. Follow UFW for updates and attend a “Know Your Rights” training, and donate if you can.
Congress just passed the Laken Riley Act which would allow for the detention of undocumented people for the accusation of a crime, even if that crime was in another country. This would end due process as we know it and force millions to live under a constant threat of state violence. Mass deportations began on Tuesday, and honestly the situation is so dire that I don't know what to say. We can't just let this happen.
4) Organize to end child labor and prison labor through boycotts, advocacy, and direct action
The incarcerated youth and adult firefighters battling the LA fires are a stark reminder that child and prison labor are still used for dangerous work. Their “wages” are coins used to silence the talk of slavery. This is unacceptable. The problem is that most prison labor is hidden from the public. First we must identify the sources of prison and child labor then it's time to push back with advocacy, boycotts, and direct action.
The label “Made in the USA” on suspiciously cheap goods can indicate prison labor, but the problem is that prison labor is connected to hundreds of food brands. It's important to learn from Palestinian activists on the value of focused, sustained boycotts. Maybe the focus should be on strike support for incarcerated people or policy advocacy that eliminates exceptions to the minimum wage, but at the very least it should be common knowledge that forced labor feeds us in 2025.
In the 2020s, child labor has been on the rise. This 2024 article describes an 88% increase since 2019. Corporations use staffing agencies to shield themselves from legal liability. These staffing agencies that act as child labor traffickers need to be named and shamed. We have child workers in meat processing plants. It's such a dangerous position that a 16 year old died in a poultry plant after getting dragged into the machinery. A child worker pulled into machinery feels like something out of a history book, but it's happening now. It's our responsibility to determine the fastest way to end this practice.
5) Support local farms with an emphasis on perennials and orchards. Trees take YEARS to replace, these are the farms we can't afford to lose
“People who never left their hometown” is considered an insult in America, but it should be our goal to have a country full of hometowns people are happy to live in. How can we build a movement if everyone has to move for “better opportunities” every five years? Rural communities have been systemically neglected for decades. The neoliberal answer is to get a better job and abandon your community in pursuit of capital, but there is no answer for the abandoned communities. We have to do better. I believe the fastest way to get rural concerns taken seriously is to bring agriculture into urban and suburban settings through perennial victory gardens.
I'd like to see a shift where urban and suburban communities take on the responsibility of hand harvesting (blue quadrant), while rural communities focus on staples that can be machine harvested (green quadrant). Rural communities don't have the labor force to hand harvest crops for urban centers, that's why we rely on imported labor. And urban communities don't have the land to produce staples like wheat. We need each other, and the faster we recognize that the better.
Now is the time to plant emergency buffer stocks, not lose orchards. We can start supporting local farms now. Subscribe to a community supported agriculture box. Click on that Facebook listing for rhubarb. Find a farm using practices you admire and send them fan mail and five star reviews. When you can't offer money, offer recognition. This isn't to say that farming magically turns you into a good person, but it is a skill set often taken for granted so appreciation goes a long way.
6) Recognize that “farmer” is not a specific term that automatically means petit bourgeois. Focus your ire on the ownership class of agribusiness or “Big Ag”.
In today's material conditions, most farmers do not own the means of production. They're essentially gig workers but the gig is an entire harvest. Farmers can be leasing the land, they depend on purchasing soil fertility through NPK fertilizer, they often don't have the Right to Repair their own vehicles, they might not be legally allowed to save their own seed, and then distributors and processors decide if they're going to buy. Consolidated grocers and food processors tend to hold more power in the industry than farmers. “Farmer” is a complex genre of agricultural workers living in an increasingly precarious position. Take the time to understand the class position of farmers on an individual basis. Agribusiness is the enemy, not “farmers”.
Seed saving is important not only to the farmer but also to the plant. If you save seed from the plants that do well in an ecosystem, over time those plants become adapted to the local conditions. If all of the seeds come from the same source every year we're no longer selecting for the desired traits in the plant. We need more biodiversity and regionally adapted heirloom seeds that can thrive in different climates.
To wrap up, thank you for reading this. If you take one thing from this article please start looking at food in terms of labor. Try doing the work of growing food. Don't panic. Keep moving. Put down roots. Remember that we're in this together. There's a phrase that comes up often when I read indigenous writers and it's about connecting to “all my relations”. We've been alienated from our relationship to food and to the earth and to each other, and it's time to regrow those relationships or perish.
The bad news is, human actions can change the climate.
But the good news is, human actions can change the climate.
It's time to act.
Further reading:
Brazil's Landless Peasants Movement (MST)
Why the climate justice movement should put decoloniality at its core
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A preview….
Part II
Ecosocialist agricultural goals
I'd like to start with the broad vision that gets you Shirepilled and dreaming of community and nourishment. I want you to envision a world where “grocery store” just means a place where humans store food. Have you noticed how in every zombie movie there's a scene with a grocery store raid? It's like we know that after the collapse food will be free but we can only picture grocery stores. But what is after that? Is it everyone having hobbies that feed the community? Harvest festivals? Community planning? Everyone feeling needed because they are actually needed? What if every bite of food you took was a reminder of your community supporting you? What if there's a reason for hope? This is what I'm hoping for:
Everyone is fed
The working conditions of food producing workers are safe and dignified
The means of food production are owned by the community
The ecological harm is minimized, while the ecological repair is maximized
The treatment of farm animals is focused on harm reduction
The treatment of wild animals is focused on harm reduction
The full decommodification of food is realized
I LOVE this piece and want to engage with the author. I found it on Popular Resistance. I should say first that I am white, living in rural West Virginia; I'm a homesteader and grow maybe a bit more than half of the food my household (of two) consumes.
I agree that food is central. Too often city people miss this, thinking vaguely that food comes from the grocery store, congratulating themselves for having a lower footprint that rural people because they can bike or use public transportation, because apartment buildings can be heated more efficiently than many suburban or rural homes. Ignoring the reality that their food comes into town in an endless stream of trucks.
I also advocate that people grow at least some of their own food--but maybe for a different reason. I think collapse is inevitable, probably within the next decade. Those who have tried gardening, at least, will have gained some skills, some tools, which can be expanded more easily than someone who has never grown a thing. But I don't think big cities can grow much of their food. They can grow some, and should--but BIG cities likely won't be sustainable in the long run, once the fossil fuels are gone. My vision is of hubs around cities, like a CSA except that it's not a single farm but a whole network of farms supplying a network of city people who care about the way their food is grown and are willing to pay a bit more for it--sometimes, perhaps, in the form of labor.
A book and blog i recommend is Chris Smaje's Small Farm Future. He's a Brit and an academic but what he says applies just about as much to the US. One thing he says that I agree with is that it works better if farmers own their own land, usually as family farms. If I put years of labor into building a house, a barn, a root cellar, getting certain cropfields or pastures fenced, setting up a water system, I ought to be able to own that, not have someone say, "I'm appropriating this." They say a high percentage of the food in the USSR was in the little private gardens, not the communal, government-managed farms. And some things, like managing livestock, don't work well as group endeavors (they MIGHT, if you get the right group of people, but the situation is rife with opportunities for conflict and mismanagement.)
But we need a solution to how to transition from the current situation where a few monopolized agribiz corps dictate and ruin farming, to one where there are at least twenty times as many farms, most much smaller, and virtually all polycultural. Notably, we need to find a way to put young aspiring farmers on the land without their having to spend years working to afford the land, the livestock and equipment. Maybe a rule that says no-one can own more than so many acres...
This perfectly encapsulates my thoughts recently on cities not providing food for their populace like we used to. I completely agree we need more local farms and gardens, and education we’ve lost. I’m reminded of a quote from Red Help ATX: “The revolution that feeds the people, leads the people.”