Belongings: The Fight for Land and Food

by Sally Miller

Overview

Land used to produce food is at the core of disputes, violent conflicts and despair across the world. As farmers increasingly can no longer afford to grow food and as one in ten Canadians faces food insecurity each year, it is clear that our culture-specific land systems lie at the heart of the current food and farm crises. Solutions must be implemented to ensure food security and food sovereignty in Canada and the world.
In Belongings, Sally Miller illustrates how food and farm crises result from adherence to the rules of private property. Miller looks at the state of farmland and farmers in Canada and across the world as a way of understanding ownership, land regulation and the dire situation of our ability to produce food. Hundreds of acres of prime farmland are lost each day to residential development, further restricting the ability of farmers to supply our food needs. Farmers face ever-increasing financial risks and often have to sell farmable land for commercial development to make ends meet.
Finally, Miller highlights several alternative structures of land use that are proving to be successful in Canada and across the globe and argues that the way in which we understand and manage foodlands needs to be reconsidered to achieve sustainable food systems with healthy food access for all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781552668528
Publisher:	Fernwood Publishing
Publication date:	09/01/2016
Series:	Gutenberg-e
Pages:	206
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Sally Miller has worked for almost twenty years in the alternative food, agriculture and co-op sectors, as a manager, consultant, organizer an researcher. She has degrees in anthropology and environmental studies. She has taught anthropology, writing and environmental sociology, and designed and implemented curriculum, workshops and materials for non-profits and co-ops in the U.S. and in Canada. She recently helped to found the Fourth Pig Worker Co-op, a co-op dedicated to natural and sustainable building and energy use.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction 1

Overview of Belongings 1

Testing for Principles in Farmland Solutions 4

Denaturalizing Private Property 8

Culture and Land Through Story 11

Land Without Borders 13

Other Ways of Being with Land 16

Complex Relations to Land in Agriculture 17

The Eruption of Alternatives 19

Alternative and Dominant Theories of Practice 20

2 Land For Profit, Land For Food 21

Where Has all the Farmland Gone? 24

Conversion 26

Agricultural Community: Farms Break Their Boundary Lines 28

Competition for Land: Farmers 32

Moving Away from Mid-Size Farms 35

Double Binds and the Farm Crisis 38

Succession: Who's Next? 40

Agriculture in Transition 45

A World Without Farms? 52

3 Restoring Knowledge Through History 55

Land History: Beyond Canada 64

Dying for Land 67

Land Reform 74

Resistance Starts at Home 80

Systems of Alternatives 81

Land Ho! 82

Land Grabs Through Local History 88

Revealing Power 89

4 The Principles of Private Property: Simple Principles, Complex Problems 92

Profit Defines Best Use 93

Simplicity in Agricultural Land Use 94

The Growth Principle 100

The Waste Principle 101

A House to Call Home 102

Owning Land and Nature 115

Land to the Tiller of Soil, Land to the Teller of Tales 116

A Community of Practice 129

Across the Hedgerows 132

Missing Properties 135

5 Weighing the Alternatives 137

Levelling the Playing Field: Tax Solutions 140

The Apparatus of Mapping: Zoning 141

Capital Solutions 145

Held in Trust for Farming 146

Values in Agriculture 148

Valuing Production 150

One Crop, One Disaster 151

Valuing the Soil 151

Valuing Farmland 152

The Benefits of Agriculture 154

Valuing Benefits for All 157

Making Change 159

Land, Social Purpose and the Public Purse 159

Public Interest in Land and Alternatives to the Private Property Model 160

Prevaricating Power 171

6 Landing For Change 180

Agroecological Thought 181

Notes 186

References 189

Editorial Reviews

This rich study...offers not just compelling stories but also new ways of thinking about the processes of conquest and the transformation of frontier societies into colonial societies.

Journal of African History - Meredith McKittrick