Community-controlled economic development as a strategic vision for the sustainable agriculture movement

Abstract

If industrial agriculture is ever to be dislodged, its opponents must achieve a strategic vision that encompasses a vast range of issues. Labour practices, pesticide reduction, farmland protection, nutrition, and consumer education must feature in a common agenda of community empowerment, breaking down the divides that splinter people socially and politically. David Campbell describes the efforts of the California Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture to coax institutions, using grassroots energy as one important means, to make serious changes in the way things get done in the world of food. It is a sophisticated, multi-dimensional approach based on a solid analysis of the context within which the sustainable agriculture movement operates as it struggles to counter the globalization of the food and agricultural economy.