Striving toward a peasant identity

The influence of the global peasant movement on three women farmers in Canada

Abstract

As diverse actors work through disparate food movements seeking to tackle the causes and effects of the global food crisis, Holt-Giménez and Shattuck (2011) call for strategic alliances between progressive and radical trends in the food movement to transform our current food system. This paper focuses on the process of alliance formation by exploring the subjectivities of three of the authors who identify as women farmers and have had opportunities to learn from and engage with peasant movements through their participation in courses, encounters and organizing spaces of La Via Campesina (LVC). These farmers’ goal of striving toward a peasant identity reveals the influence of peasant-to-peasant processes (PtPP) on their conceptions of possible futures, and simultaneously exposes tensions and struggles in agroecology transition within the Canadian context, where capitalist industrial agriculture is the norm. Using the lens of post-structural feminism, we explore the potential for radical peasant movements to influence and inspire the restructuring of our ways of relating with the earth and each other in the global North. Based on this analysis we deepen our understanding of how PtPP can foster South-North alliances which have the potential to engender food system transformation.