10 principles of a working-class local food movement

1st principle of a working-class local food movement: Mutual aid, self-help. Working poor people are full citizens, not "clients". Hunger is not a social work problem but a structural flaw of capitalism. Working poor people must manage our own food relief organizations, democratically.

2nd Principle: Stop using the saying that "cheap food isn't good; good food isn't cheap." That's like saying to your prospective market, "if you're cheap (and by necessity we need to be cheap), you're not good." The first rule of Community Organizing Club is, Don't Insult Your Community.

3rd principle: The struggle for nutritive, quality non-toxic non-lethal food is a class struggle.  Poor folks need high-quality and organic food every bit as much as middle-class folks do.

4th principle: Solidarity.  As long as I've been involved with small-scale farmers, most have been workers off the farm too. To survive, you have to work off-farm.  Are there any purely "rural" or purely "urban" worker issues? I doubt it. People working on large-scale farms, in food processing plants, or in chain restaurants need to be able to unionize, every bit as much as workers in high-skill technical occupations.

5th Principle: Co-operation, not competition. If you look the Rochdale co-op principles, these have stood the test of time.  One member/owner, one vote.  The members own the business enterprise; it is not owned by an entrepreneur, a capitalist, nor a distant corporation.  The same model can apply to ownership and operation of farms to feed low-income people..

6th principle:  Job creation starts from the ground up.  Your town likely has a "Community Development Agency" which is busy pursuing outmoded models of "creating jobs." You need to remind them, all wealth starts from the earth, and develops with applied labor: from farming, mining, logging, or fishing. Get your CDA to start a "value-added" producers' co-op to start generating jobs & wealth.  If your town is waiting for big corporations to return and rescue it from recession, you may be waiting a long, long time.

7th principle: Public institutions impacting agriculture belong to YOU, not the corporations. Institutions like public land-grant universities and University Extensions (or “co-op extension”) are still largely publicly-funded despite the stealth privatization going on as corporate money corrupts these systems. Form a watchdog group, call Bullshit on the corporate bullshit, get nasty if you see Monsanto and other agri-business corporations like Bayer, du Pont, etc pushing their agendas in these institutions.

8th principle: Corporate foundation money belongs to YOU, the workers, NOT to the bourgeoisie who carefully dole it out to groups who will walk their corporate walk. Corporations extract ALL of their wealth by exploiting it from the working class, as well as by selling products/services to workers wearing their "consumer" hats, usually at a great profit. This is the source of all foundation wealth. Don't beg for it: demand it be deployed to feed people, not the bourgeois ego and craving for a legacy.

9th principle: All agriculture is “urban agriculture.” Can you think of any aspect of agriculture that is NOT controlled by, governed by, steered by, very wealthy men in corporations and corporate/government, operating from urban centers?  You, the small “local” farmer, can identify your interests with a starving farmworker in a former rainforest village now turned to monoculture biomass energy production (e.g. Brasil).  If you can make that connection you’re well on your way to forging alliances that will return the power where it belongs: to workers, worldwide.

10th principle Grassroots democracy. Participate, don’t be a spectator. Anyone involved in small-scale organics, local food, urban agriculture, is up against a class of powerful people running powerful corporations who wish for the small-scale farmer to disappear, lose their assets, and become one of the working poor who keep these corporations going. Trying to avoid confrontation just gives more power to the corporations.  It’s going to be a fight to regain democratic control over institutions long ago corrupted. It’s not going to be easy, it will be nasty at times, but really, what choice is there but to fight for grassroots democracy and local control over your world?