Abstracts in English - Food Soveregnity

❚ JASON W. MOORE: CHEAP FOOD AND BAD CLIMATE: FROM SURPLUS VALUE TO NEGATIVE VALUE IN THE CAPITALIST WORLD-ECOLOGY

Capitalism, understood as a world-ecology that joins accumulation, power, and nature in dialectical unity, has been adept at evading so-called Malthusian dynamics through an astonishing historical capacity to produce, locate, and occupy cheap natures external to the system. In recent decades, the last frontiers have closed, and this astonishing historical capacity has withered. This “withering” is perhaps most evident in capitalism’s failure to offer a new, actually productive, agricultural model—as agrobiotechnology failed to deliver on its promissory notes. Moving from bad to worse, a second set of contradictions is now mediated through climate change. Climate change, one among many ongoing biospheric shifts, is interwoven with the totality of neoliberal agriculture’s contradictions to produce a new contradiction: negative value. This signals the emergence of forms of nature that are increasingly hostile to capital accumulation and that can be temporarily fixed (if at all) only through increasingly costly, toxic, and dangerous strategies. The rise of negative value—whose accumulation has been latent for much of capitalist history—therefore suggests a significant and rapid erosion of opportunities for the appropriation of new streams of unpaid work/energy. As such, these new limits are qualitatively different from the nutrient and resource depletion of earlier, developmental crises of the longue dure´e Cheap Food model. These contradictions, within capital, arising from negative value, are today encouraging an unprecedented shift toward a radical ontological politics, within capitalism as a whole, that destabilizes crucial points of agreement in the modern world system: What is food? What is nature? What is valuable?

❚ TAMÁS L. BARTA: LAND REFORM AND AGRARIAN DEMOCRACY IN HUNGARY IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY

In the first decades of the 20th century agriculture was the dominant sector of the economy in Hungary. In that case ownership of the land was a very important question in social debates and conflicts. The majority of the agricultural workers did not own land. Large-sized lands possessed mainly by aristocrats dominated in the food production. From the 1880s the increased production of grain from the American continent meant a great challenge for the Hungarian economics. Changes in the structure of land ownership became more and more urgent not just because of the disproportion of the Hungarian society, but also in the case of the necessary more intensive melioration of farming and to make the production of agriculture more diversified and to product more fruits, vegetables to the international market. This process was easier to realize on smaller farms and with the help of cooperatives. In the 1890s peasant parties started to organize in whole Eastern and Central Europe and in Hungary as well. Their goals were similar everywhere: a redistributive land reform which produce more equal small size family farms instead of the great possessions of aristocrats. In Hungary the peasant parties had two main branches: one of them is the agrarian socialist branch which had its traditions mainly on the territory of the Great Hungarian Plain and tried to organize primarily the landless agricultural workers. The other is the so-called smallholders’ movement which was more important in the Transdanubian counties of Hungary and was supported mainly by the wealthier farmers. All the peasant parties had the chance to realize their plans and redistribute land with a great reform after the II World War, but some years after the Stalinist dictatorship started a Soviet-modelled violent collectivization which ended the alternative plans for small-scale farms and the smallholders’ cooperatives organized from below.

❚ IZÓRA GÁL – MELINDA MIHÁLY – GÁBOR DÁNIEL VELKEY: THE SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL DILEMMAS OF FOOD PRODUCTION - AN EXAMPLE OF A PRODUCER ORGANIZATION

In the context of the ecological and climate crisis and growing socio-spatial inequalities, there is an increasing urgency to think about environmentally and socially sustainable food-provisioning, the possible structures of food-sovereignty. The currently dominant economic system keeps the prices of food, raw materials, labor, and energy low by exploiting nature and people (Moore 2019 [2014]). Through studying a producer cooperation that was able to survive several eras (including state socialism) we would like to understand those structural pressures that push a producer organisation to externalise the costs of production on the society (employees) and on nature. Our research question: How does the globalized food system shape the strategies of a producer organization aiming to help producers to survive? What social (labor cheapening) and environmental (e.g., soil degradation, environmental impact through the use of plastics and chemicals) exploitation mechanisms does a producer cooperation existing under the pressures of global capitalism have? We aim to answer the research question in an interdisciplinary author community through the analysis of semi-structured interviews with farmers and local decision makers (39) and field notes from participant observation (day laborers working on films and 1-1 working days with packaging plant staff).

❚ HERSTORY COLLECTIVE: A FEMINIST READING OF THE CENTRAL AND PERIPHERAL FOOD SOVEREIGNTY MOVEMENTS AND INITIATIVES IN HUNGARY

Both green organisations focusing on food sovereignty and feminist associations have a long history in Hungary, but their programs and goals have barely found common ground in the past decades. Literature exploring food sovereignty practices shows that more attention has been paid to the grassroots movements’ discourse than to the lived experiences of women and men involved in local food production. In this multi-authored paper, the HerStory collective spots the Hungarian green and feminist initiatives’ common grounds and addresses the current food sovereignty research gap. It explores the concept and practices of food sovereignty from the perspective of women living and/or farming in rural Hungary. Furthermore, it uncovers what problems and solutions, individual struggles and coping strategies emerge on the periphery of green and feminist initiatives. Academic and activist approaches simultaneously applied in this paper in the following three parts: (1) review of green and feminist initiatives, (2) a methodological account and semi-structured interview analysis (3) recommendations regarding collective actions in the food sovereignty movements and a solidarity base available for women and communities outside the movements’ zone.

❚ PÁL GÉZA BALOGH – AMBRUS MICHELS – ÁGNES SZEGEDYNÉ FRICZ: THE MISSING LINK. DILEMMAS OF LINKING FARMERS AND CONSUMERS IN SHORT FOOD CHAINS

Hundreds of thousands of traditional producers with several generations of agricultural backgrounds continue to farm in Hungary. While the consumer demand in favor of farmers products has also emerged, and more and more alternative food networks are serving them, these traditional producers are only participating in these networks in very small numbers. Looking at the historical roots of this problem using the notion of “parallel separateness,” we demonstrate that the social distance between producers and consumers has increased to a much greater extent in recent decades than before. Traditional producers lack the knowledge needed to connect to alternative food networks. As a result, the role of reflexive agents increased. These institutions can connect the two separating subsystems and incorporate the perspectives of both producers and consumers into their operation and fill the missing knowledge. Based on the operation of the Association for the Living Tisza and the Nyíregyháza Basket Community, we demonstrated how such an institution can play the role of the missing link.

❚ BÁLINT BALÁZS – LILI BALOGH – KATALIN RÉTHY: WHICH WAY FOR AGROECOLOGY? AGROECOLOGY IN HUNGARY: CURRENT STATE, ACTORS AND DIRECTIONS OF DEVELOPMENT

The initially interdisciplinary scientific approach of agroecology has gradually opened toward sustainable agricultural practices, traditional, local ecological knowledge, international peasant movements struggling for seed and food self-sufficiency and the political aspirations of NGOs. From 2010 onwards, more and more actors are participating in the agroecology inspired transformation of the food system: non-governmental organizations setting the standard of agro-ecology, FAO agro-ecological symposiums, farmers’ direct contact with consumers, and social movements, international peasant movements and activists criticizing the social injustice and ecological unsustainability of globalized food markets. Redefining the relationship between man and nature would require taking into account different knowledge systems, giving a more prominent place to traditional ecological knowledge, a set of farming principles and practices that can be as guiding for survival as our scientific knowledge. In the international arena, there are perceptibly sharpened contradictions around agroecology, irreconcilable positions, and attempts to appropriate the concept. Meanwhile in Hungary the basic infrastructure of research, development and education, as well as the policies and support systems that would best establish the agroecological transformation of our food system, including agriculture and food distribution, have been stagnant for decades. Our research reviewed the practical implementation of agroecology in Hungary, which is undoubtedly a niche market of food production; moreover, it is also surrounded by the misconception of uncompetitiveness. The article considers the conditions of the agroecological shift and the possibilities of establishing a national network. Our longterm goal is to establish a nationwide agroecological knowledge network and to help joint action leading to food system level transformation.

❚ SÁNDOR KOZÁK: THE HISTORY OF SUGAR AS THE HISTORY OF CAPITALISM? (REVIEW OF SIDNEY MINTZ: SWEETNES AND POWER)

❚ ZSÓFIA ÁDÁM: SCYTHE IS A WEAPON. PEASANTS IN THE REVOLUTIONS OF THE 20TH CENTURY (REVIEW OF ERIC WOLF: PEASANT WARS OF THE 20TH CENTURY)

❚ MÁTYÁS DOMSCHITZ: AGRICULTURE IN THE (NEVER EXSISTED) SOCIALISM. THE STATE-SOCIALIST ORIGINS OF THE CAPITALIST MARKET ECONOMY (REVIEW OF MARTHA LAMPLAND: THE OBJECT OF LABOR. COMMODIFICATION IN SOCIALIST HUNGARY)