Think Like Pirates

So, it's 2025. Now where?

Consider these reflections on finding a food movement’s North Star. 

Ever wonder why farmers offer some of the better meals and hotel stays in all of Italy? It is no accident. While the future for Italian agriculture may be nearly as tenuous as ours, they operate in a policy environment that values place, products, and people, whereas ours is solely fixated on production and efficiency. In the USA, we can learn from the Italian experience shaping a practical pathway towards multifunctional agriculture.  

The recent US national election results brought me back to when I first turned my attention to food as an organizing strategy in Louisiana. The year was 1994. Exhausted by successive grassroots campaigns against a rising star of the far right, David Duke, I was tired. I began to ask: Is there a better way to formulate a hopeful future than to campaign against populism? Public discourse had been degraded to scapegoating poor people, pitting town against country, and a feeding frenzy for resources in an economy of scarcity. 

In these moments when civil society contracts, citizens (and non-citizens) no longer feel safe to engage in discourse. Instead, they retreat to their camps. In environments like this, are there pathways for people to begin to imagine shared values, a shared future? This is what led me to forge a purposefully regional organization – Market Umbrella – to rebuild a social contract within the Greater New Orleans region via food. 

Our primary tool was to develop farmers markets precisely because they are within reach, practical, and inclusive. We shied away from overly doctrinaire language, and kept operations light – both in finances and in tone. This strategy is not accidental. We recognized that public discourse had become toxic. Distrust contagious, people yearned for the kind of common ground that can restart the process of rebuilding a community.  

Today, after decades of explosive growth and remarkable inroads into the mainstream of consumer, entertainment, and political imagination, the food movement does not seem to show any signs of stalling. However, it is fair to ask at this point, what’s the plot? Social movements go through periods of growth, contraction, reflection and reinvention. Just think of how many times the green movement has been deemed as moribund, only to revive itself in the wake of the next crisis or disaster. 

However, the food movement is thought to be different from other movements that arose in the 20th Century. Think of labor, civil and environmental rights. This is the case biopolitical theorist Jonathan Latham makes in his essay, “Why is the Food Movement Unstoppable?” (Independent Science News, 2016). He contends that the food movement “has many of their strengths but not their weaknesses.” 

Moreover, Latham points out that “the movement has the uncanny ability to expose long standing weaknesses in the ideas underpinning Western political establishment.” There’s more. Latham then goes on to suggest that “the opposite of neoliberal ideology is not communism or socialism, it is the food movement” (his italics, not mine). I interpret this to mean its comfort level to question growth, in particular. 

I return to the article quite often. Why? Latham accurately captures the potential for food to build bridges between unlikely allies, to provide both practical and theoretical signposts towards a hopeful future. I first read it whilst en route to the 2016 edition of Terra Madre - Salone del Gusto, when I served as executive director for Slow Food USA. We were mid-way through an organizational rethink, so the piece provided a helpful reminder of the movement’s strengths and contours. Since, these contours have grown even more pronounced. 

Consider how volunteer efforts lose steam, or how professional NGOs absorb strategies first piloted by social entrepreneurs unable to marshal the resources needed for the long haul. Meanwhile, the “reform industrial food” crowd runs in one direction, whereas the “grow the alternative food system” in another. Consider the vegan enthusiasm for lab meats, in contrast to the opposition from regenerative and agroecology circles. Fissures emerge that seem difficult to mend. 

This cacophony could be deemed a strength. Inherently decentralized, the food movement functions much like a policy version of the arcade game, “Whack-a-Mole.” No matter where the system strikes back, we pop up elsewhere. 

Do we? With the 2024 global food systems meeting calendar (of meetings in the largely Rome-based meetings) drawing to a close, I wonder if Jonathan Latham’s description of the food movement’s magic continues to be a strength. Does it continue to reinvent itself? Does it keep the industrial food system on its toes?

While this is yet to be determined, a maturing movement is gaining more seats at the table. While it may be unwise to calculate the number of meetings as a proxy for progress, there is something to be said for sitting at the table. When chanting from the outside, we are not easily heard. Indeed, ever since the collision between the pandemic-era collapse of long supply chains and the war in Ukraine, International Government Organizations (or IGOs) have given far more attention to short value chains and the resilience to be found in robust local food systems than ever before. 

In June, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) joined forces with Belgian International Non-Governmental Organization Rikolto to hold a technical consultation at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to explore shared goals of public procurement and public markets. Though fruitful, the discussions were difficult. While each group understood its own contribution to the public good, the same cannot be said for shared purposes. 
In September, the International Council for Local Initiatives (ICLEI) joined forces with FAO to mobilize stakeholders towards a shared vision and collective impact approach to urban agrifood systems. 

Also in September and also in Italy, the G7 meeting of agricultural ministers converged on Siracusa. I had the opportunity to address F7, a fascinating meeting of farmers’ union leaders. 

And then, the largest and most inspiring global food event returned for its biennial staging in Turin, Italy: Terra Madre - Salone del Gusto. 
A few short weeks later, the FAO Food Forum in Rome commemorated its halfway point through the Decade on Family Farming, followed by the Committee on (world) Food Security (or CFS) for its annual gathering, also at FAO in Rome. 

These represent only a snapshot of the meetings I had the opportunity to attend, and observe. However, the news here is not that these meetings are taking place. Some take place every year. Nor is it necessarily news that they are inviting more short-supply chain, food movement grassroots voices to be present. What strikes me as noteworthy is this: a new sense of urgency to learn insights from the local food movement. Might major institutions now recognize that the business-as-usual, better living through technology, industrial bigger-is-better solutions are not enough? Not enough to secure food for this dystopian world we have somehow accepted as certain! In this future, the UN predicts that 68% of people will live in cities by 2050. Link  

In this regard, we are living in a critical moment. Sure, the commitment to “food systems transformation,” and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) continues to echo throughout meetings like these, but the refrain sounds less convincing than it did prior to the pandemic.  

So, can we use this moment? Important research is beginning to puncture the over-inflated conjecture that “we feed the world” via mono-crop agriculture, long supply chains, and consolidation of production and distribution of only a handful of crops (most to feed animals). This just-in-time production model exhibits remarkable precision when things are humming along. The gears get stuck during global disruptions, trauma, and war, or in other words, times like now. 

For instance, the IPES-Food’s 2024 report, Food from Somewhere (link), helps to set this record straight. In this comprehensive examination of territorial markets, IPES-Food reminds us that, contrary to the myth that only the precision logistics of industrial agriculture can feed the planet, up to 70% of the planet’s population currently relies upon family farming for their daily provisions. This is not to suggest that all is well. The report also cites that nearly 30% of the planet is food insecure, and that territorial markets face many challenges: hostile regulatory environments with competent authorities, insufficient investments, and the disruptive presence of imported foods.  

Territorial food governance may sound remote, exotic, and concepts from other parts of the world, I contend that these are American issues. When they say territorial, we say regional. While only 13.5% of Americans face food insecurity (as compared to 30% globally), this still amounts to 18 million households (circa 2023, USDA). Or, compare the challenges farmers markets (our best example of territorial markets here at home) face: hostile regulatory environments for zoning, permits, and health regulations — very much the same worldwide. 

While these efforts are often belittled as marginal, it is important to remember that there are roughly twice the number of farmers markets in America (8,600) than there are WalMart locations (4,717). 

Herein lies the challenge. Combine the vast agrifood alternatives in the USA: farmers markets, CSAs, farm stops, farm stands, agritourism, u-pick-um, food hubs, and public procurement. What motivates this disparate work? Is it to bolster agriculture? If so, what kind of agriculture: organic, conventional, regenerative, agro-ecological, sustainable, or biodynamic? 

When it comes to ownership models, are we agnostic or is there a preference for family agriculture, cooperatives, B-corps, LLCs, or corporate start-ups heavily reliant upon venture capital and angel investors? 

How large is the community of alternatives in the USA? Admittedly small, twenty years ago when the WK Kellogg Foundation’s Food and Society program was making aggressive investments to grow the alternative, it calculated that alternative food amounts to a paltry 2% of the food system and that the ambition is to grow to 10%. 

Today, I cannot say where we are on the 2-10 percent road Kellogg laid out over a decade ago. With so many independent food companies gobbled up by big food, the landscape is so different now. All is not lost. Many of the innovations of the past two decades are now part of the ongoing landscape. For instance, consider how edgy food trucks seemed a decade ago. Today, they are recognized as part of the local food ecosystem. Nevertheless, it begs the question: What next? School gardens are no longer something new. Farmers markets grew 300-400% over a decade (despite the minuscule resources). Now that growth has leveled off, there are signs of maturity, but not enough signs of dots being connected between pieces of this alternative network. 

All of these strategies – from gardens to hubs, VeggieRX to mobile slaughter houses – are means, and not ends. While these means compete for relatively few resources, none alone will take us to that place where we maintain healthy and life-long relationships with food, where both food security and food sovereignty are the norm and not some distant marker on the road. 

We continue to develop unusual and surprising means to get there. Consider the unexpected rise of regenerative agriculture, love for soil, and carbon sequestration. We are getting better and better in stating our case for a different path. However, with such fragile means, we never seem to paint a picture of what the ends look like. 

This takes me back to Italy, where the bounds of thinkable thought are no accident. Sure, we ogle at actor Stanley Tucci, as he unearths yet one more luscious description of what makes Italy special in his CNN program, Searching for Italy. However, it is important to remember that food culture is a dynamic construct. Traditions may be real, but they are also cultivated and traded upon. This does not necessarily cheapen their authenticity (a concept of great value in the marketplace). Moreover, cultivation does not occur in a vacuum.  

Something rather extraordinary happened in 2001. After a decade when Slow Food reminded many Italian eaters that the barricades against homogenization can be found on family farms, many farmers who agreed that their future may be better served by reviving traditional crops, engaging directly with consumers, and exploring new business models, encountered resistance. The tax code made it difficult for farms to market directly to consumers, without establishing ancillary businesses. 

Early innovators, like Francesco Fratto of Calabria’s Agriturismo Santacinnara (link), returned home to his family’s farm in 1995, when his father suddenly died. In order to save the farm, Fratto abandoned a promising career in engineering. He soon encountered challenges to shift the model away from production towards hospitality. Permits, zoning, and the tax code made it difficult to benefit from a farm that grows, adds value, and sells its products on the farm to visitors. He also began to notice that his return to the deprived region of Calabria in southern Italy was an anomaly. Few of his peers saw reason to return, except for holidays. Today, Fratto is an influential leader in what is referred to as multifunctional agriculture. 

As its name suggests, this model of agriculture promotes the concept that a farm should diversify its operations, and move towards a myriad of support businesses (each with its own cash flow and business plan in order to keep finances fluid). Moreover, this model of agriculture gives greater attention to customer relations, value-added processing, and skills that may have never been considered as relevant to a farm devoted to the production of food. Meanwhile, the pressures for agriculture to grow bigger, faster, more efficient, etc. are also felt in Italy. The push towards convenience foods, pasta made with increasingly narrow varieties of wheat; let alone, cured meats, wines, and cheeses prepared for competitive export markets can be observed everywhere. 

Choices are real: Grow bigger and simpler for export and to fight for shelf space in the growing supermarket economy, or grow diversified in order to forge many different relationships with consumers who value scale, quality, and experience? These are choices that the American food movement is grappling with; however, we have not had the opportunity to frame these issues as clearly as have the Italians. For this reason, can we learn from the Italian Modernization of Agriculture Law of 2001? This is the law that codified multifunctional agriculture as a policy priority for Italy. I would also argue that it provides many Italian consumers and farmers with a North Star for agricultural action. 

At the time, the center left governed Italy. Agriculture Minister Alfonso Pecararo Scanio passed legislation that addressed many of the challenges that family farmers, like Francesco Fratto, were facing. While the benefits of the Law took years to gain momentum (as it continues to), its central premise is to recognize that the prevailing model for agriculture is wrong. Agriculture is not simply the act of producing food (or textiles and tobacco) on the land. If this logic is followed, then national policy may be agnostic as to who produces the products: families or large consolidated corporations? Instead, this law redefines agriculture as the activities on the land that allow for families to maintain their livelihoods and to flourish. As a result, the scope of what constitutes agriculture must also incorporate these additional businesses that help families to incite the younger generation to return (after earning degrees) to put their talents and new-found skills to work on the farm. These include hospitality, marketing, information technology, management, etc. 

The Modernization of Agriculture Law defines the multi-functionality of agriculture to include production, agritourism, direct marketing in town centers (farmers markets), and social farming (to include intern programs for migrants, teaching farms for disabled adults, children, etc.). Its great value-add for farmers has been to simplify an overly complex tax code in order to remove barriers for farmers to adjust to these new opportunities. Public funding to assist in this transition for agriculture has and continues to amplify this preferential option for family farms. 

To illustrate how this works, consider agritourism. Sure, we have it here in the United States: corn mazes, pumpkin patches, and vineyards whose efforts to lure consumers to the land also encounter challenges to mitigate the risks of people roaming about on the land: liability insurance, ADA bathroom facilities, and so forth. In Italy, they share these challenges and more. 

In order for an Italian farm to produce food, the authorities designated it legally as a production enterprise. If the family wished to bring fresh and value-added products to sell in the city center, it would need to establish a separate enterprise (let alone the challenges to enter into traditional street markets). For many small operations, this step requires far too much financial literacy to justify risky moves. Or, consider the strategy to entice shoppers to a dairy farm to purchase milk, cheese, and gelato. Not only would the European Union health regulations make for complicated adjustments to post-harvest handling, processing, and packaging of milk products, it too would require the incorporation of additional businesses and tax codes. With the Modernization of Agriculture Law, these procedures were made easier and categories were established to protect family agriculture from phony competitors who saw opportunity to get in on the act. 

Specifically, in order for an agritourism farm to meet the requirements that shelter a farm from having to pay higher taxation levels that hotels pay, the farm must maintain 50% plus one of its financial operations in production. This means that the farm’s restaurant menu’s ingredients must be 50% plus one from that particular farm. This is meant to prevent the high-end chef in town from opening up a boutique restaurant hotel with a little garden, or pretend farm, and benefitting from the lower taxation status (as a farm). 

Of course, none of this works perfectly. However, this has set in motion a remarkable revival of families’ next generations to consider their future as tied to the land (as opposed to running as far away from it as possible). 

Political winds come and go. The left held power in 2001. Today, the Italian government is hard right. However, despite these shifting political winds, multifunctional agriculture continues to dominate the political imagination. Current Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida remains a steadfast supporter of this model of agriculture, as a primary expression of national food sovereignty. This speaks volumes to the potential for food to work its way from left to right, as a wormhole in the universe. Moreover, effective advocates, like Slow Food and Italy’s largest farmers’ union (Coldiretti — a primary force behind the original 2001 Law), continue to push to remove additional barriers that make it difficult for family agriculture to thrive. After all, this is Italy. Bureaucracy is a way of life.  

All of this work is a work in progress. There are guarantees; and the proliferation of fast food only continues in Italy. However, there is an experiential alternative that attracts Italian consumers back to the land, and Italian farmers into city centers. As an example, in 2008, there were only a handful of actual farmers markets in Italy. As cited before, the legal barriers were real. Today, under the banner and administration of the Coldiretti farmers’ union’s Campagna Amica farmers market network, 1,200 farmers markets operate throughout Italy. 

This rise in direct marketing has not come easily. Many mayors fail to understand why they should devote public space for farmers. After all, don’t markets create all sorts of mess in city centers? Over time, this case has become easier and easier to make as a win-win between town and country. Importantly, this multifunctional model provides both consumer and producer with opportunities to rediscover each other, to learn, and to rebuild trust. 

The barriers for multi-functionality to become the default position for agriculture in the United States are vast. The power of consolidation is real. The belief in  chemical technology and large scale productive efficiency is almost universal. However, if we can begin to chip away at the hegemonic power of productivist agriculture by valorizing the importance of diversified strategies for families to make a living on the land, keep the next generation engaged as active protagonists for the future, then maybe we can reposition family agriculture as drivers for rural tourism, rural identity, and as beacons of innovation and resilience. Multi-functionality can be our North Star.