GROWING INTO 2024
Looking back, moving forward.
As we step into the dawn of this new year, it’s a good time to share some of our highlights from the last year, and what we’re excited about in the months ahead.
For over a decade, A Growing Culture (AGC) has worked closely with movements, organisations, and communities around the world made up of peasants, Indigenous peoples, small-scale farmers, and the organisers who advocate on their behalf — to uplift their struggles and advance their diverse visions for food sovereignty. Over the years, we have built our infrastructure and skillsets to support the needs of the food sovereignty movement. Of course, the needs and challenges of the movement are many. Communities face land theft, the criminalisation of seed saving, the forced imposition of industrial farming, vicious debt cycles, corporate consolidation of power, and ecological collapse. AGC is positioned not to directly intervene in those on-the-ground struggles, but to serve as a conduit for the communication of those struggles to the world.
Our mission centers the concept of reclaiming agency. To us, this is the essence of sovereignty — the capacity of every human being to have power and influence over the decisions and systems on which our lives depend. And reclaiming that agency begins with reclaiming control over our narratives. At AGC, we believe stories are at the heart of systems change. Stories shape our reality. They give form and meaning to our experiences and seed common understanding. The dominant systems and institutions today depend on the story that there are no alternatives to the ones we live under. But today, we’re able to see more clearly that many of the systems we entrust with our care are unjust.
Our capacity to move forward relies on our ability to disrupt the myths that maintain unjust systems, and offer a vision of something radically different. To reshape systems so that they nourish us and the land, we must recognise our interconnectedness and reclaim our collective power. To these ends, our focus is on sharing stories that not only reveal the underlying causes of the food systems problems, but also celebrate the unyielding hope and ingenuity of grassroots activists and farmers globally, showing that a different future is not only possible, but already taking root.
It’s easy from afar to perceive AGC purely as a media production house, because the work that’s most visible includes articles, social media posts, and other content we put out across our channels. But our work is much more expansive than that, and is deeply tied to the work of other groups fighting for food sovereignty from myriad landscapes — peasant and Indigenous movement partners, research and advocacy organisations, umbrella movements (unifying social movements across vast geographies), and movements struggling for tangential goals (e.g. labour rights, gender equity, racial justice, abolition, socio-economic justice, climate justice).
Our work is currently divided into three core programs. We’ve based them on the concept of social ecology — the idea that we exist within an ecosystem of which we are only one part. Rather than trying to do everything ourselves, we identify and work to strengthen key relationships and interdependencies that can support the whole. Those programs are:
Peasant and Indigenous Press
This program was conceived to identify models and channels of storytelling that reach audiences far greater than AGC’s or the food sovereignty movement’s. We build and strengthen relationships between journalists and alternative storytellers on the one hand, and Indigenous and peasant communities on the other. In doing so we create the opportunity for movement stories to engage beyond echo chambers.
Agency for Food Sovereignty
This program exists to provide movement partners the opportunity to bring forward their immense creative potential, to reach and meaningfully engage wider audiences, while mutually sharing capacities and expanding the movement. We field requests and work side-by-side with movement partners to understand their diverse challenges, goals, and needs. Together, we develop creative campaigns and strategic narrative interventions in ways that grow their capacity to make their voices heard.
History in the Making
This program aims to disrupt and dismantle prevailing narratives surrounding food systems by challenging them head-on. We creatively share stories with the intention of both critiquing the dominant systems that blind us to our own realities while also sharing stories that inspire visions of different ones — what we call “world-building”.
We wanted to share a selection of our work from the past year across these three programs with you all, so that you can get a clearer sense of what it is we do:
PEASANT AND INDIGENOUS PRESS
We continue our work of bridging the gap between journalists and peasant and Indigenous communities. We support journalists in diversifying their sources, connecting them with these communities, and hosting press events to support storytellers in covering food systems and environmental issues. Here are some of our highlights from last year:
Press Events
Unheard Palestine
In response to the ongoing genocide in Palestine, AGC brought together Palestinian partners for a digital press conference on Palestinian food sovereignty. The event featured speakers from the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), Arab Group for the Protection of Nature (APN), Palestinian Agroecological Forum, Socio-Economic Action Collective, Agricultural Movement in Lebanon, and Sharka Youth Cooperative
How Indigenous Self-Determination is Countering Climate Collapse (EN/ES)
The current narratives on climate change often exclude Indigenous communities, who are at the forefront of developing holistic ecological solutions. Their stories are anchored in systems of care, ancestral knowledge, and restorative autonomy vital to countering ecological collapse. Our 5th Peasant and Indigenous Press Forum held space for Indigenous leaders of the Americas to share their varied stories of self-determination for journalists, digital storytellers, and media representatives.
No Decision About Us Without Us!
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is a billion-dollar project founded in 2006 on a mission “to increase incomes and improve food security for 30 million smallholder farm households in 11 African countries by 2021.” This project is funded by the likes of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, USAID and various donor governments, who collectively imagine a future where agribusiness replaces agriculture.
Although AGRA claims to be “African-led”, “inclusive”, and in favour of small-scale farmers, it has sparked massive resistance from farmers and civil society across Africa since its inception, led by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA).
For the second time since 2021, AGC helped organise a press forum in response to AGRA’s annual summit (the Africa Food Systems Summit), amplifying the voices of the communities being disenfranchised by AGRA’s efforts.
Grassroots Database
The incredible communities, movements, and organisations that we work with around the world have stories that are vital, but underreported. We created a database to serve as a living collection of urgent and evergreen stories to support journalists in accessing relevant and diversified sources for a range of issues — from food systems, to conservation, climate, hunger, and development. Through this tool, storytellers can connect with communities on the frontlines of these issues.
To get access to the database, head here.
Media Stories
The following are a few of the stories that were produced in 2023 as a result of those efforts:
‘This Genocide is about Oil’ (Atmos)
The New Colonialist Food Economy (The Nation)
Groups call for US help in Maasai eviction plight (Nation)
The Green Revolution advocates should stop pushing failing policies (Business Daily)
Is the genetically modified, nutrient-rich Golden Rice as safe as promised? (Mongabay)
This land is our life’: indigenous Shipibo-konibo-xetebo people defend forest from illegal destruction in Peru (Real News Network)
AGENCY FOR FOOD SOVEREIGNTY
The direct support we offer food sovereignty movement partners in communication can range from website development, to publication writing and design, to social media campaigns. The following are some of the projects we supported in 2023:
Million Tree Campaign
In 2001, the Million Tree Campaign (MTC) was launched to respond to the systemic attack on trees, land and farmers in Palestine. Since then, the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature (APN) has planted over 2.6 million fruit trees supporting 30,000 farmers, in addition to numerous projects strengthening local food systems. We supported APN in the development of a new website for their digital campaign, helped co-create a series of static social media posts and short videos of farmer stories, and connected global partners in solidarity with Palestine, with the goal of raising global awareness about the impact of Israel’s destruction of Palestinian food systems, and to support APN’s calls for donations to plant trees. You can find some of the key posts from the campaign below:
Land at the Heart of Palestinian Liberation
Palestine’s Trees: Refuting Famous Zionist Myths
Resisting Israel’s Ecological Apartheid
My Food is African
The push for corporate industrial agriculture in Nigeria has led to the introduction of many GMOs in the country’s food system, and with them, indiscriminate use of highly hazardous pesticides that poison the land, crops, and waterways. The Alliance For Food Sovereignty in Africa launched the My Food is African campaign to realign African food policies to centre health and the redistribution of power. The Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) launched its own campaign in Nigeria as part of that continental effort.
AGC collaborated with HOMEF on their campaign push, co-creating a series of posts designed to draw audiences into a culminating campaign event. You can find the posts and event recording below:
My Food Is African - Digital Event
Stop UPOV
Whoever controls seed controls agriculture. The Union for the Protection of New Plant Varieties (UPOV) has become the driving force behind the privatisation and corporate control of seeds worldwide, and the mission to stop it has become a rallying cry for seed sovereignty-focused movements. For the second time in three years, AGC is partnering with GRAIN and the Stop UPOV group to produce a social media toolkit in order to spark awareness of, and resistance to, this little-known organisation/treaty. You can find some of the campaign posts below:
Autonomy in the Face of Agtech
In 2022, AGC was brought into a multi-year project between ETC Group and the Center for Story-based Strategy (CSS) focused on confronting the rise of corporate agtech — emerging “high-tech” modern farming interventions, from drone farming to robot harvesters, to agri-e-commerce sites, to gene-edited crops. Pitched as “the future of agriculture”, this industry is facilitating the flow of billions of dollars of investment into corporate-owned technologies that entrench and extend the control of powerful actors in industrial agriculture, further threatening the rights and lives of farmers, peasants, and Indigenous communities.
From April-July 2023, we hosted a series of workshops with members of La Vía Campesina and the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa to identify how popular narratives around technologies work, their impact and implications, what gives them power, and how we can take it back. We then synthesised those insights into a booklet called Autonomy in the Face of Agtech, offering ways to respond quickly and effectively to corporate agtech narratives. We also produced a publication called Politics of Technology, exploring different ways of thinking about technology and its influence at every level of our lives — from global economic structures, to food production, to the ways we communicate. Through the booklet, we encourage a shift towards the idea that all technology is political.
Autonomy in the Face of Agtech (EN/ES/FR)
Politics of Technology (EN/ES/FR)
Long Food Project
In 2021, ETC Group and IPES-Food put together a report entitled A Long Food Movement: Transforming Food Systems by 2045. It attempts to define the crossroads at which food movements and organisations now find themselves. With the current corporate assault on food and agriculture, food movements and organisations are frequently forced to be on the defensive, dealing with compounding crises and the erosion of rights. The report asks us to consider how we can think decades ahead, overcoming diverging priorities and collaborating across sectors and scales to shape food systems from the ground up.
AGC was commissioned to support ETC and IPES’ efforts to put the report into action. We created a new visual identity for the project, designed a shortened version of the full-length report in three languages, wrote and designed an interactive facilitation guide for food movements (also in three languages), and designed and built a website for the project.
Fertile Ground: A workshop for financing food systems transformation
AGC co-hosted a digital event for capital-holders exploring how to partner with food/social movements to support a socially just transformation of food systems, alongside the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, Integrated Capital Investing, Transformational Investing in Food Systems (TIFS), and Agroecology Fund. The event highlighted promising models for food system reclamation — from Thailand, to Sri Lanka, to Zambia and the US.
HISTORY IN THE MAKING
At the same time as we support movements, organisations, and communities in creating their own communication materials and getting their stories out in press, we also produce narrative materials on our own channels, from social media posts, to videos, to articles. The following are some highlights from 2023:
Social Media Content
We continue to leverage the wide reach of our social media channels to uplift the incredible work of our partners, and to shift the public’s focus from unjust symptoms of our food systems to the dominant system itself. A few notable posts from the last year include:
*Offshoot
Our Substack, *Offshoot, continues to be a vessel for opening up conversations around key questions related to food systems and the food sovereignty movement. A few notable recent articles include:
The Politics of Measuring Hunger
COMING IN 2024
We already have a number of projects lined up for 2024, and are excited for more to come. This year, you can expect:
Liberation Agriculture
Liberation Agriculture is an upcoming film series focused on communities across the US, from Detroit, to South Dakota, to Nebraska, to California — all of whom are cultivating much more than soil. Through their diverse stories, we intend to weave the thread that reconnects agriculture with culture, showing that our most basic means of nourishing ourselves can’t be broken down into their constituent parts — they have to be valued as a holistic part of our lives. Those showcased speak to issues of land access, economic, racial, and social justice, and sovereignty, highlighting that the solution we need is a revolution. This is a multi-year project in partnership with Regenerosity.
Cotton at the Source
Cotton Diaries and A Growing Culture are launching a media and public-facing (social media) campaign to challenge the dominant narratives around cotton supply chains. This project, called Cotton at the Source, will bring together widespread collaboration across farmers, grassroots groups, journalists and influential public figures in a major narrative intervention. Through this project we will work to amplify farmers’ stories, ecological/cultural practices, workers’ rights, and food sovereignty — to reimagine how the fashion industry can centre farmers in building systems that are equitable for all.
Care in the Polycrisis
The polycrisis refers to the multiple crises we are currently experiencing across social, economic, ecological, and political domains, all of which are exacerbating each other and causing catastrophic and disproportionate harm on a global scale. Against the backdrop of rising authoritarianism, failure of state machinery, corporate consolidation, and climate catastrophe unfolding globally, social movements have been instrumental in crisis mitigation and management. They have often developed thoughtful and effective strategies and systems to care for their regions and communities in the face of crises, creating blueprints for more just and sustainable futures.
This project weaves together five groups from around the world — Southern Peasants’ Federation of Thailand, LILAK (Purple Action for Indigenous Women’s Rights), Abahlali baseMjondolo, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), and West Street Recovery, creating spaces to share knowledge, insights, and strategies to strengthen their care systems, develop a shared vocabulary on care, and produce zines, guides, and social media content highlighting their incredible work in the face of the polycrisis. AGC is supporting this collaboration in partnership with Raj Patel and Focus on the Global South.
Block Corporate Salmon
Genetically engineered (GE) salmon is often pitched as an innovative, sustainable “solution” to overfishing. Block Corporate Salmon is a campaign to highlight the ways in which GE salmon threatens the environment, human health, Indigenous sovereignty, and local fishing communities. AGC is currently collaborating with Block Corporate Salmon to co-create a four-week social media campaign, breaking down the opposition to GE salmon. The final product will be a series of posts and a zine.
In parallel with all of this external work, we continue to spend immense amounts of time and energy to develop, build, and strengthen our internal structures. We are currently having our yearly team retreat, thrilled to co-create and strategise the foundations for the culture, workflows, and goals that we strive to embody in the coming years. Many of us in the staff team are meeting each other in person for the very first time, and the precious opportunity to come together is opening up new space to sow ideas, dreams, and collaborations that will bear fruits not only for the team, but for all of you, for the movement, and for the community around us.
While working and engaging primarily through digital mediums can sometimes be alienating and dehumanising, we acknowledge that it has also allowed us opportunities to transcend physical boundaries, and unite in our shared struggles. We’re so grateful for the community we’ve found along the way, and we are constantly navigating the tensions and contradictions inherent in these mediums, to foster meaningful connections and collective learning.
Aware of the fact that this is the first time many of you see and learn about the full scope of our work, we would love to hear your questions, comments or reflections. We deeply value the time and intention you put into reading and engaging with this newsletter, and our other channels. Whether these stories inspire you, your work, or your community, tap into the research or interests you hold, intersect with issues and struggles that impact you directly, or simply spark reflection, we aspire to continue growing and expanding the rhizome that spreads within, across, and beyond the food sovereignty movement.