What Andor Can Teach Us About the Food Sovereignty Movement
Reflections on empire and grassroots organising
Those who follow our work on this platform know we don’t usually write about pop culture—but sometimes fiction speaks truth in ways facts cannot. Andor isn’t just entertainment; it’s a mirror, a metaphor and a map for resistance.
Andor, one of the latest productions of the Star Wars universe, caught our attention since its first season aired in 2022. The series follows the journey of Cassian Andor, a character first introduced in the 2016 movie ’Rogue One’ as a pilot and fighter of the rebellion. But how did this young man end up in the front lines against the empire?
This question kicks off the two-season series, with storylines so eerily similar to today’s geopolitical reality that parallels to events like the rise of authoritarianism and the Palestinian genocide are impossible to miss. Beyond the classic rebels-versus-empire narrative, we believe Andor brings much-needed depth and nuance to grassroots organising (The Rebellion), in opposition to systems of oppression (The Empire).
From resource extraction to occupation, Andor brilliantly lays out the many tentacles the Galactic Empire uses to suffocate territories, in this case planets, and the peoples’ response to that violence in pockets of organised action. In this instalment*, we will break down different storylines of the series that resemble struggles of the food sovereignty and other social movements in real life to explore how fiction can serve as a vehicle for reflection and world-building.
*This piece contains several spoilers. May the force be with you.
SURVEILLANCE AND CONTROL
Andor’s pilot episode presents a young Cassian in the middle of a predicament in an overly-surveilled city. Through the multiple street cameras and biometric records of the Empire, he ends up targeted as a threat by Imperial security officer Syril Karn, who then deploys a manhunt for Cassian across the galaxy.
As he tries to escape, he inadvertently meets a rebel ally named Luthen, who teaches Cassian an essential lesson for Empire resistance: “Never carry anything you don’t control.” In the context of the scene, Luthen refers to Cassian’s comms device as a tool that, despite communicating, also listens, tracks and reports about citizens’ whereabouts, a seemingly one-purpose device that the Empire can insidiously control.
The obvious parallel we can draw here is our growing dependency on digital devices like our phones—which are used by corporations to not only glue our attention, but also listen to and track our activities to then sell that data to third parties. But today’s control over hardware extends beyond phones and computers. In agriculture, farmers around the globe have denounced the inability to repair their own John Deere tractors due to digital locks imposed by the company. These restrictions have led to loss of harvests and costly repairs.
To think farmers have no control over their own tools for sustenance seems absurd, but the data the farming machinery now gathers is a profit source that food and agriculture corporations aim to grow through forcing dependence. As tech giants spread their tentacles over food systems, more peasants are displaced from farmlands to make way for robots and precision-agriculture machines. Our partners at ETC Group have reported on the Digital Takeover of Food and the consequences of this not-so-quiet transition to automated farming. Today, companies have dangerously increased their control of seed DNA, soil and water quality, climate patterns, facial recognition for cattle monitoring, remote fencing, and grocery sales and consumer data. Big data companies and food retailers are no longer separate industries—they are merging into a new regime of extraction, surveillance and control.
Luthen’s lesson in Andor’s season one can also speak to the importance of offline organising for effective action against oppressive systems. For instance, farmers’ protests in India, the world's largest farmer mobilisations in the past five years, have repeatedly been repressed through internet blackouts. In 2024, Gayatri Malhotra, of the digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation, told Context News: "The alarming trend of internet shutdowns coupled with widespread online censorship is grim reflection of digital authoritarianism, particularly in the lead-up to elections,". The Hindu nationalist government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has consistently relied on digital shutdowns to stifle opposition. Farmers also denounced the use of signal jammers to cut their communications, making it nearly impossible to ask for medical aid and food supplies.
In resistance, farmers had to cover themselves from facial recognition, use encrypted messaging apps and attack the Reliance Jio cellular towers owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, whose company directly aids digital repression in India and around the globe. In Punjab alone, over 1,500 mobile towers were taken down. The Modi government also used drones to drop tear gas over the protests. Farmers destroyed them using simple objects like rocks and kites.
State repression through digital tools fits into what professor and author Shoshana Zuboff refers to as “surveillance capitalism”. Through this concept, she describes a “new economic order” and “an expropriation of critical human rights” in The Guardian:
“Surveillance capitalists “sell certainty to business customers who would like to know with certainty what we do. Targeted adverts, yes, but also businesses want to know whether to sell us a mortgage, insurance, what to charge us, do we drive safely? They want to know the maximum they can extract from us in an exchange. They want to know how we will behave in order to know how to best intervene in our behaviour.”
According to Shoshana, surveillance capitalism has gone as far as intervening in voting behaviour, recalling the Cambridge Analytica exposé, when whistleblower Christopher Wylie revealed how Facebook user data was weaponised to intervene in the 2016 U.S. elections.
“The age of surveillance capitalism is a titanic struggle between capital and each one of us. It is a direct intervention into free will, an assault on human autonomy.” —Shoshana Zuboff
Although Trump’s win in 2016 is probably the most notorious scandal known of Cambridge Analytica’s work, similar tactics for electoral interventionism had been executed by its parent company before in the Majority World*, especially in Southeast Asia. The Strategic Communications Laboratory (SCL) has openly claimed to bring president Abdurrahman Wahid to power in Indonesia back in 1999. After several surveys and research, and at the brink of what seemed to be leading to large mobilisations across the country, SCL decided to focus on 25-year-old students to “redirect their frustration away from civil unrest.” The company’s documents report organised rallies at universities, “financing activities and coverage across the country, [...] The events were so large that there was a general feeling amongst students that their voice really had been heard.”
Since the late 1990s, SCL has been manipulating people to “assist” the “democratisation” of other nations. By 2013, from the Philippines to Italy, India to South Africa, this company had run over 100 campaigns in more than 30 countries across five continents.
*Majority World refers to the countries commonly labelled as “developing,” who in fact make up the majority of the world’s population. Minority World refers to the countries commonly labelled as “developed,” and emphasises that while these countries tend to impose their will on the rest of the world, they are, in fact, the minority.
NARRATIVE WARFARE
Along Cassian’s journey in season one comes Karis Nemik, a young rebel who wrote a manifesto about the uprising of the Rebellion against the Empire.
“The pace of repression outstrips our ability to understand it. And that is the real trick of the Imperial thought machine. It’s easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident.” —Karis Nemik
The empire doesn’t just control planets. It controls the story. Andor shows us that one of the most effective tools of dominion isn’t brute force—but confusion. Misdirection. Oversaturation. Flooding the airwaves with distraction, spinning crisis after crisis until the public becomes paralysed. This, precisely, is the architecture of narrative warfare.
Narrative warfare also frames repression as progress. In our world, we see it with the media-funded empire of the Gates Foundation, the glossy PR campaigns of agrochemical companies claiming they “feed the world”, or the greenwashing of energy giants claiming their commitment to “sustainable” alternatives—alternatives still rooted in the Majority World’s exploitation.
It’s often said we’re living in a broken system, but we believe this not only blurs the oppressors’ accountability but also ignores that the damage is deliberate. How are consequences like dispossession, exploitation, impoverishment and accumulation unexpected in a system that shields and benefits profits over people?
“Imperialism can never be a benevolent force. Its logic is domination.”
—Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Contrary to what Silicon Valley “visionaries” love to pitch, the multiple challenges we face today won’t be fixed by tech—not climate change, not food access, not affordable housing, not inflation, definitely not fascism. Our present moment begs us no less than to completely reimagine how we inhabit this planet. To join those who dare to shape different worlds and futures.
But those who stand in defence of life always bear the brunt of being targeted as “radical threats”. Like in Andor, real-life corporations and institutions define who is labelled as “terrorist”, who gets silenced, whose outrage is cleansed. When the unrest and weight people have had to carry on their shoulders simmers into action after long histories of oppression, States resort to heavy militarisation, making way for the control and occupation of territories. Often, they find reasons to provoke rebellions, which then excuse their brutal repression.
In the show, the Empire's propaganda arm, the Ministry of Enlightenment, manipulates public perception by portraying Ghorman, a resource-rich planet, as a place of dangerous and militant people that need intervention — all to mask the Imperial thirst for mineral extraction. The slow erosion of truth and objective reality parallels modern-day issues involving fake news, far-right media influence, and polarising rhetoric—much like authoritarian campaigns that fuel prejudice towards Majority World countries.
“Propaganda will only take you so far. You need a radical insurgency you can count on,” says Denise Gough’s character, Imperial officer Dedra Meero. “You need Ghorman rebels you can count on to do the wrong thing.”
LAND GRABS AND OCCUPATION
Ghorman’s storyline evolves to a point where local organisers are infiltrated by former imperial officer Syril Karn. Undercover within the rebellion, Syril functioned as an imperial asset, feeding false intelligence to trigger insurrection. The resulting rebel actions gave the empire the justification it needed to increase militarisation and control. Tensions provoked by the Imperial forces eventually escalated into a mass mobilisation that ended in the massacre of the Ghorman people. With hundreds murdered, local rebels martyred, and the remaining population drenched in fear, the Empire had all the pieces in place to begin Ghorman's mineral extraction plans.
Ghorman's fate alone resembles so much of what so-called “third world countries” have had to endure under the chokehold of imperialist greed. Countries forced into resource extractive economies, cheap labour, impoverishing trade, ecosystemic destruction, and political interventions. Across the Majority World, water, land, minerals, seeds, and foods are extracted by the hands of a few to fill their pockets. It’s no surprise that the settlement of foreign military bases in multiple countries is shortly followed by mines, dams, fortress conservation, or large plantations, all in the name of security, order, and progress.
The military-industrial complex profits from extraction and the violence it creates. As War Resisters’ International explains, “materials like aluminium, copper, platinum, and cobalt are transformed into solar panels and electric vehicles, as well as surveillance drones and nuclear weapons. Unsurprisingly, mining companies tend to emphasise their contributions to the former while concealing their indispensability to the latter.”
“Among these key energy‑transition metals, 97 percent of nickel, 89 percent of copper, 79 percent of lithium and 68 percent of cobalt reserves and resources in the United States are located within 35 miles of Native American reservations.”
— Samuel Block
PRODUCTION, SLAVE LABOUR AND WAR CAPITALISM
Andor, much like other Star Wars productions, shows entire planets colonised into agricultural plantations, mining centres and wastelands. Despite these worlds having some level of autonomy and governance, Imperial control creeps through every frontier, controlling production and population.
Planet Mina-Rau is a vast wheat monoculture that serves as a hideout for Cassian’s friends after an attack on their planet, a mining world named Ferrix. In fact, Cassian himself is a refugee from another of the Empire’s mining targets, Kenari, a lush jungle devastated by resource extraction. At Mina-Rau, giant silos that store grains stick out from the golden blanket of wheat that envelopes the landscape. In season two, a group of local farmers provide refuge to Cassian’s friends as they scramble to get visas, hiding them from increasingly unforeseen Imperial raids. In this galactic breadbasket, we can mirror a) industrial agriculture’s obsession with high-yielding, vast monocultures, b) a globalised food system that stands on the shoulders of peasant and migrant labour, and c) the structural violence historically waged against those undocumented—paralleling the violent dynamics we see in real life, where ICE is used to terrorise immigrant communities.
For its sympathisers, the Galactic Empire brings order, safety and stability. Much like how real-life technocrats feel about so-called agricultural solutions like the Green Revolution, dangerous “silver bullets” that claim to hold the key to eradicating hunger through increased production, genetically modified seeds, and toxic inputs. Despite ample evidence of Big Ag’s failures to reach their goals, these conglomerates still argue they can feed the world through the single-crop, soil-depleting technologies of conventional farming.
What once were biodiversity harbours are now vast plantations or gigantic mining holes in the Majority World, all deliberately exploited by the legacies of colonialism that serve a larger imperial vision. Empire’s farce of bringing “peace and stability” through “free trade” and “development” has historically been questioned by grassroots groups and social movements. We’re reaching a tipping point where a groundswell of awareness is making it harder for imperialists to hide behind a saviour facade. From Burkina Faso to Brazil, citizens are taking to the streets to protest against foreign interventionism, refusing to bend under tactics like economic sanctions.
Andor also highlights the Empire’s heavy dependence on prison labour. Season one enters into the lives of inmates at the Narkina 5 Imperial prison complex whose daily routine consists of assembling parts for imperial weapons, playing an essential role in the Empire’s quest for domination. This mirrors the legalised slavery permitted under the 13th Amendment in the U.S., which abolished slavery “except as punishment for a crime.” Today, more than 800,000 people are forced to labour in prisons across the U.S. Like in Andor, their humanity is reduced to utility. The complicity runs deeper: public money fuels private domination. Workers' pension funds and taxpayer dollars are routinely funnelled into land grabs, prisons, and agribusiness — systems that profit from the dispossession of peasants and workers, while accelerating ecosystem collapse.
On the show, inmates are fed enough calories to keep them fueled for the day, with impeccable cells that deprive them of the slightest form of privacy, and automated electrified floors that averts any attempt to escape. Every morning, the same routine awaits: a daily march towards the assembly line where prisoners are threatened not to communicate with each other. Nevertheless, they’ve found a way.
When it was noticed by prisoners that others were simply incarcerated in different assembly lines once their release date arrived, the news spread like fire. Cassian, who had been planning his escape since the day he arrived, organised his line, led by a prisoner named Kino Loy, to collectively make their way out. As his escape plan rolls out successfully, Kino gives a speech to his fellow inmates through the prison speakers: “Wherever you are right now, get up, stop the work. Get out of your cells, take charge and start climbing. They don't have enough guards and they know it [...] There are 5,000 of us. If we can fight half as hard as we've been working, we will be home in no time.”
SMALL ACTS OF RESISTANCE CAN RIPPLE INTO LIBERATION
Kino Loy is one of Andor’s characters who best embodies one of the most uncomfortable truths of resistance—it requires sacrifice. Just like all the other inmates, he is aware that the Narkina 5 prison sits in the middle of the ocean. While sceptical at first, Kino joins Cassian’s escape plan and ends up playing a crucial role in mobilising the entire complex towards freedom. When they make it to the exit, he faces the ocean. “I can’t swim”, he tells Cassian. Not only Kino knew freedom would cost him his life, he also understood his liberation was bound to the others’. His initial push back to escaping didn’t come from not believing it could be possible, but from the fear of knowing it meant literal sacrifice.
If it wasn’t for collective action, Cassian would have most likely remained imprisoned for a longer time than he was sentenced to be—a small but crucial change that would have altered the entire future of the Rebellion. We’ve seen the victories of grassroots groups and wider movements add up to significant changes in narratives, policy and action. From halting land grabs and banning GMO salmon to winning wage fights and seed justice, our partners around the world are proving that grassroots power can—and does—disrupt empire. Together, representing a myriad of small and consistent acts towards liberation.
Luthen, one of the first militants of the resistance, recruited Cassian and orchestrated some of the foundational attacks against the Empire. His journey not only displayed how small acts can lead to bigger, long-term outcomes, but it’s also a remarkable example of sacrifice. Playing ally among oligarchs and officials, Luthen constantly risked everything to be a solid point of convergence and strategy for multiple rebel groups in the galaxy. An ‘Axis’, as imperial ranks called him, in the lack of a clear identity.
“Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love. I’ve given up all chance at inner peace. I’ve made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there’s only one conclusion, I’m damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they’ve set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a saviour against injustice without contemplating the cost and by the time I looked down there was no longer any ground beneath my feet.
What is my sacrifice?
I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude.
So what do I sacrifice?
Everything!”
—Luthen Rael
The Rebellion is presented in Andor as a tapestry of multiple movements, all ideologically diverse, tactically different and naturally imperfect. Local groups organised through decades of imperial expansion, rooted in ancestral memory and cultural pluralism. Their long histories of resistance made the rebellion an intergenerational web of hope, woven by elders, preserved by youth. To echo Luthen’s words, they burnt their lives to make a sunrise they knew they would never see. With rage and love, the Rebellion sprouted across the galaxy with a reach and force inconceivable to an Empire that choked on its arrogance.
And yet, even amidst this mosaic of resistance, it’s easy to feel dwarfed by the scale of the opposition. Empires often appear all-powerful—monolithic and unshakable—but history tells another story. It has always been the few who control the many. During the height of colonial rule in Africa, European colonisers were outnumbered hundreds or even thousands to one, yet they maintained control through violence, bureaucracy, and narrative domination.
Today, the story repeats itself: a handful of billionaires and oligarchs shape global food systems, extract resources, and manipulate democracies. But they are not the majority—we are. This is why we at A Growing Culture choose to use the term Majority World instead of Global South. Language matters. It reminds us that power does not lie in numbers alone, but in who gets to define the terms. We are not the fringe. We are the many. And when the many organise, even the most brittle empires begin to crack.
We dedicate this piece to those who resist empire in all its forms.
To the Indigenous land defenders standing against deforestation and desecration.
To the Palestinian farmers reclaiming seeds beneath siege.
To the workers and weavers, the water protectors and seed savers.
To those whose rebellion begins with a whisper, a harvest, a refusal.
May your courage echo across galaxies.
“There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try.”
—Nemik’s Manifesto
In upcoming newsletters, we will explore the role of speculative fiction in worldbuilding and reimagination. What works of this genre do you think we should revisit? Do any parallels come to mind? We would love to hear from you!
Care and Resistance - Embedding Radical Care at the heart of our movements
Over the past two years, A Growing Culture, Focus on the Global South, and Raj Patel brought together five social movements from around the world: Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa, LILAK in the Philippines, West Street Recovery in the United States, the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in Brazil, and the Southern Peasants’ Federation of Thailand. Together, we explored how care work — the vital, often unseen labour of nourishing households and communities, tending to children and elders, stewarding the land, showing up for each other in times of crisis, and keeping movements alive across generations and borders — is at the heart of their resistance.
The learnings from this process have been captured in a beautiful zine and a series of conversations, alive with stories, strategies, and visions from movements on the frontlines of resistance against capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy, and the climate crisis. For anyone dreaming of a world built on collective care, whether you are deep in this work or just beginning, this is an invitation to read, reflect, and reimagine with us.
Read and watch it all here
This article by Food Tank, breaking down how Brazil’s impressive improvements in food security in the last two years ultimately prove that hunger is a political choice. Policies that support peasant food webs, agroecology-sourced school meals and food banks can lift up people from severe food insecurity in record-time.
This report by GRAIN, exposing the corporate interests behind Pakistan’s farmlands. Private investments from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have prioritised the gulf’s food security, leaving Pakistani peasant farmers and activists worried they’ll be displaced, limiting their access to crucial agricultural resources as investors strain water resources and lead to an ecological disaster in the region.
This report by The Oakland Institute. ‘Profit off Peace?’ names the corporations seeking to extract and benefit from the mineral wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) after the peace agreement signed with Rwanda in June 2025. “This deal may only perpetuate the deadly cycle of exploitation that has plagued the country for centuries.”
Every resource produced by A Growing Culture, whether a newsletter, article, post, or design, results from countless hours of research, reflection, and the synthesis of profound conversations held both within our team and with our partners and comrades. Behind the scenes, a wealth of effort goes into making these conversations happen, from overseeing our day-to-day operations, securing our funding, to forging deep relationships with communities around the world who are leading food systems transformation. These relationships fuel our thoughts, inform our words, and inspire our actions.
We recognise that no single person can take credit for the work we collectively produce, which is why we prefer to sign as an organisation rather than as individuals. We believe that no idea is inherently our own and welcome anyone who sees value in our work to translate it, build upon it, adapt it to their own contexts, or share it however they see fit.
Andor is an entertainment product of Hollywood and another tool of empire that makes us passive consumers. They take resistance and activism and make it content and that's why I hate how much I loved it.