A conversation with Nettie Wiebe, organic farmer and long-time small farm activist in Canada and globally, one of the founders of La Via Campesina, part of the IPES food panel, and coauthor of the recent Land Squeeze report. We talk about land purchases and prices. In many places, over 70% of the farmland is controlled by 1% of the farms. This is just one of the many challenges the latest Land Squeeze report of the IPES food panel addresses. We talk about the results of the report and what to do about it, how go get speculative money out of farming and why green grabbing needs to stop.
Land squeeze: one of the biggest issues in regenerative farming is access to land. Why is that? Farmers in the global industrialised north are ageing, and many of them don’t have a next generation taking over the farm; many other people would love to farm and are, in many cases, able, but can never finance the land purchase because land prices and value are completely disconnected. They face competition from ever larger industrial extractive, well financed farms.
LISTEN TO THE CONVERSATION ON:
PRODUCTIVISM
Nettie is part of a small minority of farmers who are committed to organic farming in an industry dominated by conventional chemical farming.
”We are very much the exception, still, I’m afraid. But our neighbours are not hostile to it, and there’s a lot of interest in organic; part of it is economic interest. The inputs, chemical inputs for conventional chemical farming, continue to rise in price, and the debt loads of farmers are higher and higher. So, if you’re talking economics, at least in our little firm, when we switch to organics we have done better economically because our costs are much lower. In terms of the bigger picture, though, no, conventional chemical farming and that corporate sector that drives it, and the kind of ideology of productivism, as we call it, always trying to get more and more from the land, more bushels per acre, if you will. That model continues to be so dominant that is the overwhelming number of farmers that continue to work within that model.” Nettie Wiebe
PEOPLE WHO GROW FOOD SHOULD HAVE A BIG VOICE IN HOW WE ORGANISE OUR FOOD SYSTEM
Nettie advocates for small-scale farming to protect the environment and indigenous communities.
”I’ve always understood that food is everybody’s business, and we should all have a say in it, and particularly the people who grow food should have a very big voice in how the food systems are organised, and we should not see that voice. I’ve always been, when we started farming; we’ve always been members of the National Farmers Union here in Canada, which is a small-scale family farmer organisation very committed to protecting the role of small- scale farmers in food systems, and that’s where I’m located. But I don’t consider this just to be self-pleading; I think it’s actually very important for the health, ecological and economic health, and certainly for the viability of small communities, rural communities, to have small- scale farmers, to have a whole range of diverse farming, farmers producing our food. And I think actually, when I look back at what’s happened to food systems, I think that remains a core value…” Nettie Wiebe
THE FINANCIALISATION OF AGRICULTURE LAND GLOBALLY
The farming population in Europe is ageing, making it difficult for young farmers to access land. Land ownership and access, and the complex issue of land speculation.
”In our context, and I think that’s the European context, too, and maybe much of the world, but certainly in our context, the farming population is ageing, and so you have a lot of farming families and farmers that are nearing retirement or want to be retired, and it is almost impossible for a newcomer, a young farmer, to get access to land, and we’ll get back to the land squeeze thing. But that’s one of the key problems of the way the land markets are organised and the way the food systems are organised: that young farmers actually have a very hard time, given how expensive land has become, gaining entry, and older farmers need to retire, and that transition to generations is very troubling and very troubled because of the financialization of land.” Nettie Wiebe
”The financialization of agricultural land globally and the entry of speculative capital into that market, and that entry has increased enormously over the last two decades. That’s actually made it almost impossible for new entrants into farming, and it’s squeezing out peasant, small-scale agriculture everywhere in the world.”
– Nettie Wiebe
CONTROL ALWAYS WANTS TO SIMPLIFY
Nettie reflects on the importance of letting go of control in farming and embracing a more regenerative approach.
”I would try to change the way people think about themselves and their environment. I would try to reframe the thinking. Global communication systems and global capital and so on and so forth encourage this. We’ve become sort of monocultural, not only in our fields but also in our minds. And I would try to reinsert a whole range of diverse ways of seeing ourselves, valuing ourselves, and living in the world. Mean, the interesting thing about social context is how complex it is, but we’re constantly trying to simplify and control it in ways that, as you and I both know, have been extremely destructive and aren’t that interesting or more frightening than interesting. Let’s go for interesting rather than frightening. Let’s go for diversity rather than mono thinking and see what flourishes.” Nettie Wiebe
”If I had a wand, that’s what I would say. I would say, Let’s come to the place where we are awestruck again by the ecological context we live in, rather than the place where we try to control, diminish, and simplify the world in which we live.” Nettie Wiebe
OTHER POINTS DISCUSSED
Koen and Nettie also talked about:
- Land reform and access to land for young farmers, with a focus on speculative capital and governance issues
- Investing in social cohesion and supporting Indigenous women’s farming organisations for long-term resilience
- Reframing thinking to value diversity and live in harmony with nature.
LINKS:
LINKED INTERVIEWS:
- Wouter Veer – Trying to fix private land ownership, the root cause of all our issues
- Charles Eisenstein – Money or ecology: investors have to make a choice on which master they serve
- Regenerative Mind series
- Thomas Rippel, checking in on land ownership, stable coins, pensions for farmers and city folks
- Thomas Rippel, using a blockchain to help Farmland Stewardship Organisations grow
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The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.
This is a brilliant conversation. Nettie’s clear ethical and moral stance underpins her statements. She makes important connections between the food on our tables, the land we tread on that, the importance of diversity and how we think about community, diversity, ecology and the environment.
Yes, it really is Martha!