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Food, Climate, and the Green New Deal: a Social Contract for Justice?

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Food, Climate, and the Green New Deal: a Social Contract for Justice? Our research and analysis is fueled by people like you. Help keep Food First an independent think-and-do tank today at foodfirst.org/support. INSTITUTE FOR FOOD AND DEVELOPMENT POLICY SPRING 2019 VOLUME 25 • NUMBER 1 Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey unveil the Green New Deal Resolution. Photo courtesy of Senate Democrats (CC BY 2.0) Food, Climate, and the Green New Deal: A Social Contract for Justice? By Eric Holt-Giménez and Heidi Kleiner The Green New Deal has taken the country by storm. The non-bindingResolution calls for massive public investment in green jobs and green infrastructure to achieve “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers… to be accomplished through a 10-year national mobilization.”1 Unsurprisingly, the Green New Deal (GND) introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), has been ignored by industry, mocked by Republicans and vilified in the conservative media.2 Though it has nearly 70 co-sponsors, powerful mainstream Democrats are tiptoeing around it, perhaps because they are nervous about angering the fossil fuel industry. And while the GND has been overwhelmingly celebrated by environmentalists, social justice groups are giving it a cautious welcome.3 Ocasio-Cortez and Markey’s GND all farmers and society. A social contract follows on prior initiatives from was established.”9 economist Thomas Friedman,4 the British Green New Deal Group,5 The Green New Deal, crafted by the United Nations Environment urban-oriented policy writers, says Program’s Global Green New Deal,6 the very little about agriculture, though it more radical Green New Deal7 from the does propose, “… working collabora- US Green Party, and Van Jones’ book, tively with farmers and ranchers in the The Green Collar Economy.8 All draw United States to remove pollution and inspiration from the original New Deal greenhouse gas emissions from the that sought to pull the United States agricultural sector as much as is techno- Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace who was out of the Great Depression. Saving logically feasible… by supporting family a critical advocate of the AAA. Library of Congress, family farms, restoring and conserving farming; by investing in sustainable Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Harris & Ewing. hundreds of millions of acres of farming and land use practices that agricultural land, breaking up big trusts, increase soil health; and by building a and putting the country’s unemployed more sustainable food system that en- parity pricing—not only covering the 10 back to work were its pillars. sures universal access to healthy food.” cost of production, but guaranteeing a living wage for all those engaged in Both the original New Deal and the But for many farm justice leaders, the food and farm system—while also GND have followed on decades of this approach does not deal with the expanding programs for young, begin- laissez-faire, free-market capitalism, structural obstacles that make it difficult ning, minority, and other disadvantaged massive concentration of wealth, and for farmers to farm without emitting farmers interested in growing healthy devastating financial crashes. Bothgreenhouse gases. For Anthony Pahnke food in a responsible, equitable manner address environmental catastrophe, and and John Peck of Family Farm Defenders that will also cool the planet.” income inequality (though not wealth in Wisconsin, the GND needs to address inequality) through massive public structural issues: like the land question, Elizabeth Henderson of NOFA, the investment. Aside from the nine decades parity, and farm justice: Northeast Organic Farming Association, separating one new deal from the other, wants the GND to distinguish between they have other fundamental—and “Given that agriculture is a major US corporate agriculture interests and illustrative—differences. source of greenhouse gas emissions, family farmers, and needs greater a Green New Deal also requires a involvement of farmers and farm The United States was largely rural in just transition to a food and farm workers, “I think it’s really essential that the 1930s and the first New Deal began system which promotes agroecological farmer organizations and farmworker with the Agricultural Adjustment Act practices that build soil carbon, organizations have their voices heard that controlled overproduction, ensured protect air and water quality, and in the discussion of what should be in parity prices to farmers and levied taxes enhance biodiversity. Farmland is not the Green New Deal because there are on processors and middlemen. As Iowa just a speculative commodity to be going to be corporate pressures that farmer George Naylor explains: concentrated in a few hands, but a will see how they can profiteer from vital resource that should be dedicated this. They’re very good at that. There “Parity” was the name associated with to supporting independent family is not adequate understanding among these programs because it meant the farms and more widely distributed as some of the Green Party people, the farmer would be treated with economic part of a broader reparations agenda Sunrise folks, the Extinction Resistance equality and prices would be adjusted promoting food sovereignty. of what exactly it is that farmers and for inflation to remove the destructive farmworkers really need. Those people cost-price squeeze and the need for “Because overproduction is one on the are great allies and they’re all revved farmers to overproduce their way out main drivers of unsustainable practic- up and that’s terrific but we have to be of poverty and debt. It was understood es, a Green New Deal must include sure that they understand what works that the farmer’s individual “freedom” to policies that enable family farmers to concretely for farmers and farmworkers do whatever he or she wished with the remain viable on their own land through based on our living experience that land would be tempered for the good of supply management, credit access, and those people haven’t had.” Did you know that this is powered by people just like you? Our members’ generous support means that Food First doesn’t take a penny from corporations or governments. Donate today to support research that informs and amplifies grassroots organizing and movement building at www.foodfirst.org/support. So for climate justice to be successful we need to organize to change the po litical system Edgar Franks from Community to to just be made for profit. The effort frontline and vulnerable communities,” Community, an organization that works needs to be led by farmworkers. So and promises to “promote justice and with farmworkers in Skagit County, we definitely see that the Green New equity by stopping current, preventing Washington says, “When you compound Deal could be an opening to that but future, and repairing historic oppres- working outside with harsh weather farmworkers and rural communities sion of indigenous peoples, commu- conditions, it’s a recipe for a disaster, a need to be more involved.” nities of color, migrant communities, humanitarian crisis. A lot of that goes de-industrialized communities, depo- unnoticed as with other issues of immi- The first New Deal mobilized the pulated rural communities, the poor, grants and farmworkers. [Farmworkers] Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), to low-income workers, women, the el- are affected by pesticides, the drought, provide jobs to the country’s 15 million derly, the unhoused, people with dis- poverty…when we think about climate unemployed workers, but was weak abilities, and youth.”14 justice, part of it is the environment on ensuring for Africans-Americans, and the resources, but it’s also about the farmworkers, and communities of consequences of being poor and being color.11 Black and white sharecroppers, an immigrant that put you at a disad- for example, were left destitute by the vantage because people don’t see you as Agricultural Adjustment Act that paid a political force. So for climate justice plantation owners not to produce and to be successful we need to organize to thus shut down the markets for the cotton change the political system.” produced by sharecroppers. President Roosevelt’s “Indian Reorganization Can the Green New Deal address Act” replaced existing tribal law and the conditions and demands of constitutions with new forms of tribal 12 Indigenous activists take direct action against the farmworkers? Edgar asserts, self-governance. The “Indian CCC” corporations and politicians driving the extractive provided Native Americans with 15,000 economy. Photo courtesy of Jake Conroy / Ran (CC “Our food system is so dependent on jobs; the privatization of indigenous BY-NC 2.0) fossil fuels that we’re making [climate] land was terminated and some of it was conditions even worse. At the same returned or purchased with federal funds. In an official statement, IEN, the time we’re making profits, but on the But the new tribal constitutions put Indigenous Environmental Network, backs of farmworkers. We don’t want to stronger limits on tribes’ sovereignty.13 expressed support for AOC and be the bargaining chip. We need strong Markey’s efforts, and hailed the Green labor laws and environmental laws that Refreshingly, the Green New Deal New Deal as a “[Critical] process to protect the workers in the community resolution begins by “recognizing change the national conversation in because we don’t want our food industry systemic
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