07/28/2026
I recently started referring to myself as a “small scale urban farmer.” In order to cocoon myself from ridicule I would make this declaration in a tone deeply inflected with irony. "Of course I recognize that this quaint little garden isn’t going to feed the masses!"
The irony is a grounding technique; it functions as a reassurance that I too am realistic about global food security and that I too, am on board with the “feed the world” narrative.
The story goes something like this: in order to ensure global food security our collective energy is best spent improving the technology, the logistics and the science of modern agricultural practices. We must meet food insecurity logically and rationally and double down on large scale food production.
I used to think that capitalism would come to an end and that capital’s internal logic of endless accumulation and infinite growth would eventually reach its limit and collapse, not because of a global ethical imperative but because the natural world would force its demise.
However, based on the current trajectory of the modern, global order I suspect that even when the economic growth derived from petro and nitrogen capitalism trickles to a low drip and runs its course capital will simply re-arrange and reinvent itself like the fabled Hydra of Greek mythology.
Historically, nothing would suggest otherwise. From the enclosure of the commons in 15th century Europe to the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade; to colonialism and dispossession; to the scramble for Africa; the 1970s debt crisis; to the IMF and Structural Adjustment Programs; to the Green Revolution to Green Technology and carbon credits.
Surely we can glance for a second at the blazing, burning truth that the long arc of history does not bend towards food security or justice?
Amilcar Cabral, the Guinea-Bissau anti-colonial agronomist wrote of how human liberation and soil liberation are deeply connected. He knew that good soil literally made worlds and that soil was a point of resistance. He used a different story to tell the story of human futurity and liberation.
And I sense if he stood before me, Cabral would tell me to ditch the irony.
