Paradigm shifts for 21st century food & farming

Geoff Tansey

Oxford Real Farming Conference6 January 2014

www.tansey.org.uk

1910s – 2010s – 2050s?

• Declining powers

• New powers emerging

• Legal frameworks

• Technologies

Key trends• Economic Concentration

• Global markets

• Control

• Geo-political shifts

Revised, Food Policy, OECD, 1981

• Seed industry structure graphic

• Picture of Atlantic centred world map showing hunger map

• Picture of pacific centre world map, upside down

Today’s context- the real threats to our world

• Climate destabilisation• Competition over resources• Marginalisation of the majority world

– Inequality increased in most countries• Global militarisation

– BTWC, dual use & bio-weapons

Sources: Abbott, Rogers and Sloboda, Oxford Research Group; Richard Jolly; Malcolm Dando

Differing narratives for sustainability

• Productivity– techno-fix, economic growth, demand

exogenous, [corporate feudalism?]

• Sufficiency– ecological balance / diversity / equity– small farmers

Thinking about systems

and how to change them

See: Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems - A Primer, Earthscan, 2009

Leverage points• Rules, incentives, punishments, constraints

– Who has power over them

• Self organisation - power to add, change, evolve system structure– Diversity, variability, experimentation

• Losing control

• Goals - purpose or function of system– Core issue, who can change

• Paradigm - mind set– Shifting changes rest

Changing paradigms & practices

• A new ecological economics• To agro-ecological farming from

industrial, fossil fuel based model• Changing consumption

4 dimensions for action• Who acts

– Individuals, Indiv in Community, Corporate

• To what end– Revolution, reform, renaissance, resistance

• Using what levers– Paradigm, rules, goals ….

• Addressing power and control

DDS/CMT India

Home

Many peoplesMuch diversityGlobal is localLocal is global

200 year perspective

Thank You

www.tansey.org.uk

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