Zeitgeist

Dear readers,

It’s been incredibly hard to open up this year’s Substack in a manner that addresses the developments of the global crises while respecting our current internal pacing, always grounded in serving you and the movement with care and coherence. We know we have been silent for a while, and we deeply appreciate the patience and support of those of you who believe in our narrative work beyond the rules and expectations of this fast-paced digital environment. As we gain more internal clarity, we feel ready and excited to continue building our Substack community in parallel to reducing our dependency on Meta platforms, a step that will take time but certainly feels aligned with our values and political stance.

With every second unfolds a new story, a new dilemma, a new win or loss to address. The more we wait, the more ground remains uncovered. While the world as we know it looks like it’s falling apart, it seems to be expected of us to treat every new horror as an insignificant drop in the sea of “normal”. If you scroll on social media, you’re constantly bombarded with nerve-wracking news, ads, coping humour, pop culture, more news, memes, yet another historical event, and so on. This is not accidental: information overload is being strategically used as a weapon. Silently, no matter how distressful, pacifying, or exploitative the information pushed on our brains is, it is slowly settling with concerning normality like pieces of a neverending puzzle after each scroll.

We’ve dedicated other entries to talk about how paralysing these ‘apocalyptic’ times can be, and today we won’t delve much into that—this fatigue doesn’t need to be overexplained. We rather open this year’s reflections with a fundamental question to us, as an organisation, and to you, as a supporter of our vision; what’s the relevance of food sovereignty in a collapsing system?

Almost every symptom of the violence around us is mirrored in our food systems, unfolding alongside a broader erosion of sovereignty at a global scale. Seeds, for example, have been under corporate attack for decades. Beyond being the foundation of the world’s nourishment, they are at the heart of a people’s autonomy. To control seeds is to control life itself.

Imagine a future where every seed planted is either patented or privatised. Where communities can no longer save, exchange and reproduce them freely? Where every harvest guarantees record-high profits for less than a handful of companies, and a new cycle of debt for farmers? Where peasants are forbidden from practicing shared stewardship, and are instead forced to depend on volatile corporate control over supply, pricing, and access.

Tragically, this is not a distant future, but a trajectory already underway. If it wasn’t for the persistent and defiant resistance of Indigenous peoples, peasants and small-scale farmers, corporate-controlled seeds would have taken over our fields and tables long ago. Last year, we supported the launch of StopUPOV.org to broaden the organised resistance against the efforts of Minority World* governments and transnational corporations to privatise and commodify seeds. In this website, you’ll find a summary to understand how Minority World countries have granted corporations monopoly rights over seeds via the UPOV framework, a world map to identify which countries have historically pushed UPOV and which ones have been imposed into it, as well as an introduction to the StopUPOV alliance and simple steps to help free seed.

*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. Majority World refers to the countries commonly labelled as “developing,” who in fact make up the majority of the world’s population.

The globalised food system has been designed to benefit a few; it is rooted in greed and dispossession. A system meant to produce without thinking of how or who. A corporate hydra that depletes ecosystems, marginalises farmers and manufactures hunger. We’ve said it before: the industrialised food system cares for agri-business not for agri-culture. Stripping our humanity away from the systems that nourish us is Empire’s ultimate form of oppression. Today, more than ever, we need to stand up for our sovereignty.

The ongoing war waged by the U.S. and Israel is exposing the fragility of the globalised food system. With the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has come a rise in fertiliser prices that is brutally impacting farmers in the Majority World. From India to the U.S., Brazil to the Philippines, oil and gas prices are also spiking alongside food costs, pushing millions into deeper poverty and food insecurity. While we all struggle, corporations are predicted to profit from the crisis, just like during and after the pandemic or after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This analysis by Raj Patel breaks down the implications of the current war across energy supplies and the industrial food chain, and what’s to come in the near future:

“As the clean energy transition reduces fossil fuel demand in transport and power, the oil and gas industry is increasingly turning to petrochemicals—particularly fertilizers and food-grade plastics—as its growth frontier. Petrochemicals are on track to become the single-largest driver of oil demand growth, accounting for nearly half of all growth by 2050. The food system is where Big Oil plans to park its future.”

Between wars, occupation, energy shortages, mass migration, decaying governance, we’re constantly being pitted against each other while the global tech-oligarchy surveils and plays dice with our collective fate. Data centers settle in foreign lands, cooled off by the water entire regions depend on for their survival. Illegal mining enslaves and exploits to gather resources for devices and “green energies”. In the fields, every piece of data is being extracted for so-called precision agriculture, with tools as controversial as pest-killing drones and cattle collars for mass control in the name of virtual fencing. But technology is political, and far from neutral. In collaboration with ETC Group, La Vía Campesina, and the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, we put together the Autonomy in the Face of Agtech booklet. It presents strategies for identifying how popular narratives around technologies work, their impact and implications, what gives them power, and how we can take it back.

In the face of tech-oligarchy with its tentacular reach into every facet of our lives, we are reminded that there is no single issue anymore. AI is a food sovereignty issue. War is a food sovereignty issue. And just as AI rises despite its environmental and political implications, many are turning to the land with a veil of idealisation and a heavy dose of individualism. Off-grid living centred around self-sufficiency seems to be a current aspiration across generations, and it’s easy to understand why. The hyperconnectivity of this world, paired with the costs and damage of late-stage capitalism is detrimental to us and the planet in every way possible. It makes sense then, that more people are becoming aware of the privileges that “living off the land” brings—if you own the land, with access to water, energy, and the tools, techniques and support systems to grow pesticide-free foods.

Longing to shield oneself from the worst could be considered a reflection of our survival instinct, but agriculture is a collective intelligence. From Indigenous nomads to pastoralists to early agrarian settlements, entire civilisations were born from a deep understanding of land, ecology, and community. No fresh foods would reach our hands today without the restless work of the peasantry, and at its core is a historical struggle for territorial autonomy and collective liberation. A liberated future can’t be built by isolating ourselves, it demands we unite. The goal is not self-sufficiency, but also communal agency.

Food sovereignty demands that we organise, that we uphold the values that allow us to care for life, that we act collectively rather than individually, that we think long-term and on a localised, small scale, that we don’t do things for profit, but ecosystemic support. It is born from cultures of solidarity and mutual aid, not islands of well-being for the privileged. Food sovereignty also requires us to understand where else we need to be sovereign: entertainment, consumption, education. Sovereignty means challenging and perhaps rethinking our concepts of freedom. It means embracing diversity and questioning centralisation—of production, distribution, power.

Systemic transformation begins with local actions. What are the needs of your community? What are the injustices happening at your front door? What support systems can you map around you? Engaging in these conversations where you’re at can be enlightening, and cultivate a stronger sense of belonging. In our conversation with Nancy Matsumoto, we talk about the vital role of local networks and the importance of uplifting the alternative food system. In her latest book, ‘Reaping What She Sows’, Nancy highlights the stories of women who are actively challenging industrial food chains through community-based alternatives.

We know that social media platforms have become a space to “connect” and “interact”, but spending time away from our screens is crucial if we want to successfully organise and protect our communities in an increasingly surveilled world. The efficiency of our strategies cannot depend on already compromised algorithms; by May, Instagram won’t even be safe for private messaging since they will remove end-to-end encryption. The power of these platforms is driven by our attention—are we conscious of where we put ours?

At A Growing Culture, we are taking small steps to free all of our narrative work from the confinements of our Instagram feed and house it in an open-access archive. Overall, we are eager to expand our editorial work in offshoot and beyond through community-centred storytelling, making space for guest writers, and amplifying the voice and perspectives of those who inspire us to continue doing this work. Seed, in particular, is a theme that we will be exploring throughout the year across projects and this substack. We have many stories lined up, so you can expect to hear from us every week now, starting with the first of a set of articles published in collaboration with MAD Agriculture.

Again, we appreciate your patience and support. We would love to hear from you what questions or considerations came to mind while reading today’s reflection, or if you’d like us to explore something in particular for future pieces.

CALL FOR SUPPORT

Please consider donating to the solidarity campaign led by the Agricultural Movement to support farmers threatened by Israeli attacks in Lebanon. The collected amount allows them to produce seedlings for the new season, distribute heirloom seeds to farmers in areas not under threat, cover labour costs of agricultural workers as well as shelter, feed and transportation costs of cattle and beehives from threatened zones to safe areas. Donate here.

1. This report by the ETC Group, which examines how the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is directing public funds into “deep tech” fields, including controversial solar geoengineering projects that challenge global norms. It raises concerns about weak democratic oversight, conflicts of interest, and the influence of Silicon Valley interests, arguing that ARIA’s approach prioritises speculative, profit-driven technologies over ecological integrity and public accountability.

2. This article by our comrades Amalini De Sayrah and Clarice Rangel Schreiner from the Nyeleni process, that highlights how Sri Lankan women of the Vimukthi Collective are organising against systems of indebtedness and financialisation, and building alternatives through solidarity economies, agroecology, and grassroots resistance to microfinance debt.

3. The report ‘Head in the Cloud’ by IPES-Food. It analyses how food systems are under an increasingly alarming control by technology and agribusiness firms that only reinforce high-cost, high-input production models. This report also highlights farmer-led innovations that strengthen soil health, conserve agrobiodiversity, adapt crops to climate change, and build resilient local food systems

4. This interview with Karen Washington by Mark Brand touches on the importance of mapping the systems of support in our communities, food as a tool for organising, the relevance of sovereignty in a “security” focused approach to combat hunger, and the difference between charity and solidarity.

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.