What’s good, is good for the land
What might a grassroots agroecological movement with justice and equity at its centre look like?
This is a Transformation scenario, one of four archetypal scenarios described in IFTF’s ‘Alternative Future Scenarios’ toolkit. It explores a future where profound and positive shifts occur across various domains. This scenario embraces radical changes in social, economic, and technological systems, driven by a collective desire for a more equitable and sustainable world. Societies adopt new models of governance, prioritize well-being and environmental stewardship, and leverage emerging technologies for positive impact. Collaboration, innovation, and inclusivity are central themes in this scenario, resulting in a transformed and resilient society.
Getting organised
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”
Ursula K Le Guin
“People had had enough. A lot of us had spent our entire adult lives under austerity. We organised. A nation of whingers finally grew a backbone. History is filled with ‘sensible’ middle-aged men telling people who are actually trying to do shit that they are doing it the wrong way, or that it’ll never succeed. ‘Human nature’ this, ‘people today don’t want to work anymore’ that. It was all bollocks. We stopped listening to them, and we organised. People were sick of the endless cost of living crisis, they lacked meaning, and they were paralyzed by the enormity of the task at hand. We did something about that. The strike and its aftermath were joyous, hopeful and messy, it was bloody hard work, and we didn’t get everything right. But we did it. ”
Tara, 32, Atlantic Rainforest Restoration Corps, Snowdonia Chapter
Year 2040
Decades of austerity; everything getting shitter, but more expensive. Privatisation of the NHS. Oil and gas projects are still being approved despite the world being on fire. Record numbers of elderly dying of the cold in the winter and of the heat in summer each year. Land grabs in the name of carbon offsetting and false dawn technofixes. There was a crisis of imagination within government; all they had to offer were weak incrementalist solutions not fit to tackle the polycrisis at hand, and culture war distractions as they asset stripped the country to the bone. Critical issues like food security barely got any attention compared to the bodily autonomy of marginalised groups.
It’s hard to point to exactly what that final straw was. Many people were surprised when the dam finally burst. Historians are still arguing over it. Some have drawn comparisons to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the removal of a mental blockage in the British people. Whatever it was, years of civil disobedience, industrial action and violence culminated in the year 2031 in what few had thought possible: a general strike.
A critical mass of critical workers said “Enough.”
Bins stopped getting collected. The post stopped getting delivered. Trains, buses, lorries and delivery vans stopped being driven. Crops went untended. Supermarket shelves didn’t get restocked. Schools, pharmacies, factories and warehouses shut. Electricians, plumbers, builders and other trades downed tools. Hospitals and the fire service went down to skeleton crews responding to only the most severe emergencies. The ‘box-tickers, taskmasters, flunkies, goons and duct tapers’ of the modern office place all stopped what they were doing too—though nobody noticed that quite so much.1
A bitter fortnight-long impasse, and then: we won.
A coalition of the oppressed emerged; anti-austerity, pro-redistribution of land and wealth but, critically, not the mythical ‘radical woke left extremists’ that you’d be warned about.2 Instead, hardworking people, ‘normal’ people tired of their living standards slipping ever further whilst the ruling class bumbled their way from one scandal to the next.
There was historical precedent, Britain has a long history of struggle and class action that is too easily forgotten.3 Rights taken for granted today, like the weekend, public holidays and paid annual leave, were fought for through collective action by trade unions and others. Somehow we’d become passive since then, a collective apathy. When this later struggle is retold or taught in schools in the decades to come it will no doubt be told from a sanitised, whitewashed and over-simplified narrative, as history so often is. It was anything but that. What happened next was hopeful, complicated and messy…
Working people weren’t some homogenous beast woken from a great slumber to unanimously birth Utopia, but were tired of too little too late and utterly terrified that the worst was still to come. Climate change had long since stopped being a thing for future generations to worry about, or something on the news happening to people far away. They’d all known people die in heatwaves. They’d all experienced the shortages in the supermarkets. Whole communities had been wiped out by flooding.
The urgent need to mitigate climate change by radically slashing emissions, and trying to adapt to the new normal—and the chaos of what was to still come—was front and centre of public demands after the general strike.
During the preceding years of crisis, a grassroots community-led response to climate chaos had risen to prominence, as it so often does in times of crisis. Neighbours, once strangers, began to connect and support one another—a social fabric that had been missing in society was slowly rewoven. Small-scale farms were a natural focal point for food mutual aid that other organisations coalesced around.4 Networks arose organically: neighbourhood and community groups, food banks, charities, local sports teams, and places of worship came to fill in the gaps, often gaping ones, left by a beleaguered and distracted national government and became the scaffolding upon which much local (re)organisation occurred.5 Naturally, a decentralised response was heterogeneous. Fascism briefly reared its ugly head in parts of the country, but mutual aid and community won out.
Every cottage shall have their porcyon
‘England is not a free people, til the poor that have no land, have a free allowance to dig and labour the commons’
Gerrard Winstanley, 1649
During the mid-2020s, public sentiment began to sway and became more sympathetic to the actions of Just Stop Oil and others, including a new group; the ‘New Diggers.’ With a name paying homage to the anti-enclosure groups of the 1600s, their mandate was land.6 They declared that unjust access to land was the root cause of many of society's ills. While most of us were crippled by debt to rent or own a roof over our heads—more than 50% of the UK was owned by the richest 1%.7 This inequality was being further compounded during that time as a corporate ‘green’ land grab saw huge areas in Scotland, Wales and Northern England bought by corporations to plant massive invasive pine monocultures in the name of carbon credits.
Land reform in the wake of the general strike inspired by the New Diggers was radical and swift in its effectiveness. Measures taken included: a cap on the maximum area of land that a person or business could own; a limit of one home per person; rules that only UK residents could own land or property; stricter rent controls; reformed taxation for agricultural land; and a fully transparent land registry.8 Land could no longer be treated as a speculative asset, large private land ownership was effectively outlawed, and large estates were broken up. Some powerful actors stood to lose out big time. They didn’t go down without a fight.
The long game was a redistribution of land to those who were willing and able to work it. There was a huge demand for jobs that actually contributed to society, and growing food was of the highest priority. Clearly though, distributing land to people who had never worked it before, and expecting them to feed a nation, would be an abject disaster. Farming is tough graft, reliant on knowledge, expertise and more than a little gumption. Many pairs of soft city hands, though eager, simply weren’t ready. A transition plan was prudently put in place, reallocating substantial resources toward educating the next generation (of all ages) of farmers, not only in the technical skills of low-carbon agroecological agriculture but also a philosophy of stewardship and a land ethic.9
Agroecosystems had long been treated as resources to be exploited, but our relationship with them is gradually moving closer to one of kinship or clan relationship, with other beings as co-inhabitants of agroecosystems, with a oneness or harmony with nature.10 Societal ‘values of nature’ were shifting, from an anthropocentric perspective of ‘living from’ agroecosystems and nature to a more pluricentric approach of ‘living with’ or ‘living as’ nature.11 Alongside land reform, this realignment of human-nature relationships was critical—though long known to be a pivotal leverage point, it had been ignored for its difficulty and perceived fluffiness.12 Now the Overton Window was shifting.
Reoriented education explicitly incorporated systems of knowledge beyond mere scientism: incorporating local ‘situated’ knowledge of existing land stewards with science was critical to realising the potential of a grassroots, local agriculture.13 Farmer clusters and watershed councils comprising farmers, critical infrastructure representatives, researchers and citizen scientists have allowed management practices to more closely mirror the ecology of bioregions, watersheds and microcatchments.14 Along with citizen assemblies and other democratic mechanisms, these institutions have empowered citizens to participate in ecosystem restoration and land stewardship, even if they weren’t directly involved in growing food as part of the agrarian revival. The closer connection to the land has profoundly shifted the human-nature perspective of the average citizen, even if we all know people today that it might be hard to imagine engaging in such a way today.
Local authorities have transformed in this era of more decentralised governance, people are much more engaged with local politics in the wake of climate chaos. In 2040, local authorities are far more meritocratic and effective at governance. Fortunate, too, because post-strike they had a huge amount of land to redistribute equitably. One of the principal mechanisms for doing so was the revival of County Farms, owned by local authorities and run by experienced farmers providing secure employment and training to new entrants and farm labourers. Community Land Trusts were another mechanism for communities to take ownership of land, whilst citizen assemblies were key to democratic local decision-making. Groups with little to no historical access to land—the working class, women, queer, POC and intersections of each—now had opportunities never before afforded to them, through efforts championed by the likes of Land In Our Names and others.15
Agrarian revival
A locally oriented, low-carbon form of agroecological production emerged on redistributed land out of necessity. It wasn’t based on faux misty-eyed nostalgia for a past that never existed, or the ‘cruel fantasies of well-fed people’.16 Nor was it techno-utopian ecomodernist dogma, too energy intensive and ignorant of diverse food cultures. Bio-intensive, agroecological production with a high input of labour (of which there was no shortage) was critical to achieving food sovereignty by replacing fossil fuel-derived inputs.
Working closely with educational and research institutions and the guidance of the Landworkers Alliance (whose membership had swelled as the fight for food sovereignty and land rights became dinner table issues), county farms run by experienced farmers were responsible for producing staple crops like cereals, legumes and potatoes using bio-intensive agroecological methods.17 With so many new entrants to farming the first few years were a stretch. Experienced farmers and growers were vital for the transition, yet the number of people needing to be trained far outweighed those experienced and knowledgeable enough to train them. Networks of small-scale growers coalesced around their mentors over the years.
The British landscape has evolved into a rich patchwork of horticulture, cereal and legume fields, orchards, silvopasture and hay meadows. Abundant municipal food forests were planted in every settlement, providing rich supplementary food and medicine to communities - fruits, berries, nuts, herbs, perennial vegetables and medicinal plants. Large-scale grain-fed meat production has been scaled back quite substantially particularly in upland areas due to competing land use with ecosystem restoration. Poultry, pigs, and rabbits are kept by many households, whilst municipal goat herds and beehives serve communities, in gardens, orchards, and communal meadows.18 Urban farms, aquaponics and mushroom farms all help to eke out as much food as possible from our small island. There has been a significant trend of depopulation in cities as land redistribution occurs and densely populated cities make less sense; more people working the land meant more people living on the land.
Re-commoning and redistributing land has brought about many new forms of shared infrastructure, which better suit community-oriented mutual aid. A host of municipal infrastructure that supports agriculture and the nascent bio-economy has been implemented: composting facilities, insect farms to valorise food waste for animal feed, biorefineries, municipal seed banks and nurseries for bioregionally appropriate varieties. 19
Transformative breakthroughs in ‘Korean Natural Farming’ techniques to work with native soil microbiology and advanced cover cropping regimes have all but eliminated the need for synthetic inputs. Further breakthroughs in food innovation, based on traditional fermentation techniques used by monks and other craftspeople on animal milk but translated to legumes, nuts and cereals have brought about a new generation of locally adapted plant cheeses that taste every bit as good as traditional cheeses.
Restoration of the Atlantic Rainforest
“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.”
Greek Proverb
Land reform and an unprecedented available pool of labour allowed for grand-scale ecosystem restoration projects. By the early 2020s, the UK was one of the world's most nature-depleted countries—in the bottom 10% globally.20 There was plenty of work to be done. Britain looked to the so-called global south, including many of her former colonies, like India, for inspiration where the growing Half Earth movement and stewardship by indigenous peoples had been particularly influential.21
Undoubtedly the biggest success story was the restoration of the Atlantic Temperate Rainforest to its former glory.22 Covering just 0.5% of the UK in the early 2020s and little known amongst the population (its oxymoronic sounding name still confused many during the early phases), but now it’s closer to 20%, running along the Western spine of the country - from Cornwall, through Wales, the Lake District and half of Scotland.23 This project was a critical part of the climate mitigation response, a way to draw down carbon, whilst restoring biodiversity and reducing the impacts of flooding.
The project moved quickly: it had always been a popular idea, but there was never the political will to get it off the ground.24 The Atlantic Rainforest Corps was set up, employing thousands of people to plant diverse native trees, with seeds and saplings supplied through municipal infrastructure outlined earlier. Removal of the many monoculture plantations thrown up during the corporate land grab was an important part of the project too, with that timber used in new construction projects. A grand project to repair some of the ills we’d reaped on our beloved island. Today most of the trees are less than a decade old and it’ll take some time before it reaches its true glory.
For perhaps the most radical development, Britain again turned to her former colonies for inspiration. The rights of the Atlantic Rainforest were enshrined within a legal framework as it was granted legal personhood, recognising the ecosystem as a subject of the law, capable of holding rights and bringing legal actions to protect its well-being. Further, a model of collective stewardship for the Atlantic Rainforest was established, drawing inspiration from indigenous governance systems, emphasizing community-led decision-making and respect for the interconnectedness of all living beings.25
Even in this era of radical land reform, there isn’t as much room as there used to be; ecosystem restoration takes up a lot of space, conflicting with food production in some areas. The bio-intensive labour-intensive small-scale agriculture is more productive per area.26 Better regional planning, a reprioritisation of resources directed to food production, changes in what we came to expect or demand and an influx of labour to food-producing activities all eased the pressure.
A likely future?
This scenario sought to explore what one possible future for regenerative agroecology could look like if a critical mass of people successfully organised and demanded a more just and equitable future. It’s been observed on numerous occasions that it is ‘easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of Capitalism.’27 Whilst this scenario doesn’t explicitly go that far, many of the deeply entrenched tenets of that system, like private property rights and the human-nature relationship, are reimagined here. If you think this scenario is unrealistic, consider the following questions:
How will people react if their government's response to repeated climate disasters is insufficient? What if the public demands radical action?
What would it take for a general strike or other forms of mass collective action to happen in the UK? What could be that tipping point? What could be the aftermath?
How might recommoning or radical redistribution of land change things? What would it take to make this happen?
What kind of supporting infrastructure would be required for a low-carbon agroecological food system to thrive? How would it be paid for?
If more people had access to land, and we reoriented society to only provide jobs that served society, how would people spend their time?
How might more decentralised forms of governance manifest? What forms of mutual aid might arise?
How could large-scale ecosystem restoration projects get off the ground? Who will pay for them?
How could a reorientation of the human-nature relationship, from more anthropocentric views to more pluralistic views, happen in future? What might be the societal impact?
How can we ensure that equity and justice are enshrined in the future?
These are the five categories of Bullshit Jobs outlined in David Graeber’s book of the same name
As one example, Chris Newman outlines elements of his mutual aid program at Sylvanaqua Farm here: Farm to community: critical elements of a successful farm mutual aid program
For some good examples of contemporary Mutual Aid in the face of climate disasters see Mutual Aid and Disaster Justice: ‘We keep us safe’
The Land Magazine (2009) A short history of enclosure in Britain
Guy Shrubsole (2019) ‘Who Owns England’
ibid (7)
Maraja Riechers, Jacqueline Loos, Ágnes Balázsi, Marina García-Llorente, Claudia Bieling, Aracely Burgos-Ayala, Leila Chakroun, Thomas J.M. Mattijssen, Maximilian M. Muhr, Irene Pérez-Ramírez, Kaisa J. Raatikainen, Sakshi Rana, Miles Richardson, Linda Rosengren & Simon West (2021) Key advantages of the leverage points perspective to shape human-nature relations
ibid (9)
ibid (9)
Jack Kloppenburg, Jr. (1991) Social Theory and the De/Reconstruction of Agricultural Science: Local Knowledge for an Alternative Agriculture
This is a great essay that critically summarises much of the debate between George Monbiot and Chris Smaje. ‘Cruel fantasies of well fed people’ refers to the title of one of Monbiots essays central to that debate.
Several of these ideas were explored in the 2019 report by the Labour Party ‘Land for the Many’
Full credit to an excellent series of essays by ‘The Last Farm’ on municipal eco-socialist infrastructure which heavily inspired this section. Give them a gleg: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
ibid (18)
Natural History Museum (2021) Biodiversity Intactness Index
See Kim Stanley Robinson’s ‘Ministry for the Future’ for one such example
Christopher Ellis (2016) Oceanic and temperate rainforest climates and their epiphyte indicators in Britain
If this seems fanciful, see here to explore the many projects of this nature that are happening today.
Glenn Davis Stone (2022) The Agricultural Dilemma: How Not to Feed the World