The economic conditions that pushed the United States into the great famine of the 1920s–30s, namely debt crisis, profit driven mismanagement of environmental resources, and foreclosure of personal and private property, are eerily similar to those of the 21st Century. These forces have historically worked in concert to create a downward spiral of food affordability and agronomic recession that ends in mass starvation for the working class.
Predatory agribusiness and real estate systems have not changed in any meaningful way throughout modern history. Modern capitalist agriculture is fundamentally designed to enrich capitalist profiteers, not to feed the people. Economic demand for food products is not driven by the people’s needs, but by consumer purchasing power; economic supply of food products is driven by a producer’s ability to realize profit from consumer purchasing power. Thus, under the capitalist mode of production, the devaluation of money can, has, and will cause the entire agricultural system to collapse.
In order to mitigate the damages already caused by the petroleum industry and profit driven agribusiness we must actively reverse their effects and shift our societal goals from exploitative, individualist competition towards egalitarian cooperation. Economic Degrowth, regenerative agriculture, and agrarian reform known in the United States as “Land Back” are three major tools that can not only avert famine but also actively engineer a brighter future in coordination with nature instead of industrial domination.
The 20th Century Dust Bowl — A Warning from History
Throughout its development, the United States has established itself as an agricultural hyperpower with market dominance in domestic production and colonial plantation crops. This hegemony has been cultivated through unsustainable practices of fossil fuel farming and imposed upon the rest of the world by imperialist war and economic austerity. In its aggressive expansion, the U.S. agronomy of today has become entrenched in the same practices that Hugh Bennett warned of on March 21, 1935, when he directed the attention of Congress to a Nebraska dust storm blacking out the sun in Washington D.C. This infamous storm, along with the many that preceded and followed, would become known as the Dust Bowl era of U.S. history, and the tangible manifestation of economic collapse, market stagnation, and environmental disregard.
The Dust Bowl began when Savings and Loan banks in the 1920s — eager to exploit the inflated costs of real estate — were lending irresponsibly at unsustainable interest rates to American farmers. As farmers took on debt to invest in heavy machinery, substantial increases in harvest yields began to push prices down on staple commodities like wheat and corn. In the same way that 21st century working people sold more of their time to service interest on personal debt, farmers had to expand their arable land and harvest more crops at lower revenue to make ends meet. For example, in 1930, 68 million acres of wheat yielded 824 million bushels, generating $848 million in revenue, but by 1932, 58 million acres of wheat yielded 942 million bushels, generating just $358 million in revenue — a 14% increase in productivity, but a 57% decrease in revenue, over 2 years.
Under immense pressure from similar interest payments throughout the 20th century, American farmers began an era of ravenous expansion: Farmland swelled from 413 million acres in 1930 to 945 million in 2000, or from 25% to 50% of the landmass of the continental U.S. Much of this land occupied the Great Plains, a landscape formerly characterized by deep-rooting prairie grasses — with roots more than 20 feet deep — capable of soaking up more than 7 inches of rain in a single storm and retaining it in one of the world’s greatest deposits of rich, black topsoil. The destruction of the North American prairie and its replacement with shallow-rooting monocultures has directly decreased the amount of freshwater held within the interior U.S., which contributes to rising sea levels and sustained droughts.
Capitalist agriculture necessitates expensive, constant supervision of water resources to combat the symptoms of drastically reduced water infiltration and retention in the ground. Once a section of land has been cleared of native plants, farmers rely on combinations of retention ponds, irrigation systems, subterranean aquifers, rain collection, and municipal water supplies to retain moisture in the ground. With the onset of the Great Depression, urban citizens were unable to afford food, market prices dropped, and the lack of financial input bloated interest payments for most farmers. Between 1929 and 1932, more than 30% of U.S. farms were foreclosed, leaving over 100 million acres of tilled farmland completely barren and unmanaged, mainly in the Midwestern and Plains states.
The culmination of these economic issues was a devastating period of drought and starvation in the U.S. while unsold crops rotted in piles or dried out in fields unreachable by the hungry and destitute masses.
A Dust Bowl for the Space Age
In the modern United States, wages have stagnated to such a point that the 2022 consumer holds less purchasing power than they would in 1980. This net negative for labor is the result of 40 years of neoliberal financial development and trickle-down tomfoolery. This decrease in consumer dollar power has already fomented a steep recession in agricultural activity: Farm debt is at an all time high, and farm profits are at all time lows. Farmer suicide rates — normally twice as high as the average — are increasing in tandem with drought conditions as the Colorado River system fails. Meanwhile, farm foreclosure rates are breaking records across the corn belt, once again leaving millions of acres barren and unmanaged.
The average cost of cropland in the United States has increased 7.8% just from 2020 to 2021, and more than 75% since 2007. Over the same 15 year period, farmland mortgage debt has climbed 267% from $112.7Bn to $301Bn, achieving a U.S. total farm debt of $464.4Bn in 2022. On top of this grim financial situation, geopolitics and capital interests have caused substantial cost increases in seed, fuel, fertilizer, and water to compound the larger trend of failing farms. In reaction to the exploding cost of farm production, market prices are increasing leading to a 12.2% increase in the consumer price index for “food at home” over the last year and are projected to continue outpacing alarmingly high inflation.
Climate change is predictably disrupting agriculture. Seasons continue to shift, rainfall becomes unreliable, and megadroughts are drying up dozens of major rivers across all six inhabited continents. In the Southwest U.S., where North America is experiencing its worst drought, the Colorado, Arizona, Canadian, Red, Pecos, Arkansas, and Rio Grande Rivers are running dry, while others in the agricultural heartland, like the Gasconade River in southeastern Missouri, have begun a deadly cycle of severe flooding and extreme drought, greatly damaging crops, infrastructure, and livelihoods in the region. In California alone, a million acres of farmland are expected to be lost to drought in 2022, as farmers make the financial decision to destroy established orchards and plow fields of immature crops, while California water prices reach all time highs.
The severe untenability of this situation has farm operators and workers across the U.S. living in fear of foreclosure, and their farmland in threat of dereliction. This will inevitably lead to increased drought and flood severity, increased food prices, and decreased nutritional availability and diversity for the vast majority of people. These crises will continue to coalesce into a modern day mega-famine across the American Southwest unless revolutionary changes are effected in the way our societies allocate resources.
Avenues for Healing: Degrowth, Regenerative Agriculture, and “Land Back”
The U.S. began its slow recovery from the Dust Bowl and Great Depression — thanks largely to Hugh Bennett — when Congress passed the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936. The act not only gave the USDA purview over soil conditions and water conservation, but also directly increased wages for farm workers in a widely successful effort to boost consumer buying power from the root. Another example of FDR’s New Deal policies that edged towards U.S. agriculture reform, the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1935, saw the federal government purchase more than 6 million domestic pigs and create the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation (dissolved in 1942) to distribute these and other surplus agricultural commodities to “destitute households.” However, our agronomic systems have calcified against the same social policies that saved the U.S. from civilizational collapse in the mid 20th century. This is evidenced by the ongoing food supply collapse under the pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which millions of pigs and chickens have been euthanized (i.e., wasted), and more than a hundred million acres of land crops have been burned, buried, or otherwise left to ruin.
Politically, the solution to these problems exists by the name of Economic Degrowth. This movement is known particularly well in France, where notorious economist Timothée Parrique earned his PhD by compiling a constellation of disconnected policies and procedures into a coherent theory, deserving the attention of activists, policy makers, and economic planners globally. In his 2019 thesis, The Political Economy of Degrowth, Dr. Parrique meticulously explains the governing mechanics of turning entire capitalist economies on their heads, utilizing political power to actively redistribute resources among the working class. Degrowth has finally gained enough attention to be mentioned more than 5 times in the Sixth Report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a means to mitigate climate damage and minimize catastrophe.
Everyone can contribute to healing the landscape in their local environments through Regenerative Agriculture — the practice of using agricultural techniques to regenerate ecosystems to their natural balance while maintaining an ability to extract food. The closest modern America has come to this kind of revolutionary food-system shift was the Victory Garden movement that began in WWI and eventually accounted for 40% of U.S. fresh produce in 1943. In order to achieve this, citizens were empowered to rehabilitate public land for agricultural use; or, in other words, (very) partial land reform. Rehabilitation of derelict urban land — like the 30,000 empty lots in Cook County owned by the City of Chicago — will not only provide local communities with the potential for food sovereignty, but reduce flooding through improved rain absorption, reduce summer temperatures through shading and plant respiration, as well as the myriad of social and health benefits inherent in dignifying the working class.
A perfect union of Economic Degrowth and Regenerative Agriculture has already manifested in the Land Back movement — a decolonization effort to return stolen land and culture to Indigenous governance. Before the 15th-Century invasion of the Americas, beginning with Columbus, Indigenous communities spent millennia transforming their environments into plentiful agroforests and prairielands on a scale that would blow the tin pot off Johnny Appleseed’s head. The techniques needed to combat global climate catastrophe and systemic collapse have already been developed and practiced in Indigenous cultures. Our primary task is to remove the systems of oppression that prohibit their reimplementation.
If we intend to evade the looming civilizational collapse of the 21st century we must revolutionize our food systems with Regenerative Agriculture. We must return the land to Indigenous Stewardship. And we must embrace Economic Degrowth policy that supports people over profits and serves hunger over industry.
A Note From the Editors
The above article, “Free Market Famine”, convincingly warns of an imminent “dust bowl” in the U.S. by summarizing the historical consequences of the fundamental problem of capitalist agriculture (and all sectors of industry under the capitalist mode of production): the ecological unsustainability of profit-driven industry.
However, there are some substantial issues with the argument. The Editorial Board of Unity–Struggle–Unity has decided to publish the above article because, in our view, its strengths outweigh its weaknesses. As it would be contrary to our editorial policy to substantively alter a submission without consulting the author, we instead decided that it would be best to publish the article as-is, editing only for grammar and clarity, and to correct errors of theoretical and political substance in this note.
The author correctly (more or less) diagnoses the problem, but prescribes an inadequate solution. This prescription has two components: degrowth and “regenerative agriculture,” which the author says are “united” in the Land Back movement.
The main problem with both components, and with the whole prescription, is that they are essentially reformist, not revolutionary.
Let’s examine either in turn.
First, the author calls for degrowth. Unfortunately, the author never tells us what degrowth actually is. Instead, the author sings the praises of a certain French economist and degrowth advocate, who is said to call for, “turning entire capitalist economies on their heads, utilizing political power to actively redistribute resources among the working class.” This has the elements of a definition, but is still too vague to really tell us what degrowth actually is.
Degrowth can be defined as a movement for mass deindustrialization and the extreme curtailing of production and consumption, based on the ecology-oriented critique of economic growth. A basic premise is that capitalism is predicated on unlimited growth, despite the Earth having finite resources — all true. Thus, within the degrowth movement are moderates, who wish to diminish capitalist production through reforms, and radicals, who wish to eliminate capitalism altogether, also through reforms. Another basic premise of degrowth is that sustainable development is not possible (or, should be assumed impossible), and that efforts to build an ecologically sustainable economy (e.g., investing in renewable energy, electrified public transportation, and so on) are still “growth” and should therefore be ended.
Without entering into a full discussion of the merits and limits of degrowth, the problem at hand is that the movement’s progressive ideas will never be implemented in public policy without a socialist revolution. Countries characterized by the capitalist mode of production are ruled by dictatorships of the property-owning and labor-exploiting classes, first and foremost the capitalists; the governments of these countries exist to defend the interests of the capitalists, and any demand to scale back production will, needless to say, threaten the profits of the capitalists. Despite its more radical theoretical content, the degrowth movement has not significantly departed from the practical orientation of its fellow environmentalist counterparts: Its proponents mainly focus on lobbying governments, setting up think tanks, working with NGOs, holding academic conferences, and so on.
This is why degrowth and other reformist environmentalist movements, such as the Green movement, while progressive in content, are incapable of achieving the revolutionary changes we need to repair Earth.
Degrowth proponents envision a new, post-capitalist, ecologically healed world, and yet seem to believe, wrongly, that such a world can be reformed into existence by existing governments. The author of the above article, despite identifying as a Communist and holding membership in an ostensibly “Communist” party (the CPUSA), fails to challenge this reformist practical orientation, and likewise says that degrowth demands the attention of “activists, policy makers, and economic planners,” as well as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the degrowth movement has already caught the attention of governmental and intergovernmental bodies across the world — and, as with every other environmentalist reform movement that threatens capitalist interests, those bodies have mostly chosen to quietly acknowledge degrowth, while failing to actually act on its proposals. Clearly, we cannot rely on the good will of “policy makers and economic planners,” nor on the UN. Clearly, begging our rulers and oppressors for reforms won’t work.
All Communists should adopt the best elements of degrowth — assuming we haven’t already. But we must recognize that only a socialist revolution that overthrows the capitalists and builds a new, eco-socialist global economy will manifest the political willpower and ability to repair our planet while at the same time ensuring that all people enjoy abundance, prosperity, and equality.
Second, the author calls for “regenerative agriculture,” which he defines only vaguely as “using agricultural techniques to regenerate ecosystems.” While on principle we would of course support such programs, we disagree with the author’s characterization of this as a “revolutionary food-system.” The author cites as an (imperfect) example of regenerative agriculture the “Victory Garden movement” of the first half of the 20th Century. It is interesting to note that the New York Times article cited by the author, as an explanation of the Victory Garden movement, argues that the “movement” was not really grassroots, and was not really about “empowering citizens,” nor about “revolutionizing” agriculture, nor about “regenerating ecosystems.” The Victory Garden “movement” was a U.S. Federal Government campaign to instill the American public with wartime patriotism, and it served to increase the profits of large-scale agribusinesses, not to undermine capitalist agriculture. The “movement” was abandoned shortly after the Second World War ended, mainly because the public, especially the white suburbanites, lost interest in small-scale agriculture.
The author then calls for the “rehabilitation of derelict urban land” for this same purpose, which he says will “provide local communities with the potential for food sovereignty,” in addition to various ecological benefits. We would of course support a community gardening movement that fostered solidarity among working and dispossessed people, while potentially alleviating some degree of food poverty, especially one that came packaged with ecological benefits. But there is nothing inherently “revolutionary” about repurposing undeveloped lots to serve as gardening allotments. Plenty of cities across the world feature public allotments of this sort, and while they’re certainly neat, struggling for reforms to open up such allotments in U.S. cities won’t in and of itself bring us an inch closer dismantling capitalism (and therefore to achieving true “food sovereignty” for the dispossessed) or to repairing our planet’s biosphere.
Again, in principle we support the author’s “regenerative agriculture” model. But the problem at hand is that only a socialist revolution can realize this model as a revolutionary initiative — an initiative that simultaneously contributes to ecological restoration and the elimination of food poverty.
Finally, the author prescribes the “Land Back” slogan. All Communists must support the reclamation of stolen land by Indigenous peoples, and the right of all Indigenous peoples to return to and enjoy sovereignty in their respective homelands. All Communists must support decolonization. Problematically, however, the author again fails to state how this will happen, aside from the very vague, “remove the systems of oppression” in the way of decolonization. We feel the need, again, to state unambiguously that decolonization necessitates revolution. In other words, the just “Land Back” demand cannot be reformed into reality. The only way to decolonize North America will be to overthrow, abolish, and dismantle the U.S. Empire, as well as its junior-partner Canada, in a continent-wide anti-colonial revolution. Only then will “Land Back” become a reality.