Britain's new 'peasants' down on the farm

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/16/peasants-revolt-to-change-food-production


Smallholdings should be the dominant face of farming in Britain, says the Land Workers' Alliance. Photograph: Alamy


The English peasantry may have officially died out in the Middle Ages, but a new breed of small-scale farmers who live off a few acres and celebrate life on the land have been accepted to join the world's biggest peasant organisation.

Jyoti Fernandes and other members of the newly formed Land Workers' Alliance were in Jakarta, Indonesia, last week for a global meeting of La Via Campesina, a movement of more than 180 peasant organisations which together can boast 200 million members in more than 80 countries. The alliance is the movement's first membership organisation in England and Wales.

Fernandes, 39, is part of a wave of self-proclaimed English "peasants" determined to stand up for smallholders and reclaim the countryside with an alternative vision of what the future of UK agriculture could look like. "Food and farming aren't just about market economics and just getting people calories in their body; it's got this huge social and cultural dimension to it," she says.

Western definitions of "peasant" are mostly pejorative, suggesting "a member of a class of low social status that depends on agricultural labour as a means of subsistence". But many of the 70 people who set up the alliance in March are young, highly educated and committed to a life on the land. They expect membership to grow to several thousand.

[chervilant]

1. In like spirit,

I reclaim "Hoi Polloi" as a revered designation for the vast majority of us -- activists and 'peasants' across this awesome planet --now linked by the internet, and challenging the vile corporate megalomaniacs who've usurped our media, our politics AND our global economy.