Reconnecting With Beans To Take The Power Back Over Our Food … – ARC2020

Xavier Hamon (right) pictured during the Rural Resilience gathering organised by ARC2020 and partners in Pless, France, October 2022. Also pictured (from left): Katrina Idu (Forum Synergies), Czech farmer Terezie Dakov, and Louise Kelleher (ARC2020). Photo: Adle Violette

If we all agree to take back the power over our food, what do we need?

On Saturday 22nd April, the Global Bean network, including ARC2020 and its projects Rural Resilience and Seeds4All, invited its members to organise in-person events to celebrate the diversity of pulses in Europe and beyond (Albania, Austria, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Greece, USA). These leguminous celebrations then connected online for the Global Bean Seed Festival to talk about their initiatives and showcase their varieties.

Helping to frame the discussion, Xavier Hamon, artisan cook, president of the Alliance of Free Tables (formerly Alliance des cuisinier.e.s, a partner of the Rural Resilience project) and director of the Universit des Sciences et des Pratiques Gastronomiques (another partner of the project). His political statement encourages us to take the power back over our food, by re-cultivating of hundreds of varieties of grains and pulses, taking back land, winning political mandates, and most of all, support to those who work for the living world, day after day. Below is the full text of Xaviers presentation.

Words by Xavier Hamon

Lire cette tribune politique en franais

Dear Partners,

I was asked to present a political angle on the question of seeds and beans. I am very proud that a cook has been asked for political comments: it means that the view of our profession is starting to change, and the vision of the Alliance des Tables Libres et Vivantes is starting to be understood. We are no longer only tools for territorial promotion. I measure the road travelled and I thank the organisers for their trust.

Before I begin, to be clear, the cooks that I represent are all fighting for better food, better use of pulses and cereals, more plant-based food, the end of industrial livestock, and support for sustainable extensive livestock farming.

Sorry to keep referring to the French example, but it is what I know best. Perhaps it can offer the biggest gap between completed transition projects and the horror of agribusiness and poor quality food.

In France, in the world of cuisine, in a country that calls itself the capital of gastronomy, only certain people are allowed to talk about the professions that feed us.

And so we all are subject to the dominant discourse. Cultural hegemony, as Antonio Gramsci described it. Behind this dominant discourse are vested interests.

The cultural hegemony does not correspond to the reality. This vision of chefs represents less than 1% of the food services sector in France. The rest is left to the agri-food industry and fast food, which brings low quality jobs and the loss of professions that work with the living world.

All this translates into a desertion of personnel from kitchens and restaurants because in addition, the reality of working conditions is so terrible that no-one wants to do these jobs. As they say: Business as usual.

And thats the solution: Agribusiness is a perfect match for the Food Business, with the historical complicity of the great French chefs who were part of the development of the agri-food industry.

The parallel with agriculture is evident. There is also a hegemonic discourse that leaves little place for what all of you do, every day. Questions of farming and food are managed in the offices of the ministry of agriculture or at the general assembly of the biggest agricultural union in the country. Sensing that deep changes in society are questioning their ecocidal and socially unacceptable models, the agricultural hegemony deploys fiction, storytelling, greenwashing, corporate social responsibility, the media and politicians, to reassure consumers, so that they continue to be fed by the big food retailers.

In both gastronomy and agriculture, we see the same losses:

Bean growing has always mixed beliefs, pagan and religious, agronomic conditions, histories of migration, food needs, to constitute shared living cultures

This shared culture allows for the kind of social intelligence embodied by community festivals.

Without this relationship to the living world, without these relationships to each other and a shared culture, there is no life in society. Beans also carry this cultural responsibility.

We have the knowledge. We know how to do the transition. But its still a long road to find the means to move from activism to a real development of the sector.

If we all agree to take back the power over our food, what do we need?

Lets admit it: if we take our heads out of our nice stories, we dont live in a world that is concerned with the common good. Its a capitalist world that co-opts our arguments in a relationship that is closer to transhumanism than to the living world.

Our resistance in opposing this system shows an important trait of the human character. We still have a survival instinct, a trace of our reptile brain that invites us to resist. We inherit the history of past struggles and social victories.

History is repeating itself on the sides of the dominants: transhumanism echoes the futurist movement of the 1920s. On our side we also inherit past resistance movements to anchor us in the living world and to put humans back in a position of deciding for ourselves. The political movements after World War Two, and the social victories that followed until the 1980s, show that other ways are possible.

To quit the existing model, we need to have bigger ambitions, collectively. We need more of us. Alone, small-scale models will only save themselves they will not save the common good, or the damage done to food.

Two recent events show us that there is still a long road ahead:

We saw the same elements of cultural hegemonic discourse. As in the Netherlands, the power of productivist agricultural unions translates into the strong presence of these farmers in decision-making spaces: municipalities, regions, the boards of banks and insurance companies, chambers of agriculture and agricultural colleges.

To develop better food, a better relationship with the living world, we can no longer leave the power to these influencers. The representative bodies of our republics can no longer be personified by only the capitalist and technological model.

Our discourse is not enough. Our advocacy is not enough. We have to find the means to campaign, to win mandates, to be where the decisions are made. None of us can do it alone. Which is why my final message is to invite you to build the means of our ambitions for fairer food systems:

.. the number one element of our mental and physical health: food.

Lets pay with dignity the people who work for the living world every day, and take back the power over our plates by means of mandates, not our bank cards.

Thank you very much.

Watch Xavier Hamons presentation at the Global Bean Seed Festival here.

Visit the Rural Resilience project page

Read ARC2020s findings from the field in France, 2020-2022

Rural Resilience | A Collective Adventure

France | Cooking Up Fairer Food & Farming Part 1

France | Cooking Up Fairer Food & Farming Part 2

Rural Realities | Succession Passing It (All) On To The Next Generation

Rural Realities | Feet on the Ground in the Battle for Land

Rural Realities | Testing Grounds for Wellbeing

Cultivating The Future Together ARCs Rural Resilience Gathering in France

France | Meet The Farmer-Bakers Proving Their Skills

France | Meet The Farmer-Bakers Proving Their Skills part 2

Cross-Pollinating Resilience From Portugal: Nos Campagnes en Resilience in Pless

France | Growing Vegetables, Seeding Values Part 1

France | Growing Vegetables, Seeding Values Part 2

What France Can Teach Us About Rural Resilience

France | Farming by Numbers part 1

France | Farming by Numbers part 2

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Reconnecting With Beans To Take The Power Back Over Our Food ... - ARC2020