Written by Antoine Lenique 

The term peasant has historically been unfairly tainted with negative connotations in the western world. However, it is worth having a look at the UNDROP definition of the term. Indeed, according to the Article 1 (1-2) of the declaration, many farmers in Australia and other western societies could identify as peasants:

…a  peasant is any person who engages or who seeks to engage alone, or in association with others or as a community, in small-scale agricultural production for subsistence and/or for the market, and who relies significantly, though not necessarily exclusively, on family or household labour and other non-monetized ways of organising labour, and who has a special dependency on and attachment to the land.

The present Declaration applies to any person engaged in artisanal or small-scale agriculture, crop planting, livestock raising, pastoralism, fishing, forestry, hunting or gathering, and handicrafts related to agriculture or a related  occupation in a rural area. It also applies to dependent family members of peasants.

Appropriately, the concept of ‘peasantness’ is not limited to small-scale farmers, it also extends to all Indigenous Peoples, transhumant and nomadic communities, the landless, hired and seasonal workers and their families and communities, regardless of their migration status and engaged in the above-mentioned activities. Therefore, it is impossible to ignore the importance of peasantries for the future of our food systems and our society as a whole, particularly to end world’s hunger in a changing climate. Indeed:

• Peasants are the main or only providers of food to more than 70% of the world’s population.
• Peasants have greater crop diversity and higher yields than larger farms, as it is now understood that as farms get larger, crop diversity declines and post-harvest loss increases.
• Peasants produce food with less than 25% of the resources used to get all of the world’s food to the table – including land, water, fossil fuels.
• Peasants represent 80% of the world’s hungry and 70% of those living in extreme poverty.
• Only 24% of the food produced by the Industrial Food Chain actually reaches people – the rest is wasted in meat production inefficiencies; lost in transport, storage and at the household; and diverted to non-food products.
• For every dollar spent on industrial food, an extra 2 dollars are required to clean up the health and environmental mess

Sadly, peasants going hungry is the most ironic consequence of the headlong rush towards increased food production through productivist agendas led primarily by Green Revolution advocates, such as the agribusiness industry and the governments who endorse it. Food production is progressively shifting from subsistence and place-based agroecology-oriented farming, to more commercial and industrialised commodity-focused practices, replacing peasants with capitalist farmers or ‘entrepreneurs’ at alarming rates. As food activist and political economist Eric Holt-Gimenez puts it,

Commercial farmers don’t produce food to feed people: they produce food to sell on the market, where they compete with other food producers. Whoever can produce the most food at the cheapest price will have the most market power — power to flood markets and push out other producers. When smaller, subsistence farmers who are actually growing most of the world’s food go broke, they often go hungry.

Besides their disproportionate exposure to environmental degradation, toxic substances, land grabbing and climate change, peasants and rural workers also suffer from the burdens caused by poverty, hunger and malnutrition. Recently, their situation has become even more dire, due to the direct effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as its subsequent harmful impact on food and cost-of-living crisis.

Australia’s new peasantry movement

In Australia, a ‘new peasantry’ movement is emerging. The movement is challenging colonial capitalist agricultural practices by adopting an agroecological approach that is deeply informed by First Peoples’ ecological knowledge and custodial ethics. Since British colonisation, Australian agriculture has been characterised by environmental degradation, systematic disruption of Indigenous land management, and a commodification of land that prioritises productivity over ecological sustainability. In contrast, the nascent peasantisation movement seeks to develop a more holistic relationship with Country, drawing inspiration from Indigenous epistemologies that view land as interconnected and sacred, rather than a mere resource for extraction.

This emerging agricultural movement represents a critical response to the ecological and social harms of neoliberal farming practices. By embracing a custodial ethic, these new peasants are actively working to decolonise agricultural systems, seeking ecological reparations as well as social reconciliation. Their approach involves reimagining farming as a practice of care and reciprocity, challenging the dominant paradigm of land as capital. Numerous case studies and ethnographic research demonstrate how these farmers are developing alternative economic models, which prioritise biodiversity, animal welfare, and meaningful engagement with First Peoples’ land management principles. Ultimately, the literature positions this movement as a transformative and emancipatory approach to agriculture that could potentially reshape Australia’s food systems towards greater ecological and social justice.