We need to reconstruct both the public sphere—decimated after 30 years of neoliberalism—and need to recognize, repurpose, and grow the practice of “commoning” in the food system. The public sphere is that area of social interaction where debate and decisions are made regarding the economy, public services, the shared environment and daily life that are not simply determined by the priorities of “the market.” The public sphere for most of us has disappeared under the power of the global market and the bottom line that appear to be making the decisions regarding everything from the dominance of processed foods to global warming. I say “appear” because the corporate public sphere is alive and well. One finds it at the World Economic Forum in Davos, or in the World Bank, where the .01 percent bargain with the fate of world’s people and resources. So not any public sphere will do.

We need to reconstruct a critical and radical public sphere in which values like equity and respect for the Earth guide the decision-making process of the majorities rather than one that ensures the financial interests of the elites. We see this happening in things as simple as local food policy councils and as complex as the global coalitions for climate justice. Another example of a critical (and radical) public sphere were the mobilizations at Standing Rock led by indigenous water protectors.

Commoning refers to all those social interactions of collaboration that are determined by the moral economy rather than the market. Traditionally, these social interactions were actually grounded by a physical commons, like pasture, forests or fishing grounds that were governed by very strict rules of cooperation. But if we think about it, even the formal, capitalist market today functions in great part because we cooperate to make it work, without any financial remuneration.

Commoning—as much or more as capital—makes the food system work. We need to repurpose our forms of cooperation to strengthen our communities and our social and political networks rather than the capitalist food system. This can also be as simple as a Community Supported Agriculture agreement between a service worker’s union and a local farmer’s guild, to something global like the movement-based fair trade markets. These kind of movement activities both protest against the current food regime and actively construct the alternative. The integration of activism with livelihoods is the key to successful social movements because it creates the sustained social pressure that produces political will—and that’s what creates social change.

How can an average consumer help contribute to the transformation of the food system?

It is important to eat according to one’s values—organic, fair trade, local, etc.—but conscious consumption—essentially a market-based approach to transforming capitalism—comes up short because sooner or later capitalism ends up absorbing these products into the system. Conscious consumption needs to be paired with activist citizenship to avoid being divested of its political power.

You write that our food system was built on exploitation and oppression. How does this play out in 2017?

The people who are the hungriest, most food insecure, and most affected by diet-related disease in the world—including the United States—are food and farm workers. Most of these hungry people are women and people of color. During the 2008 food crisis, one to two more baby boys per 1,000 births died who would have otherwise lived. For girls, seven to eight baby girls per 1000 births died who otherwise would have lived. This seems to me to be ample evidence that the global food system—built on patriarchy, racism and class exploitation—has not changed its structures.

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue is tightly invested in the industry he’s regulating. How do his priorities differ from your vision for the food system?

Perdue wants to help monopoly agrifoods corporations squeeze profits out of farmers and consumers. Food is simply a means to that end. He isn’t “regulating” anything (unless it is criminalizing dissent or protecting CAFOs from public scrutiny). We can expect the further disappearance of mid-sized family farms and further corporate concentration of our food system under this administration, as well as the increased “financialization” of our farmland as farm mortgages are traded and sold on the global market. We can expect the further hollowing out of the U.S. heartland and a worsening of the social strife, food insecurity, and opioid addiction currently devastating the countryside. We need to break the corporate stranglehold on our food; put people back on the land, invest in rural communities and break up the big monopolies and stop speculating with our farmland and our food.

What’s the biggest myth about food policy as it relates to the economy?

The biggest myth is that hunger and food security are the result of food scarcity. We produce one and a half times more than enough food to feed every man, woman, and child on the planet. People go hungry because they are poor and don’t have enough money to buy the food being produced. Calls to “double food production” are half a century old. Instead of ending hunger they have indebted farmers who borrow money to buy newer, bigger, and more expensive inputs, only to see prices bottom out because of a glut of food on the market.

It’s not scarcity but overproduction that is driving hunger and getting the agrifoods corporations and their shareholders very rich. Of the billion or so hungry people in the world, most are the poor farmers who actually produce 70 percent of the world’s food, but they can’t even afford to feed themselves. They don’t need expensive inputs, they need more land, access to water, and to health, education, and welfare services.