Raj Patel

I was lucky enough to have the chance to talk with Rupa Marya and Anna Lappé at the 2021 Oxford Real Farming Conference. Here’s our take on philanthropy, and what’s wrong with it.

Continue reading “Against Philanthropy”

NB – Reposted here since it doesn’t seem to be available online elsewhere yet.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 20, 2020

Continue reading “For Immediate Release: Family Food Producers And Anti-Hunger Advocates Urge Support For Local Supply Chains In Next Stimulus Bill”

Here’s a piece run by Jacobin, written by Jim Goodman and me, on the history of the New Deal, and how it matters for rural America today. Agriculture policy in the original New Deal sprang from a heady mix of class struggle and uneasy alliances. The Green New Deal will have to stitch together a different coalition that can challenge the dominant mode of agriculture and create a more just food system.

Continue reading “A Green New Deal for Agriculture”

Here in the US, it’s “Columbus day”, a federally recognized holiday. Jason W Moore and I take a dim view of Columbus.  We’re sympathetic with the move to rename today “Indigenous peoples day” but, if that doesn’t suit, we’ve got an alternative suggestion…

Continue reading “The New Columbus”

… and history and current affairs. Here’s a recent article I wrote for The Guardian.

Continue reading “Land struggles are God’s way of teaching racists geography…”

Below, an adaptation of part of A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, written with Jason W Moore, published in The Guardian. If you’ve read the book, do look out for the post-publication addendum of the story of Oklahoma-based Christian Alcoholics and Addicts in Recovery. CAAIR was set up by chicken executives so that survivors of the opioid epidemic might pray by day and work on the understaffed night-shift at slaughterhouses. Do read the full story, as researched by the Center for Investigative Reporting. And, meantime, here’s the excerpt as published in the Long Reads series at the Guardian.

Continue reading “Chicken, for Christ’s sake”

Continue reading “Terrorism for trolls: A note from Austin”

I was asked to contribute to Letters to a Young Farmer, a collection patterned on Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. For inspiration, I re-read America’s poet laureate of the soil, Wendell Berry. His 1973 Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front is very good. Its last line: Continue reading “Practice Reparation”