Australia’s new peasantry: towards a politics and practice of custodianship on agroecology-oriented farms

Abstract

Since settlement, colonial values of productivity and improvement have transformed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Country into a site of agricultural extraction. We examine the nascent peasantisation movement in Australia driven by small-scale farmers rejecting colonial capitalist agriculture within an agroecological transition. Our case studies explore how new peasants seek guidance from First Peoples and peasants in developing a politics and practice of custodianship, while fostering degrowth economies. Custodianship, we argue, offers a theoretical and practical framework for the agroecological transition in settler contexts through foregrounding social and ecological reparations across scales from the farm to global food sovereignty activism.