“A great deal depends upon a right relationship with the soil; the right relationship with the soil is the basis for the right relationship with one another.”Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America (1977)
In today’s world, food and land are increasingly dominated by huge corporations and global supply chains. These corporations define anything that stands in their way as “backward” and in need of “development”, including small-scale, land-connected farming.
Simon Wiebusch, Country Divisional Head of Crop Science for Bayer South Asia, stated in 2024 that India cannot become a “developed nation” with “backward’ agriculture”.
Bayer’s vision for agriculture in India includes prioritising and fast-tracking approvals for its new products, introducing genetically modified (GM) food crops and increasingly focusing on herbicides, developing them for specific crops like paddy, wheat, sugarcane and maize.
Bayer has a view of what agriculture should look like and is securing control of farmers in various countries by having a direct influence on how they farm and what inputs they use. Its digital platforms are intended to be one-stop shops for carbon credits, seeds, pesticides and fertilisers and agronomic advice, all supplied by the company, which gets the added benefit of control over the agronomic and financial data harvested from farms.
The likes of Wiebusch often refer to “modern agriculture”, a deliberately deceptive term: it means a system dependent on proprietary inputs and integrated with corporate supply chains. Anything other is defined as “backward”.
On the Bayer India website it says: Simon’s key strengths include unlocking business growth, redefining distribution strategies, driving change management and building diverse teams that drive market share and create business value. Stripped of the corporate jargon, the goal is to secure control of the sector and ensure corporate dependency.
India has achieved self-sufficiency in food grains and has ensured there is enough food (in terms of calories) available to feed its entire population. It is the world’s largest producer of milk, pulses and millets and the second-largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnuts, vegetables, fruit and cotton.
Bayer promotes a corporate expansionist “development” agenda that is self-sustaining and can be described as anything but progressive (see this critique of the type of development being promoted and an extensive appraisal here in chapter 10).
The giant agribusiness corporations that promote the prevailing increasingly globalised system of agriculture are responsible for, among other things, soil degradation, synthetic fertiliser run offs into waterways, the displacement of rural populations and land appropriation, the flight to over-populated cities and proletarianisation (former independent producers reduced to wage labour/unemployment), the massive decline in bird and insect numbers, less diverse diets and a spiralling public health crisis due to chemical-intensive farming.
And yet, it is an inconvenient truth for them that the (low input and impact/low-energy) peasant food web—not industrial agriculture— still feeds most of the world. Another hard-to-swallow truth is that small farms are more productive even though the industrial model sucks up huge amounts of subsidies and resources.
Small-scale, land-connected farming offers a different way forward. Lives rooted in community and the soil provide an alternative to the industrial model that treats food as a commodity and land as something to be extracted and sold. Small farms remind us that food is not simply a commodity. It embodies relationships, culture and meaningful human effort.
Historical experiments like the 17th-century Diggers in England, who briefly shared land and farmed collectively, saw land as a foundation for human dignity and rootedness.
Agrarian philosophy
Agrarianism, the philosophy behind this way of life, celebrates rural living, small farms and a deep connection with the land. Working the soil is both an economic and a moral activity, cultivating virtues such as self-reliance and cooperation that help nurture resilient communities.
Agrarian thought argues that rural life offers richer meaning than the alienation of urban industrial existence because it is grounded in nature, human labour and interdependence. At its heart lies a commitment to decentralisation: land should belong to those who work and depend on it, rather than to corporations or states.
While agrarianism advocates decentralisation and local autonomy, the modern development narrative emerges from top-down policies prioritising corporate interests. This “development” often ignores or erases local traditions and knowledge, weakening agricultural systems rooted in community and sustainability. It does this for profit, control and so-called efficiency.
In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber noted that industrial modernity subjects every sphere of life to the cold logic of efficiency and control, the “iron cage” of instrumental reason. In this world, food becomes a statistic, labour a function and land a machine to be optimised and exploited. Moral and spiritual meaning gives way to abstraction and control.
Weber’s insight into the rationalisation of modern life shows how agriculture, labour and land can be reduced to mere functions and commodities. This structural domination is not only economic—it shapes the conditions under which human freedom and meaning can survive. Later in this article, Dostoevsky will illuminate how this same logic affects the human spirit, showing that the consequences extend beyond structures into moral and existential life.
To understand how this world took shape, it helps to separate capitalism, industrial modernity and scientific rationalism, though they are often intertwined. Capitalism is driven by profit and ownership, turning land, labour and food into commodities. Industrial modernity seeks scale and speed, replacing craft and care with machines and systems designed for output. Scientific rationalism aims to measure, predict and control the world.
Each began with different intentions, but together they have reshaped our relationship with the land. When profit joins industrial efficiency and a mindset of control, soil becomes data and people become functions.
Agrarian life resists this system by restoring a moral and spiritual dimension to labour. Cultivation is more than production; it is participation in the rhythms of life where the land remains a living partner rather than a resource to be exploited.
Yet this vision faces deep obstacles. Land ownership is heavily concentrated: a few corporations, investment funds and wealthy individuals control vast tracts of arable land. Financialisation treats land as an asset to trade and profit from, making it hard for small-scale farmers to enter agriculture, maintain ownership or pass land to the next generation.
Today, every aspect of life is measured, controlled and optimised. In agriculture, corporate and industrial systems extend this same pursuit of efficiency and control to land, food and farming communities, concentrating power and displacing small-scale farmers.
Corporate control
Land, once the basis of culture, sustenance and community life, is now an instrument of speculation and capital accumulation. Wealth goes to those who control property, not those who work it. And communities suffer as farmland is consolidated with local food systems sacrificed for short-term gain.
Corporate-driven “development” is framed as a moral good, yet it erases much of the rural, emptying out the countryside of people, culture and beneficial insects in favour of vast expanses of chemical-laden mono-cropped fields. The capitalist commercialisation of agriculture makes traditional farming increasingly unviable, leading to the collapse of rural communities.
Despite this, agrarian principles show alternatives are possible. Shared labour, local decision-making and mutual care restore autonomy and genuine human connection. Communities built on these principles are better able to face economic, environmental and social challenges together, sustained by bonds that industrial modernity dissolves.
While Weber analysed the societal structures that confine human freedom, Fyodor Dostoevsky probed the internal, spiritual consequences of a world governed by calculation and predictability. In Notes from Underground, the “underground man” embodies the alienation, despair and moral disorientation that arise when life is treated as entirely controllable, a condition mirrored in industrial agriculture.
Dostoevsky rejected the idea that human existence can or should be fully rationalised, planned or subordinated to efficiency. Every attempt to predict and regulate human behaviour, he argued, risks crushing the moral imagination, individuality and sense of agency.
This existential critique resonates with agrarian life. Farming inherently involves uncertainty: weather, soil conditions, pests and seasonal rhythms. Like the underground man, small-scale farmers confront forces they cannot fully dominate, cultivating humility and attentiveness. In embracing these uncertainties, agrarian life preserves space for freedom, creativity and ethical responsibility—dimensions industrial modernity seeks to eradicate.
Dostoevsky also exposed how overemphasis on utility and control diminishes human solidarity. In industrial systems, people and land become mere functions or resources, stripped of relational and ethical significance. Similarly, the underground man’s alienation reflects the broader social and moral erosion that occurs when calculation replaces care.
Agrarian practices, by contrast, sustain relationships with community, soil, animals and the wider ecosystem, embedding human life within a network of mutual dependence and moral accountability.
In this sense, Dostoevsky provides a spiritual complement to Weber’s structural critique. Where Weber charts the “iron cage” of rationalisation, Dostoevsky illuminates its effect on the human spirit.
Agrarianism enacts a form of resistance to both: it cultivates the moral, relational and imaginative capacities that industrial modernity seeks to suppress. Farming becomes not just an economic or practical activity but a medium through which humans exercise freedom, nurture community and participate in the enduring rhythms of life.
Corporate control of almost everything is edging towards a world of technofeudalism, where people increasingly rely on centralised, technology-based systems. In agriculture, algorithms, cloud platforms, data-driven farming, proprietary inputs, carbon colonialism, drones and automation further detach people from the land.
Even soil is becoming a proprietary input to be controlled and engineered by corporations. Genetically engineered soil microbes are marketed as biofertilisers, biopesticides or soil conditioners that can enhance nutrient uptake, improve pest resistance or sequester carbon more effectively. These products are often gene-edited or genetically modified to supposedly outperform native microbes, with claims that they can revolutionise farming practices.
These are proprietary genetic technologies that require farmers to depend on corporate-controlled inputs, perpetuating dependency on chemical and biotech giants. Moreover, the ecological risks of releasing GM microbes into soil ecosystems are largely unassessed, and their long-term impacts on native microbial communities and soil health remain uncertain.
In effect, we see an attempt to control farmers and dominate every aspect of nature itself.
Resistance
Sustainable practices such as crop rotation, intercropping, soil care and water stewardship reflect a long-term mindset that industrial agriculture sidelines. Communities that cultivate a close relationship with their land maintain cohesion, cultural continuity and ecological balance.
Tamil Nadu in South India provides a clear example. The Tamil harvest festival of Pongal celebrates the land, the harvest and social and sacred relationships. On the first day, boiling newly harvested rice with milk and jaggery expresses gratitude to the Sun God for the season’s yield, acknowledging that the harvest depends on human labour as well as cosmic and natural forces.
On the second day, Maattu Pongal honours cattle essential to farming, recognising human-animal interdependence. Sharing the food among family and community reinforces generosity and collective well-being over individual accumulation.
Festivals like Pongal show that ecological mindfulness and social cohesion are lived, embodied practices. Land is life-sustaining and a source of identity. Farming and communal care combine survival with ethical and spiritual development, showing that well-being depends on how we produce, relate to the land and care for each other.
Agrarianism and the Diggers’ legacy continue to inspire resistance to concentrated control over land, food and technology. Just as the Diggers reclaimed land for communal life, modern movements challenge concentration through grassroots activism and local practice.
Just as Pongal embodies agrarian ethics through ritual and gratitude, the Zapatistas translate these values into political action. Since 1994, in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico, they have defended Indigenous land and built autonomous communities rooted in cooperative farming, local governance and food sovereignty. Like the Diggers, they insist that land should serve people and communities, not corporations or distant elites.
Reclaiming control over seeds represents another aspect of communal and historical foundations of agriculture. Corporate patenting, hybridisation, genetic modification and certification regimes threaten the genetic, cultural and ecological commons. Seeds carry culture, history and relationships. Farmers have been saving, exchanging and developing seeds for millennia.
Planting involves entering a relationship with the land, time and community. Harvest marks a cycle, expresses gratitude and reaffirms connection to nature. Preserving planting knowledge and honouring harvest rituals reconnects communities to deeper rhythms.
Placing human, ecological and spiritual values at the centre of food production, agrarianism offers an alternative vision. It can be seen as both a Weberian and Dostoevskian project of re-enchantment. It restores moral and spiritual aspects that bureaucratic rationality dissolves and reclaims the mystery that utilitarian science excludes. Against a world trapped in the iron cage of control, it points to renewal through labour, fellowship and reverence for the land.
Vision for progress
The Diggers’ insistence on shared land, critiques of corporate control and festivals like Pongal show a path to reclaim autonomy, foster resilience and live in harmony with the land. The critique offered by agrarian philosophy is actively lived today.
The international food sovereignty movement, championed by La Via Campesina, a key driver of political agroecology, asserts that people have the right to define their own food systems, directly challenging corporate dominance. Regenerative agriculture, focusing on rebuilding soil health, increasing biodiversity and improving water cycles, translates agrarian principles into practical, science-backed farming practices.
While agrarianism grounds farming in community, ethics and care for the soil, offering a moral and cultural vision of agriculture, political agroecology puts these values into practice, showing how communities can organise farming collectively to support people, the environment and local control over food. It shares agrarianism’s emphasis on decentralisation, cooperative labour and cultural connection to the land, but political agroecology adds tools for systemic change, combining ecological science, grassroots mobilisation and policy advocacy to advance food sovereignty.
Communities practising political agroecology actively protect seeds, maintain diverse cropping systems and strengthen local food sovereignty.
Movements such as La Via Campesina, Zapatista communities and regenerative farmers show that traditional wisdom, ethical values and scientific practices can coexist in the pursuit of resilient, community-centred food systems. Political agroecology also frames cultural practices such as Pongal as integral to sustaining ecological balance, social cohesion and ethical stewardship of the land.
In a world increasingly dominated by the corporate control of food, land, farmers and technology, agrarianism and political agroecology together offer a comprehensive vision of progress. From the Diggers’ insistence on shared land to Pongal rituals, Zapatista activism and La Via Campesina campaigns, these perspectives remind us that societal health depends on soil health and the freedom of those who cultivate it.
This synthesis of historical, cultural and political practices shows that agrarianism remains a viable framework for sustainable modernity. By combining spirituality, community and ecology, it reframes the meaning of progress itself.
