Building a Movement Ecosystem Capable of Transforming the Food System (Pt 2)

Part 2

This three-part series explores what it could mean to build a diverse, complex, and interconnected movement around food, farming, and land in the UK. The ideas are rooted in Ali Taherzadeh’s doctoral research on the UK agroecology movement and shaped by a range of contemporary movement organisers and thinkers. This work feeds into the Movement Strategy project with Shared Assets and Navigate Coop which is facilitating a collective of organisations in the movement to work together on movement-level strategy.

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Part 1 introduced the idea of social movement ecology and spoke about the importance of figuring out your role in a social movement ecosystem. This values both home and coalition spaces in our movements and takes a both/and approach to field building: growing movements by reaching beyond our comfort zones, while staying anchored in transformative politics that listen to the divergent voices to keep the movement from being co-opted.

Part two asks “what exactly is a coalition, and how do we build coalitions that are strong, healthy, and aligned? It explores four key considerations in trying to build successful and durable coalitions:

●      Strategy: how do we bring different tactics and theories of change together?

●      Boundaries: how do we know who is in the coalition and who isn’t?

●      Organising systems: how do we function effectively as a coalition?

●      Movement culture: how does (sub)culture shape our coalition building?

What are we aiming for?

Coalitions go beyond informal networks, partnerships, and easy alliances —they require deeper and sustained collaboration, clear structures, and shared goals. Building such coalitions is challenging but essential. Across the food, farming, and land movement, burnout is widespread, and many are losing hope as the dominant system resists change - going back on commitments, and actively placing roadblocks in the way to progressing alternatives. It can feel difficult to slow down and think strategically, but as Navigate Coop reminds us, responding to crisis means pausing, reconnecting, and gaining clarity.

"We believe we are in an emergency, and the most useful response to an emergency is often to slow down, breathe deeper, connect with whatever can resource and support us, and get clear. [...] We dream of a social movement that finds ways to bring together what often gets separated, into something that is more than the sum of its parts."

We need a movement that unites what is often fragmented—one that becomes more than the sum of its parts. That begins by considering how the strategies of its different elements might come together..

Strategy: how do we bring different tactics and theories of change together?

An overall movement strategy needs to understand how the work of different parts of the movement interact and can be combined for most success. Our different tactics can then make sense within this broader strategy and be targeted towards one or more pressure points in the system at one time.

Mapping the movement is a good first step towards understanding how different parts can work in coalition. What are the different theories of change – aka, the underlying beliefs around how change happens – that organisations and groups base their actions on? What specific tactics do they use? Where are there existing collaborations and connections? And where are there points of tension? Where are resources concentrated and where are they being shared?

Recognising each approach’s strengths and limitations and how they can compliment each other can help us take action to achieve complex systems change.  

Erik Olin Wright outlines three key strategies of transformation, used by Ulex  in their movement ecology approach:

●      Ruptural - disrupting the existing system, breaking away from the status quo

●      Symbiotic - developing alternatives and reforming the system from within

●      Interstitial - building alternatives outside of the systems “in the cracks of capitalism”

Wright argued that, in powerful capitalist societies like the UK, no one strategy on its own was sufficient. He viewed interstitial strategies as capable of eroding economic power and replacing the dominant system when supported through ruptures and reforms that disrupt and redistribute political power.

Instead of choosing between reform or revolution, we can focus on non-reformist reforms—changes that challenge the system at its roots. Andre Gorz’s idea of “non-reformist reforms” is of reforms that have anti-capitalist intent and enable cumulative change towards system transformation. We can interrogate whether a reform is reformist or not using different criteria, such as the question activist Harsha Walia poses: “Is it increasing the possibility of freedom?”. This is where our own values and boundaries help us form meaningful coalitions.

Boundaries: how do we know who is in the coalition and who isn’t?

There are different boundaries that need to be defined when doing coalition work:

A.    Your personal boundaries engaging in coalition work

B.    The boundaries of the movement as a whole: what are we speaking about?

C.    Positive boundaries of the coalition: what do we stand for?

D.    Negative boundaries of the coalition: who do we definitely not want to involve?

A. Personal Boundaries

As mentioned in the previous blog, engaging in coalition work is hard. We all have different capacities and limits around how much time we spend in coalition vs. home spaces as well as how far we stretch in bridging across differences.

Coalition work is particularly hard for those who hold more marginal positions and less power in a movement and in society, where there are often more risks.

You need to decide what your personal boundaries are so you can sustain your engagement.

What counts as coalition work for you? What power do you hold in movement spaces? What do you see as your role? It could be as a divergent voice in the movement, to use your power to amplify those voices, or to bridge with those beyond the movement, for instance.

B. Movement Boundaries

The boundaries of the movement are how it is defined. When we talk about “the movement,” are we all on the same page about what issues and actors that includes? When we talk about land justice, for instance, are we also talking about housing? When we talk about food, are we also including food poverty charities and community food groups? This is the broader context and ecosystem in which your coalition exists.

C. Positive Coalition Boundaries

Within this wider movement ecosystem are the more defined boundaries of your coalition. You must decide what you are collectively fighting for. What is the future vision the coalition is trying to reach? What values and principles guide you? Who is it critical to include this work? What language do you want to use and why?

By deciding on these boundaries in truly participatory and democratic ways, you will lay a strong foundation for your collective work and clarify who is welcome to join. When you disagree on specific tactics, for instance, you can use the shared agreement that defines your work to guide you. A good example of positive boundaries are the flags put up at events of the National Articulation of Agroecology in Brazil to share their core values.

ANA flags: Agrotóxico mata (Agrichemicals kill), Sem feminismo, não há agroecologia (Without feminism, there is no agroecology), Agroecologia promove saúde (Agroecology promotes health) etc.

D. Negative Coalition Boundaries

The negative boundaries more clearly define who is not involved. What are your hard lines on who can be involved in the coalition and who you work with more generally? Disagreements can arise over these questions so it is good to discuss from the start. For instance, do you have a boundary around not co-operating with supermarkets, large landowners and landlords, or agritech companies?

To come to these decisions and to respond to challenges as they arise over time, it is really important to also determine how you organise as a coalition.

Organising systems: how do we function effectively as a coalition?

The left has often split over how to organise at scale—raising issues of power and democracy, as well as effectiveness and resources. We need organising systems that create space for all voices to be heard while enabling effective coalition work.

Navigate’s seven Living Systems, inspired by Miki Kashtan and others, offer a helpful framework for this kind of collective action.

●      Decision making - how we make decisions

●      Conflict - how we respond to conflict in the group

●      Resource flow - how we distribute resources (time, money, skills, knowledge)

●      Information flow - how information is shared

●      Feedback - how we respond to and incorporate feedback

●      Care & Support - how we identify support needs and meet them

●      Connection & Community - how we care for our inter-personal relationships and our community

Running through all of these is the shared collective purpose and values of the group. These systems are “living” in the sense that they are continuously reflected on and adapted as the collective develops.

Another important element is learning and knowledge sharing. Bringing together a diverse group of organisations and movement actors involves training, upskilling, and knowledge sharing, which brings challenges. Part 3 in this series will go deeper into the different types of learning needed in movements struggling for system change.

Early on you will need to figure out how you make decisions and how you structure yourselves to do this effectively. Do you have working groups on different issues? Are there caucuses to ensure marginalised groups are represented? Do you take a sociocratic model and organise in circles? These systems will develop over time but it is important to get clear early on to be effective and avoid replicating power dynamics.

An interesting example is the global peasant movement, La Vía Campesina, which manages to organise internationally amongst 180 member organisations in 81 countries using various levels of organising based on horizontality, including global and regional convergences.

Movement culture: how does (sub)culture shape our coalition building?

Culture or subculture are central in movement spaces, particularly in home spaces where a shared group culture signals the values and shared identity of the group. But subcultures can also alienate or exclude people from spaces and limit connection between people who have different cultural experiences.

For example, BPOC activists can feel put off by by the style of dress and dominance of folk music in some alternative land movement spaces, while more conventional farmers might be uncomfortable with spiritual or justice-focused facilitation practices at gatherings. As one interviewee from my PhD research put it:

“How do you make [a space] open to people who don't identify with that subculture without sort of abandoning the people for whom that subculture is really important and, you know, provides a lot of sort of certainty in a world that's otherwise hostile.”

This is where distinguishing between home and coalition spaces helps. What kind of space are you creating and for whom? Is the subculture intentional and full of meaning or accidental and exclusionary? In coalition spaces, we need to be mindful of what might alienate others, while also co-creating positive and inclusive group cultures. Here are some things to consider:

Language

Don’t assume shared language—avoid jargon and explain key terms clearly.

Go further by co-creating shared language within your coalition. Terms like “agroecology” or “power” can mean different things, so take time to define them together through a participatory, curious process.

Aesthetics

Aesthetics—like posters, dress, decor, and space—signal group culture. For example, a DIY compost loo may feel meaningful to some but off-putting to others.

While aesthetics often give us a quick sense of whether an event or group is “for us”, they are also often not that critical for achieving our shared purpose and can do more harm than good if we’re not aware of what messages they are sending out. Ask: Are our aesthetic choices creating barriers in coalition work? How important are they, and do they help engage those we want to reach?

Organising Style

The ways we organise collectively and hold space reflects culture— social class for instance is often reflected in how we organise. It is important to not make assumptions about what are commonly held practices. Practices like check-ins, horizontal structures, or embodied work may feel unfamiliar to some, but can be valuable for challenging power and building the world we want. However, unexamined norms—like meeting times, lack of childcare, or unpaid participation—can exclude. With any organising practice we need to assess how necessary it is to our collective mission. For any practice, ask: Is it essential? Who does it include or exclude? Are we making intentional, collective choices—or just assuming what works?

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Building coalitions is tough. It takes us out of our comfort zones and requires us to see things from others’ perspectives. It requires us to design organising systems that work for diverse groups and adapt them as we grow and change as a coalition.

There are many tensions to navigate around how broad or narrow, open or closed, the boundaries of our collective vision and narrative are. But as we are reminded with the terrifying rise of the far right, we need to do things differently. We can no longer afford to be marginal outsiders or operate in our silos. We need to use all the tools we have to create a synergistic, powerful movement with a strong collective vision. One that inspires far more people to join us in the struggle for better and more just food, farming, and land futures.