Robbie Blake
Originally published by ARC2020 on 20 February 2026.
How accessible are conversations around transition? As we at ARC2020 deepen our longstanding work to support agroecology and food sovereignty, with a focus this year on the right to food in our Rural Resilience project, it’s a good moment to take a step back and reflect on how to bring a broader range of voices into the debate. Good Food For All! – a European Citizens’ Initiative carried by a coalition of over 300+ civil society organisations across Europe, including ARC2020 – is taking important strides to help make the messages of the food sovereignty and agroecology movements heard. But the battle for hearts, minds and policies is far from won. In this op-ed, Robbie Blake of IPES-Food asks how these movements can tell better stories.
At IPES-Food, our mission is to support the transition to sustainable food systems – by providing independent research and amplifying the voices and experiences of those on the frontlines of food systems change, particularly food sovereignty and agroecology movements. As part of the EU Food Policy Coalition – an alliance of civil society and organisations advocating for sustainable food systems at EU level, including NGOs, social movements, farmer organisations, trade unions, and think-tanks – we’ve been working to strengthen the narratives and frames that underpin this transformation. This work began with a shared recognition that we are too often losing the battle of ideas to big agribusiness interests.
In the wake of major farmer protests across Europe in 2023-24, IPES-Food worked with the coalition and Framing Mattersto explore how the coalition can better align our messaging, sharpen counter-narratives, and connect with broader audiences. This involved an analysis of existing communications and the media landscape, collective workshops to identify stronger frames and counter-narratives, and a framing toolkit of lessons learned. This work revealed a core challenge: too often, we are falling into communications traps, and even powerful ideas like agroecology and food sovereignty risk being locked behind inaccessible language.
This article shares insights from that process – and draws on my experience as a long-time communicator in food and environmental movements. It makes the case for better stories to shift hearts, minds, and policies – and suggests how we might begin telling them.
Why our messages aren’t landing
Ask ten people on the street if they’ve heard of agroecology, and most will say no. Ask what it might mean, and they’ll guess it’s something scientific (like entomology, perhaps?).
The agroecology movement is growing in recognition and influence. But it has a PR problem. As a movement we are locked behind technical jargon and inaccessible language. And that makes us easy to ignore.
Definitions of agroecology seem obscure to the layperson. (The 13 principles and 10 elements, anyone? How many could you name?) Here’s but one recent example from my inbox:
“promoting soil regeneration, diversified crop and livestock production, reduced dependency on external inputs, circular systems and economies, landscape multifunctionality, good governance…” It goes on.
This isn’t just an agroecology problem. Across the food movement, we’ve paid too little attention to the frames and stories we use to win popular support. We assume our audiences share our vocabulary and associations – but often we just sound weird.
‘Food sovereignty’ is another example of a concept stacked with specific meanings to us that are not widely understood by more public audiences. We talk about it like it’s self-explanatory: to many it sounds like something to do with kings and queens.
Too many of us are more fluent in dense academic discourse than in the poetry of the dinnerplate or the farm. And that leads to people tuning out. Especially in today’s fast-scrolling world.
Stories are how people make sense of the world. The stories we tell ourselves, the frames we use to evoke our ideas, and the way we tell these stories, matters. While Big Ag is telling stories that stick – are we offering anything people actually want to hear?
The narrative challenge
Big Ag understands the power of narrative. These powerful agribusiness corporations and industrial agriculture interests are backed by a sophisticated, resourced PR machine that knows exactly how to shape public opinion – and they use it relentlessly. Whether it’s glossy marketing, scaremongering about famine and farmer revolt, endless greenwashing, or simplistic slogans about “feeding a growing population,” their stories are designed to stick.
Here are three dominant industry narratives that shape public debate – and how they hold us back.
Narrative 1: ‘feed the world’
This is the mother of all Big Ag narratives: to feed a growing population, we must produce more food.
It sounds plausible. It stirs primal fears of hunger, and frames the issue solely around yield and quantities produced. It casts technologists and industrial producers as heroes, and those facing hunger as helpless victims; environmentalists become obstacles. This story justifies any method to boost output – no matter the cost to people or the planet. It gives Big Ag moral cover for a failing, extractive food system.
A common variation is ‘food security’ which activates military-style values of national defence and top-down control.
Even food movements sometimes unintentionally echo this narrative when we talk about yields and ‘food security’ without questioning the frame.
Narrative 2: ‘technology will save us’
Another potent narrative: we can carry on with business as usual – because innovation and technology will solve all the problems. This modernist narrative casts ag-tech firms and scientists as heroes delivering the magic bullet of “more with less.” It celebrates tools – chemicals, machines, gene editing, digital tech – while ignoring who controls them, who loses, and who profits. (It’s worth noting how Big Tech has reduced innovation to only mean these things.)
It’s a comforting message – for those in power: ‘leave it to us; you don’t need to worry’. Any opposition becomes an anti-progress villain. It conveniently ignores the harms caused by previous innovations; it implies agribusinesses are investing for the good of mankind, rather than for their financial return; and it dodges the need for deeper systems change.
Narrative 3: ‘the straw that breaks the camel’s back’
This narrative says: now’s not the time for change – farmers are in crisis. There’s always a new pressure: war, inflation, drought. And any new policy is framed as the ‘final straw’.
It’s emotionally powerful – painting farmers as suffering heroes. But it’s weaponised to block change and deregulate.
In this version of the story, all legislation is a burden. Power dynamics are hidden. And Big Ag uses real farmer struggles to advance its own interests.
It’s especially difficult to counter, as many family farmers are certainly facing great pressures. But it directs public sympathy towards deregulation and Big Ag interests, rather than tackling the structural issues farmers face.
Learning from narratives that have been successful in resisting industrial food systems
So how can we counter these dominant narratives? Let’s look at what’s worked before – and why. Some food movement frames have achieved cut-through – and there’s much to build on.
- The “Frankenstein foods” campaign against GMOs stirred public fear about tampering with nature. It evoked threat, health risks, and scientific hubris – casting GMOs as an unnatural experiment gone wrong. It wasn’t afraid to use cultural icons or crude messaging to make its point.
- Ultra-processed foods now play a similar (if subtler) role – highlighting unnatural tampering by big business in our food, versus natural and more wholesome diets.
- In Europe, food and trade movements were effective at raising the spectre of chlorine washed chicken and hormone beef to resist the signing of trade agreements with the USA – shorthand for low standards, corporate interference, and tampered food.
- Narratives around food miles and local, seasonal food have also had considerable success – tapping into values of freshness, trust, and “real food” close to home. Just look at supermarket marketing.
What lessons can be learned from these examples? These insights draw from the narrative toolkit work IPES-Food led with partners in the EU Food Policy Coalition.
Simplicity is key – even if it feels crude. Keep it simple, relatable, and memorable. Cut the jargon. If a 14 year old, or your grandmother, won’t understand it, it’s too niche. Never assume others share your vocabulary just because your peers do.
Don’t shy away from values and emotion – they resonate more than facts and figures. Highlight the damage being done – and always say who is doing what to whom. Your food is being covered with toxic pesticides (not ‘residues’). Biodiversity is not ‘lost’: the wildlife you love is being destroyed by corporate food production.
Make change seem possible. Highlight positive changes that have happened previously and what’s needed now.
Evoke public support. Be clear about the role of the public in supporting our work – show that our goals are shared by millions. Include people, and show that we are part of a big movement together working for a common goal.
These are the building blocks of stronger frames – and stronger stories.
What frames and narratives can we deploy to help opinions shift towards agroecology and food sovereignty?
To counter Big Ag’s narrative machine, we need strong frames and values-driven storytelling of our own. Here are some narrative directions that can help us do just that.
Big Ag versus farming
It’s vital we always make a distinction between corporate food production or big agribusiness, versus ‘farming’ (the positive sustainable agriculture we do want). The public clearly rejects one – food barons, Big Ag, rich landowners; and they value the other: farmers and food producers.
Though much of the public have no or little personal experience with farms, ‘farming’ has universal popular appeal – from childhood storybooks, to advertising and media. In people’s minds, “farms” are green places with happy animals, and small, low-intensity food production. This idealised vision is used by big agribusiness to advertise its products: though in reality it looks nothing like it. Agroecology and food sovereignty movements need to own “farming”.
Therefore we need a separate term from “farm” to discuss the most damaging aspects of exploitative agriculture we condemn: corporate food production, industrialised agriculture, exploitative agriculture, Big Ag…
Food access not food security
To combat the ‘feed the world’ narrative, we need to shift the conversation onto food access.
Though the term ‘food security’ has an academic pedigree, with formal definitions agreed by the UN, it is unhelpful in communications and winning narratives. It activates values of national security, nationalism, defence, crisis, and safekeeping – values which are unlikely to help in making the case for food systems transformation. It automatically implies that increasing food production is the appropriate response to securing enough food.
By contrast the term ‘food access’ has more positive associations – activating values of sharing, fairness, social justice, and benevolence. And it implies that the solution is about distribution, and provisioning of the food that is already produced.
More than that, we need to proactively and consistently highlight the issues we think really matter for hunger and food access – the unfair distribution of food; the poverty and inequality that prevent people accessing food; food being enormously wasted and siphoned off to biofuels and animal feed for profit; the lack of access to healthy food at an affordable price for everyone, due to the greed of big business. We need to repeat this as often as the ‘feed the world’ narrative is trotted out.
Big business versus the people
A helpful existing narrative we can try to reinforce is the big business versus the people narrative. The narrative goes: Big agribusiness corporations are working behind the scenes to make sure that laws and policies deliver for their own profit – and not for people, the environment, or farmers.
Here we need to highlight the influence of big business and point to them as the cause of the problems in food systems. This helps establish the cause of the problem and being clear about the damage being done (the industrialisation of the countryside).
It taps into public beliefs that corporate power is out of control; that corporations are the ones attacking the measures we need.
Use everyday language
We must constantly bear in mind that – though ‘agroecology’ and ‘food sovereignty’ are significant concepts for social movements – public audiences do not understand the terminology in the way you do. With public audiences, these words will almost always need explaining in more every-day language. Otherwise we only make sense to ourselves.
Here are some suggestions for explaining agroecology in simple vocabulary that everyone can understand:
Natural farming that avoids toxic chemicals and nurtures land, nature and people.
Farming that takes care of the land and nature to grow food that’s good for people and the planet.
Here are some suggestions for explaining food sovereignty in simple vocabulary that everyone can understand:
Food and farming in the hands of people not big corporations.
Locally controlled food and farming.
Communities and farmers control the food we eat and how it’s grown.
Conclusions
If agroecology is going to gain ground, we need to do more than be right – we need to connect. We need to speak in ways that move people. That means telling powerful stories that people recognise themselves in, using words that resonate, and framing the future we want in terms and values that inspire. We can’t afford to stay in the comfort zone of technical language and internal debate. The stakes are too high.
The good news is that the food movement has powerful stories to tell – stories of people, community, land, care, and justice. Stories of eating. These spark emotion and connection. Everyone who eats has a stake in this future.
We have the ideas. Now we need the language to match. If we want to change the food system, we have to change the story first.
Robbie Blake is communications manager for IPES-Food.
ARC2020 and the EU Food Policy Coalition are members of the coalition behind the Good Food For All! European Citizens’ Initiative. Click here to find out more about this initiative, and add your signature if you agree with the demands.