Healing the Metabolic Rift between Farming and the Eco-System: Challenges Facing Organic Farmers in Canada and in Sweden

There is a growing list of scholarly and popular works which, when taken collectively, raise major concerns about industrialized farming and our present food system, particularly its impact on the natural environment. Over a century ago, Karl Marx used the concept “metabolic rift” to describe problems related to ecological and social sustainability resulting from capitalist industry and agriculture. in this paper, we examine the extent to which some members of today’s organic farming movement are addressing the metabolic rift and changing the social organization of food production.