Over the long run of history, the most effective opponents of excessive wealth and privilege have not normally been city dwellers, workers or unions. Instead, they have usually been those with close links to food and the land, what we would now identify as the food movement.

Even today, in more than a few countries, food is the organizing principle behind the main challengers of existing power structures. In El Salvador, the national coordinator of its Organic Agriculture Movement (MAOES) is Miguel Ramirez who recently explained:

We say that every square meter of land that is worked with agro-ecology is a liberated square meter. We see it as a tool to transform farmers' social and economic conditions. We see it as a tool of liberation from the unsustainable capitalist agricultural model that oppresses farmers.

According to Ramirez, the Salvadoran organic agriculture movement wants much more than improved farming. It is seeking enhanced political rights, long-term ecological sustainability, social equity and popular health. Ramirez calls it "this titanic but beautiful struggle, to reclaim the lives of all Salvadorans."

They may be small farmers, but they have a grand ambition. This ambition is even shared worldwide. But how realistic is it? Are they right to imagine food and farming are the missing vehicle for transformative social change?

The question is timely. Not long ago, The New York Times asserted that the center aisles of US supermarkets are being called "the morgue" because sales of junk food are crashing; meanwhile, an international consultant told Bloomberg magazine that "there's complete paranoia" at major food companies where food movements are being taken very seriously.

Food movements are rapidly growing across the world. In the US alone, there have been surges of interest in heirloom seeds, in craft beers, in traditional bread and baking, in city garden plots, in organic food and in opposition to GMOs. Simultaneously, there has been a massive growth of interest in food on social media and the initiation or renewal of institutions, such as Slow Food USA and the Grange movement, to name just a few.