Digging Deeper for Food Justice: Engaging Latino Immigrants in Social Movements for Sustainable Food

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Mares
Author(s):  
Karen Emmerman

Food Empowerment Project (F.E.P.) is a vegan food justice nonprofit in northern California. We focus on making a more just and sustainable food system for everyone involved. Since injustice in the food system crosses the species barrier, we work to connect the dots between the exploitation of human and nonhuman animals. We focus our efforts on four main areas: ending the use of animals in the food system, improving access to healthy foods in Black, Brown, and low-income communities, exposing the worst forms of child labor (including slavery) in the chocolate industry, and advocating for farmworker rights. These seemingly disparate areas have much in common: they are interlocking forms of oppres­sion, marginalization, and domination in the food system. We recognize that the intersecting nature of oppression necessitates a nuanced response. For example, as an organization working on both farm­worker justice and food apartheid, we cannot advocate for lowering the price of food as this would negatively impact produce workers who already suffer grave systemic injustice. Instead, we advocate for equality of access and living wages for everyone.[1] In this piece, we focus on our approach to the lack of access to healthy foods, and specifically our community-based efforts in Vallejo, California.


Urban Studies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 778-794 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Moragues-Faus ◽  
Roberta Sonnino

Cities have begun to develop a more ‘place-based approach’ to food policy that emphasises translocal alliances. To understand how such alliances develop distinct capacities to act, in this paper we integrate key theoretical contributions from governance networks, social movements and translocal assemblages. Our analysis focuses on the activities and tools used by the UK’s Sustainable Food Cities Network to assemble local experiences, create common imaginaries and perform collective action. Through these processes, we argue, the network creates cross-scalar, collective and distributive agencies that are modifying incumbent governance dynamics. As we conclude, this raises the need to further explore how translocal configurations can develop forms of power that contest, break or reassemble the relations in the food system that are actively preventing the emergence of more sustainable foodscapes.


Author(s):  
M. Jahi Chappell

This article examines La Vía Campesina (LVC), or the International Peasant Farmers' movement. The LVC, founded by farm leaders in 1993, is currently made up of 148 peasant organizations in sixty-nine countries. LVC claims to represent the interests of at least 200 million farmers and has been touted as the largest and one of the most important social movements in the world. The article describes the LVC's fight for normatively defensible values-for a food system reflecting ideals of ethics and justice-and its quest to develop defensible lifespaces for small farmers in terms of socioeconomic, ecological, and political autonomy. It also examines how their aims and tactics align with current scholarship on the issues of sustainability and autonomy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (17) ◽  
pp. 9687
Author(s):  
Esteve G Giraud ◽  
Sara El-Sayed ◽  
Adenike Opejin

“Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness”, is what millions of Americans strive for. The onset of COVID-19 has highlighted the disparities that exist among Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities, which are facing food access inequities. In this paper, we argue that engaging in growing food sustainably can improve food access, support food justice and enhance sense of purpose and well-being. We expand the notion of Food Well-Being (FWB) to include food producers—especially gardeners—and hypothesize that gardening has the potential to enhance FWB, regardless of the racial and socio-economic background. However, without policies tackling social and racial justice issues, structural barriers may hinder this potential. We use three studies to draw a rich profile of sustainable food gardeners in Arizona, USA and their well-being: (a) the children and teachers engaged in school gardens in the Phoenix metropolitan area; (b) sustainable gardeners and farmers in Phoenix and Tucson; (c) Arizona gardeners during the pandemic. The results show a connection between sustainable gardening and eudemonic well-being, and an impact on the five FWB dimensions (physical, intellectual, spiritual, emotional and social). However, without appropriate policies, funding and infrastructure, the impact might remain minimal, volatile and subject to tokenism.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberley M. Greeson ◽  
Robin C. D. Currey

The new Master of Science in Sustainable Food Systems (MSFS) program at Prescott College was re-envisioned as part of the preferred teach out partnership with Green Mountain College that closed in 2019. In collaboration with faculty from both colleges, the new MSFS program was developed to intentionally center social justice and offer students a Food Justice concentration. Food justice is a growing movement that seeks to shift global, industrial food systems toward more equitable, just, and sustainable foodways. Using this definition, students in the Food Justice core course uncovered how forms of institutional oppression prevent certain communities from accessing healthy and culturally appropriate food. This course was designed and taught from an anti-racist, anti-colonial, and culturally sustaining pedagogical framework. The Food Justice course frames students' investigation of the current food system and how issues of privilege, access, and identity relate to food justice throughout the MSFS program. Through experiential learning, students were asked to develop and implement a project that aligns with social justice values. In this perspective paper, we describe our experiences as sustainable food systems educators in making structural changes to the master's program. We share the values and assumptions that led to the development of the Food Justice concentration and course; detail our pedagogical frameworks; and highlight students' projects as a manifestation of the student experience.


Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 66
Author(s):  
Sally Kitch ◽  
Joan McGregor ◽  
G. Mauricio Mejía ◽  
Sara El-Sayed ◽  
Christy Spackman ◽  
...  

Multiple factors create food injustices in the United States. They occur in different societal sectors and traverse multiple scales, from the constrained choices of the industrialized food system to legal and corporate structures that replicate entrenched racial and gender inequalities, to cultural expectations around food preparation and consumption. Such injustices further harm already disadvantaged groups, especially women and racial minorities, while also exacerbating environmental deterioration. This article consists of five sections that employ complementary approaches in the humanities, design studies, and science and technology studies. The authors explore cases that represent structural injustices in the current American food system, including: the racialized and gendered effects of food systems and cultures on both men and women; the misguided and de-territorialized global branding of the Mediterranean Diet as a universal ideal; the role of food safety regulations around microbes in reinforcing racialized food injustices; and the benefits of considering the American food system and all of its parts as designed artifacts that can be redesigned. The article concludes by discussing how achieving food justice can simultaneously promote sustainable food production and consumption practices—A process that, like the article itself, invites scholars and practitioners to actively design our food system in ways that empower different stakeholders and emphasize the importance of collaboration and interconnection.


2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 255-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Wallace

AbstractUsing the resources of prophetic religion, and with special reference to the blighted city of Chester, Pennsylvania, I argue that lack of access to affordable, nutritious food is an environmental justice problem embedded within a host of other social and economic problems. A holistic analysis of the dysfunctional web that ties together seemingly disparate social pathologies can make sense of, and provide solutions for, the eco-crisis, including the food crisis, in urban communities today. I offer a case study of a grocery co-op in Chester as a successful experiment in sustainable food justice and participatory democracy that directly confronts the urban crisis, including the rising incidence of obesity and diabetes in under-resourced communities. By avoiding a carbon-intensive food regime, the Co-op is a living parable of how local food choices can undergird the health of consumers along with the bio-systems that support this and future generations of humans, animals, and plants. I conclude that the powers of resurrection hope and biblical justice are compelling resources for combatting the mean-spirited politics of greed and power that drive the downward cycle of American cities today.


Author(s):  
Amanda Rooney ◽  
Helen Vallianatos

Our case study draws on emerging ideas of degrowth, showing how degrowth values and strategies may emerge where cities rely heavily on global food systems, and contributes to literature on food for degrowth in local contexts. Degrowth rejects the imperative of economic growth as a primary indicator of social wellness. A holistic understanding of wellness prescribes radical societal transformation, downscaling and decreasing consumption, strengthening community relationships and promoting resilience. Building on Bloemmen et al. (2015), we apply a holistic model of degrowth in a small-scale context, embedded within larger capitalist economies, to examine degrowth opportunities and constraints in Edmonton, Canada. Emergent themes in interviews reveal opportunities and challenges for local food for degrowth, by altering local food supplies, reducing food waste and decreasing consumption. We explore the role of social relationships in food justice work, increasing food knowledge, and building capacity for local, sustainable food production.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 228-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica L. Gilbert ◽  
Rebekah A. Williams

While mainstream efforts for reparations center financial compensation via legislation and litigation, social movements expand this conceptualization in order to address critical and yet often overlooked components of reparations. Equitable access to land and opportunities to heal from intergenerational trauma are two of these reparations demands that social movements prioritize. However, there is a dearth of scholarly literature exploring the role and impact of social movements on reparations. Therefore, we seek to develop this important conversation. In doing so, we elucidate the ways in which these two foci of reparations overlap with those of other social movements; food justice initiatives, in particular, also emphasize the connections between racial justice, land justice, and healing. We thus synthesize social movement, food justice, and reparations literatures to examine the overlaps between the goals of food justice initiatives and social movements for reparations. Using two case studies, Tierra Negra and Soul Fire Farm, we demonstrate the ways in which food justice initiatives support social movements for reparations. Contextualizing our analysis within reflections on personal experiences, we argue that through their efforts to transform systems of oppression, food justice initiatives provide an alternative pathway to achieving reparations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-304
Author(s):  
Charles Z. Levkoe ◽  
Colleen Hammelman ◽  
Kristin Reynolds ◽  
Xavier Brown ◽  
M. Jahi Chappell ◽  
...  

Radical geography research, teaching, and action have increasingly focused on food systems, examining the scalar, sociopolitical, and ecological dynamics of food production and harvesting, processing, distribution, consumption, and waste. While academics have contributed significantly to these debates, the success and progress of this scholarship cannot be separated from the work of practitioners and activists involved in food justice and food sovereignty movements. This paper draws together the voices of scholars and activists to explore how collaborations can productively build the evolving field of radical food geography and contribute to more equitable and sustainable food systems for all. These perspectives provide important insight but also push the boundaries of what is typically considered scholarship and the potential for impacts at the levels of theory and practice. Reflecting on the intersecting fields of radical geography and food studies scholarship and the contributions from the scholar-activists, the authors share a collective analysis through a discussion of the following three emerging themes of radical food geography: (1) a focus on historical and structural forces along with flows of power; (2) the importance of space and place in work on food justice and food sovereignty; and (3) a call to action for scholars to engage more deeply with radical food systems change within their research and teaching process but also in response to it.


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