scholarly journals Mobilizing Networks and Relationships Through Indigenous Food Sovereignty: The Indigenous Food Circle’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Northwestern Ontario

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Z. Levkoe ◽  
Jessica McLaughlin ◽  
Courtney Strutt
Keyword(s):  
Food Insecurity ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Emergency Situation ◽  
Indigenous Leadership ◽  
Northwestern Ontario ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Meaningful Relationships ◽  
Settler Population

This paper explores the Indigenous Food Circle’s (IFC) response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Northwestern Ontario, Canada. Established in 2016, the IFC is an informal collaborative network of Indigenous-led and Indigenous-serving organizations that aims to support and develop the capacity of Indigenous Peoples to collaboratively address challenges and opportunities facing food systems and to ensure that food-related programming and policy meets the needs of the all communities. Its primary goals are to reduce Indigenous food insecurity, increase food self-determination, and establish meaningful relationships with the settler population through food. This community case study introduces the IFC and shares the strategies and initiatives that were used during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 to address immediate needs and maintain a broader focus on Indigenous food sovereignty. The food related impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Indigenous People and determining solutions cannot be understood in isolation from settler colonialism and the capitalist food system. Reflecting on the scholarly literature and the experiential learnings that emerged from these efforts, we argue that meaningful and impacting initiatives that aim to address Indigenous food insecurity during an emergency situation must be rooted in a decolonizing framework that centers meaningful relationships and Indigenous leadership.

Fulfilling the Right to Food for South Africa: Justice, Security, Sovereignty and the Politics of Malnutrition

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 112-152
Author(s):  
Busiso Helard Moyo ◽  
Anne Marie Thompson Thow
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Food Justice ◽  
System Transformation ◽  
Right To Food ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Right

Despite South Africa’s celebrated constitutional commitments that have expanded and deepened South Africa’s commitment to realise socio-economic rights, limited progress in implementing right to food policies stands to compromise the country’s developmental path. If not a deliberate policy choice, the persistence of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms is a deep policy failure.  Food system transformation in South Africa requires addressing wider issues of who controls the food supply, thus influencing the food chain and the food choices of the individual and communities. This paper examines three global rights-based paradigms – ‘food justice’, ‘food security’ and ‘food sovereignty’ – that inform activism on the right to food globally and their relevance to food system change in South Africa; for both fulfilling the right to food and addressing all forms of malnutrition. We conclude that the emerging concept of food sovereignty has important yet largely unexplored possibilities for democratically managing food systems for better health outcomes.

scholarly journals Systems of Food and Systems of Violence: An Intervention for the Special Issue on “Community Self Organisation, Sustainability and Resilience in Food Systems”

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 7092
Author(s):  
Mama D. Ujuaje ◽  
Marina Chang
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Continuous Process ◽  
Present System ◽  
Farm Production ◽  
Agricultural Produce ◽  
Field Practice ◽  
Self Organisation ◽  
Embodied Practice

This intervention critiques the rationale which underpins the authority of the food system as a context for sustainability, resilience and self-organisation. We apply learning from embodied practice, in particular The Food Journey©, to demonstrate the existence of harm and trauma arising from the overrepresentation of the liberal model of Man as constituting the only reality of humanity. This model has, in reality been a colonial, capitalising force of violent dispossession. It is this context that has produced global circulations of agricultural produce, systematised by a colonialism which violates the integrity of all that it encounters as different. Colonialities of being, power and knowledge extract and exploit globally both people and places as legacies of colonialism and perpetuate an abyssal divide between worlds. We unsettle and reconfigure both geopolitical contemporary and historic accounts of food-related narratives. We do this to help reveal how the ‘food system’ is actually a mainly Euro-American-centred narrative of dispossession, presented as universal. We propose the use of decolonial tools that are pluriversal, ecological and embodied as a means of interrogating the present system design, including its academic and field practice. The embrace of decolonial tools have the potential to take us beyond mere emancipation, cutting through old definitions and understandings of how food sovereignty, farm production, land justice and food itself are understood and applied as concepts. The outcome—as a continuous process of engagement, learning and redefinition—can then lead us towards a relational pluriverse as an expression of freedom and full nourishment for all humans and for the Earth, which is, in itself, a necessary healing.

Hegemony, Counter-Hegemony and Food Systems Literacy: Transforming the Global Industrial Food System

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Rose ◽  
Izo Lourival
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Education ◽  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Sustainable Food ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
Food Citizenship ◽  
Ecologically Sustainable

AbstractNational and global food systems are beset by intersecting and mutually reinforcing crises of public and ecological health. The locus of these crises resides primarily in the excessive concentration of corporate power and control. Deploying a Gramscian theory of politics as a contribution to the ongoing development of a critical food-based environmental education pedagogy, this article argues that transformative change requires the mass exercise of food citizenship directed towards the realisation of a socially just and ecologically sustainable food system, as contemplated by the principles of food sovereignty. The article argues further that food citizenship in turn presupposes levels of engagement and motivation that will only come from processes of transformative learning and critical consciousness-raising through an emerging form of environmental education: critical food systems literacy.

The impact of COVID-19 on the world food system

2020 ◽  
pp. 66-72
Author(s):  
N. Shurakova
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
World Food ◽  
Global Food Security ◽  
Food Supply Chains ◽  
The World ◽  
Agricultural Imports ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Global Food

The article examines the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the world food system (WFS) through the prism of economic and social aspects. It is revealed that the paralysis of world trade caused by the coronavirus pandemic has had a devastating effect on the WFS and threatens global food security. It is proved that in order to prevent a food crisis in the foreseeable future, it is necessary to restructure food systems at the national and global levels, ensure their stability and continuity of operation. Some measures are proposed to prevent trade barriers, protect food supply chains and expand access to food. It is concluded that there is a need to expand domestic «food sovereignty», especially in countries that depend on agricultural imports and are involved in the global food trade system.

The Obesity Pandemic and Food Insecurity in Developing Countries

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen Lowitt ◽  
Katherine Gray-Donald ◽  
Gordon M. Hickey ◽  
Arlette Saint Ville ◽  
Isabella Francis-Granderson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Food Insecurity ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Nutrition Transition ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Overweight And Obesity ◽  
School Type ◽  
Farm To School ◽  
Double Burden

Overweight and obesity affect over half a billion people globally and represent major public health concerns because excess weight gain is a key risk factor for non-communicable diseases. This chapter presents an overview of global trends in obesity, considering both developed and developing country contexts. It describes how this pandemic is rooted in the “nutrition transition” taking place around the world as a result of a globalized agri-food system that is changing the quantity, types, and desirability of foods available for consumption. In some countries, this is contributing to a “double burden of malnutrition,” as the problem of undernutrition now coexists alongside an increasing prevalence of over-nutrition. An overview of key policy responses and policy instruments that governments can utilize to address obesity is provided, recognizing that a holistic food systems response is needed to address the global challenge of obesity. The remainder of the chapter focuses on the food security and obesity challenges facing the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and profiles a “farm to fork” school feeding project in the island nation of St. Kitts-Nevis that was designed to reduce obesity and improve food security among children. Implementation and key results of this integrated project are presented, including the core components of agricultural production, procurement of local produce, and children’s consumption of nutritious foods. The chapter concludes by identifying lessons for supporting “farm to school”-type projects as a possible food systems response to addressing obesity and food insecurity.

scholarly journals The State of Food (In)Security in the Trans-Himalaya, Upper-Mustang, Nepal

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 92-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rishikesh Pandey
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Food Insecurity ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Aid ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Global Issue ◽  
Food Transport

Food insecurity is a global issue, with higher prevalence of hunger in developing countries. Low crop yield and food production - due to difficult topography and traditional farming methods - combined with lower income; fluctuations in prices and supply, and low quality of food have been causing food insecurity in Nepal. This research examines food (in)security situation in Upper-Mustang, Nepal. The results are derived from the data collected through face–to-face interviews with the heads of 66 households, in-depth interviews conducted with 22 key informants, and discussions with the group of local people in different (6) places. The household food system was studied from livelihood perspectives and food (in)security was assessed in relation to self-sufficiency or production sufficiency, access, utilization, and stability of food. Households in the Trans-Himalaya acquire food from multiple sources such as farming and livestock ranching, buy food from the market, and also receive food aid for the sake of survival during the food crisis. Food security situation in terms of self-production in Upper-Mustang is at worst stage that many households are facing severe to chronic food insecurity. Studied households access marketed food, though the price they pay is very high. The worrisome issue is that there is no significant improvement in food security situation over time in the Trans-Himalaya. Study found that not the household size but dependency ratio in the household increases food insecurity. On the other hand, quality of farmland in terms of cropping intensity and availability of irrigation rather than the farm-plot size contribute for food security. The issue of food security is still a valid development policy goal for Nepal in general and for the Trans-Himalaya in particular. Accordingly, food security interventions are important. Yet, policy for interventions should look into all components of food systems, particularly providing irrigation, promoting local food varieties, and provisioning for food subsidies and food aid together with subsidies in food transport.

scholarly journals Food hubs play an essential role in the COVID-19 response in Hawai‘i

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Saleh Azizi Fardkhales ◽  
Noa Lincoln
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Performance Metrics ◽  
Food System ◽  
Local Food ◽  
Community Food Security ◽  
Local Food System ◽  
Food Hubs ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
System Resilience ◽  
Multiple Challenges

Community food security and food systems resili­ence have received much emphasis in the last two decades, at least partially in response to mounting challenges and pressures on the global food system. While empirical research shows strong evidence that direct-to-consumer relationships in the food system predominantly serve affluent commu­nities, during the COVID-19 pandemic local food providers have become a necessity through their provision of essential services, such as hunger relief and home deliveries for vulnerable populations. In this paper, we examine the challenges and opportunities of food hubs—innovations in local food systems that help connect small farmers with local markets—during the COVID-19 pandemic using quantitative and qualitative data from practitioners on the ground. The hubs were not necessarily equipped or experienced in the response needed, but they quickly adapted to the situation and demonstrated success during the pandemic, as illustrated by 200–300% growth in performance metrics such as revenues generated, employees retained, customers served, and farmers supported. The performance of the hubs in response to the multiple challenges accompanying the pandemic demonstrates their key role in food system resilience through features of diversity, functional redundancy, and connectivity, suggesting that disaster preparation should consider local food hubs a necessary service. We provide policy suggestions for supporting their role in local food system resilience beyond the pandemic.

scholarly journals Uncovering hidden urban bounty: A case study of Hidden Harvest

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 18-32
Author(s):  
Chloé Poitevin DesRivières
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Private Lands ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Social Environmental

Urban food systems primarily rely on foods grown in rural spaces, and often face challenges in creating spaces to grow fresh, healthful and affordable food in cities. Urban food harvest organizations aim to overcome these challenges by locating and harvesting food that already exists in cities on the numerous fruit- and nut-bearing trees located on public and private lands. Hidden Harvest is a leading initiative for urban fruit and nut harvesting in Canada, and unique in its for-profit social enterprise model. The organization aims to legitimize and support the practice of harvesting fruits and nuts in urban areas, and provides a means to increase access to—and availability of—fresh, healthful foods hyper-locally in Ottawa, as people harvest from their own (or nearby) neighborhoods. This field report examines the challenges and opportunities faced by Hidden Harvest in attempting to link multiple social, environmental and economic goals relating to food sovereignty, social justice and ecological sustainability. In particular, the organization seeks to establish a self-sustaining business model through innovative solutions and the development of networks with local food processes, food organizations and businesses, which enables Hidden Harvest to grow and develop distinct ties and relationships in Ottawa. This case study reveals how organizations such as Hidden Harvest use food to enhance and tie together local economies, knowledge, food security and community well-being.

scholarly journals What does it mean to do food justice?

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten Valentine Cadieux ◽  
Rachel Slocum
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Food Justice ◽  
Local Food Movement ◽  
The World ◽  
Food Movement ◽  
The U.S

'Food justice' and 'food sovereignty' have become key words in food movement scholarship and activism. In the case of 'food justice', it seems the word is often substituted for work associated with projects typical of the alternative or local food movement. We argue that it is important for scholars and practitioners to be clear on how food justice differs from other efforts to seek an equitable food system. In the interests of ensuring accountability to socially just research and action, as well as mounting a tenable response to the 'feed the world' paradigm that often sweeps aside concerns with justice as distractions from the 'real' issues, scholars and practitioners need to be more clear on what it means to do food justice. In exploring that question, we identify four nodes around which food justice organizing appears to occur: trauma/inequity, exchange, land, and labor. This article sets the stage for a second one that follows, Notes on the practice of food justice in the U.S., where we discuss attempts to practice food justice. Key words: food justice, food sovereignty, food movement, food security, alternative agri-food systems

scholarly journals Subversive Future Seeks Like-Minded Model: On the Mismatch between Visions of Food Sovereignty Futures and Quantified Scenarios of Global Food Futures

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-67
Author(s):  
Yashar Saghai
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Simulation Models ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Many ◽  
Computer Simulation Models ◽  
Global Food

AbstractWill we, by 2050, be able to feed a rapidly growing population with healthy and sustainably grown food in a world threatened by systemic environmental crises? There are too many uncertainties for us to predict the long-term evolution of the global agri-food system, but we can explore a wide range of futures to inform policymaking and public debate on the future of food. This is typically done by creating scenarios (story lines that vividly describe what different futures could look like) and quantifying them with computer simulation models to get numerical estimates of how different aspects of the global agri-food system might evolve under different hypotheses. Among the many scenarios produced over the last twenty years, one would expect to see the future advocated by the food sovereignty movement, which claims to represent roughly two hundred million self-described “peasants” (small farmers) worldwide. This movement defends a vision of the future based on relocalized, sustainable, and just agri-food systems, self-governed through direct and participatory democratic processes. Yet, food sovereignty is conspicuously absent from quantified scenarios of global food futures. As part of the roundtable, “Ethics and the Future of the Global Food System,” this essay identifies seven obstacles that undermine the creation of food sovereignty scenarios by examining two attempts at crafting such scenarios.

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