Breaking the Food Chains: An Investigation of Food Justice Activism* (original) (raw)
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University of Miami Inter-American law review, 2011
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Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 2019
While scholars who study issues of food justice use the term food power rarely—if at all—their arguments often position the rise of the food justice movement in the context of food power that sustains oppression in the food system. Similarly, many food justice activists and organizations produce an analysis of oppressive forms of food power, while placing the goals of the movement to create sustainable community-based interventions in the periphery. Yet, the pursuit of food justice is a dual process related to power. This process is characterized by the simultaneous acts of dismantling oppressive forms of food power and building emancipatory forms of food power. It also has deep roots in the historical arc of food politics in the Black Freedom Struggle of the civil rights era. However, we know very little about this dual process and how black communities engage in it. In this paper, I juxtapose two cases of black farm projects—the historical case of Freedom Farms Cooperative (FFC) in Mississippi and the contemporary case of the Rocky Acres Community Farm (RACF) in New York—to explore the dual process of food justice. I conclude with a brief discussion on what the cases teach us about this dual process and its implications for scholars and activists who work on issues of food justice. Such implications provide insights into the possibilities of the food justice movement in the future and challenge the movement to include, more explicitly, issues of race, land, self-determination, and economic autonomy.
This paper demonstrates the need for a more holistic and anti-racist approach to local alternative food practice in the U.S. that would aim to meet the needs of the most marginalized: women, people of color, lowincome peoples, immigrant peoples, and rural/small-farm holders. First, I define three major food discourses: community/food security, food sovereignty and food justice. Second, I focus on the current state and framing of the food alternatives system and network of emergency food resources in Seattle, WA. Third, I add to previous work done about space, whiteness, and privilege in the food alternatives movement and its exclusionary practices. Lastly, I consider conceptualizations of privilege and whiteness in order to critique the three aforementioned discourses. The goal of this paper is to widen the language of local alternative food work and create a framework that would aim to meet the autonomy and needs of those disproportionately affected by industrial food practices.
Food justice, intersectional agriculture, and the triple food movement
Agriculture and Human Values, 2019
Emerging as an intersectional response to social inequalities perpetuated by the mainstream food movement in the United States, the food justice movement is being used by marginalized communities to address their food needs. This movement relies on an emancipatory discourse, illustrated by what I term intersectional agriculture. In many respects, the mainstream food movement reflects contention between marketization (corporate agriculture) and social protectionist (local food) discourses , while the role of food justice remains somewhat unclear as it relates to the mainstream movement. Each movement attempts to restructure the ways in which food is distributed, consumed, and produced, impacting the social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental dimensions of food. Using the lens of Nancy Fraser's triple movement framework, I construct an interpretation of food justice as the emancipatory pole of what I term the triple food movement to explore the role of food justice as it relates to the mainstream movement. Specifically, I draw upon the cases of black farmers and queer people in the U.S. creating and (re)creating spaces to address their community food needs and counter systems of domination constructed around race, class, gender, sexuality, agriculture, and food.
This commentary argues for a need to go “beyond food” in research, writing, and activism on the food system. Noting a tendency within both academic and activist discourse around food to focus on “the food itself,” rather than on broader structures of inequality and disinvestment, I argue that more research is needed that focuses explicitly on the ways in which institutional structures and systems (including nonprofits, schools, housing, as well as the food system) can exacerbate broad injustices, including limited food access. I draw on research experience in post–Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, USA, as well as commentary from eminent food systems scholars, to advocate for new research trajectories that utilize food as a lens for contesting broader structures of injustice, rather than advocating for more and better food as an end in itself.
Food justice or food sovereignty? Understanding the rise of urban food movements in the USA
Agriculture and Human Values, 2015
As world food and fuel prices threaten expanding urban populations, there is greater need for the urban poor to have access and claims over how and where food is produced and distributed. This is especially the case in marginalized urban settings where high proportions of the population are food insecure. The global movement for food sovereignty has been one attempt to reclaim rights and participation in the food system and challenge corporate food regimes. However, given its origins from the peasant farmers' movement, La Via Campesina, the translation of food sovereignty principles to the developed world, food sovereignty is often considered a rural issue when, increasingly, its demands for fair food systems are urban. Through interviews with scholars, urban food activists, non-governmental and grassroots organizations in Oakland and New Orleans in the United States of America, we examine the extent to which food sovereignty has become embedded as a concept, strategy and practice. We consider food sovereignty alongside other dominant US social movements such as food justice, and find that while many organizations do not use the language of food sovereignty explicitly, the motives behind urban food activism are similar across movements as local actors draw on elements of each in practice.
Solidarity, space, and race: toward geographies of agrifood justice
2016
The editors of this special issue pose the cogent overarching question, what are the spatial dimensions of food justice? In essence, the questions 'what is food justice and how is it practiced?' cannot fully be answered without understanding space. The radical analysis implicit in food justice draws on an understanding of the social structures underlying inequalities evident in the socio-spatial organization of food systems. We suggest there are four interrelated nodes in networks of food justice organizing around which transformative change is happening or needs to occur: trauma/equity, exchange, land, and labor. These nodes were derived from our own sustained ethnographic research and the critical literature. Because a central concern in U.S. food justice mobilizing is the relationship between race and survival, we focus on the first intervention point (trauma/equity). Using case studies from Minnesota, USA, we propose ways the food movement might move toward racial justic...
Whose right to (farm) the city? Race and food justice activism in post-Katrina New Orleans
Agriculture and Human Values, 2014
Among critical responses to the perceived perils of the industrial food system, the food sovereignty movement offers a vision of radical transformation by demanding the democratic right of peoples ''to define their own agriculture and food policies.'' At least conceptually, the movement offers a visionary and holistic response to challenges related to human and environmental health and to social and economic well-being. What is still unclear, however, is the extent to which food sovereignty discourses and activism interact with and affect the material and social realities of the frequently low-income communities of color in which they are situated, and whether they help or hinder pre-existing efforts to alleviate hunger, overcome racism, and promote social justice. This research and corresponding paper addresses those questions by examining food justice and food sovereignty activism in the city of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina as understood by both activists and community members. I argue, using post-Katrina New Orleans as a case study, that food projects initiated and maintained by white exogenous groups on behalf of communities of color risk exacerbating the very systems of privilege and inequality they seek to ameliorate. This paper argues for a re-positioning of food justice activism, which focuses on systemic change through power analyses and the strategic nurturing of interracial alliances directed by people residing in the communities in which projects are situated.
Sociological Spectrum, 2020
Oktibbeha County (Mississippi) is among the highest food cost and food insecure counties in the nation. In 2016, a group of scholars from a landgrant university held periodic meetings to address food insecurity, food access, and local food systems development, creating the Oktibbeha Food Policy Council (OFPC). A large body of literature on food justice, intersectionality, food policy councils, and agri-environmental assemblage highlights the importance of these types of collaborative initiatives to facilitate better availability and access to fresh and healthy food among historically marginalized groups. However, little has been studied on how food policy councils can be generated and evolve in historically marginalized rural communities of the South. By analyzing the OFPC, this paper aims to contribute to this gap in the existing literature, exploring what factors led to its creation and development. Results of this study show how food justice and the intersection of race and socioeconomic status with local agri-food problems influenced the assemblage and work of this group, creating new opportunities, for low-income families and limited resource Black farmers. Discussions and conclusions center on the lessons, opportunities, and challenges learned from this experience and critical aspects that may be contemplated by similar initiatives and contexts.
Food Justice Now! Deepening the Roots of Social Struggle
2018
Order: https://bit.ly/2rCkJOp The United States is a nation of foodies and food activists, many of them progressives, and yet their overwhelming concern for what they consume often hinders their engagement with social justice more broadly. Food Justice Now! charts a path from food activism to social justice activism that integrates the two. It calls on the food-focused to broaden and deepen their commitment to the struggle against structural inequalities both within and beyond the food system. In an engrossing, historically grounded, and ethnographically rich narrative, Joshua Sbicca argues that food justice is more than just a myopic focus on food, allowing scholars and activists alike to investigate the causes behind inequities and evaluate and implement political strategies to overcome them. Focusing on carceral, labor, and immigration crises, Sbicca tells the stories of three California-based food movement organizations, showing that when activists use food to confront neoliberal capitalism and institutional racism, they can creatively expand how to practice and achieve food justice. Sbicca sets his central argument in opposition to apolitical and individual solutions, discussing national food movement campaigns and the need for economically and racially just food policies—a matter of vital public concern with deep implications for building collective power across a diversity of interests.