"The Revolution Will Be Community Grown": Food Justice in the Urban Agriculture Movement of Detroit (original) (raw)
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More Than Just Food: Food Justice and Community Change (Introduction)
The industrial food system has created a crisis in the United States that is characterized by abundant food for privileged citizens and “food deserts” for the historically marginalized. In response, food justice activists based in low-income communities of color have developed community-based solutions, arguing that activities like urban agriculture, nutrition education, and food-related social enterprises can drive systemic social change. Focusing on the work of several food justice groups—including Community Services Unlimited, a South Los Angeles organization founded as the nonprofit arm of the Southern California Black Panther Party—More Than Just Food explores the possibilities and limitations of the community-based approach. It offers a networked examination of the food justice movement in the age of the nonprofit industrial complex.
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.
Open Philosophy Journal, 2020
Today the relationship between food and cities is revitalizing urban areas, as food production practices transform locales one block and one neighborhood at a time. The key catalysts of this transformation include the commitment to address the root causes of inequalities within food systems and the desire to increase local control over food systems that have been increasingly industrialized and globalized. These goals, encapsulated by the terms "food justice" and "food sovereignty," play major roles in guiding local food initiatives in cities today. This study explores how justice-oriented urban agriculture projects transform city contexts in ways that reduce regulatory barriers-barriers that, when left in place, could perpetuate systems of oppression. The study ends with the argument that, by removing regulatory barriers, urban agriculture projects are transforming cityscapes in ways that cultivate justice at the system level.
D-Town Farm: African American Resistance to Food Insecurity and the Transformation of Detroit
This article analyzes community building and political agency through an investigation of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN). By using farming as a strategy of resistance against the structural factors that have left much of Detroit in a condition of food insecurity, DBCFSN not only meets citizens’ needs for fresh produce, but also builds community by transforming the social, economic, and physical environment. In so doing, it creates new community spaces on vacant land. DBCFSN uses the farm (a) as a community center, (b) as a means to articulate culturally relevant language about healthy food and healthy lifestyles, and (c) as a tangible model of collective work, self-reliance, and political agency. These farmers adopt a community-based model for increasing access to healthy food for the mostly African American citizens of Detroit. By focusing on improving the daily existence of citizens rather than mobilizing against the power structures, D-Town, a seven-acre model urban farm project of DBCFSN, activists participate in the revival of a city mired in racism and poverty, and all but abandoned by politicians, the automobile industry, and the merchants and supermarkets who once served Detroit’s residents.
Building emancipatory food power: Freedom Farms, Rocky Acres, and the struggle for food justice
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.
Learning democracy through food justice movements
Agriculture and Human Values, 2006
Over time, the corporate food economy has led to the increased separation of people from the sources of their food and nutrition. This paper explores the opportunity for grassroots, food-based organizations, as part of larger food justice movements, to act as valuable sites for countering the tendency to identify and value a person only as a consumer and to serve as places for actively learning democratic citizenship. Using The Stop Community Food Centre's urban agriculture program as a case in point, the paper describes how participation can be a powerful site for transformative adult learning. Through participation in this Toronto-based, community organization, people were able to develop strong civic virtues and critical perspectives. These, in turn, allowed them to influence policy makers; to increase their level of political efficacy, knowledge, and skill; and to directly challenge anti-democratic forces of control.
Community Food Security: A New Social Movements Approach
2011
This thesis explores a burgeoning social movement aimed at shaping the processes of food production and distribution, the Alternative Agrifood Movement. As a collection of initiatives, this movement seeks to mitigate environmental and social injustices perpetuated by the conventional agrifood system. An investigation of the movement is contextualized in social theory surrounding New Social Movements and Whiteness. Research for this thesis focused on Alternative Agrifood Movement as experienced in the Humboldt Bay Region in Northern California. This research revealed tension between the two most prominent concepts of the alternative agrifood movement, sustainable agriculture and food security. In response to this tension, I promote the concept of community food security as a mediator. I illustrate how the community food security concept partners efforts of sustainable agriculture and food security. I stress that combining sustainable agriculture and food security work is fundamental for the success of the alternative agrifood movement. I conclude by stressing the importance of approaching food issues from a human rights framework while highlighting the role of race and whiteness throughout alternative agrifood efforts.
"This paper examines the role of urban agriculture (UA) projects in relieving food insecurity in lowerincome neighborhoods of post-industrial U.S. cities, using Philadelphia as a case study. Based on food justice literature and mixed-methods such as GIS, survey, field observations, and interviews, we discuss how neighborhoods, nearby residents, and the local food economy interact with UA projects. Our findings suggest that, although UA projects occupy a vital place in the fight against community food insecurity in disadvantaged inner-city neighborhoods, there are debates and concerns associated with the movement. These concerns include geographic, economic, and informational accessibility of UA projects; social exclusion in the movement; spatial mismatch between UA participants and neighborhood socioeconomic and racial profiles; distribution of fresh produce to populations under poverty and hunger; and UA’s economic contributions in underprivileged neighborhoods. Finally, we outline future research directions that are significant to understanding the practice of UA."
University of Miami Inter-American law review, 2011
Section I of this paper, "Interracial justice," explains our under standing of the concept and practice of interracial justice. Section II, "The Black Panthers and the connection between food and political self-determination," details how the people's survival pro grams established by the Black Panther Party and related activ ism of past decades has laid the groundwork for new coalitions among disparate groups that are coming to recognize a common stake in achieving greater autonomy through food justice. Section III, "Food insecurity in a land of plenty," describes the dimensions of Oakland's community health crisis and traces how the public private partnerships have led to the establishment of an Oakland Food Policy Council, one of several mechanisms supported by the local government to facilitate the establishment of community gardens and productive green space to be managed by neighbor hood groups. Section IV, "California's commitmen...