Week 8: Food Sovereignty and Food Justice

Food Sovereignty

The right of peoples healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems

What are the seven pillars of food sovereignty?

1) Focuses on Food for People

2) Values Food

3) Localizes Food Systems

4) Puts Control Locally

5) Builds Knowledge and Skills

6) Works with Nature

7) Food is Sacred

Pillar 1: Focuses on Food for People (Food Sovereignty)

• puts all people at the centre of food policies

• Rejects food as a commodity

• Ensure sufficient, healthy and culturally appropriate food for all individuals

Pillar 2: Values Food Providers (Food Sovereignty)

• values and supports the contributions, and respects the rights of all who cultivate, grow, harvest and process food

Pillar 3: Localizes Food Systems (Food Sovereignty)

• brings food providers and consumers closer together

• Resist governance structures

• Puts providers and consumers at the centre of decision-making on food issues

Pillar 4: Puts Control Locally (Food Sovereignty)

• Gives control to local food providers and respects their rights. Control over:

  • Territory

  • Land

  • Grazing

  • Water

  • Seeds

  • Livestock

  • Fish population

Pillar 5: Builds Knowledge and Skills (Food Sovereignty)

• builds on the skills and local knowledge of food providers

• Rejects tech that undermines or contaminates local knowledge

Pillar 6: Works with Nature (Food Sovereignty)

• uses contributions of nature

• Low external input agroecological production and harvesting methods

• Maximize contributions of ecosystems and improve resilience + adaptation

Pillar 7: Food is sacred (People’s Food Policy Project)

• For Indigenous peoples, this derives from the essential relationships between human beings and the natural elements

  • including all the other creatures.

  • those who provide food must be seen as central to the food system

  • it must be shared with everyone

  • it cannot be commodified

What are the tensions between food security and food sovereignty?

• Food security criticized as being ‘productionist’ oriented – remember that the food security definition evolved from food production, availability, and then access, even though there’s enough food to feed everyone

• Food security focuses on trade and global markets that’s in direct opposition to food sovereignty’s approach towards localized food systems

What does Black Food Sovereignty promote and strengthen?

• Black people’s access to healthy and culturally appropriate food that is produced and distributed in an environmentally sound and sustainable manner

• Black people’s stewardship of systems and institutions that determine access to food and resources for producing food

• Black people’s leadership in policy and program development to address community health and wellbeing

What are the systemic barriers/origins of Food Insecurity among Black Canadians?

• Anti-Black racism

• Lack of access to land for farming and related activities

• Under-representation of Black leadership in food and agriculture

• Exclusion of black leadership from Canadian food movement

What are the aims of food justice?

• challenge and restructure the dominant food system by providing a core focus on equity and disparities and the struggles by those who are most vulnerable

• Aims to transform the food system by eliminating disparities and inequities

• Analyzes and reflects on structural causes that lead to unequal access to food for different groups

• Ensures fair distribution of benefits and burdens of where, what, and how food is grown, produced, transported, distributed, accessed, and consumed

• Locally grounded – communities must define this term for their own purposes

• Self-reflexivity + consider equity, power, justice, intersectionality, and positionality

What is food justice?

• food justice is social justice

• Social justice: the equitable distribution of fundamental resources and respect for human dignity and diversity

• Meeting basic human needs, freedom from exploitation and oppression, and access to opportunity and participation

Food Apartheid

• shifts the framing away from geographic and economic “access” and toward the root causes of food system injustices

  • E.g. racially biased housing policy, lending practices, food industry consolidation, wage stagnation

• Only by addressing root causes will we achieve the basic human right of nourishing, affordable food for all

What are the different approaches to food apartheid?

• food banks

• Food sovereignty

• Food justice

What are the benefits of food sovereignty and food social justice approaches?

• help reduce food insecurity while building social cohesion and improving access to food

  • Food sovereignty might address the health and culturally appropriate side to food access that is lacking in the food bank model

  • Food justice movement enables communities of colour and low-income communities to “create local food systems that meet their own food needs”

    • agency