Food Justice

The photo above shows a campesino, or farmer, holding potatoes to sell.⁷

Food Insecurity is experienced mainly by people of color and people living in poverty due to the lack of access to food or diverse diets. Food Justice is the movement to ensure healthy and nutritious food for all people.²

Profit Over People and the Planet

Food justice is considered to be a part of environmental justice movement because food insecurity and environmental injustices are intersectional.² Since industrialization, food production has become very commercialized. The mechanization of tools, organization of crops, input of chemicals, and supply chains all increase short term efficiency of food production without considering the long term costs.³

Today, food insecurity leaves close to two billion people hungry and malnourished across the globe.¹ Although enough food is being produced to feed the entire population of our planet, it is not distributed to all people equally. Food growers are now far removed from consumers, and the companies that process and distribute food do not always prioritize accessibility to all people. This leads to many people of color and people living in poverty not having access to good quality food or enough food.⁴ Studies have proven that Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous communities have the worst access to supermarkets with fresh, healthy, and affordable groceries.²² The corporations in power are white dominated and can easily mislead marginalized communities about diet quality or simply overlook their needs.⁵ 

Current Practices

The western diet is responsible for many health conditions and deaths globally, while also causing many environmental problems. This diet includes a high intake of carbohydrates, added sugars, sodium, and animal products, while lacking fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Black communities are over 2 times more likely to be food insecure and they are at higher risk of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and other chronic conditions because of this.²² 

Modern day farms that produce the crops and meat to support the western diet are depleting resources, contributing to habitat destruction, polluting the soil and water, and releasing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.⁴ Agribusiness and government are the two main influences of this system. Agribusinesses are corporations, such as Del Monte and Deere & Company, that sell chemicals and technology used in agriculture practices today. In order to compete, farmers buy into Green Revolution technology developed by these companies since the 1970s to supposedly make farming more efficient. The use of this technology easily clears the land, exposing it to erosion and flooding events. 

Farmers also accept subsidies from the government to cultivate specific crops, for example corn or soybeans. The government subsidies encourage farmers to run monoculture farms, or farms that only produce a single crop. This lack of biodiversity also leads to nutrient depletion.²³ When there is a lack of nutrients available to crops, farmers are forced to purchase artificial, chemical fertilizers produced by agribusinesses. Frequently, farmers are also forced to buy seeds that are genetically engineered from the same corporations that are resistant to the chemicals they are using. Both of these products cost the farmers more money, lowering their profits and making competition even more difficult.¹⁴ 

Although these practices may be effective immediately, they cannot be sustained long term, worsening the farmers’ original situation and damaging the environment.²³


Future Sustainability

In solving global food insecurity and improving diet quality, we can simultaneously create more sustainable food production.¹ Instead of continuing to fuel the Western Diet through monoculture, we can implement farming techniques that utilize natural ecological processes to reduce chemical inputs and land disruption while involving the community. This will connect people to their environment and bring them closer to their own food production, which can also help increase knowledge to grow and prepare healthy meals independently.⁶

The diagram to the right is an example of how biodiversity can help to optimize production in growing crops. Many Indigenous tribes of North America cultivated squash, corn, and beans together, and this combination came to be known as the Three Sisters. The three crops are interdependent as the corn stalks allow the beans to climb and reach the sunlight, the bean roots provide nitrogen to the corn and squash, and the squash is shaded by the tall corn plant.²⁴ Using natural relationships like this also lessens the need for Green Revolution technology to clear the land. The lack of disruptions to the soil allow for microbial communities, or bacteria, to establish in the soil. These organisms also help to cycle nutrients naturally and reduce the need to add chemical fertilizers or use genetically modified seeds. The more permanent root systems keep the soil in place while allowing for water to infiltrate and even recharging the groundwater.²³

This system is much more efficient as it is much less labor, money, and energy intensive for farmers, all while protecting the environment from erosion and pollution. It can also help individual farmers to achieve Seed Sovereignty, which is the movement to end barriers to get seeds. Instead of buying genetically engineered seeds from agribusinesses or being forced to put government subsidies towards a specific crop, farmers can use the seeds from crops of their previous seasons and exchange with one another. This allows farmers to be more involved in the industry and helps them to be more successful in turning profits.

What Can I Do?

There are many ways to help end food insecurity. Here are some examples:

Sources