Food Justice

People of color are the most severely impacted by hunger, poor food access, diet-related illness and other problems with the food system. The food justice movement works not only for access to healthy food for all, but also examines the structural roots of these disparities — and works for racial and economic justice, too. This work isn’t new. What gets lost in the predominant narrative about urban white foodies obsessing over the latest food trend and statistics on poor health outcomes for minority groups is that people of color have been bringing historical injustices in the food system to light and have been working toward empowering alternatives.

Why Food Justice Is Necessary

 The dominant food system, with its cheap, empty calories and ubiquitous fast food joints, leaves many Americans undernourished and unhealthy — and the brunt of those results are borne by low-income communities of color. Nationally, the rate of food insecurity for African-American households is more than double that of white households, while one in five Latinos are food insecure — compared with one in ten whites and one in eight Americans overall. ¹³¹⁹ Soul Fire is part of the Freedom Food Alliance, a collective of farmers, political prisoners and organizers who use food justice to address racism in the criminal justice system. In Detroit, a city with a large undeveloped land base and rapid gentrification, Detroit Black Community Food Security Network has been building power for more than a decade to ensure that wealth and other benefits from redevelopment will accrue to the city’s historically Black population rather than exclusively to white newcomers. Black Urban Growers was founded in 2010 to build community support for black farmers in both urban and rural areas, and the National Black Food and Justice Alliance cultivates black leadership and organizes for food and land sovereignty. In the South, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives has been supporting farmer cooperatives for fifty years, while the Southeastern African American Farmer’s Organic Network (SAAFON) helps black farmers, vastly underrepresented in organic farming, navigate the certification process and provides small loans and other assistance.

Indigenous Food Justice

For Native American communities, food justice and food sovereignty are often about re-establishing native culture and foodways, destroyed by colonialization and displacement, and about reclaiming indigenous health. The Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance and White Earth Land Recovery Network/Native Harvest both work to restore indigenous food systems that support self-determination, wellness and cultures and rebuild relationships with the land. The First Nations Development Institute supports rebuilding Native control over their own food systems, while the University of Arkansas School of Law Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative provides practical, technical and legal support for such efforts. Minnesota-based chef Sean Sherman and his team, together known as “The Sioux Chef,” are revitalizing Native American Cuisine. They write that in the process, they are re-identifying a North American Cuisine and reclaiming a long-buried and inaccessible culinary culture.

Food Worker Justice

Immigrants and migrants from Central and South America have been successful food justice organizers for decades as they have often led the fight for farmworker rights. Much of today’s food justice organizing by Latinx groups still carries on this long tradition; as immigrants from Africa, Asia and around the world have also become farm and food workers, many of them have joined these fights as well. Groups like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Food Chain Workers Alliance and Community to Community Development, each led by immigrant and migrant farm and food workers, have won major victories in terms of wages and fair treatment, and brought multinational corporations to the bargaining table. The Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) has been successfully organizing restaurant workers to advocate for improved wages and working conditions.

Rooted in Community brings together youth groups centered on food justice, from around the country, for an annual conference to learn from one another toward building the next generation of food justice activists.

These are just some of the many organizations working right now to bring an explicit racial justice analysis to farming and food, examining the history and present context of white supremacy in the food system and working to ensure equity and access for all people.