Why we call it “Food Justice”.
Many people have asked me why People’s Grocery uses the term “food justice” when discussing its mission and work rather than the more conventional term “food security”. To explain why People’s Grocery chooses the term food justice to represent its work and strategic direction, we have to understand the meaning and origin of the term “food security” and the difference between the two. The following was taken from www.wikipedia.org:
“Two commonly used definitions of food security come from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA):
* Food security exists when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. (FAO)
* Food security for a household means access by all members at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food security includes at a minimum (1) the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and (2) an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (that is, without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies). (USDA)”
While these definitions of food security reveal some fundamental ideas behind the term and its correlating school of thought, People’s Grocery recognizes that an accurate and thorough understanding of hunger, the risk of starvation and/or the lack of access to sufficient or healthy food sources entails an analysis of structural inequalities and imbalances of power within a framework of human rights and social justice. After all, it is commonly agreed upon that enough food is produced globally to feed the entire world population at a level adequate to ensure that everyone can be free of hunger and fear of starvation. What prevents equal distribution of food is primarily a complex set of global and local inequities. (For more about this idea read “Diet for a Small Planet” by Frances Moore Lappe).
People’s Grocery believes that in order to discuss issues of hunger one must also discuss the underlining issues of racial and class disparity and the inequities in the food system that correlate to inequities to economic and political power. Most definitions of food security fail to articulate an analysis of power or to place the concern for human rights and social justice at the center of their analysis. One definition of food security that begins to incorporate this analysis is the one used by the Community Food Security Coalition:
“Community food security is a condition in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance and social justice.”
While this definition begins to get to what we believe is the heart of the problem, it only implies that social and economic inequities are factors leading to food insecurity, rather than articulating this fact within their definition. People’s Grocery asserts that “maximizing self-reliance and social justice” requires an approach in which social justice is a central outcome, rather than as an associated outcome that is merely hoped for.
In the current climate of increased militarization and anti-terrorism the concept of food security begins to blend with the concept of national security and takes on an entirely different orientation than the one pursued by community organizations and service agencies. We believe that this is a dangerous direction to head in when working with food systems, agriculture and feeding people and that this trend jeopardizes the autonomy and focus of community food security work. See my blog post on the “International Symposium on Agro-terrorism” for more on this:
Food justice asserts that no one should live without enough food because of economic constraints or social inequalities. Food justice reframes the lack of healthy food sources in poor communities as a human rights issue. Food justice also draws off of historical grassroots movements and organizing traditions such as those developed by the civil rights movement and the environmental justice movement. The food justice movement is a different approach to a community’s needs that seeks to truly advance self reliance and social justice by placing communities in leadership of their own solutions and providing them with the tools to address the disparities within our food systems and within society at large.
