Restoring Food Sovereignty in Vulnerable and Marginalized Communities
In order to restore or implement food sovereignty in vulnerable and marginalized communities, we first have to answer a few questions: Who are these vulnerable and marginalized peoples? What put them in that situation? What does food sovereignty mean to them? What’s stopping them from realizing food sovereignty in the first place?
Who are these vulnerable and marginalized peoples?
In colonized countries (I say “colonized” because even though these countries have liberated themselves from previous colonizers, they continue to be colonized by neoliberalism, mega corporations, and foreign countries’ governmental policies), such as the US, Canada, countries in Abya Yala (South and Central America), India, etc, people are marginalized by their skin colour, economic status, gender, sexual identity and orientation, mental and physical health status, etc. People have been displaced from their original homes and lands to cities or even other countries. We include those who are urban poor, without fair access to education, economic involvement and opportunities, and at times, immigration status.
What put them in that situation?
By forcing people to move to cities (thus increasing urban poor), “they transform from a self-reliant, highly skilled agricultural society, into poor and politically vulnerable substrata of urban society…”
If there ever was one answer to this question, it would be colonization, capitalism, and the neoliberal agenda. Indigenous and native peoples have been murdered, forced away from their homes, put into residential schools. They have been displaced from their original homes and lands by corporations land grabbing for various reasons, environmental destruction caused by these corporations, such as flooding (due to hydroelectric dams), deforestation leading to desertification, monoculture mega farms, mining operations, oil and gas exploration, just to name a few.
LAND is an important part of the equation in food sovereignty; without land, there is no food. By forcing people to move to cities (thus increasing urban poor), “they transform from a self-reliant, highly skilled agricultural society, into poor and politically vulnerable substrata of urban society,” “economically dependent on low wages for unskilled labor” and “[losing] their relationships, roles, ancestral knowledge and practices of self-sufficiency.”(1)
What does food sovereignty mean to them?
Many food banks across the US are concerned only with food security, which ensures that people have access to safe food, which most of the time, is non-nutritious, canned, highly processed, and with lots of additives and preservatives. Food security concerns itself only with preventing starvation. “From a decolonial standpoint, we can avoid hunger and still suffer malnourishment from a lack of access to our Indigenous crops, foodways, and heritage cuisines.” (2) Food sovereignty is a community’s ability to “determine the nature of food production, the manner of consumption, and the modes of distribution.” (3) It implies that people are able to make their own decisions about what kind of food nourishes them, which is not the case in many areas considered “food deserts,” where the choice of food has already been made for people, where grocery stores sell only processed or packaged foods, where people have to travel for hours for “better” food options that are much more expensive.
As Valerie Segrest (Muckleshoot) puts it, “the land is our identity and holds for us all the answers we need to be a healthy, vibrant, and thriving community. In our oral traditions, our creation story, we are taught that the land that provides the foods and medicines we need are a part of who we are. Without the elk, salmon, huckleberries, shellfish, and cedar trees, we are nobody. (…) This is our medicine; remembering who we are and the lands that we come from.” (4) Food not only nourishes, but is also medicine, community, identity, ancestral knowledge and wisdom, and our roots.
What’s stopping them from realizing food sovereignty in the first place?
Needless to say, the lack of access to land and entitlement through centuries of discrimination, violence, marginalization is one main hindrance to vulnerable communities attaining food sovereignty. Another issue is the fact that the people who do not have food sovereignty nor security are the very ones who grow, pick, and distribute food to the rest of privileged society. Food sovereignty is a threat to neoliberalism and capitalism. Having people become self-reliant and self-sufficient is the last thing the CEOs of food corporations want. When displaced and marginalized people have to rely on unhealthy food as their only option, they inevitably become reliant on big pharmaceutical companies as well. It is a cycle of oppression that they alone pay for.
Rural and urban land needs to be prioritized in local food production, run and organized by local communities that involve the most vulnerable in decision-making. Green spaces need to be maintained, grown, and expanded. Local food production need to be grown without chemicals, and distributed equally and fairly, not just to luxury, expensive, fresh supermarkets.
Most importantly, food cannot and should not be a commodity. Food is a gift from Mother Earth that should be tended to, taken care of, shared, enjoyed, and celebrated by all.
(1) Josefina Medina and Rufina Juárez in the 2007 UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues with La Red Xicana Indígena, during the Special Rapporteur on Migration Issues
(2) Nabhan, Gary P. 2011. Food, genes, and culture: Eating right for your origins. Washington, DC: Island Press.
(3) Juárez, Rufina. 2017. Indigenous Women in the Food Sovereignty Movement: Lessons from the South Central Farm. Mexican-Origin Foods, Foodways, and Social Movements. The University of Arkansas Press.
(4) Valerie Segrest (Muckleshoot), Muckleshoot Traditional Foods and Medicines Program 2015
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