Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
In the United States, racially and economically marginalized commu-
nities have begun to articulate a somewhat parallel demand for food
justice. The concept of food justice challenges an industrial food system
structured by racial and economic inequality, which results in lack of
access to healthy, affordable, culturally appropriate food among low-
income people and people of color. U.S. federal policies, according to
this movement's analysis, have stripped low-income communities and
communities of color of the ability to produce their own food. The
growing U.S. food justice movement further claims that national and
local policies have created incentives for grocery stores to abandon
low-income and minority urban neighborhoods, thereby ensuring that
processed, high-calorie food is more affordable than produce. The U.S.
food justice movement's community-based response to this analysis
demands not only increased food access, but a food system rooted in
environmental sustainability and social justice. In articulating this goal,
activists bring together the environmental justice movement's attention
to how race and class affect access to environmental benefi ts and the
sustainable agriculture movement's emphasis on alternative modes of
production, distribution, and consumption (Alkon and Norgaard 2009).
Despite an analysis highlighting national policy, the U.S. food justice
movement tends not to push for legislation. The neoliberal context
in which the food justice movement operates has led to norms of partici-
pation that encourage low-income people and people of color who
lack food access to become entrepreneurs, providing healthy food in
their communities. Such projects have taken the form of farmers'
markets and farm stands, school and community gardens, cooking and
nutrition classes, and support for home-based businesses offering pre-
pared foods.
In this chapter, I draw on six case studies from Latin America to map
potential connections between the U.S. food justice movement and trans-
national struggles for food sovereignty.
1
Much of the fi rsthand research
on the latter comes from activist-scholars associated with the nonprofi t
Institute for Food and Development Policy, better known as Food First.
These scholars highlight the efforts of networks of small farmers, non-
governmental organizations, social movements, and governments to
develop alternative strategies that work toward more sustainable and
just forms of agriculture, and of social life. In viewing their case through
the lens of the U.S. food justice movement, I tie the production, distribu-
tion, and consumption of food to both national policies and the trans-
national political economy. I also underscore a parallel emphasis on local
