Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
However, the funding structure of nonprofi t organizations generally
demands that after some kind of incubator period, programs become
economically solvent. Food justice activists in the United States have not
lobbied for the kind of state involvement seen in Belo Horizonte and
Cuba. Indeed, recognizing that the U.S. government largely steps in on
the part of agribusiness, food justice activists tend to argue against gov-
ernment intervention. But the example from Belo Horizonte indicates
that, even within a nation enmeshed in market-led agricultural policies
aimed at harnessing the technological advances of the Green Revolution,
there may be opportunities to pressure state and local policymakers to
support programs favoring food justice and food sovereignty. Such
ongoing state funding may help U.S. movements to simultaneously
expand food access while providing adequate returns for farmers. It is
worth noting that this strategy is quite different from U.S. movements'
emphasis on eliminating intermediaries by encouraging direct relation-
ships between producers and consumers.
Moreover, the various examples from Latin America posit their own
food disenfranchisement—both lack of land tenure and lack of access to
affordable, appropriate food—as the result of particular forces of glo-
balization. Like the U.S. food justice movement, some efforts function
as everyday resistance within states embracing the globalization of agri-
culture. Others, however, directly challenge state policies that favor this
political economic order, creating participatory norms of direct action
rather than alternative forms of production and consumption. The MST,
for example, confronts an inequitable land tenure system worsened by
market-led agrarian reform (Sauer 2006; Wolford 2007). Their land
occupations directly oppose World Bank and IMF policies aimed at
privatization, while their protests pressure state actors to create a more
equitable agricultural system. The MST is also a member of La Via
Campesina, and through this alliance they participate in protests against
international monetary institutions while sharing their experience with
landless peoples worldwide. This combination of national and transna-
tional targets represents the movement's understanding that the effects
of globalization are amplifi ed by and experienced through state policies.
Given that the U.S. food justice movement regards federal policy as
responsible for environmental injustices within the food system, it is
striking that their tactics are generally not aimed at policy change.
However, as with Campesino a Campesino, the U.S. food justice move-
ment's programs may help to build the structural literacy and grassroots
power necessary for such an undertaking.
