User:Homedpo/Food Justice Movement

History
Food justice has been a part of the activist sphere since the founding of the United States. Yet, the history of our modern Food Justice Movement formulated in the early 1960s during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Access to food for Black people was stripped, mounting pushback.

For example, in November 1962, the completely white board of supervisors in Leflore County voted to discontinue the Federal Surplus Food Commodity Program. Only white members of the community could attend, though those who used the program were less than 1 percent white. Officials like Mississippi’s public welfare commissioner, Fred A. Ross, condemned the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s free food distribution program. This welfare cut is now known as the Greenwood Food Blockade. The Federal Surplus Food Commodity Program provided items such as meal, flour, and powdered milk to 90 percent of Black people in the winters. In response to harsh conditions, the SNCC petitioned president John F. Kennedy to intervene. The federal government mandated that the program be continued, despite the continued pushback from white government officials. This marked the end of the Greenwood Food Blockade, but only was the beginning of white people in power weaponizing access to food.

Years later, the Black Panther Party played a big role in the burgeoning Food Justice movement in the coming years. In 1969, they launched the Free Breakfast for Children program at a church in Oakland, California. This model was adopted by countless cities across the country, and ultimately led Congress to increase funding for the National School Lunch Program and expand the breakfast program to all public schools.

A separate sphere of the Food Justice movement is that of the white community, whose trajectory in the movement differed from that of the Black activists. In 1996, the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) was an important player in advocating for access to fresh fruits and vegetables. However, this group was composed of all white Americans and neglected to seek input from residents of the food insecure areas they attempted to help. According to Daniel Ross, Director of Nuestras Raíces, food security cannot exist independently of the specific community in discussion because of how central food and agriculture are to a community.

Modern Political Response
Food access and justice is a contentious topic in current day legislation, as the fight for food justice is far from over.

The movement was highly popularized during President Obama’s two terms, largely in part due to his wife, Michelle Obama. President Obama passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010, calling for a raised nutrition standard in the National School Lunch Program. Despite some Republican lawmaker pushback, the law went into effect. In 2020, The University of Washington School of Public Health found that since the passing of this legislation, children from low-income households have been eating healthier school lunches with better nutritional quality.

Supplementing the legal action taken by the President, Michelle Obama’s activism in the political sphere led to the onset of programs like Let’s Move, that target decreasing adolescent obesity across the United States. Nevertheless, a decade later, certain scholars justify a decrease in funding towards these programs that are anchored on obesity reduction instead of food justice and equity.

In 2017, the Food Deserts Act was introduced to the House. The Act called for consistent grants for grocery stores in areas defined as formal food deserts. Grant money would be allocated to selling healthy foods that are locally sourced. This bill did not make it past an introduction in the House. Scholars suggest that this highlights limited support for food justice from Congress, despite food insecurity being a relatively bipartisan issue.

Years later, the Healthy Food Access for All Americans Act was introduced in 2021 to the Senate. The legislation calls for tax credits and grant funding for opening grocery stores and food banks in food deserts. This bill has yet to be passed as of April 2022.

Food Deserts
Food deserts are defined by the USDA as census tracts that contain a notable population of low income people that lack access to healthy and affordable food, such as a typical chain grocery store within reachable distance. In food deserts, it is typical to see an abundance of fast food restaurants alongside gas stations and liquor stores with no fresh food, only offering bagged chips, sodas, and other quick eat items that lack nutritional substance, are available, alongside fast food restaurants that do not offer healthy options. In a Report to Congress done by the United States Department of Agriculture, it was found that 23.5 million Americans live more than one mile away from a grocery store and do not have access to a car. There are concerns regarding individuals in food insecure areas that have to rely on public transportation to access local food markets to grocery stores.

Some activists criticize the term “food desert” as a bad descriptor of these neighborhoods, for two main reasons. First, the word “desert” implies something that is naturally existing. Deserts are labeled as so because they receive a certain amount of precipitation, a factor beyond human control. Rather, urban planner Karen Washington of Johns Hopkins explains that residents in “food deserts” often may have food, but it is the quality of such food that suffers. Grocery stores may have produce that is financially inaccessible for residents, and as such proximity is not always the main issue. Research from the University of Washington has shown that proximity to supermarkets had no correlation to ability to shop at a supermarket, and perhaps social deprivation is a better explanation. Scholars have used the term food mirage to explain this concept.

Food Apartheid
In recent years, racial justice organizers have began to label the lack of access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food a form of Food Apartheid. These organizers argue that this disparity is predominantly because of structural inequalities that deprive poor communities of color from access to the same selections of food as richer white communities. Ashante Reese, author of Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access explains that the anti-Black  racism and uneven capitalist urban development create conditions that can only be called food apartheid.

Critics of this term explain that using the word apartheid to describe this unequal food access devalues the suffering inflicted on millions of South Africans upon its introduction in 1948. Apartheid was a traumatic experience for the millions of South Africans that lived under apartheid rule, and for that reason some call it an insensitive label for the food segregation phenomenon.

Structural Inequities
Access to food is a highly racialized topic.

Indigenous Americans
Most of the farms in the United States exist on stolen land from legislation such as the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This land was then portioned among white settlers for extremely low costs, through legislation such as the Homestead Act. Prior to European colonization of the Americas, the indigenous people that inhabited America had various regionally unique food resources. Nevertheless, today one in four Native Americans lack reliable access to healthy food and have a much higher risk for diet-related diseases. American Indian and Alaska Native adults are 50% more likely to be obese and 30% more likely to suffer from hypertension compared to white Americans. They are also 50% more likely to be diagnosed with coronary heart disease, and three times more likely to have diabetes.

Valarie Blue Bird Jernigan, the Executive Director of the Center for Indigenous Health Research and Policy, posits that these levels of food insecurity are a direct cause of colonization. Her Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) study on the Round Valley Reservation in Mendocino County, California, found that the 4000 residents studied had nutritionally poor diets because of lack of access to fresh foods. The Round Valley Reservation's only sources of food during the study was a single grocery store located in the town over, with a fried chicken fast food restaurant inside, where 85% of its shelf space is dedicated to prepackaged foods. The only other source was reported to be a gas station which sells prepackaged snacks and hot dogs.

Currently, up to 85% of Native American peoples on Reservations take part in food assistance programs, one of them being the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR). The foods that these programs distribute are often canned and prepackaged, inevitably being high in salt, sugar, and fats as well as low in vital micronutrients. As such, reform is necessary for these programs to more effectively target the problem. She explains that her ideal solution is increased efforts should be focused on providing Indigenous food sovereignty, which is a specific policy approach that works to mobilize communities using multi-millennial cultural harvesting strategies.

In the past, the government has tried to expand upon addressing this food insecurity by expanding access to food banks and promoting benefits like SNAP assistance. Nevertheless, research shows that Indigenous communities do not or cannot utilize these benefits. Her possible explanations are that many people do not shop at places that accept SNAP or are recipients of discriminatory practices. Furthermore, many Indigenous people use harvested food for dietary, medical, cultural, and practical purposes. As such, when these tribes were forced to move because of colonization, this disruption sent shockwaves through their societies.

Certain organizations have programs that target aiding indigenous populations in particular. Mohegan Foodways is a program associated with the Mohegan Tribe, a tribe of around 1,700 people located in southeastern Connecticut. According to Susan Meehan, Traditions & Outreach Specialist with the Mohegan Tribe, the program’s goal is to plant the seeds for a sustainable program that will develop with Mohegan encompassing future generations.

Black Americans
In the aftermath of slavery, Black Americans faced a unique and difficult struggle to obtain food justice. Between 1865 and 1910, though many Black men became landowners, land was stolen from them through legal trickery and undue violent acts. Furthermore, many were unable to own land at all. As a result, countless Black people were forced to sharecrop on other people's land. White supremacist violence and discriminatory money lending policies, many of which were instituted by the US Department of Agriculture, allowed for white developers to easily acquire properties. In 1920, Black Americans owned 14% of American farms. In 2017, that proportion has gone down to 2%. This inability to farm and grow one’s own food prevents many communities from achieving a truly sustainable food system. Dara Cooper, the executive director of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance, claims that providing healthy food options is not enough to achieve food justice. She explains that a community must own and control the institutions that deliver said food.

Beyond farming discrimination, since the end of the Great Recession, the income disparity between Black and white households has widened, and this intersection of socioeconomic issues and racial history creates a higher risk for Black Americans to face food insecurity. Food mirages explain the concept of grocery stores being present, but the healthy items within them being financially out of reach for their customers.

Harlem, New York is a neighborhood that highlights much of the radicalized nature of food injustice. Harlem was 87.6% Black in 1990. Past and current resident Angela Helm explains that at the time, the neighborhood would have been described as a food desert. Spurred by a real estate transformation, Starbucks locations began to open and President Bill Clinton moved his office into the neighborhood. As such, rents began to skyrocket and the landscape shifted. Residents protested the opening of Whole Foods, which drew in white neighbors and produce that remained unaffordable for residents and their families. Gentrification is a phenomenon that disproportionately impacts Black residents in urban areas, and also their access to food.

A similar phenomenon can be seen in New Orleans, Louisiana. Following the destruction wreaked by Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans East was still home to 73,000 predominantly African American residents. This neighborhood in itself would constitute the fourth-largest city in Louisiana, yet the entire neighborhood has not a single grocery store.

To target these disparities in economic capital, Soul Fire Farm, an Afro-Indigenous centered community farm, created a reparations map to allow these efforts to become more useful. Additionally, other scholars propose nutrition incentive programs, that provide cash matches for SNAP and WIC benefits spent on fruits and vegetables in markets and grocery stores.