By Leanna M Sweha
This is the first in a series of regular articles on “food justice.” Food justice has deep roots in the sustainable/organic agriculture and farm labor movements that date back to the 1970s, with many pioneers living and working right here in our region.
Over the last two decades, food justice has emerged as a movement and an ethic that unites concerns about environmental/animal welfare impacts of agriculture with public health concerns about rising rates of food insecurity, obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Holistic in view, it covers the whole range of issues in the modern food system.
Agriculture is Yolo County’s largest industry, and the Sacramento region aspires to be the “Silicon Valley” of agricultural innovation. It’s imperative, therefore, to examine food justice issues in our region.
Here in Davis, the UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SAREP), part of the Agricultural Sustainability Institute (ASI), has been addressing food systems issues for almost thirty years. Gail Feenstra, Food Systems Analyst at SAREP and Deputy Director at ASI, explained that food justice is an essential part of sustainability.
“Since our founding in 1986, SAREP’s mission has been to promote agriculture that is environmentally sound, economically viable and socially just. The social justice part has always been the weak leg of the three-legged stool. This is improving over time, but we still have a long way to go.” According to Feenstra, the concept of food justice resonates with everyone, whether involved in food production or not, because everyone has a relationship with food.
Food justice is a focus of the UC Global Food Initiative. Launched by President Napolitano last summer, the initiative addresses “how to sustainably, equitably, and nutritiously feed a world population expected to reach 8 billion by 2025.”
Just last week, UC Santa Barbara hosted a California Higher Education Food Summit to address environmental, social and economic issues in the food system. Nikki Silvestri, former executive director of the People’s Grocery, founded in 2003 to improve food access in the “food desert” of West Oakland, gave the keynote. Silvestri noted, “When we talk about justice, we are actually talking about everyone, from beginning to end.”
A 2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Press publication entitled Food Justice: Food, Health and the Environment, offers an equally broad definition of food justice:
“…justice for all in the food system, whether producers, farm workers, processors, workers, eaters, or communities. Integral to food justice is also a respect for the systems that support how and where the food is grown – an ethic of place regarding the land, the air, the water, the plants, the animals, and the environment.”
Taking the broad view of food justice, here are some potential topics on the table for future articles, in no particular order:
2014 Water Bond, groundwater law. Irrigation management, dry-farming.
Yolo County Food Bank/partner agencies. Food Bank Farmers, FARM Davis
SNAP/CalFresh
Food waste reduction innovators
Davis City Council proposal to require restaurants to offer healthy drink choices on their children’s menu
Harvest Hub Yolo/Community-Supported Agriculture
Farmworker health, housing and labor issues
Yolo Farm to Fork/Farm to School
Cannery Community farm, City of Davis community farm concept at Mace 391
Climate change and adaptation, CalCAN Summit
Cap and Trade (AB 32), carbon offset programs for agriculture
Honey bee and other pollinator decline
Nutrient management, nitrate and heavy metal water pollution
Conservation tillage, cover-cropping, hedgerows
UC Global Food Initiative campus food service programs, student fellows
UCD Agricultural Sustainability Institute, UCD World Food Center Innovation Institute for Food and Health
Impacts of Prop 2 (Standards for Confining Farm Animals, 2008)
UCD Graduate School of Management’s Sustainable AgTech Innovation Center
2014 Farm Bill
Food and beverage brands as change agents in the food system
Information technology and agriculture
Reconciliation ecology/wildlife-friendly farming
Paying farmers for ecosystem services
Yolo Ag and Food Alliance/California Food Policy Council
Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) Rural-Urban Connection Strategy (RUCS)
Advances in breeding, genomics, GMOs
Dietary choices and diet movements, food justice labeling
New farmers – federal, state and local assistance programs
Integrated pest management
As you can see, the list could go on and on. If you have a food justice/sustainability topic that you think should be profiled at Davis Vanguard, please send a message to info@davisvanguard.org.
Leanna M Sweha, JD, has been a resident of Davis for 20 years. As a young molecular biologist in a USDA lab working to engineer Roundup-resistant corn, she grew interested in sustainable agriculture. Fascinated with the legal and policy issues of agricultural genetics, she became an attorney specializing in agricultural and natural resources law. She has worked for the California Resources Agency and the UC Davis Office of Research.