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What is Community Food Security?
By Jodi Rhoden
Oct. 27 (AGR) -- Throughout history, humans have known that
political and social autonomy are closely tied to a community’s
ability to produce its own food. The less control a community has over
its food sources, the more easily it can be coerced and controlled by
outside forces.
Looking at the current state of global food distribution, it is easy
to see that community food autonomy is lacking to a deadly degree.
So what does food security have to do with it? And just what is “community
food security?” On Saturday, Oct. 16, farmers, gardeners, urban
agriculturists, activists, community organizers, nonprofit workers,
and policy-makers from all over North America met in Milwaukee, WI for
a four-day conference to seek answers to those questions. The 10th Annual
Community Food Security Coalition Conference was hosted by the Community
Food Security Coalition (CFSC), an international non-profit organization,
and Growing Power, an urban farm, food bank, and youth program in Milwaukee.
The conference featured tours of local and regional sustainable agriculture
projects and workshops on topics ranging from Super-Sized Retail as
a Threat to Community Food Security to The State of Urban Agriculture
in Chicago Today. It included classes and presentations on anti-hunger
projects, farm-to-cafeteria campaigns, and efforts to build local food
systems.
As an organizer for the Bountiful Cities Project (BCP), an urban gardening
and sustainability education organization in Asheville, I attended the
conference to meet other folks doing similar work as BCP, to learn new
ideas and new language in the urban gardening movement, and to participate
in shaping the international dialogue around food and justice.
According to CFSC’s website (www.foodsecurity.org), community food
security is “a condition in which all community residents obtain
a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a
sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance and social
justice.”
Similar to community food security is the concept of community food
sovereignty: according to Food First (www.foodfirst.org), food sovereignty
is “the right of peoples, communities, and countries to define
their own agricultural, labor, fishing, food and land policies which
are ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate
to their unique circumstances...”
The conference created a venue for sharing stories across cultural,
racial, and class lines. The most striking and inspiring elements of
the conference were the stories of individuals working for food security
in their communities.
On the Hopi reservation, a new organization called the Natwani Coalition
is working to bring agriculture, local farmer’s markets, and food
and gardening education to the Arizona Hopi Tribe. Louella Nahsonhoya,
a Hopi Indian, spoke at a workshop entitled The Convergence of Minority
Agriculture and Community Food Security. She described how the community
had once been economically self-sufficient, even under colonialism,
because they were able to raise their own crops and medicine. But then
the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) had imposed ranching on the Hopi
people. The sheep and cattle they raised trampled their cornfields and
orchards, and fouled their spring.
Louella and a few others felt that a return to the old ways of growing
food would improve the lives of the Hopi, so they formed the Natwani
Coalition. Only six months old, the organization has already planted
fruit trees and dug a small, permanent reservoir around the natural
spring, organized farmer’s markets, and held a local food-oriented
health fair on the reservation.
Other communities are responding in different ways: Mala ‘Ai ‘Opio
Community Food Security Initiative (MA’O), an effort by locals
in Wai’anae, an isolated area on the west side of the island of
O’ahu in Hawai’i, is working to decrease the amount of food
imported to the island. As one of the organizers said, “Once upon
a time our community was 100 percent self-sufficient. We can become
more self-sufficient now.”
Growing Power was another inspiring organization. Started by Will Allen,
an African-American organizer and farmer, Growing Power includes an
urban farm (the last registered farm in the city of Milwaukee) which
includes aquaculture (the raising of fish), beekeeping, livestock, worm
systems, water catchements, greenhouses, cooking classes, youth development,
and professional training. Growing Power works closely with the large
Hmong population in the Midwest, advocating for immigrant farmers and
their right to food security.
Groups such as the Southside Community Land Trust in Providence, RI,
and the Food Project in Boston, MA, talked about their work using urban
agriculture as a means to engage, employ, and inspire inner-city youth.
The LA-based Center for Food and Justice showed participants how to
lead a community organizing campaign like the soda ban in LA public
schools.
Organizers from the Missouri Rural Crisis Center described their successful
campaign against the pork checkoff, a tax on small pork farmers that
forces them to subsidize corporate agribusiness. African-American farmers
from Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama described the difficulty of getting
their products to far-away markets due to rising fuel prices and subsidies
for corporate agriculture; and how they had formed farmer’s cooperatives
to combat the problem.
Guyanan-Canadians Anan Lololi and Anyika Tafari co-founded the Afri-Can
Food Basket, which distributes African and Caribbean produce to people
of color in Toronto and has been re-working the food pyramid to represent
traditional foods.
Through the sharing of stories like these, participants at the CFSC
conference were able to work together to create new ways of supporting
grassroots food security efforts. By working across borders to develop
fundraising, education, and policy change initiatives, participants
strengthened their own visions, while supporting other groups in achieving
theirs.
For the Bountiful Cities Project, and the other organizations in attendance
from the southern Appalachians, participating in the conference reminded
us that we are a part of something bigger than ourselves: a movement
working to shift the power of how communities and cultures access food
from a destructive, oil-dependent, economically exploitative mega-business,
to a vibrant, self-determined, connected, and sustainable food system.
Not an easy task, but an important one. If you are interested in the
Bountiful Cities Project and our urban agriculture efforts, please call
257-4000.
Inspiration in the face of Empire
The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire
by Arundhati Roy
South End Press
Review by Finn Finneran
Oct. 27 (AGR) — “‘The Project for the New American
Century’ seeks to perpetuate inequity and establish American hegemony
at any price, even if it’s apocalyptic… For these reasons,
we must consider ourselves at war,” declares Arundhati Roy in her
new book, The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire.
In this short collection of essays and speeches Roy offers a much needed
voice of criticism and urgency in these volatile times. The book is
only 118 pages, but thoroughly deconstructs and connects the dots of
the US-led empire and its effects on the entire planet. What is most
valuable about The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire is
Roy’s critique of the non-violent resistance movement working against
the empire at hand.
Almost immediately Roy schools her readers on how the left often falls
for “Empire’s” tricks. She points out the left’s
mistake in following corporate media’s lead in crisis reportage.
The Bush administration banks on crises because “they know that
crises by definition must be short-lived.” Imperialists such as
George Bush merely need to wait out the crisis.
For example, in the months leading up to and after the start of the
war in Iraq there was a collective sense of urgency, especially on Feb.
15, 2003, when millions across the globe took to the streets. But that
one day was not enough; it was only a weekend. “Holiday protests
don’t stop wars. George Bush knows that,” says Roy.
But even still, there has been no massive outcry to the same degree
since Feb. 15, 2003, despite the fact that Iraq is still occupied by
coalition forces, fatalities have sharply increased in the past 6 months,
and the pretext for going to war has been proven false.
The crisis of the US beginning a new war has passed.
“It is utterly urgent for resistance movements and those of us
who support them to reclaim the space for civil disobedience. To do
this we will have to liberate ourselves from being manipulated, perverted,
and headed off in the wrong direction by the desire to feed the media’s
endless appetite for theater. Because that saps energy and imagination,”
Roy writes.
“What we need to discuss urgently are strategies of resistance.
We need to aim at real targets, wage real battles, and inflict real
damage.”
Arundhati Roy also does an amazing job at explaining the ins and outs
of empire. She explains how the history books’ versions of imperialism,
racism, and genocide have merely evolved into slyer versions which she
simply calls New Imperialism, New Racism, and New Genocide.
“Modern democracies have been around for long enough for neo liberal
capitalists to learn how to subvert them. They have mastered the technique
of infiltrating the instruments of democracy — the ‘independent’
judiciary, the ‘free’ press, the parliament — and molding
them to their purpose.”
Take South Africa for example; in 1994 a non-racial, multi-party democracy
came to power, thus ending 300 years of colonialism and apartheid. But
the gap between rich and poor became even wider thanks to privatization
and structural adjustment programs.
“Democracy has become Empire’s euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism,”
writes Roy.
Arundhati Roy has managed to give the gift of inspiration in the face
of the worst empire this world has ever seen. She is clear in her closing
words that change will come – it could be ugly or it could be beautiful
– but it is entirely up to us.
She also makes a point to explicitly include people from the United
States into the ranks of the resistance to “Empire’s”
conquests, despite – and perhaps because – they are being
carried out in our name.
“Hundreds of thousands of you [US citizens] have survived the relentless
propaganda you have been subjected to, and are actively fighting your
own government.
“If you join the battle, not in your hundreds of thousands, but
in your millions, you will be greeted joyously by the rest of the world.
And you will see how beautiful it is to be gentle instead of brutal,
safe instead of scared. Befriended instead of isolated. Loved instead
of Hated.
“I hate to disagree with your president. Yours is by no means a
great nation. But you could be a great people.
“History is giving you a chance. Seize the time.”
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