More time in the kitchen,less time on the streets: the micropolitics of cultivating an ethic of care in alternative food networks

There is increased attention to alternative food efforts as individuals and groups seek to build stronger local food infrastructures to increase accessibility, transparency, and fairness with how food is grown, produced, and distributed. In considering individuals and families contending with food injustices and insecurities; concerns and questions have surfaced about what it means to privilege the leadership and participation of these communities in alternative food efforts. While there are no linear answers to these questions, this paper explores how one statewide food network in the United States seeks to involve youth contending with the juvenile justice system in a job readiness programme, Youth Kitchen, that interfaces the youth with farmers, chef educators, community organisations, and farmers markets. This paper contends that integrating alternative food and juvenile justice work is a complex terrain that both advances social justice and reproduces existing power asymmetries within alternative food networks. The inclusion of accounts from multiple stakeholders in the local food and juvenile justice system generates a multilayered view that moves away from an either sustainability or social justice rubric to a more process-oriented lens that reveals the strategic dilemmas that alternative food networks encounter. On the one hand, the social landscape of this programme promotes an ethic of care and shared ownership between the staff and participating youth. At the same time, akin to many alternative food networks, neoliberal interests bump against this ethic of care and white privilege seeps into staffing patterns and everyday programmes in ways that reproduce the status quo.     

Practicing food justice at Dig Deep Farms & Produce,East Bay Area,California: self-determination as a guiding value and intersections with foodie logics

This article describes Dig Deep Farms & Produce, a food justice organisation and urban farm working to stimulate local economic development, create jobs, and improve the quality and accessibility of food in Ashland and Cherryland in California's Bay Area. Their practices are based on self-determined values although they take a flexible, anti-essentialist approach to foodie logics, which are prominent and problematic in the Bay Area. The case study then examines specific practices and strategies, as well as intersections with foodie logics, in three arenas – values determination, strategic partnerships, and foodways – that help to cultivate food justice and highlights key characteristics of food justice work: emphasising self-determination and working to fundamentally change the economic and social conditions of food apartheid.     

Community gardening: cultivating subjectivities,space, and justice

Community gardens have been lauded for being inherently resistant to neoliberalism and criticised for underwriting it. To move beyond this either/or debate, we need to employ more focused lenses and specify both the processes of neoliberalisation at play and the outcomes they can produce. This paper explores the ways in which neoliberal processes of privatisation, state entrepreneurialism, and devolution intersect with community gardens, and the subjectivities that may be cultivated, the spaces that may be created and the types of justice that may be advanced as a result. It argues that certain characteristics and orientations of gardens are more conducive to resisting neoliberalism. These include the cultivation of producer, citizen, and activist subjectivities (over those of consumer, entrepreneur, and volunteer); the elevation of the use value of shared lived space (over a site’s potential exchange value) and the advancement of spatial justice through community access to non-privatised space; and food justice, through non-commodified means of obtaining food. Holding these ends in mind can help ensure that proponents of community gardening sow the seeds of the fruits they most wish to reap.     

Health,Environmental and Social Justice

Health is a basic human right. Improving health requires social and environmental justice and sustainable development. The 'health for all' movement embraces principles shared by other social movements—in sustainable development, community safety and new economics. These principles include equity, democracy, empowerment of individuals and communities, underpinned by supportive environmental, economic and educational measures and multi-agency partnerships. Health promotion is green promotion and inequality in health is due to social and economic inequality. This paper shows how health, environmental and economic sustainability are inextricably linked and how professionals of different disciplines can work together with the communities they serve to improve local health and quality of life. It gives examples of how local policy and programme development for public health improvement can fit in with global and national policy-making to promote health, environmental and social justice.     

Seeking Indigenous food sovereignty: origins of and responses to the food crisis in northern Manitoba,Canada

A food crisis confronts many Indigenous communities in northwestern Canada, as reflected by wide-scale food insecurity and diet-related disease. South-generated responses to this crisis generally disregard principles of Indigenous food sovereignty and are disengaged from concerns related to environmental and food justice. This study seeks to explore the needs and priorities of a First Nation (Misipawistik Cree Nation) and an associated Métis community (Grand Rapids) regarding existing and potential responses to the food crisis in northern Manitoba. Substantial changes to the traditional food system were initiated during the establishment of the reserve system in the 1800s and now extend to damage associated with hydro development. Responses to these changes were categorised according to themes and include the revival of country food traditions, individual and community gardens, agriculture in the North, and better quality imported foods. Regardless of response, decision-making needs to be community-driven, culturally appropriate, to reflect local priorities in order to effectively address the northern food crisis, and, ultimately, needs to work towards Indigenous food sovereignty to be effective.     

Capacity building for food justice in England: the contribution of charity-led community food initiatives

This paper discusses the extent to which charity-led initiatives can contribute to capacity building for food justice in England. The paper draws on evaluations of two projects run by the charity Garden Organic: the Master Gardener Programme, operating a network of volunteers who mentor households, schools and community groups to support local food growing, and the Sowing New Seeds programme, which engages “Seed Stewards” to work with communities to encourage the growing and cooking of “exotic” crops. Based on qualitative data about peoples’ motivations for participation and the benefits that are experienced, we interpret these projects as examples of capacity building for food justice. We suggest that whilst currently depoliticised, the “quiet” process of reskilling and awareness raising that occurs through shared gardening projects could have transformative potential for people’s relationship with food. Finally, we use our findings to raise critical questions and propose future research about food justice concepts and practices.     

Local food networks as catalysts for food policy change to improve health and build the economy

Local food networks (LFNs) are growing in popularity, in part as a response to broader criticisms of conventional food production. Municipal policy-makers have the opportunity to work with stakeholders to build LFNs to increase access to healthy foods in cities and ultimately improve population health and well-being. Building opportunities for healthy eating is particularly important in our study area. Flint, Michigan, is a post-industrial shrinking city suffering from the economic and health effects of deindustrialisation. Various stakeholders in Flint have responded to a significant issue with access to food by strengthening collaborations through a food policy council (FPC). Growth in the local food system has been supported by administrators and community advocates alike, through supporting community gardens, farmers' markets, and urban agriculture in a manner similar to nearby Detroit. Participant observation was conducted with stakeholders involved in the development of the LFN and the FPC in Flint. Stakeholders were exposed to existing research on the food system to help inform their policy direction. The group expressed several core concerns and prospects for future work, including a strong emphasis on consensus-based decision-making. Based on the synthesis of stakeholder opinions, policy recommendations are made to aid in continued planning of the LFN. Planning for food is an important first step in improving public health and strengthening local economic development in post-industrial cities. This research highlights the issue by making explicit the challenges and opportunities for policy advocacy in LFNs.     

Food justice youth development: using Photovoice to study urban school food systems*

How do youth learn through participation in efforts to study and change the school food system? Through our participatory youth action research (YPAR) project, we move beyond the “youth as consumer” frame to a food justice youth development (FJYD) approach. We track how a group of youth learned about food and the public policy process through their efforts to transform their own school food systems by conducting a participatory evaluation of farm-to-school efforts in collaboration with university and community partners. We used the Photovoice research method, placing cameras in the hands of young people so that they themselves could document and discuss their concerns and perspectives. The research was designed to gain insight about youths’ knowledge of food, health, and community food systems. Drawing upon the youth group’s insights, we build a framework for building critical consciousness through FJYD.     

The supervision of environmental risk: The case of HCB waste or Botany/Randwick?

The governance activities of capital and the state include attempts to control the timing and spacing of social activities such as the production of environmental risks and settlement of different social groups. The supervisory activities that have shaped the environmental and social history of the Botany/Randwick area are identified here, to examine how the HCB waste risk developed in that community. The analysis shows that multiple environmental risks and an ethnically diverse, working class community have been brought together in space to create environmental injustice. Analysing the governance of one environmental risk like hexachlorobenzene (HCB) waste may not increase understanding about communities facing multiple environmental risks or the supervisory processes that lead to the unfair accumulation of risks for particular places or social groups. Lessons from the environmental justice movement suggest that reframing problems like HCB waste management at Botany/Randwick as distributive justice issues may contribute to governance arrangements that better manage multiple risks and pollution sources in space affecting marginalised communities.     

Environmental justice as a (potentially) hegemonic concept: a historical look at competing interests between the MST and indigenous people in Brazil

ABSTRACT

This article explores the need to recognise and compensate the plurality of environmental justice claims, while paying close attention to the outcomes of the most marginalised groups – cultural and ecological – in political decision-making to avoid vestiges of hegemony. The early history of the Movimiento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra (MST) serves as a case study in which environmental justice claims clash with indigenous rights claims. In recent decades, the MST has refused settling Amazonian indigenous territories, consistent with the organisation’s Via Campesina platform, which focuses on redistributing the 50% of national territory controlled privately by Brazil’s richest 4%. Yet, in the 1970s and early 1980s, Brazil’s military government pitted landless peasants and indigenous people’s struggles against each other, circumventing land reform potentially disruptive to the country’s de facto colonial fazenda land system. This tactic pressured competing groups – landless peasants and indigenous people – to fight against each other, concluding predictably: the most powerful factions ended up getting their way, conceding less in negotiations than their less-advantageously positioned, marginalised counterparts. When marginalised groups gain concessions in environmental justice struggles, often the goods comprising those concessions come at a cost to marginalised groups with even less political visibility. Hegemonic structures of power remain non-negotiable in the process of alleviating other injustices in perceived zero-sum politics. Such systemic displacement and dispersion of violence in systems built on violence suggests hegemony affects not just to other marginalised groups, but to nonhumans too.     

Food access,food security and community gardens in Rockford,IL

Urban agriculture projects seek to ameliorate issues of food access and food security for people living in areas with low access to fresh foods, including food deserts. Within this discourse, community gardens have been promoted as vehicles to reclaim unused urban space, produce food locally and connect populations to their food sources and larger community. A variety of community garden models exist; in the Midwestern city of Rockford, Illinois, many community gardens grow food for donation to food pantries as part of a programme to benefit socioeconomically disadvantaged persons in the city. However, the ability of these gardens to involve neighbourhood participants and provide the social capital-related benefits attributed to community gardens in the literature is uncertain. Here we examine community gardens in Rockford, IL to assess the extent to which they contribute to residents’ ability to obtain fresh produce as well as other social benefits. Data for this project come from a combination of interviews with gardeners, focus groups with food pantry users and a survey of pantry users. We find that while non-gardening community members are benefitting from the increased produce that the gardens provide, they are not receiving all of the social and communal benefits associated with actively participating in a garden.     

“Coal is in our food,coal is in our blood”: everyday environmental injustices of rural community gardening in Central Appalachia

ABSTRACT

Central Appalachia's historical dependence on natural resource extraction industries has contributed to a long history of under- and uneven development, including trends of persistent poverty, cycles of unemployment, weakened local governance, environmental degradation, and severe social inequalities relative to the rest of the nation. Though these trends have been well documented at structural and community-levels, scholarship is more limited in assessing how the conditions of natural resource dependency may shape the everyday experiences of those who live in such regions and how those everyday experiences may illuminate challenges for future development. Employing an embedded case study design, this study examines how everyday environmental injustices may be experienced via community gardening activities, a sustainable development-oriented activity celebrated in urban locations but largely unexplored in rural environments. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with 43 gardening programme coordinators and participants, the findings demonstrate that everyday environmental injustices are experienced across four distinct, yet overlapping and mutually reinforcing, dimensions: natural, built, human health, and socioeconomic environments. These factors in turn constrain programme participation and beneficial programme outcomes, particularly for more disadvantaged households that are affected by chronic illness, geographic isolation, and environmental hazards. Although the interviewees viewed many of these challenges as further justification for pursuing grassroots initiatives like community gardening programmes, these constraints also interacted in a way that limited the success of these locally-oriented sustainable development efforts, particularly for individuals who are the most socially, economically, and environmentally marginalised.     

Can home gardens scale up into movements for social change? The role of home gardens in providing food security and community change in San Jose,California

Urban policymakers and sustainable food activists have identified urban agriculture as an important strategy for confronting a host of urban problems, including food insecurity, health disparities, access to urban green space and community economic revitalisation. Much recent work on urban agriculture has examined community and school gardens, but little research has been undertaken on home gardens as a solution to urban problems. This article examines a home-gardening programme in San Jose, California, La Mesa Verde, asking whether some of the benefits found in community gardens can be found in home gardens. Specifically, we look at financial, health and community benefits, examining the potential of home gardens to become forces for broader social change. We ask whether gardens can become agents of cultural preservation, self-determination, particularly for recent immigrants who use these spaces to build identities and work towards collective action and self-determination.     

A case study of the opportunities and trade-offs associated with deproclamation of a protected area following a land claim in South Africa

Reconciling conservation and social justice imperatives is a major challenge facing many postcolonial states worldwide. Where historically disenfranchised communities have laid legal claim to protected areas, the typical resolution has been collaborative management agreements between the state and claimant communities. The real outcomes of such strategies for people and ecosystems have been seriously questioned, although alternative approaches are seldom explored. Here, we reflect on one such alternative that was pursued in a case in South Africa, where the land was handed back to the community and a replacement protected area created. Our objective was to explore the opportunities and trade-offs associated with this approach for communities and conservation agencies alike, and to compare these to typical collaborative management outcomes. Methods included key informant interviews, focus group discussions and household surveys. We find that, surprisingly, this approach created more benefits for the conservation agency than for claimant communities. Indeed, the community experiences bore a striking resemblance to those experienced in collaborative management settings: intra-community conflict, confusion over leadership and serious questions about the boundaries of the “community”. Processes aimed at redressing past injustice in disputes over conservation land, regardless of the approach adopted, must bring with them a strong commitment to building institutional and leadership capacities within communities, and pay serious attention to the ways in which equity and social justice can be fostered after the settlement of a land claim. Settlement agreements are frequently treated as the final step towards social justice, but are in fact just the beginning.     

Tracing the unintended consequences of food safety regulations for community food security and sustainability: small-scale meat processing in British Columbia

In 2004, as a response to the discovery of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy in Canadian cattle and other food scares, the Province of British Columbia (BC) developed a comprehensive set of meat inspection regulations, increasing the requirements for food safety infrastructure. Through a series of interviews with farmers and stakeholders, we highlight some of the unintended consequences for community food security and sustainability that resulted from these stringent safety regulations in rural and remote communities in BC. These include the loss of meat production and processing capacities as well as the erosion of local food practices and traditions through the criminalisation of farm-gate sales. We suggest that food safety regulations intended to protect consumer health may result in negative effects for community food security and rural sustainability and that these consequences should be accounted for when developing food policy.     

Patronage and access to a legacy city farmers’ market: a case study of the relocation of the Flint,Michigan, market

This study examines the effects of relocating the Flint Farmers’ Market, a large and successful market in the medium-sized legacy city of Flint, Michigan. Over the course of a year, market patrons and vendors were surveyed to explore questions about the scale of the market, patron demographics, reasons for visiting the market, seasonal variations in outcomes, and healthy food access. The results indicate that the relocated, downtown market is successful in large part because it satisfies multiple needs – it provides access to fresh, local produce; it provides lunch options for downtown workers and students; and it serves as a community gathering space. The study further demonstrates that farmers’ markets in legacy cities can serve a large region, attract diverse customers, and remain sustainable year-round, even in northern climates. These findings should be of interest to planners, policy-makers, and market managers who are considering opening or relocating a farmers’ market as a means of supporting community health, well-being, and economic development.     

Local or global food markets: A comparison of energy use for transport

Abstract

This study compares energy use for food transport to a farmers' market in Sweden with energy use for transport in the conventional food system. The farmers' market was investigated through data sampling from on-site investigations. The conventional food system was studied with the aid of life cycle assessments reported in the literature. Overall, the study found no significant differences in levels of energy use for transport to the farmers' market compared with the conventional food system. For certain products, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, transport-related energy use was much lower in the local system although the season in Sweden for this kind of product is restricted to two or three months at the end of the summer. However, there is considerable potential to increase energy efficiency in local food systems by organizing the selling in new ways and by using more energy efficient vehicles.     

“The right to food is nature too”: food justice and everyday environmental expertise in the Salvadoran permaculture movement

In El Salvador a growing permaculture movement attunes small-scale farming activities to principles of ecological observation. The premise is twofold: close-grained appreciation of already-interacting biophysical processes allows for the design of complementary social and agricultural systems requiring minimum energy inputs. Secondly, the insistence on campesino smallholders as actors in the design of sustainable food systems directly addresses decades of “top-down” developmental interventions, from Green Revolution experiments in the 1960s and 1970s to international food security programmes in the 1990s. Permaculture connects food insecurity to the delegitimisation of smallholder innovation and insists that, through sharing simple techniques, campesino farmers can contribute towards future-oriented questions of environmental sustainability. This repositioning is brought about through the mobilisation of pedagogical techniques that legitimise the experiences and expertise of small-scale farmers, while standardising experimental methods for testing, evaluating and sharing agroecological practices. Like food sovereignty and food justice movements, Salvadoran permaculture links hunger with longer histories of (uneven) capital accumulation and dispossession and renders campesino farmers its protagonists. By modelling a form of expertise premised in intimate involvement with specific environments, permaculture goes still further, seeking to dislodge a pervasive knowledge politics that situates some as knowers and innovators, and others as passive recipients. This grounds human rights in an ethos of caring for the “more-than-human” world and places emphasis on a corollary right as part of food justice, increasingly being demanded “from below”: the right to know.     

Personalized Nutrition and Social Justice: Ethical Considerations Within Four Future Scenarios Applying the Perspective of Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach

The idea of personalized nutrition (PN) is to give tailored dietary advice based on personal health-related data, i.e. phenotoype, genotype, or lifestyle. PN may be seen as part of a general trend towards personalised health care and currently various types of business models are already offering such services in the market. This paper explores ethical issues of PN by examining how PN services within the contextual environment of four future scenarios about health and nutrition in Europe might affect aspects of social justice according to Martha Nussbaum’s capability approach. The scenarios have been created by a mixed group of stakeholders and experts in three consecutive workshops. This resulted in the definition of four future scenarios within a scenario space consisting of two variables: the ‘logic of health care systems’ and ‘conception of health’. Within each scenario, PN is likely to play a more or less important role in improving health by influencing food consumption patterns in society. Nussbaum’s capability approach implies a concept of social justice as a function of a minimum standard of human dignity. This denotes an account for equality in terms of a minimum of entitlements. However, also the ability of achieving individual objectives is essential for social justice. Personalisation advice in health and food consumption patterns, as aimed for by PN, is therefore acceptable provided a minimum of entitlements is guaranteed to all members of a society, and at the same time freedom concerning personal preferences is respected. Potential variation of how different people might benefit from PN should therefore be consistent with the minimum required as defined by the list of capabilities.     

Health, Environmental and Social Justice

Health is a basic human right. Improving health requires social and environmental justice and sustainable development. The 'health for all' movement embraces principles shared by other social movements--in sustainable development, community safety and new economics. These principles include equity, democracy, empowerment of individuals and communities, underpinned by supportive environmental, economic and educational measures and multi-agency partnerships. Health promotion is green promotion and inequality in health is due to social and economic inequality. This paper shows how health, environmental and economic sustainability are inextricably linked and how professionals of different disciplines can work together with the communities they serve to improve local health and quality of life. It gives examples of how local policy and programme development for public health improvement can fit in with global and national policy-making to promote health, environmental and social justice.