Charla de Merienda Presents: Food Security in the Americas
Food Apartheid in America | Pantaleon Florez III
Food apartheid is alive and well in the United States, and US agriculture has never been oriented around actually feeding people. Through centuries of oppression, the food system in the US has been predominantly set up to benefit capitalist cishet masculine white supremacy. The nature of this oppression is older than the United States itself, and the US has utilized both pen and sword to inequitably control food and land access. As grim as this may sound, there are steps we can take to push back against a system born of Indigenous genocide and slavery of the African Diaspora.
Understanding the progression of events leading to today requires following an ever evolving system of white supremacist legislation and violence. Prior to the establishment of the imperialist nation state known as the US, European settler colonists committed acts of genocide and land theft against Indigenous peoples. These settler colonists also brought chattel slavery of the African Diaspora. Once the US was founded, the Naturalization Act of 1790 worked in tandem with Alien Land Laws to ensure that only “free white men” would have access to stolen land. Genocidal efforts continued to thrive with the 1830 Indian Removal Act wherein the way was paved for white settler-colonists to take advantage of the Homestead Acts about 30 years later. Additionally, the Homestead Acts established colonial outposts such as agricultural extension offices and land grant institutions.
These institutions served to ensure and establish colonization of stolen land primarily for white men. The 1914 Smith-Lever Act would further formalize agricultural extension offices and President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson would later use this act to support capitalist agribusiness through “get big or get out” policies. President Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz would go one step further and tell farmers to “adapt or die”. Given the legacy of genocide, slavery, and civil rights violations, we can easily see how Black and POC communities have been impacted the most. In just the past 20 years, we have also seen the largest civil rights settlements to date which went to Black farmers in 1999 and 2010 for farm loan and subsidy discrimination by the USDA to the sum of $2.2 billion.
As if the perniciousness of white supremacy in US agriculture were not already enough, the United States’ legacy of segregation compounds the specific issue of food apartheid. With Black, POC, and poor communities historically delineated by segregation, reinforced by redlining, and held in place by income inequality or torn apart by gentrification, corporate agribusiness can do as it pleases all while soaking up billions in federal subsidies. This translates into an outright lack of access to land to grow our own food. This also means that corporate agribusiness can set up nutrient dense grocery shops in areas of concentrated wealth and whiteness while posting up nutrient deficient convenience and dollar stores in Black, POC, and poor neighborhoods. When there is no monetary incentive to do otherwise, capitalist interest has operated and will operate in this way. We are so entrenched in capitalist interest that even our federal food assistance program (SNAP) is a model that subsides consumption rather than production for the sake of feeding people. We deserve systems that put the people who are most in need first.
There is no time for devil’s advocacy on this issue. There are 40 million people (12 million children) who do not eat enough each day in the United States. When food (and land) access is so clearly restricted as it is here in the US, drastic and overdue measures must be taken. We must look to historical oppressive measures to find suitable, restorative actions. There must be repatriation of land, reparations, and treaty acknowledgements to Indigenous peoples. There must be reparations and land distributions in accordance with the production and promises to the descendants of the African Diaspora. We must stop subsidizing corporate agribusiness that places profits above both people and the environment. We must shift to food distribution models that heavily localize food production while sequestering carbon and caring for the environment. In order to take these actions, we need more hands doing the work of production, distribution, service, and food waste and recovery. We need programs that open up equitable land access to Black, POC, and poor communities. We also need more voices to spread the truth to the people that the conditions that exist are a product of colonial, imperialist actions rooted in white supremacy. Those born into food apartheid are not at fault, and both the government and corporate agribusiness need to be held accountable for their actions.
Promoting Development of an Equitable Food System
Ruaa Hassaballa
An equitable lens in policy development and implementation helps to set priorities promoting a sustainable food system. In every single county in Kansas, there has been an increase in diverse populations and people of color (Kansas Health Institute, 2018). The change is positive for Kansas both culturally and economically. One way to celebrate the diversity of the local food system is by partnering with local ethnic food retail stores in Lawrence. In addressing local food promotion, it is important to celebrate diversity and cultural heritage and build relationships with community members of color and others traditionally marginalized in policy development and implementation. Commissioned by the Food Policy Council Health Equity Working Group, a report on Ethnic Food Retail Stores was prepared by the Center for Community Health and Development, a World Health Organization Collaborating Center.
The KU Center for Community Health and Development and the Douglas County Food Policy Council worked together to identify priorities for promoting a sustainable food system. Six Lawrence ethnic food retail store owners and their clientele were interviewed to determine priorities for local action. Stores included La Estrella, the Mediterranean Market, African Caribbean Store, Indian Cosmos Cafe, J&V Oriental, and F Mart. Key findings included the strengths of these stores as well as the barriers they face to sustainability.
The ethnic food retail stores are important to the community and fill a need for variety and diversity in food offers within the food system. Store owners continue to give back to the community by employing residents and offering specialty items, while customers are thankful for the sense of community and specialty items provided. Voices of the local community of clientele and store owners at the ethnic food retail stores in Lawrence inform suggested recommendations for policy changes to promote sustainability. Next steps include promoting and celebrating these stores while working towards program and policy changes to develop an equitable food system.
Insecurity, Un-sustainability, and Opportunity in the Coffee Industry
Ellie Anderson-Smith
Much of the specialty coffee industry's understanding of food insecurity in Latin America is tethered to a broader condition of poverty experienced by coffee producers--the largest, yet most vulnerable link in the supply chain. In-keeping with the globalized nature of the coffee industry, poverty of coffee producers is contextualized by global markets and volatile pricing structures that perpetuate asymmetrical power dynamics between coffee producers and buyers, lack of social resources in producing communities, and widespread ecological and biological threats to coffee production and the livelihoods secured from it. Current green coffee prices, determined by the commodity market based on short-term projections and speculation by traders on the New York Stock Exchange, cannot sustain livelihoods in coffee producing communities. Further, monoculture farming practices, changing climates, and unpredictable weather patterns in producing countries contribute to drops in crop yields, decreases in land availability suitable for coffee production, increases in coffee plant diseases and harmful pests, and by extension, rising costs of production to an already under-compensated link in the supply chain.
While there is consensus within the industry that the above conditions must change in order to improve quality of life of Latin American coffee producers (and to ensure the long term viability of coffee production), it remains subject to commodity trading practices that fail to consider quality, costs of production, and other conditions of producing communities. Paired with a growing consumer base demanding more price transparency and traceability of their coffees, the specialty coffee industry presently finds itself riddled with tension. The desire to make positive change within the industry is met with uncertainty as to what those solutions might look like.
Ultimately, it's a daunting but exciting time for specialty coffee. Coffee roasters like The Roasterie occupy a position in the supply chain that enables us to be agents of change, but only if the industry as a whole acts upon the momentum and opportunity to place value on conditions and practices that support a more sustainable future for coffee producing communities.
Food security in the Americas: the exploding Venezuela crisis
Carlos Centeno
What is food security? To the state, it should be a matter of national security. For the consumer, it can be the line between a life of prosperity and intellectual development, or even worse, it can be the difference between life or death. For the producers, the farmers, it’s their livelihood.
At my former job we identified and mapped the roots of food insecurity in Central America to better design programs that could solve chronic food insecurity as opposed to employing band aid relief programs that get more expensive over time. We understood through geospatial historical analysis that most food security hotspots thrived where soils where damaged, where droughts occurred every two to four years, where poverty levels were the highest, where water seemed scarce. We deployed teams to those hotspots to run district-level conversations to understand what was happening. We did this with local government, NGOs and community livelihood representatives; mostly farmers.
A pattern emerged: A history of poor land management, as a result of both crumbling government support for remote croplands, and a legacy of civil wars and displacement, were partly to blame. But if we focused on what was in front of us, we could solve this. Poor land management can be repaired with community leadership and government support. We had already seen it in Ethiopia, where hundreds of thousands of hectares of previously drought-prone land became fertile again. We worked with ministries of agriculture and soil experts, and today this is how the organization addresses food insecurity. That was my job for about 8 years, all over the world. But Venezuela was a whole different ball game.
Venezuela’s food emergency is not the result of civil war displacement, it’s not the result of poor land management, or even weather hazards like droughts. Until the late 1990s Venezuela produced most of its food at home. Today, food production barely exists. At the beginning of this year we were able to dig up stats that reflected what we were seeing in the border crossings:
· 60% of people go to sleep hungry.
· Most people have lost more than 20 lbs in a year.
· Eight million people out of 30 million have two or less than two meals per day.
Venezuela is the world’s second largest refugee crisis in the world right now. Some 4.5 million people have left the country since 2016. If there is no change, UNHCR expects up to 8 million refugees by the end of 2020. Compare that to the 6.5 million in Syria and the 1 million Rohingyas in Bangladesh, where I worked as well. It is also a silent emergency, one that resurfaces every time there is violence and a wave of international commentators from the left and the right take over social media to voice their sudden knowledge of the crisis.
Disastrous state planning, draconian economic policies destroyed the local food industry developing food mafias, and cartels. The National Guard manages the state’s food security program. A program that is supposed to reach the poor yet up to 40% of the food was siphoned off to the black market where the Guards could sell it to Venezuelans for 8 times the price.
It’s been 5 years since the international community sounded the alarms of the disaster to come. Since then, the government has continued a blame game without serious considerations for macroeconomic reforms. As I write this, the military controls the country’s supply chain of food; the ports, manufacturing, distribution. It does so through sheer force. Hyperinflation continues to hit 250% a month; prices double every 17 days or less.
Venezuela is a slow ticking time bomb or I should say, a slow explosion that is destroying the lives of millions.