Food Culture Justice and Food Security:

Why Global Networking is Crucial

Gris Gris Lab Herbal Garden, New Orleans,

LA

I recently attended a food security conference in New Orleans,

LA with three of my colleagues,from Tallahassee, Florida. 
Cultural Arts Natural Design International (CANDI), The
Greater Frenchtown Revitalization Council, Project Food, and a
Horticulture Scholar were chosen to participate in this
conference. We were sponsored by the  Nathan Ballentine aka
The  Man in Overalls  and the Wiley Sunshine Foundation.

Qashima Boston, Joyce Brown, Claire Mitchell and Miaisha

Mitchell
We are a collaborative of grassroots organizations working to
build sustainable, healthier communities that have access to
fresh healthy foods and a better way of life.  Although this
collaborative has varied and many strengths in their own right
this conference and others like this are key to building a united
front on sustaining and building healthier food systems locally
as well as  around the world. We learned much in the way of
organizing around food systems, policy, producers, land issues
and much more. For me learning the language or the lingo of
this forum was key.   So I will share at least one  new  term for
me.
 Land-trust:: A land trust is a nonprofit organization that, as
all or part of its mission, actively works to conserve land by
undertaking or assisting in land or conservation easement
acquisition, or by its stewardship of such land or
easements.( There is much more to this definition so I
would do the research on this for more information.) In
relation to farm land. Some open questions I have are ;
How does this actually work if someone wanted to donate
land to you or your organization, if its in a land trust?
 Food Sovereignty : "Food sovereignty" is a term coined by
members of Via Campesina in 1996 [1] to refer to a policy
framework advocated by a number of farmers, peasants,
pastoralists, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, women, rural
youth and environmental organizations, namely the claimed
"right" of peoples to define their own food, agriculture,
livestock and fisheries systems, in contrast to having food
largely subject to international market forces. 
  
 Food Security: Food security happens when all people at all
times have access to enough food that...
1. is affordable, safe and healthy
2. is culturally acceptable
3. meets specific dietary needs
4. is obtained in a dignified manner
5. is produced in ways that are environmentally sound and
socially just  Its everybody's business! 
 Principles
Via Campesina's seven principles of food sovereignty
include:
 Food: A Basic Human Right. Everyone must have access
to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food in
sufficient quantity and quality to sustain a healthy life with
full human dignity. Each nation should declare that access
to food is a constitutional right and guarantee the
development of the primary sector to ensure the concrete
realization of this fundamental right.
 Agrarian Reform. A genuine agrarian reform is necessary
which gives landless and farming people – especially
women – ownership and control of the land they work and
returns territories to indigenous peoples. The right to land
must be free of discrimination on the basis of gender,
religion, race, social class or ideology; the land belongs to
those who work it.
 Protecting Natural Resources. Food Sovereignty entails
the sustainable care and use of natural resources, especially
land, water, and seeds and livestock breeds. The people
who work the land must have the right to practice
sustainable management of natural resources and to
conserve biodiversity free of restrictive intellectual
property rights. This can only be done from a sound
economic basis with security of tenure, healthy soils and
reduced use of agro-chemicals.
 Reorganizing Food Trade. Food is first and foremost a
source of nutrition and only secondarily an item of trade.
National agricultural policies must prioritize production for
domestic consumption and food self-sufficiency. Food
imports must not displace local production nor depress
prices.
 Ending the Globalization of Hunger. Food Sovereignty is
undermined by multilateral institutions and by speculative
 capital. The growing control of multinational corporations
over agricultural policies has been facilitated by the
economic policies of multilateral organizations such as the
WTO, World BankIMF. Regulation and taxation of
speculative capital and a strictly enforced Code of Conduct
for TNCs is therefore needed. and the
 Social Peace. Everyone has the right to be free from
violence. Food must not be used as a weapon. Increasing
levels of poverty and marginalization in the countryside,
along with the growing oppression of ethnic minorities and
indigenous populations, aggravate situations of injustice
and hopelessness. The ongoing displacement, forced
urbanization, oppression and increasing incidence of racism
of smallholder farmers cannot be tolerated.
 Democratic control. Smallholder farmers must have direct
input into formulating agricultural policies at all levels. The
United Nations and related organizations will have to
undergo a process of democratization to enable this to
become a reality. Everyone has the right to honest, accurate
information and open and democratic decision-making.
These rights form the basis of good governance,
accountability and equal participation in economic,
political and social life, free from all forms of
discrimination. Rural women, in particular, must be granted
direct and active decision-making on food and rural issues.
Food sovereignty is increasingly being promoted as an
alternative framework to the narrower concept of food security,
which mostly focuses on the technical problem of providing
adequate nutrition. For instance, a food security agenda that
simply provides surplus grain to hungry people would probably
be strongly criticized by food sovereignty advocates as just
another form of commodity dumping, facilitating corporate
penetration of foreign markets, undermining local food
production, and possibly leading to irreversible biotech
contamination Bt corn to Mexico since the passage of NAFTA is
a case in point.

The most  dynamic force of this forum was it was mostly

entirely contained and designed by grassroots people and
organizations. The hosts were the Community Food Security
Coalition out of Portland Oregon.

Tallahassee Collaborative Networking with a Journalist Scholar

from  Senegal, Africa
Networking was in high energy  and we made many extremely
vital connections around the country and around the world.
Malik Yakini Chairman of DBCFSN with Qasimah and Miaisha

Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN)

How did this conference help support our work in

Tallahassee, FL?
First and foremost lets define our communities. We may live in
Tallahassee but our networks  are local, national and global, thus
we have an obligation to expand our sharing to our global
networks and communities. This will be done by taking this
information and breaking it down. Language is key  and  real
life situations and relevancy otherwise you will not  engage your
community.    This is not an easy task, nor is this work done in
isolation. This work must be done in collaboration as a
interactive process not a let me show you how its done
atmosphere. It must  involve entire communities, with the
communities taking the lead, and if the powers at be want to
really effect change, it will call for them to put their money
where their mouth is, roll up their sleeves and join in. 
Some of the workshops I attended were

Engaging Youth in Food Justice and Community Building

Deborah Leta Habib, Seeds of Solidarity
Vanessa Lynch, Seeds of Solidarity
Youth programs can provide young people with a safe and
productive community setting to grow and transform, while
cultivating food and skills for activism.  Through dialogue, this
session explores key questions, challenges, and strategies for
energizing existing youth food and agriculture programs to
inspire and engage young people as change makers. 
Some of the key messages circulating in this forum was you
must involve youth in from the beginning of your planning,
implementation and view them as viable pieces of the puzzle not
as an afterthought or to assign menial tasks.   This group
explained as in many mainstream organization people seem to
view working with the youth as a job rather than viewing them
as having valuable insight on what is happening in their world as
well. It was mainly geared toward people who actuall work with
children and youth but do not know how to engage them.
Creating meaningful, relevant service learning opportunities can
be challenging. When done well, they provide students with
excellent, engaging experiences
Grantsmanship Workshop with USDA
The USDA discussed keys to  successful grantsmanship, the dos
an don’ts  in proposal writing, working with collaborations,
timelines, evaluation, and project sustainability.  This
information was helpful and it showed the USDA wanted to help
people who had not received grants before as well. The inside
tips really did help.  My thoughts were on how deep the USDA
roots run with FDA, EPA, United Nations, WHO etc……..(just
food for thought)

 From Detroit to New Orleans  Building a US Food

Sovereignty Movement
Na Ra Barber, Detroit Black Community Food Security
Network
Stephen Bartlett, Agricultural Missions
Joaquin Martinez, Community to Community Development
Bob St Peter, National  Family Farm Coalition? Via Campesina
North America
Karen Washington, New York City Urban Farmer
Ben Yahola, Myskoke Food Sovereignty Institute.\
This forum  was an action packed dynamo session. There were
at least 100 people in the room.  The panel was an awesome
group of people and the breakout sessions reveled so many
grassroots  strategies and experience in the room from around
the world. This is  definitely a unified grassroots  international
movement, and people around the world seem to be saying now
is the time and reaching out to unite.

Emerging Technologies and the Threat to a Just Food

Systems
This panel discussed the emerging technologies in the food
systems such as animal genetic engineering, cloning and  
nanotechnology. This was an informative session with the
speakers outlining what technologies were actually happening
realtime in our food systems.  We also discussed how these
technologies threaten our health, animals and our environments. 
What was interesting was the variety of interest attending this
session, there was a chef, who was very outspoken, Monsanto
was prevalent in most of the discussions and there were quite a
few college students.

 Plate To Politics 
Liz Johnson: The Whitehouse Project
Lisa Kivirist, : Rural Women's Project
Nevada Littlewolf : The Whitehouse Project
This workshop explored what the key ingredients  to stir up 
change in our food system. Stating that more women in
leadership roles that influence agriculture and food policy
change.  There were tools  and strategies shared that could help
in all phases of  leadership amongst women from rallying for
school lunch reform to running for office while supporting a
diversity of women  activists innovators and educators. Real
time issue such a structural racism and systemic methods of
oppressive discrimination were were discussed by the audience.

The highlight of the conference for me was the networking

sessions during which time we met a host of exciting, movers
and shakers around the country who are effecting social change
around the world. One grassroots organization at a time.

Celebrity Gardeners 

Will Allen of Growing Power and Joyce Brown of Cultural Arts

Natural Design International
 Growing Power

Networking , Networking, ........

Some of the Cultural connections were made after the Second
Line dance from the hotel to the French Quarters Market place
where the gumbo was goooooood and the music was deep ... the
crowds were thick and we had beads all over out necks.....So
here's a little glimpse of the second line dance if you have never
experienced it

Seafood Gumbo

A word  from and about the host of the Food Culture Justice
Conference
  

Some Valuable Links from the Community Food Security

Coalition
RELATED WEBSITES
A collection of food-security web links in the following
categories:
Community Supported
Food Security/Food Systems
Agriculture (CSA)
Urban Agriculture/Community
Progressive
Gardens
Nutrition Religious
Sustainable Agriculture Community Development
University/Cooperative
Farmers' Markets
Extension
Anti-Hunger Restaurants/Chefs/Co-ops
More information on Conference from Miaisha Mitchell
More information on Conference from Qasimah Boston 
More Information on Conference from Claire Mitchell