Community food security directly addresses issues of access to healthy food, and while highlighting differences in access between racial communities, activist involvement has largely included majority whites and middle-class individuals . Activists within the Community Food Security Coalition began to demand more recognition of the dynamics of race in problems of poverty and food access. Advocates noted that cultures of whiteness seemed to permeate practices in activist groups . Slocum argued that it became problematic for knowledge of what constitutes “good food” to be seen as held and produced in white communities that can share their knowledge with others. The failure to recognize white privilege and difference in organizing undermined efforts towards change in the food system. Conducting ethnographic research at two farmers’ markets in northern California concerned with food access, Alkon and McCullen found the dominant white discourses were perpetuated. A lack of attention to structural problems and attention to the historical conditions that have led to the problems they seek to ameliorate can permit activists to reinforce or replicate unjust systems. Mares and Alkon argue that this has led many organizations to the discourse of food justice, a new iteration of community-based action in response to lack of food access. We will see a similar critique of food justice organizing in the following section.
In response to the cooptation or subsumption of organic agriculture by capitalist interests,10 liter pot many food activists turned to the adoption of the banner of local food. The local food movement is not a direct object of study in this chapter because of it is less directly committed to and engaged with justice. Nonetheless, it is a movement that has had significant overlap and impact on food security activism as it has quickly gained ground and continues to be a heavily used trope in food movements . Local food production/consumption and community food security have frequently been coupled in the objectives of AFIs. In northern California Jim Cochran of Swanton Berry Farm and Larry Yee, a retired extension Director from Ventura County, started a project that exemplifies the persistent focus on local. The project, entitled The Food Commons, would provide the physical, financial and organizational infrastructure for alternative production, processing, distributing, marketing, and access to quality food . Local councils would control communal land in trusts and on which production and processing could occur. Commons councils would also run community banks to provide loans and other financial services to food system enterprises, producers, and consumers. Finally, food commons would provide hubs to aggregate and distribute local and regional food. The organizers emphasized the following principles: fairness, ecological, social, and economic sustainability, access to ownership and participation in decision making in production processes, food access/security for all participants in the food system, decentralization, integration from farm to grocery store, transparency and stewardship.
Yet, many scholars and activists grappled with problems of focusing on local solutions to the problem of food access. Activist-scholars, like Patricia Allen, encouraged advocates to see the limitations in localization efforts and the potential conflicts between multiple goals of these projects. For example, Guthman, Morris, and Allen provided a critical analysis of community supported agriculture and farmers’ market projects that purported to be able to both improve food security and support local farmers. In a study of California CSAs and farmers’ markets, the authors found that these local food strategies where originally developed to support small farmers, helping them gain more stable markets and a greater share of profits. Farmers markets and CSAs are said to be “win-win” for consumers and producers, but the researchers found multiple conceptual and practical barriers to low-income consumer participation such as the lack of EBT machines at markets, the inability for most CSAs to accept food stamps, biases that low income individuals don’t have the education to value local food, and the idea that small businesses have scare resources to allocate towards addressing food access. The goal of the majority of California CSAs and farmers’ markets was to support farmers, and food security came in as a close or far second depending on a variety of variables in each circumstance. Activists who may have initially been draw to these strategies as a mechanism for address food access were learning the limitations of using market-based tools. While many food system localization advocates embraced local projects as a means to empower marginalized communities, others questioned whose voices were being elevated.
Echoing the activist questioning the role of race in the food system, Allen argued, “localism subordinates differences to a mythical ‘community interest’” . Allen claimed that “more participatory democracy at local levels is absolutely necessary to work toward an environmentally sound and socially just agrifood system, but it in and of itself is not sufficient because some voices drown out others” . Historical differences in access to power, wealth and voice based on geography and demographics exist in all communities . Instead of embracing localism as a panacea to a variety of food system problems, critiques insisted that a reflexive approach to localism can create discursive and physical space to experiment, reflect and work towards alternative social structures while also recognizing broader social inequalities that local projects may not be able to address . 7 The focus on community-based solutions, promoting self-sufficiency within the community food security coalition and movement has been tempered by critique and recognition for the need to engage national policy, broader structures of economic and social inequality, and reflexivity as a practice in envisioning social change. Movement actors have also been active in calling for increased funding for various social assistance programs aimed at alleviating hunger . And yet many projects remain focused on increasing physical access to healthy foods. In San Jose the Health Trust remains the primary funder and coordinating force for many alternative food initiatives. Since 2009 the Health Trust has worked to increase access to healthy food in Santa Clara County through gardens, farmers’ markets, farm-to-institution projects, and CSAs. Through the Trust twenty-four Americorps volunteers work to promote healthy food production and consumption. While the Trust has recognized the importance of engaging policy to address the root causes of poverty, the organization remains focused on community-based solutions to increase immediate access. In the case of the Health Trust, the motivation is not an explicit disavowal of engagement with the state as a mediator of social change, as is the case with many garden projects. But a theme does appear is talking with activists. Individuals and organizations want to see immediate and direct impacts of their work; they do not want to see distant policy makers able to undo their efforts when better campaign contributions flow from the opposing camp. A general distrust that federal or state programs can actually understand and provide for the needs of community members exists in many food movement circles, potentially greater in communities of color.Community food security activists sought to put justice on the table of food system change by highlighting how inequality in access to food resources was a dominant feature of the contemporary food system. While poverty was the underlying problem that most advocates sought to address, strategies to address food insecurity and even the defining of food insecurity focused on communities’ proximity to physical healthy food outlets. The primary injustice,10 liter drainage collection pot as it came to be understood by a broader US audience, was that communities didn’t have stores or markets where individuals could buy healthy food with through either cash or government entitlements. This framing of justice aligns well with political theorist, John Rawls’, definition of justice within liberal egalitarian democracy today . Rawl’s notion of justice rests upon a commitment to equality or fairness and is a universal theory of distributional justice aimed at the fair allocation of socially valuable goods such as liberty, opportunity, and wealth to be adjudicated by “blind” legal institutions. Justice would be reached when liberty is maximized and those with greater wealth in society contribute to meeting the expectations of those with the least. This form of justice dominates many contemporary institutions, which aim to ameliorate the immediate outcomes of unfair distribution.
Community food insecurity, by focusing on inadequate distribution of food outlets and the high costs of healthy food, becomes a problem that could be solved through a more fair distribution of society’s resources. Activist frequently sought to address distribution of social resources through local projects that espoused communitarian values. Communitarian versions of justice envision people in particular communities, most often spatially bound, coming together to articulate decisions about what values and practices constitute the good life . Through this framing of injustice, urban gardens and other local solutions can play a primary role in increasing physical proximity to food resources, if not addressing broader problems of poverty and racism in social institutions that create inequalities in food access. Because local gardens can help address food insecurity, access to land in low-income neighborhoods became an important question for community food security activists. Yet, the movement focused less on community management of land resources then food justice and food food sovereignty activists.While community food security and local food system activists have highlighted the lack of access to healthy food across disparate communities, many advocates felt there was a lack of attention paid to the racial and cultural dimensions of inequality of food system formation. By developing a movement around food justice, activists have thickened analyses of economic disparities as well as highlighted important differences in how particular communities struggle against injustice. These activists have added an important dimension to work for justice, freedom from discrimination based on difference and freedom to self-organize as communities interested in mutual aide.The food justice movement has come together from several points of origin including environmental justice activism, organizing against hunger and disease in communities of color, struggles against institutionalized racism which view food activism as an entry into making change, critiques of racism in the food system, and critiques of racism in the food movement . Food justice, as an analytical framework, puts greater emphasis on histories and geographies of racism, classism, and gender oppression in the food system. This work “contextualizes disparate access to healthy food within a historicized framework of institutional racism” . Several scholars and activists have suggested the term “food apartheid” to refer to racially exclusionary practices that result in unequal food access . In the early 2000s members of the Community Food Security Coalition brought increasing critiques of the lack of awareness and inaction on issues of racial injustice to the national conference and other food security organizing spaces. Erika Allen and others began providing “dismantling racism” trainings at conferences and other CFSC spaces. In 2003 the CFSC founded the California Food and Justice Coalition as a project intended to coordinate growing food justice efforts in California. The project worked to solidify organizing efforts for policy change and the development of community-based alternatives and to bring a food justice focus to the Community Food Security Coalition. In 2006 Erika Allen pushed for dismantling racism to become a key piece of the mission of Growing Power, a leading alternative food movement organization based out of Milwaukee and Chicago. Her work resulted in the founding of the Growing Food and Justice for All Initiative which has gone on to organize multiple national conferences. The first national conference was held in September 2008 and focused on engaging critically with the question of race in the food system. The conferences have brought people from across the nation together to build connections, learn from each others’ efforts, and “forge new partnerships around food system self determination for low-income and communities of color” . Alkon and Norgaard argued that the work of food justice organizations can help create a theoretical and action oriented bridge between movements for sustainable agriculture, community food security and environmental justice. Gottlieb and Fisher, of the Community Food Security Coalition, introduced an environmental justice approach to food security work in 1996 by highlighting that environmental injustice increased exposure to environmental problems and also the inequitable distribution of environmental benefits, such as healthy food access . The environmental justice movement is just now turning its attention to the distribution of environmental burdens and benefits in society.