Food justice or food sovereignty? Understanding the rise of urban food movements in the USA

Abstract

As world food and fuel prices threaten expanding urban populations, there is greater need for the urban poor to have access and claims over how and where food is produced and distributed. This is especially the case in marginalized urban settings where high proportions of the population are food insecure. The global movement for food sovereignty has been one attempt to reclaim rights and participation in the food system and challenge corporate food regimes. However, given its origins from the peasant farmers' movement, La Via Campesina, the translation of food sovereignty principles to the developed world, food sovereignty is often considered a rural issue when, increasingly, its demands for fair food systems are urban. Through interviews with scholars, urban food activists, non-governmental and grassroots organizations in Oakland and New Orleans in the United States of America, we examine the extent to which food sovereignty has become embedded as a concept, strategy and practice. We consider food sovereignty alongside other dominant US social movements such as food justice, and find that while many organizations do not use the language of food sovereignty explicitly, the motives behind urban food activism are similar across movements as local actors draw on elements of each in practice.Overall, however, because of the different histories, geographic contexts, and relations to state and capital, food justice and food sovereignty differ as strategies and approaches. We conclude that the US urban food sovereignty movement is limited by neoliberal structural contexts that dampen its approach and radical framework. Similarly, we see restrictions on urban food justice movements that are also operating within a broader framework of market neoliberalism, however, we find that food justice was reported as an approach better aligned with the sociohistorical contexts in both cities, due to its origins in broader class and race struggles.

Food justice: cultivating the field

“…The concept of 'food justice' overlaps with related goals of 'food security' and 'food sovereignty,' all of which are understood differently in the US and internationally. These distinctions have been thoroughly parsed in earlier scholarship (Mares and Alkon 2011, Heynen et al 2012, Jarosz 2014, Brent et al 2015, Trauger 2015, Carney 2016, Clendenning et al 2016. away from the study of labor issues (such as the prevalence of low-wage and hazardous jobs in the food system, the labor challenges involved in scaling up alternative food production, and the nature of occupational roles in food justice movements).…”

Who Cares? The Importance of Emotional Connections with Nature to Ensure Food Security and Wellbeing in Cities

“…Local food can help give back communities that ability to control, understand and influence the food they eat [63]. This awareness is resulting in an influx of food sovereignty research and movements worldwide [36,93,98], which could have significant implications for the wider food system and political governance in the future. Learning from developed countries, preventative policy should be made a priority in low-income countries that are currently undergoing urban population influx and transitioning away from local food production (with shorter supply chains) towards a more globalised food system.…”

“…There is an opportunity to merge nature and food focused programs to reinforce this connection. Interestingly, these programs are often in line with food sovereignty movements to "re-connect the social and business links between gardens, communities, and restaurants, emphasizing the importance of building social relationships through multiple actors" [36] (p. 174). Unsurprisingly, as the urban agriculture literature has shown, these programs can build strong informal networks of social support, trust and cohesion which have been shown to mitigate food insecurity [134].…”

“…Food deserts are "those areas of inner cities where cheap, nutritious food is virtually unobtainable and large geographical areas without access to healthy and affordable foods" [33] (p. 213). Food deserts are more prevalent in lower socio-economic areas and result in higher levels of food insecurity [34][35][36][37]. As an example, in Australia somewhere between 5-11% of the population is food insecure, with certain groups (e.g., unemployed people, single parent households, low-income earners, rental households, young people, indigenous, culturally and linguistically diverse and socially isolated people) being more susceptible [35,38,39].…”

Does Urban Agriculture Improve Food Security? Examining the Nexus of Food Access and Distribution of Urban Produced Foods in the United States: A Systematic Review

“…The urban food justice and food sovereignty movements in the U.S. are limited in practice in achieving their more radical or transformative goals due to the fact that they are operating within "a broader framework of [capitalist] market neoliberalism" [109]. The challenge has not been growing enough food per se, but rather "producing and distributing food in ways accessible and affordable for the growing urban poor" [109] while sustaining UA operations in a capitalist, production-and profit-oriented society.…”