Coming Together for Food Justice

How do we form new relationships within this growing movement for sustainable agriculture and food justice?  Where are the opportunities and what are the limitations?

As someone who has gained from the diversity of food and agriculture blogs (as well as building my own – surinfarmersupport.org), I’m often content with accessing new information and campaign updates via the web.  It’s been an important tool for educating us all on important and complex issues.  This medium will only go further in empowering our ideas for what a more sustainable and just food system should look like.

Further, as an activist living in Thailand and working with Thai farmers and NGOs, much of my connection to the movement in the U.S. has been built upon e-mail messages and blogpost comments.  This is what it has to be, given time differences and schedules.  And, I do feel connected – Civil Eats posted a link to my blog, and the Greenhorns invited me to post on their Irresistible Fleet of Bicycles.

Yet, at the same time, activists online seem to spend a lot of time debating – I’m thinking here about the comfood discussion this winter about Alice Waters’s food elitism or last week’s back and forth about the validity of the term “food desert.  Yes, Alice Waters says some elitist things and yes, food desert is an “inadequate term” (thank you, Brahm Ahmadi of People’s Grocery).  It seems we spend a lot of time critiquing our agreement, which is important for uniting the movement under similar language, yet when folks actually come together, share ideas and work for a common cause, this movement benefits greatly.

This coming together is the working model for the Alternative Agriculture Network (AAN) in Thailand.  Realizing that Thailand is a much smaller country, one thing I’ve begun to realize is the importance of forming local groups or networks.  When Thai farmers, activists and NGOs are able to spend a day or two critically approaching their work and planning for future efforts, the AAN maintains it’s direction and strengthens allies throughout Thailand and abroad.

Upon returning to the U.S. for a visit this summer, I realized the simple beauty (and importance) of seeing people face-to-face and exchanging with them, discussing current issues and planning out solutions.  I’ve been away from the U.S. for one year and will be away for another, and despite the current recession, the movement here for a better food system continues going forward and gaining strength.  Though Costco seems to now be filled with organic carrots, lettuce and apples from all over the world, small farmers’ markets are popping up all over the country.  Meanwhile, organizations like Our School at Blair Grocery are empowering urban youth in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans.  Here we have opportunities for critique and celebration.

This past weekend at the 2009 ENGAGE National Convergence, I got to learn more about the work happening in New Orleans for food justice, as well as link up with Kandace Vallejo, Erica Dodt and Dylan Cook from the Student/Farmworker Alliance (SFA).  (Thanks to Gillian’s last post – Bigger Than Just Tomatoes – for introducing their work).  ENGAGE is a coalition of returned study abroad students that builds lifelong connections and cooperative action between peoples and social movements working towards a just and sustainable world.  It was great to make these new friends and build allies for ENGAGE and  Thailand’s Alternative Agriculture Network.  Together, we organized a workshop and brainstormed ways for ENGAGE members to get more involved with fair food around the country.

How are we going to connect rice farmers in northeastern Thailand with Latino, Mayan Indian and Haitian immigrant tomato pickers in Immokalee, Florida?  We’ve got plenty of ideas and we look forward to acting in solidarity for the CIW Encuentro in October.  There are a lot of challenges in bringing together the different parts of this movement, but we can’t overlook the value of sitting down together for a common goal.  Nor can we fail to integrate all the tools that Internet communication provides for us.  And I hope that more local, regional meetings or convergences will be important in the future of coordinating our efforts.  How do we find a balance?  What do you think are our next steps?