26/01/2024
Food justice is the idea that everyone deserves access to fresh, nutritious food that is both appealing and appropriate for one's culture. It examines the food system as a whole and emphasizes that equity and care should be top of mind for each stage of the food process—from how the land is cultivated to the workers tending to the crops to those who consume the product.
Food justice is also the right to grow, sell, and eat healthy food. Efforts and initiatives to ensure people have access to food are not engaging in charity. Instead, they are supporting an individual's right to food options. The same is true for farmworker resources and support.
Based on the food justice framework, everyone involved in food production should be treated well and paid a fair wage, regardless of their documentation status or ethnic background.
Similar, and often used interchangeably, is the food sovereignty framework. The basics remain the same, but food sovereignty goes beyond providing access to food and questioning the imbalanced food systems. Food sovereignty pushes for community self-sufficiency and places marginalized communities at the helm of their own healing and sustainability.
Working within a food justice framework requires an acknowledgment of the ongoing and intentional barriers that marginalized communities face in connection with access to food, namely Black and Brown communities and those facing homelessness. Almost a quarter of Black households and 1 in 5 Hispanic households experienced food insecurity in 2022, according to Department of Agriculture data.
Angella Weiss
