Food Justice Is Environmental Justice

"Kimmy is a single mom living in extreme poverty with her three small children on the west side of Buffalo. She works two jobs just to pay for the basics and to keep her family afloat.Everyday after school her three children play outside until she gets home; she quickly cooks dinner for them and the next door neighbor's two kids in exchange for her kids' evening care while she goes to her night job.  Each week she tries to go to the grocery store but must take two buses and her small children with her as well as a small cart for her groceries.  The trip usually takes about four hours and she can only get what she can carry in her cart.  Most weeks, because of her busy work schedule, she must get food from the corner store, which is mainly Mac-n-Cheese, microwave dinners, packaged noodles or canned foods. Otherwise her choices are one of the five fast food restaurants in her neighborhood.  She knows the options aren't good but they allow her to get by, given her hectic schedule. Her kids usually come home from school hungry and go to the corner store for chips and soda since they are cheap and readily available."

             Food security refers to the availability of food and one's access to it. A household is considered food-secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. This standard can exist only when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life. Unfortunately the story written above is what millions of people in low-income neighborhoods across the nation face on a daily basis. Food security, or the availability of fresh, healthy and culturally appropriate food, is commonly perceived only as an issue in countries overrun with civil war or facing extreme poverty. In 2006 it was reported that globally, the number of people who are overweight has surpassed the number who are undernourished – the world had more than one billion people who were overweight, and an estimated 800 million who were undernourished. Worldwide around 925 million people are chronically hungry due to extreme poverty, while up to 2 billion people lack food security intermittently due to varying degrees of poverty. The Environmental Justice movement has an alternative view that takes a collective approach to achieve food security. It takes note that globally enough food is produced to feed the entire world population at a level adequate to ensure that everyone can be free of hunger and fear of starvation. It believes that no one should live without enough food because of economic constraints or social inequalities is the basic goal. This approach views food security as a basic human right, it advocates fairer distribution of food, particularly grain crops, as a means of ending chronic hunger and malnutrition. The core of the Food Justice movement is the belief that what is lacking is not food, but the political will to fairly distribute food regardless of the recipient’s ability to pay.

source: http://www.greenforall.org/blog/food-justice-is-environmental-justice-is-social-justice/?searchterm=None


Mary Navarro