Fight Poverty

By Mary Navarro 

Millions of people die of hunger-related causes every year. However, that is not because of actual shortages of food, but is a result of social injustice and political, social and economic exclusion. No one gets to choose the family circumstances into which she or he is born; it’s like the flip of a coin. And although the total wealth of the world has never been greater, reliable access to basic resources is denied to the ballooning ranks of the world’s poor. The hardships faced by people living in poverty, include homelessness, the lack of sanitation and clean water, exploitation by employers and dangerous working conditions. While the context of and circumstances surrounding food injustice and insecurity vary from region to region, a common denominator exists: inadequate access to sufficient quantities of healthy food. There is also an inherent connection between food security and environmental sustainability, another victim of careless and exploitative food production and distribution. Food justice may focus on food, but it connects with issues like economic development, race and class inequities, education, vacant properties, and of course, environmental sustainability. Food justice accomplishes something else: by emphasizing alternative sources of food, it challenges the dominance of the corporate food industry. It reminds us that we have economic alternatives. What we eat and how we shop matters. Food justice aims to ensure that the benefits and risks of producing, distributing, and consuming food are shared fairly by everyone involved and to transform the food system to eliminate inequities. That’s a highly inclusive definition that encompasses everyone from the farmer to the tomato picker to the home cook and the corporation that sells canned goods or fast food. That defines food justice as a cross-class, multicultural movement that engages in a wide variety of work on local, regional, national, and global levels. The food justice movement includes efforts to create urban farms, community-supported agriculture projects, programs focused on getting fresh produce to people who live in food deserts, protecting the rights of workers on farms and in restaurants, and challenges to corporate farming practices that endanger the ecosystem – and much more.

sources: 


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1017-01.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_justice