Given the urgency of responding to climate change, food movements have featured prominently in urban planning, food policy, and sustainability initiatives, over the past decade. However, mainstream frameworks, such as the Local Food Movement, have typically catered to privilege, namely, a white middle class. They tend to overlook food networks that racialized communities have relied upon to survive social marginalization. Many of these communities have come together to support one another during COVID-19, a time when they've experienced profound social and dietary inequities. While the pandemic has presented a parallel crisis to climate change, it has also presented an opportunity to build food movements that are more sustainable, equitable, and inclusive to diverse communities. In this episode, we will understand how we can do so using the framework of food justice. Interview Summary Welcome to Rights Not Charity. This podcast series is about a big idea, ensuring that everyone has enough food, not as a charitable gift, but as a fundamental human right. My name is Audrey Tung, and I'm a PhD student at the University of Victoria. Jade Guthrie, our guest today, is an expert on issues of food justice and food sovereignty, in both theory and practice. She is a Community Food Programs Lead at FoodShare Toronto, and a Community Organizer with Justice for Migrant Workers. Drawing from her background in social work, she applies an intersectional and anti-oppressive approach to your advocacy for the right to food. So what is food justice and how does it come up in your work? So for me, I think that food justice is a way of looking at the food systems that we have, and exploring and dissecting them through a really critical lens. It's really about identifying where and how broader systems of oppression are shaping our experiences and our relationships with food. And then food justice is working to dismantle those systems, to transform our food system into a more just and equitable one. You know, when we talk about food justice, I think it's really about recognizing that things like settler colonialism, and capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, these are some of the organizing principles that are very much embedded within our current food system. And, we see, and we feel, this play out every day in people's lives. So we see it in the ways that black and indigenous folks, disabled folks, poor folks, other groups of marginalized people, these are the folks who are disproportionally facing more barriers to accessing food. These are the same people who are policed within the food system, and the same folks who are exploited as workers along the food chain. So when we talk about food justice, it's really kind of acknowledging that we can't talk about these food issues, things like food insecurity, without talking about all of these broader systems that it's rooted in. You know, going back to this notion of Rights Not Charity, I think when we talk about food justice, what becomes clear is that any meaningful so-called solution to the problem of food insecurity, has to take into account these sites of oppression that breed the conditions for food insecurity, right? So we can't just continue looking to temporary Band-Aid solutions, but we need to be thinking about sustainability and long-term transformation. So it's not just about putting food on the table, but it's about things like anti-oppression, anti-racism, asking questions like, "How can we decolonize the entire food system?" I think it is Karen Washington who I heard say this, but that "food justice is an action word." So you've got to talk the talk and walk the walk when it comes to food justice. So it means that we need to be working to transform these systems, to create a food system that's really built for the people, right? Not one that's built on the backs of marginalized folks, which is what we currently have. Thanks for teasing out the complexities of food justice so succinctly and eloquently. I particularly like how you mention that food insecurity can't be disentangled from wider systems of oppression, such as racism. So in your workshops, how do you harness the connective power of food towards social change? I think that food is really special, because our unique relationships with food are incredibly intimate and personal, but at the same time, this notion of having a relationship with food is very universal in the same way. Or like everyone has some sort of relationship with food, even if that relationship might be fraught. And I think also it's important to note that our relationships with food are very much inherently political too. Our experiences with food and the connections that we have with food, are rooted in notions of things like identity, and community, and culture, and race. The stories that we tell about the foods that we eat, or the foods that we love, or the foods that we want to cook, are very much stories about ourselves. So they ...
