The State of Black Food Sovereignty
"This is about waging love; we love ourselves, we love our children, we
love the earth, we love all of life. So This is not a protest this is
actually an act of waging love. The love we are talking about is the
love of life not the love of death."
In Memory of Charity Mahouna Hicks, Detroit Based Local2Global Peace, Human Rights, & Food Sovereignty Activist
I. The State of Black Food and Health Justice and Black Food Sovereignty
"The
key to understanding and eliminating racial and ethnic health
disparities is to acknowledge that they are not the result of individual
behaviors. Instead, poorer health outcomes and ethnic and racial
disparities in health are the result of social determinants of health
care status. Therefore, the elimination of health care disparities
requires solutions based on social justice.
Social justice is the fair distribution of society's benefits, responsibilities and their consequences. It focuses on the relative position of one social group in relationship to other social groups in society, as well as on the root causes of disparities and what can be done to eliminate them. Thus, eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities may necessitate altering social policies, social systems and social institutions in order to remove unequal treatment and outcomes in the United States' health care system." (http://www.medicareadvocacy.org/medicare-info/health-care-disparities)
Social justice is the fair distribution of society's benefits, responsibilities and their consequences. It focuses on the relative position of one social group in relationship to other social groups in society, as well as on the root causes of disparities and what can be done to eliminate them. Thus, eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities may necessitate altering social policies, social systems and social institutions in order to remove unequal treatment and outcomes in the United States' health care system." (http://www.medicareadvocacy.org/medicare-info/health-care-disparities)
Hunger is the world’s number 1 health risk. (Hunger Stats, United Nations World Food Programme, www.wfp.org) Hunger
kills more people than AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Combined every
year. (Id.) Poverty and hunger are closely linked with poverty being
the greatest indicator of hunger. (Resources/fact
sheets/bread.org/African American poverty.pdf) Education is the greatest indicator of poverty. (Id.)
One in four or 25% of African Americans live below the poverty level, compared to about 1 in 8 or 12.5 % of all Americans. (Id.) Similarly,
one in four or 25 % of African American households is hungry,
compared to about 1 in seven or 14% of all American households. Black
children suffer hunger at higher rates than do adults. 38% or a
little more than one third of all African American children are hungry.
(Id.)
As
well, poverty is the main indicator of health and quality of health
care. (National Health Care Disparities Report (2005), Agency for
Health Care Research and Quality, US Department of Health and Human
Services pp. 131-132.) Consequently, black Americans who experience
poverty at greater rates than the overall US population suffer many
diseases at greater rates that the overall US population and are less
likely to receive adequate health care. (Id.)
Black
Americans suffer high blood pressure, a major risk for coronary heart
disease, stroke, kidney disease, and heart failure, at a rate of 40%
greater than that suffered by white Americans. (“A
Strategic Framework for Improving Racial/Ethnic Minority Health and
Eliminating Racial/Ethnic Health Disparities,” US Department of Health
and Human Services, Rockville, MD: Office of Minority Health, January
2008.) Black Americans are twice as likely to die from strokes as
white Americans. (Id.) Black
Americans are also 2.1 times as likely as whites to suffer from
diabetes and much more likely than whites to experience complications
from diabetes, such as amputation of lower extremities. (Id.)
Black
Americans are more likely to die from cancer than any other racial
and ethnic group in the US. (American Cancer Society, Cancer Facts and
Figures for African Americans, 2007-8) Black
American men are 50% more likely to have prostate cancer and are more
likely than any other racial group to suffer colorectal cancer. (The
Commonwealth Fund, “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Healthcare: A
Chartbook,” 2008.)
15% of Black Americans suffer from adult onset diabetes compared to 8% of the white population. (Id.) Because of reduced access to health care, treatment for these diseases is significantly lower among black than white people. (Id.)
Globally, black people experience poverty and hunger
at higher rates that do whites as well. In 2000, 50% of the world’s
poor were Africans. (The Challenge for Africa, Wangari Maathai, p. 10)
28% of the worlds hungry or 238 million people live in Sub Saharan
Africa. (Poverty Facts and Statistics, www.globalissues.org) The only larger portion of the world’s hungry live in South Asia. (Id.)
More
than 80% of diabetes deaths in the world occur in low and middle
income countries which includes all of Sub-Saharan Africa.
(WHO.int/Diabetes) Around 27-28% of all children in poor countries are
underweight or stunted of which Sub Saharan African and South Asia
account for the bulk of the deficit. (Poverty
Facts and Stats, Id.) If current trends continue, the United Nations
Millennium Development Goals for Africa will be missed by 30 million
children, largely because of slow progress in Southern Asia and
Sub-Saharan Africa. (Maathai at 6.)
In
Sub-Saharan Africa, one in 6 children dies before his fifth birthday
comprising half of the world’s child deaths largely due to conditions
largely associated with hunger. (Maathai at 6.)
Racial
disparities in access to land for farming is well documented as well.
European Colonial governments forcibly removed and displaced African
people from arable land to make way for colonial settlers, exactly as
was done to native peoples in North America, and this forced removal
and displacement of Africans has not been rectified as of today. (Id.) Europeans
or their descendants own almost all the land in the Americas, almost
all the good land in Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania, and most of
the best land in many African countries like South Africa, Zimbabwe,
Namibia and Kenya. raceandhistory.com
While
in 1920, over 14% of U.S, farmers were African American, as of 2007,
less than 2% of U.S. farmers were Afro-descendants. (National Black
Farmers and Urban Gardner’s Conference) In Kenya, 10 percent of the
population, both black and white farmers, owns 73 percent of all arable
land. In South Africa, 16 percent of the population, made up of
whites, owns 87 percent of all arable land. In Zimbabwe, 4,500 white
farmers - or a mere .03 percent of a population of 13 million Africans
- own 73 percent of all arable land. raceandhistory.com.
In Namibia, another country in South West Africa, whites who make up
about 6 % of the population own about 50% of arable land.(Maathai at
227.)
II. Black Food and Health Justice and Black Food Sovereignty
II. Black Food and Health Justice and Black Food Sovereignty
Food Justice is:
communities
exercising their right to grow, sell and eat healthy food. Healthy
food is fresh, nutritious, affordable, culturally-appropriate and grown
locally with care for the well-being of the land, workers and
animals. People practicing food justice leads to a strong local food
system, self-reliant communities and a healthy environment. (Just
Food.org)
Health Justice:
recognizes
that there are numerous socio-economic factors (social determinants
of health) that affect an individual’s and a community’s health
status. The idea of social determinants of health is based on
substantial research that the social and physical environment greatly
influences a person’s health. Health justice addresses the fact that
in order to attain physical and mental health at the individual and
community level, we must address issues of equity, access, and justice
as they relate to particular social, physical, political and economic
environments. Health care services are one important element in
attaining health, but health services alone cannot eliminate
inequities such as poverty, racism, and gender-based violence. Without
attention to and efforts aimed at the complex realities of
individuals’ lives, we cannot hope to achieve good health and
wellbeing for all.
Food Sovereignty is:
the people’s truly democratic, just and sustainable, supreme control over their food and agriculture. It is a doctrine that the International Small Farmers and Peasant’s Movement, la Via Campesina, introduced to the world in 1993 although indigenous communities used the phrase before 1993. Food Sovereignty has seven principles:
1. Food:
A Basic Human Right. The basic human right to healthy nutritious,
culturally appropriate food in sufficient quantity and quality to
sustain a healthy life with full human dignity. Each
nation should declare that access to food is a constitutional right
and guarantee the development of the primary sector to ensure the
concrete realization of this fundamental right.
2. Agrarian
Reform. A genuine agrarian reform is necessary which gives landless
and farming people—especially women—ownership and control of the land
they work and returns territories to indigenous peoples. The
right to land must be free of discrimination on the basis of gender ,
religion, race, social class or ideology; the land belongs to those
who work it.
3. Protecting Natural Resources. Food
Sovereignty entails the sustainable care and use of natural
resources, especially land, water and seeds and livestock breeds. The
people who work the land must have the right to practice sustainable
management of natural resources and to conserve biodiversity free of
restrictive intellectual property rights. This can only be done from a sound economic basis with security of tenure, healthy soils and reduced use of agrochemicals.
4. Reorganizing Food Trade. Food is first and foremost a source of nutrition and only secondarily an item of trade. National agricultural policies must prioritize production for domestic consumption and food self-sufficiency. Food imports must not displace local production nor depress prices.
5. Ending Corporate
Control over our Food and Agriculture. Food Sovereignty is undermined
by multilateral institutions and by speculative capital. The
growing control of multinational corporations over agricultural
policies has been facilitated by the economic policies of multilateral
organizations such as the WTO, World Bank and the IMF. Regulation
and taxation of speculative capital and a strictly enforced Code of
Conduct for Trans National Corporations is therefore needed.
6. Social Peace. Everyone has the right to be free from violence. Food must not be used as a weapon. Increasing
levels of poverty and marginalization in the countryside, along with
the growing oppression of ethnic minorities and indigenous
populations, aggravate situations of injustice and hopelessness, The
ongoing displacement, forced urbanization, repression and increasing
incidence of racism against smallholder farmers cannot be tolerated.
7. Democratic
Control. Smallholder farmers and consumers must have direct input
into formulating agricultural policies at all levels. The
United Nations and related organizations will have to undergo a
process of democratization to enable this to become a reality. Everyone has the right to honest, accurate information and open and democratic decision making. These
rights form the basis of good governance, accountability and equal
participation in economic, political and social life, free from all
forms of discrimination. Rural
women, in particular must be granted direct and active decision
making on food and rural issues. (Family Farm Defenders Via
Campesina’s Seven Principles of Food Sovereignty.)
II. Why Food Sovereignty rather than Food Security?
(This discussion is taken from the Alliance for African Food Sovereignty announcement of its formation.)
In
2001, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an international
organization, defined their objective of achieving food security as:
a
situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical,
social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that
meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and
healthy life.
The US government uses a similar statement. While
this objective sounds good, it has been misused to justify policies
that only prioritize yield and the delivery of food to consumers by any
means. Food
security, has become divorced from consideration of how that food is
produced and by whom, i.e., ‘food justice’ and ‘food sovereignty.’ “Food
security” is misused to encourage the industrialization and
corporatization of agriculture, food aid, the use of genetically
modified seeds, the shifting of food production from diverse crops for
local markets to monocultures for export and the liberalization markets
where small producers are put out of business by subsidized imports.
For example, “Food Security: is the stated objective of the most recent Green
Revolution in Africa being aggressively promoted by the Alliance for a
Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). AGRA promotes expensive ,
subsidized fertilizers, pesticides and hybrid seeds, which are not
economically and environmentally sustainable. AGRA puts the private sector in charge of seed supply and replaces local and public seed systems.
Policies based on “Food Security” have failed to protect consumers around the world from soaring food prices. Under
Food Security practices prescribed by the US and other governments,
businesses and the FAO, world hunger is actually growing. Under
the Food Security doctrine, food has become a commodity for
maximizing profits for a few rather than a source of nutrition for the
people as mandated by Food Sovereignty. Never before was the inequity
of the global food system more starkly evident than during the Food
Crisis of 2007-2008. As people around the world starved, agribusiness and commodity traders reported record profits.
It
is clear that the doctrine of food security on its own has failed to
meet the needs of the people for a source of nutrition and is
destroying our environment. Real food security must be based on food
sovereignty, the people’s truly democratic, just and sustainable,
supreme control over their food and agriculture.
This
model of food sovereignty, not food security, is what is needed, one
that works with farmers and consumers, communities, soils and
biodiversity, on which actual food production depends. Instead
of focusing only narrowly on food production like the doctrine of
Food Security, Food Sovereignty serves all elements—farmers,
communities, ecosystems, climate, markets and consumers—involved in
food and agriculture. It
is a holistic approach, mutually enhancing at every level, bringing
coherence, justice and environmental and economic sustainability to
food and agriculture. (Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa)
III. “Organizing for Justice”
At the US Community Food Security Coalition Policy Conference this past May 2011 held in Portland Oregon, the opening plenary: Leading the Movement for Food Justice: Analysis, Organizing and Power for Policy Change,
moderated by Makani Themba Nixon of the Praxis Project, was the only
session to receive a standing ovation during the four day conference.
In that plenary, presenters: Jaron Browne, POWER San Francisco; Saru
Jayaraman, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United; Rodrigo Rodriguez,
South West Organizing Project, and Kolu Zigbi, Jessie Smith Noyes
Foundation, discussed and gave strong examples of powerful organizing
work by poor and people of color to achieve policy goals. Policy is
broadly defined as any actions, agreements and laws that directly
improve people’s lives in concrete ways.
In October 2011 at the 2nd Annual National Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners Conference hosted by B.U.G.S, Black Urban Gardeners, in the Bronx, New York, a small coalition of black food and agriculture activists , Anan Lololi of the AfriCan Food Basket in Toronto, Canada, Ayenay
Abye of Communities Creating Healthy Environments (CCHE) in
Washington D.C., USA and Maria Whittaker of Local2Global Advocates for
Justice (L2GAJ) in Mission, Kansas, USA collaborated to present a workshop on Black Organizing for Power and Dignity: Visions of Black
Food and Health Justice and Black Food Sovereignty in order to
provide an open space to build strategy across and within black
communities for food and health justice and food sovereignty.
Given
the deep inequities that exist in American society and the world, it
is important to continue this conversation, go deeper and broader, so
we can build strategy across and within black communities for food and
health justice and food sovereignty.
