From Food Crisis to Food Justice

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From Food Crisis to Food Justice

• September 2009

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God or Human eating is central

• Being a creature means you eat for a living it
  is that simple.
• Humans need to eat God doesnt
• First human sin an eating violation
• Eating is where we interface daily and directly
  with God and Gods creation.
• Sunshine (grace), water (grace), food (grace,
  sweat and radahnot dominance but skilled
  mastery)

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What might Gods food system look like?

• Food for all
• Healthy and life-giving nutrition
• Produced ecologically
• Eaten in gratitude and with joy
• Responsive in times of critical shortages and
  famines
• Produced and shared in ways that ensure future
  generations can feed themselves

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Food Sovereignty Democratizing the food system
Peoples right to healthy and culturally
appropriate food produced through ecologically
sound and sustainable methods, and their right to
define their own food and agriculture systems.
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Food Sovereignty How-To

• 1) Organize for change
• 2) Build local food economies
• 3) Create a policy climate that allows
  sustainable food systems to grow
• 4) Resist forces that perpetuate destructive and
  unjust industrial food system

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Why local food economies?Local food
promotes
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• Health Healthy Eating
• nutritious, fresh foods as part of healthy diet
• teaching children healthy eating habits early on
• regular exercise in fresh air

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• Local Economic Activity
• circulating local dollars (multiplier effect)
• employment job training
• small farm businesses are relatively easy to
  start

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• Environmental Sustainability
• reduced transport cost
• reduced cold storage
• reduced packaging
• sustainable urban design (heat island effect,
  storm water, resource conservation)

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• Food Justice
• access to fresh foods by all residents
• elimination of food deserts
• justice for farm workers and other workers in
  the food system

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• Community Quality of Life
• greater sense of place
• different generations working together
• bringing beauty to neighborhoods

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From Understanding to Caring - connecting to
nature creates first understanding and then a
desire to help ensure the survival of all
species inhabiting the earth.
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Ideas for building local food economies

• Food security (what assets do we have?)
• Revive wilderness (sacred prayer garden)
• Kitchen, canning, training, growing
• Outdoor gardens, indoor hydroponics or
  aquaculture

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Ideas for building local food economies

• VBS camps plant native trees, shrubs,
  vegetables
• Youth planting perennials to sell
• Create a congregational or presbytery policy to
  encourage sustainable and productive land use
• Putting production into hands of those who need
  it the most

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ENUF

• Everybody
• Needs
• Urban (and Rural)
• Food Faith Forest Fun
• Adapted from Doug K. Lowry

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Individually

• Shift to the right on the
• Food Shopping Continuum
• Megastore (e.g. Costco or Wal-Mart) ?
  Supermarket
• Natural Marketplaces (e.g. Wild Oats)
• Buying Club / Food Co-op
• ? Non-Chain Grocery Store
• Local Co-op ? Farmers Market
• ? CSA ? Community or Home Garden

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Individually and corporately
Buy locally-grown food from
Your neighbors
Farmers Markets
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farmers
Local produce stands
And grow your own food
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Things your congregation can do
Host a Farmers Market in your parking lot.
Some churches lend their kitchens to Farmers
Market vendors for food preparation or processing.
Some sell discounted vouchers to low-income
shoppers.
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Organize Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) at
your church
With your members (or combined with a neighbor
church), you could invest in the future harvest
of a local farmer and receive weekly boxes
(shares) of fresh produce.
You could also subsidize the cost of shares for
people who cant afford them.
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Start a community-church garden
Learn how to grow healthy food.
Invite neighbors, including those who may not
have sufficient income, to produce vegetables
for their families.
Bring school children in to learn the joy of
growing food.
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Find out what foods are sold and grown/processed
within 100 miles of your home and buy them!
www.localharvest.org
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Hold a Celebrating Local Foods Potluck or 100
Mile Potluck using produce from home and church
gardens and from local farmers and ranchers, and
ingredients from local processors and cooks.
And buy fair trade pcusa.org/coffee
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Farm to Cafeteria

• Encourage institutional purchasing policies to
  give preference to locally-produced items, such
  as the farm-to-cafeteria programs that are
  successfully sprouting up in schools around the
  U.S.

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Celebrating the victories

• In partnership with many of the groups PHP
  supports, we won 100 million in new funds for
  programs to rebuild local food systems through
  increased access to healthy food, and support for
  organic, beginning and minority farmers.

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Give to One Great Our of Sharing or Centsability
for community development projects globally
through PHP and SDOP
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Resources
Just Eating? Practicing Our Faith at the Table An
adult middle school bible study and
action-oriented curriculum on food and faithful
living Available for download at
www.pcusa.org/food and through PDS
www.pcusa.org/marketplace or [phone]
Food Faith Web-based education and action
resources on food and faith issues at
www.pcusa.org/food foodandfaithblog.org
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pcusa.org/foodcrisispcusa.org/hungerpcusa.org/fo
odpcusa.org/trade
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Andrew Kang Bartlett, PHP