Author Archives: freuna

A Reflection of Food Politics and Working with Landesa

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For the Group Project, my group of five worked with the NGO Landesa which strives to work with farmers in poor countries to help them know and hold their land rights. What we were tasked with doing is creating infographics to put onto Landesa’s social media to better inform people, especially young adults, of what they do. This was a very interesting experience for me because what my group got to works on is heavily tied to what we have discussed in our class throughout the year especially regarding systems thinking.

How Landesa tries to make a difference in the world directly ties with concepts brought up specifically in two of our classes. The first is that of food sovereignty and more specifically land sovereignty, which Marc Edleman discusses in his essay. He mentions that access to land rights helps provide even distribution of land and provide greater access to resources (923). Landesa is working directly with communities to better raise them up from the bottom because it will help them create their own economic opportunities for themselves. The next concept the ties Landesa directly to our class is their fight for land rights specifically for women. Julia Whitling mentions in her article, “When women are provided with the same inputs, assets, and technical assistance as men, their yields could increase by as much as 20-30 percent, which translates to a reduction in the number of undernourished people in the world by 12-17 percent” (2019). This shows the importance of Landesa’s work in because it can make such a big impact in poor and unequal communities.

It truly was a pleasure to work with Landesa especially because we got to see the approach that they took. In my contribution to Landesa’s social media I focus on their belief in better education as a solution to addressing land rights issues. This goes directly along with systems thinking because better education often means better understanding of land rights which that will lead to greater economic growth of the communities. It was great to learn just how much Landesa’s work described what us as a class often hoped for to bring change to poor communities without access to food.

 

One of my infographics

 

Sources

Marc Edelman et al. “Introduction: Critical Perspectives on Food Sovereignty.”  Journal of Peasant Studies: Global Agrarian Transformations 41, 6, 2014, pp. 911–931.

Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Hungry for Equality: Examining the Gender Gap in Food  Security

Photo credit: thechicagocouncil.org/blog/global-food-thought/hungry-equality-examining-gender-gap-food-security

A Response to “Urban Farms’ Rapid Response to Covid-19” by Champ3

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Original Post: https://sites.uw.edu/pols385/2020/04/16/urban-farms-rapid-response-to-covid-19/

Covid-19 is showing just important it is for all people to have easier access to food, however in the United States some people with the least access to food live in urban areas. Due to many food sellers deciding not to set up shop in poor urban areas because it is not profitable enough, there are food deserts for millions of people across the county. The current pandemic is showing just how important it is for these areas to have community farms so that people have access to fresh and healthy food without it being dependent on capitalism. Champ3 notes how unreliable food chains can be and that is why urban farms are so important.

However, what I think that Champ3 doesn’t mention in great detail is that the pandemic is showing a few limitations of urban farming. With the outbreak of Covid-19 and social distancing rules in place, urban farms in general are not able to be as productive because the number of workers must decrease. Especially when these farms are squeezed into such a tight space, it is much more difficult to plant, maintain, and harvest these foods.

In a way these urban farms are quite similar to what Monica White describes in her essay about the Freedom Farmers which gave recently freed black people an opportunity to create their own economic and food-based sovereignty. These urban farms give the chance to provide food for communities that are often majority people of color without the need to depend on outside forces like the government or large food companies. However, in both cases they face the same problems of not approaching the issue systematically. The whole pandemic is showing the need for change in policy in order to better provide the people who live in these communities with access to food.

Photo Credit: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/15/11660304/urban-farming-benefits

Thinking More Deeply About Hunger

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For how much food is such important to every person’s everyday life, I think it says very important things about the life I am able to live where I don’t need to worry about my hunger. Because I don’t need to worry about my access to food it and answer to questions I have about my hunger may seem as simple to me as, “if you are hungry, then eat.” It is often difficult for me to think about the such substantial amount of hunger that is in the world if I have never experienced it myself. It was very important for me to take time to listen to and digest the thoughts of how abundant hunger is in the world and how debilitating it can be.

One thing that I think really helped me better understand the point of this contemplative practice was that I went into it having barely eaten anything in almost 24 hours. In the buildup to this exercise I found myself being able to barely focus on anything other that how hungry I was. I felt more tired, it was more difficult to concentrate on classes, and my body felt uncomfortable.

Once I was able to settle and listen to the contemplative practice I was able to think more deeply not just about how hunger was affecting me at that moment, but how people experience that feeling that I had nearly every day without the ability to even know when they could eat next or how much they are able to eat. I think in a class like ours when we take the systems approach to things like hunger, it can often be difficult for us to think about these issues more individually, I think it can really help us understand what people are going through if we take time and really think about how hunger can affect ourselves and others.

 

Photo Credit: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/oct/13/food-diet-what-you-eat-affects-brain-health-dementia#img-1

Covid-19 Outbreak is a Large Threat to Migrant Farmworkers

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Amidst the pandemic of the coronavirus, one group of people that is essential to the mass food production of the United States is also at some of the highest risks of an outbreak. Migrant farmworkers are still hard at work across the county while many Americans are able to work from home. The reason these people are much more susceptible to the virus come down to the close quarters that they both work and live in.

Migrant farmworkers are not payed well and a high percentage of them are undocumented. The reason for this is highly political. In our economy in order for food producers to get ahead of the competition, they must resort to cheap and plentiful labor. Because our immigration system makes it so difficult for people to move to this country legally, many people from Mexico and other South and Central America instead move here and are undocumented. And even though American farm labor does not pay well it might be the only choice for undocumented people because it requires no experience and larger farms are willing to hire undocumented immigrants while many other industries are not.

There are a few solutions that may be able to help these migrant farmworkers and immigrants as a whole. While these are longer term solutions and will not stop an outbreak at the moment, the goal from them is to make sure that immigrants no longer need to be in this position. One thing that is very important is making it easier to migrate legally to the United States. This makes so that other industries are more willing to hire immigrants because they are documented, and it also makes it so farms are forced to give their workers at least minimum wage. Another solution is raising the pay of farm workers. This could be done by making a subsidy for large farms, but only if they pay their workers a certain high enough wage. This way the workers are being payed enough to have their own housing. While these are difficult policies to pass and of course will not solve the problem right away, it makes it so that migrant farmworkers are able to have a safer and healthier future.

News Article: https://thefern.org/2020/03/migrant-farmworkers-feed-america-and-theyre-at-high-risk-for-a-coronavirus-outbreak/

Photo Credit: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/01/29/464758284/activists-demand-a-bill-of-rights-for-california-farm-workers