Tag Archives: transparency

Political Lands and Foods; Indigenous Communities in Brazil as Land Defenders

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Bananas, sugar cane, palm oil, soy– theses are just some of the foods tied to the deracination of indigenous communities from their ancestral lands. Land rights for indigenous peoples in Latin America have always been contentious as territories have been appropriated for use of farming, natural resource and extractive industries, and other uses not originally intended by their original populations. While companies like the United Fruit Company quickly and other multinational agricultural companies took over in places like Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica, agricultural development projects in Brazil’s Cerrado and Amazon ecoregions have quickly displaced indigenous populations in Brazil, leaving an estimated 13.8 percent of land as formally designated for these communities, according to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, and 31% as agricultural land (USAID).   

Image by the Rights and Resources Initiative: depicting the RRI’s Forest Tenure Database four land tenure categories. (click here to see enlarged image)

For me, this research makes clear the nexus between land rights and access for indigenous communities, and mismanaged foreign investment which has disrupted local livelihoods and economies. To think systemically about land rights is to understand the ways that vulnerable communities are negatively affected by land grabs (particularly by governments to address food insecurity), or indirectly through foreign direct investment (FDI). 

Land rights are directly tied to our course ideas of transparency, food justice, and sustainability. Through networks like the Rights and Resources Initiative, organizations, governments, and others are vying to increase transparency with access to land globally. Food justice is inherently tied to transparent access to land: when we don’t know where our food is coming from, it’s difficult to identify who’s rights are violated at different stages of cultivation, harvest, processing, and transportation of these foods. Many rights are violated in the simple acquisition of land before it is even developed for agriculture. 

In the case of Brazil, this rings true. Thirty-eight large companies now control much of Brazil’s agricultural land, including large companies like Cargill and Coamo, which have faced significant backlash for their deforestation practices which have primarily displaced indigenous people in the Center-West region. In March 2020, Indigenous leaders from the Yanomami tribe testified in front of the UN security council warning against the genocide of indigenous and uncontacted groups in the region.   

Yanomami indigenous leader Davi Kopenawa denounces deforestation and indigenous land invasion in Brazil, via Conectas Human Rights

Systems thinking connects this course to fundamental ideas of land and food justice. Unpacking what transparent and equitable food systems will look like in the future will require serious action to protect indigenous habitation of land in addressing egregious issues of climate change, food security, and sustainability within the food chain. 

 

Food sovereignty in the Shellfish Industry

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In regards to action projects, I participated in working with the Center for Food Safety (CFS) on creating a sustainable shellfish scorecard. The scorecard can be utilized by restaurant owners, chefs, and consumers who are demanding to be knowledgeable of which shellfish producers follow sustainable procedures. CFS is a national non-profit public interest and environmental advocacy organization working to protect human health and the environment by curbing the use of harmful food production technologies and by promoting organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture. CFS also educates consumers concerning the definition of organic food and products. Producing a scorecard to determine shellfish producer’s level of sustainability with the help of CFS will certainly be a meaningful contribution to the larger community because it will be functional to exclude shellfish producers that execute practices that degrade biodiversity and the environment it surrounds it. 

What I learned through working with the CFS is the idea of food sovereignty and how important it is for consumers to be knowledgeable about the process of how sustainable the food is being produced. Included in the scorecard, are criteria based on the feasibility and sustainability of shellfish producers in the shellfish industry. The criteria includes; pesticide use, transparency over regulations and environmental legislation, seeding and harvesting methods, and lastly, processing methods. This action project promotes people’s right to to healthy and culturally-appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems which are all tested through the criteria we have generated.

Another thing I wanted to bring up is our capability of getting involved in projects like this simply in our homes, and through our computers. I find it amazing how we integrated elements of collaboration, grasping and creating ideas, and completing tasks without ever seeing each other in person. As Karen said, we really are working and living in unprecedented times, and yet we continue to strive for greatness. We continue to do as much as we can to stay involved, despite limitations. Then, I realized that this is the type of vitality we need to make positive changes within the food system. We have to keep educating ourselves, and work together to amplify what the system lacks and the assistance it needs.

Sovereignty and Shellfish

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Food sovereignty is no simple thing in today’s food politics discourse. The modern American, whether they like it or not, is deeply embedded in a global food network. When we ask ourselves what it would mean to become food sovereign people, we must determine what self-sufficiency can and should mean within our community. As Raj Patel argues in his article “Food Sovereignty Grassroots Voices”, food sovereignty must account for the power politics of the food system. In working alongside the Center for Food Safety, a national nonprofit group that works to protect human and environmental health by advocating for sustainable practices and curbing harmful food technologies, I developed a scoring system to grade the sustainability of Washington’s shellfish operations.

Through this work and Patel’s point on power politics, I built an understanding of the simple fact that food sovereignty must begin with knowing where your food comes from. To know where your food comes from must mean to know more than its location, but to know the methods and labor that went into its creation and the impacts of this production on people and the ecosystem. My contribution to the development of the shellfish scorecard is both a contribution to the transparency of the industry as well as to the normalization of consumer-facing food transparency.

“Shellfish Aquaculture in Washington: Pesticides, Plastics, and Pollution Impacts to Our Environment” Center for Food Safety. October 24, 2019.

Food sovereignty discourse often revolves around food and farmers. While these are significant aspects of developing and defining a food sovereign community, this approach ignores the larger economic and political systems that encase our culture of food. This multidimensional image, which is explored in-depth in part eight of “Introduction: Critical Perspectives on Food Sovereignty”, must include a notion of sustainability and justice that addresses these larger systems. In defining food sovereignty with the consideration the multidimensionality and the inherent need for consumer facing transparency, the creation of and use of the shellfish scorecard begins to take on a larger weight.

As my group approached the scorecard, we carried the lessons of food sovereignty and systems thinking into our research process. We developed a scorecard that grades the sustainability of a shellfish operation on how the operation relates to Washington’s ecological feedback loops and the policy positions of the operation. This scorecard reflects values of food sovereignty and will aid consumers in their ability to support sustainable businesses.