Farm & Environment Resources
While not all-encompassing, this blog and webinar series serves as a starting point and provides some clarity regarding how our call for a better food & farm system is deeply intertwined with ongoing calls for racial justice. As a majority white-led organization, this is just one way we are using our power and platform to fight back against white supremacy, exploitation, and erasure in our food system. We will continue to fight for our vision for a more racially-just food system in collaboration with our Black, Indigenous, Latinx and allies of color who have been at the forefront of this fight forever.
Confronting Racism & White Supremacy in our Food & Farm System
A 3-part Blog Series
As we reflect as a nation on the systemic racism in our institutions, we must also recognize and confront racism in every aspect of U.S. policy, including the agricultural policies that underpin our food and farm systems. Our modern industrial food and agricultural systems are built on a foundation of colonization, genocide, slavery and other forms of exploitation, oppression, and erasure, because industrial agriculture is built on white supremacy.
We know we need to overhaul our food system, and a key part of this overhaul is to recognize, reject and uproot the racism in our food and farm system and work towards the collective liberation of all people, by eradicating the structures that harm Black, Indigenous, Latinx and people of color most.
This 3-part blog series looks at the role of racism in our food system — past and present — and why we must dismantle it in order to build the food and farm system we need and deserve.
Part 1: Rooted in Racism — The Unspoken History of our Food & Farm System
Part 2: How Industrial Agriculture Reinforced Oppressive Systems
Part 3: Moving Forward Together in the Call for Justice
The Food & Farm System We Need & Deserve
A 4-part Webinar Series
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the huge cracks in our highly consolidated industrial food system, proving it’s far less resilient than the diversified, regional operations it replaced.
Now more than ever, it’s time to transition to a food and agricultural system that works for everyone – for farmers, workers, eaters and the land. Our food and farm system belongs in the hands of a more diverse base of farmers and workers, not under the control of a small handful of giant corporations.
This 4-part webinar series dug in on these topics and allowed us to learn alongside our allies across the Midwest region who are fighting alongside us for a better, more equitable food and farm system.
Episode 1: “Creating a Better Food & Farm System for Workers”
Click here to view recording for Episode 1.
Featuring:
Axel Fuentes — Board Member, Food Chain Workers Alliance; Executive Director, Rural Community Workers Alliance (RCWA)
Axel and RCWA are at the center of an ongoing lawsuit on behalf of workers against a Smithfield packing plant for poor working conditions during the COVID-19 crisis. They are members of the Food Chain Workers Alliance – a coalition of worker-based organizations whose members are organizing to improve wages and working conditions for all works along the food chain.
Navina Khanna — Director of HEAL Food Alliance
HEAL’s mission is to build our collective power to create food and farm systems that are healthy for our families, accessible and affordable for all communities, and fair to the hard-working people who grow, distribute, prepare, and serve our food — while protecting the air, water, and land we all depend on.
Episode 2: “Creating a Better Food & Farm System for the Environment”
Click here to view recording for Episode 2.
Featuring:
Shona Snater — Bridge to Soil Heath Organizer, Land Stewardship Project (LSP)
The Bridge to Soil Health Project works with crop and livestock farmers and other professionals that view soil as a long-term investment. LSP acts as a bridge between emerging soil health information and local farming practices, thereby uniting a community of farmers as the Soil Builders’ Network.
Episode 3: “Creating a Better Food & Farm System for Eaters”
Click here to view recording for Episode 3.
Featuring:
Claire Kelloway — Reporter and Researcher, Open Markets Institute
Claire is the primary writer for Food & Power, a first-of-its-kind website, providing original reporting and resources on monopoly power and economic concentration in the food system. Her writing on food and agriculture has appeared in ProPublica, Civil Eats, Pacific Standard Magazine, and more.
Episode 4: “Creating a Better Food & Farm System for Farmers”
Click here to view recording for Episode 4.
Featuring:
Tim Gibbons — Missouri Rural Crisis Center (MRCC)
Every day MRCC fights to preserve family farms and independent family farm livestock production, promote stewardship of the land and a safe, affordable high-quality food supply, support social justice and economic opportunity, and engage rural Missourians in public policies that impact their farms, food, families and communities.