Food Justice … What Is That?

What is food justice?  It’s been only  recently that I have thought about what that means.  Is it about food access in our inner cities?  Is it about land and agricultural reform across the globe?  Or is it a combination of all those conditions that shows the need for all those affected by food injustice to come together and fight for a better world?I set out next week to Paraguay and Brazil to find out.

As the child of Paraguayan immigrants my experience with food justice issues has been mostly from an urban perspective.  I grew up in and outside of Philadelphia and New York most of my life and I have witnessed what has recently been dubbed “The Obesity-Hunger Paradox“  The idea behind the paradox is based off a recent survey that found the most severe cases of hunger to be in the South Bronx, also one of the nation’s capital for obesity.  How can a community with such severe hunger also be obese?  Well, even more interesting, experts said these weren’t problems affecting people in different neighborhoods or homes but sometimes in the same household, even the same person.  The piece said “the hungriest people in America today, statistically speaking, may well be not sickly skinny, but excessively fat.”

The Bronx Paradox, as some call it, said what I have been saying for years and what I saw over and over again growing up.   In my community many, including myself, were struggling with weight issues and had very little access to healthy foods.  I would see families order take out or go through the drive through for dinner many times.  It was a pretty easy way to feed a family of six for under $20 if you hit that dollar menu, especially if that was all you had.  I’m positive there was no better deal in town back then to feed a family.  Sometimes that drive thru was an answer to parents prayers.  Not to mention how many parents in my neighborhood, including single mothers,  would rush home exhausted after working excessive hours and just want to spend time with their kids.   I myself experienced these same conditions as my parents where trying to keep a roof over me and my siblings head and sustain their shoe repair business.

So I leave tomorrow for Brazil and Paraguay and have plenty to do beside visit my precious family.  I plan to learn about the landless movements in both countries, agrarian reform, poverty, and displacement.  But even bigger is I really am setting out to discover how these same struggles are connected to ours here.  Are they one in the same? The struggles of poverty, healthy food access,  access to land, and immigration here.

I know I have plenty to learn while I am away but I promise if you follow my adventure over the next month you will learn just as much as I do.

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