Noll and Murdock- Who's Justice is it Anyway? Week 4 Blog Post

This article highlights, once again, the inequalities in our food systems. Food security is defined by the USDA’s Economic Research Service: "access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.” If we are operating from the stance that this is to be provided by a market-driven system, with the uncapped power we give big businesses, we are doomed to fail. These businesses will continually outmarket smaller and more local farms and food resources. Food sovereignty on the other hand is a system that operates from the position of the consumer. In general, your average consumer is the average citizen who is part of the community they are purchasing food. These are the people consuming the food and giving them the ability to be part of the growing, sourcing, or production of the food they eat is a powerful place to start.  

Food sovereignty organizes food production and processing “according to the needs of local communities, giving priority to local consumption” (Schanbacher). Food imperialism has dominated the United States since the dawn of its inception. This is exemplified by Indigenous People’s Day, a day in which we recognize our Native Americans and their culture and heritage. We do this as a way of attempting to honor them despite having committed genocide and then forcibly removing and institutionalizing those that survived to attempt to “reform them” into a more acceptable American version by erasing their culture, traditions, and values. We shouldn’t continue to allow big industries that have a stranglehold on the agriculture industry, this is allowing the imperialistic agenda to continue.  

The article touches on the imperialistic ideology that is enshrined in our current form of food security when referencing the Western concepts of justice as a pillar of food sovereignty. Because of our history of colonization and the Western bubble most of us live in, even our view of the interconnectedness between our food resources and the humans consuming it is skewed. The article mentions that we have a particular emphasis on “distinctness” rather than connection. Part of the holistic approach to food sovereignty is that it’s rooted to minimize future issues with access to food. Thus, food security is inherently part of the framework of food sovereignty.  

Food sovereignty also considers the essential environmental factors that are part of all food systems. Settler Europeans in the U.S. predominantly used methods in agriculture that exploited natural resources. Most of the focus was on cash crops produced to exert profits. Noll and Murdock continue to point out that there are competing conceptions of justice that need to be taken into account. These can be more easily considered from the standpoint of food sovereignty; food security alone does not address these issues.