2/23 food sovereignty

 In Whose Justice Is It Anyway? Noll and Murdock discuss who food justice movements are really serving. They argue that even though these movements are supposed to fight inequality they often unintentionally reinforce it through white perspectives. This connects to the idea of food sovereignty, which is the belief that communities should have the power to control their own food systems, including how food is produced, distributed, and accessed, often produced in a way they agree with and choose to support. A lot of the solutions focus on things like teaching people how to garden or encouraging healthier eating which can be helpful, but that can ignore the large scale racism that creates food inequality in the first place. It shifts the focus to individual responsibility instead of looking at structural issues like racism, land access, and wealth inequality, which goes against food sovereignty. One idea that stood out to me was that justice is not the same for everyone. What feels like justice to one group might not to another. Food sovereignty shifts the focus to communities having decision making power over the systems that affect them. Instead of outside organizations deciding what solutions should look like, justice would involve listening to what communities actually want and need. For example, adding a farmers market to a neighborhood does not fix food injustice if people cannot afford the food or if it does not align with their cultural preferences. I had not really thought about how food justice efforts themselves could reinstate privilege and injustice. It made me think about how even good intentions can reinforce inequality and that is why it is important to listen to the communities you are trying to help first instead of assuming what they need and what justice looks like to them. By addressing systemic racism at the local and government level first we can better assess and support communities experiencing food injustice while also moving closer to true food sovereignty.