Municipal Governments - Thoughts

  When talking about food justice, we often picture non-profits distributing boxes of food or community gardens. However, Megan Horst challenges readers to look past this idea. Should municipal governments actually want to achieve food justice, they should stop treating food as a health initiative or a hobby and begin treating it as a battlefield for civil rights. 

    The central argument in the article is that many cities in the United States often default to what is easy to obtain rather than what is just. Urban food projects often benefit the propertied class either accidentally or intentionally. This occurs when a high-end grocery store is subsidized in a food desert which prices out many minority residents that the project was supposed to help. Without a radical orientation, municipal planning ends up being just another tool for displacement. 

The article highlights the five contours of food justice. In order for a city to have reached an appropriate level they must address inequity/trauma, exchange, land, labor, and democratic process. Hort’s analysis demonstrated that many cities are getting good at demonstrating equity but often fail when they get to the land and labor parts. It is easy for a council to pass an action plan but much more difficult to pass laws that will take valuable real estate off of the private market or protect farmworker’s rights. This causes the municipal government to become stuck. They are often operating within a capitalist framework that prioritizes economic growth over human dignity. We are given tons of alternatives, such as farmers markets that are just the status quo dressed up. 

A lot of food plans are just fancy gardening clubs without the land reparations of minimum wage conversations. The municipal governments need to pull it together and begin planning a food system that doesn’t just focus on profit but serves the people.