Response to “Environmental and Food Justice: Toward Local, Slow, and Deep Food Systems” (Mares and Pena)

Environmental and Food Justice: Reading Response

The article Environmental and Food Justice by Teresa Mares and Devon Pena unpacks why alternative food movements, like veganism or eating locally, are only accessible to white privileged people, disregard indigenous struggles and lead to further social injustices. One of the main take away points from this article is the privilege that comes along with food. A central point in this article is the connection between eating what is available to you and that what is available to you depends on who you are. Mares and Pena question the vegan/locavore mind set of sourcing the majority of ones food locally and omitting animal products from ones diet by asking these three main questions: 1. “Is it deep enough merely to consider our carbon footprint?” 2. “should we also not consider how a call to eat locally invokes spaces that have been settled, colonized, ruptured and remade?” 3. “Is it not necessary to stand in solidarity with those communities that are disallowed to from celebrating their local food because of forced displacement?” These three questions outline Mares and Pena’s perspective on food systems and how we rationalize our food choices..

Two important concepts to Mares and Pena’s understanding of food systems are food sovereignty, “the deeper social and cultural meanings indigenous and diasporic communities assign to food,” and the autotopographies, “the grounding of self and communal identities through place making.” Mares and Pena apply the connection between these concepts to the South Central Farmers in Los Angeles, who started a garden in an industrial area of the city which supplies many diasporic communities not only with food but food sovereignty: access to culturally significant foods, practices and histories. This was critical to the empowerment and autonomy of the displaced peoples in that area.

Since reading this article, I have been thinking of how there are two majorly important aspects to a food system: socially just and environmentally sound. What ever food systems we subscribe to they must not destroy the environment and must account for everyone who is a part of it. And I think Mares and Pena would agree with this. Of course, this is easier said than done. How can we have a food system that allows indigenous peoples access to their food sovereignty, allows diasporic communities who have been forcefully displaced by trade agreements like NAFTA their food sovereignty, and maintains healthy ecosystems? I think Mares and Pena are correct in their idea in framing any solution “not…in opposition to, but rather autonomously from the mainstream alternative foods movement.” When we realize that the reasons our food systems currently are so oppressive and unsustainable are not because white people are inherently evil but because the alternative food movements mimic the mainstream food system in that their leadership come from those who benefit from the intergenerational traumas that have lead to the imbalance of today’s reality.

This is another key point Mares and Pena briefly touch on: the concept of experts and science, which invalidate most traditional knowledge and creates another nonmutual, nonsymbiotic dependency between underprivileged communities and over privileged communities. It is a consistent theme for the North to assume leadership and try to “help” the South–which really means causing most of the problems the South must deal with. This is the main problem. It is time to let go of the racist/classist standards held for leadership and expert knowledge, and look to those who are suffering from the inequalities for solutions rather than making up unfounded ones.