Response to “Environmental Food Justice: Towards Local, Slow and Deep Food Systems”

After reading “Environmental Food Justice: Towards Local, Slow and Deep Food Systems”, by Teresa Mares and Devon Pena, I found myself noticing all the little things that I do in my daily life that, for me, means trying to be more conscious of our food system but in reality is me being limited by my knowledge of how the food system actually works. For example, at the grocery stores, my parents taught my siblings and me how to look for what food was in season and came from somewhere near where we lived and I took that as my family doing our part to support local foods and the food system in general. Upon reading this article, I realized that eating foods that were in season was not something that is a new process as this is something that people have been doing for centuries.

The authors introduce the term “alterNative” as a way to describe how some privileged people often overlook the fact that the ways of helping the food system grow is the same way that native people have been living for years without the intent of helping the food system. (201) The trend of eating locally or planting local (or native) plants are alterNative as people have been doing these things for years as that is the way that they live. If I was really interested in the local food system, I would know not only where my food is coming from but also the history of the land that my food is coming from. This is the “deep” aspect that the title refers to. It took me a while to figure this out, but the knowledge of the place where our food is grown is essential- the more aspects that we know about the land and the knowledge from people who have inhabited the land and have been able to successfully farm there, the more we can actually do to create a stronger, better food system.

I agree with the author that food should be a right for everyone and the Puget Sound urban farmers opened my eyes to how food could, feasibly, be a right instead of a commodity. By appropriating space to the people who want to actually grow food, a new food system is being built. In this project, Octavio’s story stuck with me (found on page 213). The white people who were giving the classes to the minority groups living in the area probably seemed like a good idea in order to make sure that their project took off, however Octavio’s response to the “lessons” struck me. Growing up as a farmer in Mexico, he was probably the most qualified person to teach how to grow corn. By not thinking of the people who would be involved in the project or the knowledge that they could bring to the table, the white organizers left out a major part of the food system. It is something to be learned from though. If I were to try to implement a project similar to this, getting to know the land and the people and the collective knowledge of everyone involved is the best way to have a deep and slow and local food system.

This article really opened my eyes to how much other people can contribute to the food system. Often times I can really be limited to the information that I know or other people from academia know (such as the knowledge gleaned from peer reviewed articles- the preferred sources of most of my classes) and just work off of that when more information can be obtained from local knowledge. This article reminded me that there are other viewpoints to incorporate and learn from.

Works Cited:

Mares, Teresa M. & Devon G. Peña. “Environmental and Food Justice: Toward Local, Slow and Deep Food Systems”. Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class and Sustainability.