Food Justice doesn't Just mean Food

I don't know how you all reacted to the "Big" news, but in my eyes, it holds incredible promise for our college campus in many realms. Here's an index article to jog your memory about campus reactions to the news.

But how does Social Justice pertain to food? Especially here? Here is a concise definition of Food Justice to spark our conversation. It really is true that food affects everyone. Not only that, but because eating includes taking part in a larger system (as Pollan has shown us) the way we eat and use our purchasing power has enormous impact on the broader community.

Large corporation food spending seems contradictory to Food Justice, because much of large corporation spending is synonymous with cutting ethical corners in order to increase profit. But thinking about the purchasing power of these corporations, they have incredible potential to influence the broader system by redirecting their spending. For example, Bon Apetit management company issued a CIW agreement that used their purchasing power to demand better working conditions for farm labor. But Farm Worker rights deal with only one aspect of Food Justice.

There are ZERO grocery stores in the 49006 zip code (our zipcode, which includes the Northside neighborhood) and only one grocery store in zipcode 49007 (The Park st. Market). What does this mean for families making minimum wage and working maximal hours every week? It means shopping at convenience stores because of lack of time and energy to take the bus all the way to a real grocery store. Imagine if we didn't have the caf... we have Munchie Mart, but getting to Meijer on the bus takes like 1.5 hours round trip not including shopping time. If we can imagine shopping at Munchie Mart for 3 meals a day, it may help us to understand one reason for health decline in low income neighborhoods. Families who do not have health insurance are often the ones who have no access to food, making their lifetime even more expensive because of the long term affects of what they have access to. The Fair Food Network is an organization dedicated to addressing these issues.

Buying "Local" and "organic" foods is often seen as elitist or expensive. But do these words hold the broader implications of Food Justice in practice? Just, Local and Sustainable food all work towards a common goal: to boost the local economy in order to create a more cohesive system for all, and to support farms that don't exploit farmworkers.

Does our Social Justice work on campus have a space to rally around these issues? Could we do it through out dining service provider?

Sorry that was long... don't worry if you can't look at it all, we can go over it in discussion :)