CITIES AND URBAN LIFE

GGR124 | Week 10 | 2018

TODAY’S CLASS
remaking urban nature
• Food and the City – Food systems, food deserts, food workers, food
justice & food sovereignty
• The Black Panthers Food Program
• Foodshare Toronto
• Black Creek Farm
TODAY’S QUESTIONS
Why has food become such a key sector for remaking urban futures?
How might the transformation of urban food systems address challenges of
environmental sustainability?
How are food systems also matters of social and economic equity?
Can alternative food systems – the transformation of the food chain – help
build socially just and environmentally sustainable urban futures?
“Contemporary food production, like much of our economy, is dominated by
large corporations, and these corporations produce edibles through an
industrial process. The food chain is incorporated in the world capitalist
system, where crops are grown in the global or domestic south, often in elds
of monoculture crops, using bioengineered seeds and subjected to harsh
pesticides; then the products are packaged and shipped to the end consumer.6
What we see on the supermarket shelves or serve to eat is a food product,
alienated from the natural and social world.” - The Colour of Food, 2011
FOOD SYSTEM / FOOD CHAIN
The food system is a complex set of activities and relationships including
production, processing, distribution, marketing, retail, consumption and
waste. Most of the food we eat comes from a highly sophisticated
industrialized system. - City of Toronto, 2015
“The food chain provides employment for millions of workers in other
sectors, some unseen to the eye of the consumer, such as processing and
distribution. A movement based on a holistic understanding of food justice
needs to encompass the chain of food production that connects seeds to
mouths. The food chain includes the workers that help to plant the seeds,
harvest the crops, package the food, deliver the product and serve the
meal to consumers. The future of good food must not ignore these
workers and their livelihoods. Food justice must involve increasing their
wages and improving their working conditions, so that they too can enjoy
healthy and sustainable lives.”
- The Colour of Food, 2011
FOOD WORKERS
• Work in the food system is
highly precarious, with low
wages and and few employment
protections.
• Work in the food system has
higher rates of toxic chemical
injuries than any other sector
of the U.S. economy - an
estimated 300,000
farmworkers suffering from
pesticide poisoning annually
(Colour of Food, 2011).
• Farmworkers often lack the
right to organize without
retaliation, because they are
often excluded from labor law
protection.
FOOD DESERT
Neighbourhoods where residents have little or no access to stores and
restaurants that provide healthy and affordable foods.
- Cummins & Macintyre, 2002
• Food deserts are most prevalent in lower income areas of the
city, impacting neighbourhoods in the inner suburbs in particular.
• Food deserts are compounded by poor connectivity and limited
mobility in these areas.
FOOD SOVEREIGNTY
“The idea behind food sovereignty is to give people control of the food system so that
they can make choices about how food is produced, distributed, cooked and eaten.
Fundamental to this movement… is to build communities.” - Colour of food, 2011
http://www.pbs.org
/video/independent
-lens-free-
breakfast-program/
• When the United States government
began a program serving breakfasts
in school for children in low-income
neighbourhoods in 1966- the Black
Panther Party was already organizing
its own Free Breakfast for Children
Program.

• The Panthers' free breakfast

program was a response to the
failures of US welfare state policy
and the war on poverty, which was
failing to provide for Black
communities in need.

• The Panthers’ also saw food as a key

to community empowerment.
• By 1969, the Panthers’ program had
spread to 23 cities. That year, they
distributed free breakfast to 20,000 kids

• The Panthers' free breakfast program

was part of a strategy of building
community service programs or "survival
programs", meant to develop community
infrastructure to help individuals meet
their needs. The Panthers developed
over 60 such community programs.

• Other ‘survival programs’ included: Free

Ambulance, Free Breakfast for Children, Free
Busing to Prisons, Free Clothing, Free
Commissary for Prisoners, Free Dental, Free
Employment, Free Food, Sickle Cell Anemia
Research, Police Patrols, Seniors Against a
Fearful Environment, Free film series, Free
GED, Legal Aid, Martial Arts, Teen council…
J.Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI (1935-1972)
FOOD JUSTICE
We work to address the structural inequalities that have become embedded in our
industrialized food system:
• the systemic exploitation of food system workers (especially undocumented farm and
kitchen workers)
• the lack of access to fresh, nutritious food in low-income communities of color
• our culture's over-reliance on packaged, processed food that is killing our bodies and
our environment
We are transforming the food system one garden at a time. In the last 6 years, our team
of formerly incarcerated landscapers has built over 400 edible gardens throughout the
East Bay, empowering hundreds of people to grow their own food. Now, we're cultivating
urban farms and training centers that will dramatically increase the scope and scale of
this work.
ECONOMIC JUSTICE
By building a local, sustainable food system, we can create thousands of green jobs. We
provide living wages ($17.50/hr starting wage) and comprehensive health insurance to all
our employees because our communities have been starved for good jobs for far too
long. By investing in food workers, we can reinvigorate our local economy, increasing
access to fresh produce AND meaningful employment.
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
We believe that communities should challenge the structural inequalities where they live,
work, and play that negatively impact their health and well-being while seeking to have
equal access to environmental goods including: green space, public transportation, and
nutritious/affordable food.

SOCIAL JUSTICE
We believe that everybody deserves to be treated with respect and have equal access to
food, jobs, and education.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jul/11/detroit-
urban-renewal-city-farms-paul-harris