Environmental for Food Justice

Food sovereignty and biodiversity. Credit: Sourcewatch Moderator’s Note: As part of our occasional series on food autonomy, we are reposting this essay by alter-globalization activist, organizer, and author, Esther Vivas. Ms. Vivas argues in this piece that without women the world would go hungry. This operates at several levels including the unpaid and largely invisible work of reproduction, which is to say reproduction of tradition, customs, and all the other qualities that make for a whole way of life or ‘culture’.  Vivas critically unpacks at the impact of neoliberal policies on women and their productive and reproductive labor. One especially significant issue is access to land since women are traditionally the smallholder subsistence farmers of their regions. The smallholders are often the first targets undermined by neoliberal policies designed to promote modernized industrialized agriculture for the production of cash crops for export. As the transition happens nations find...

Familias Unidas por la Justicia committee and members after voting to authorize boycott of Sakuma Bros. Farms! Moderator’s Note: As part of our continuing series dedicated to the revolt of food system workers, I am posting an important analysis and set of critical reflections prepared by Tomas Madrigal, a graduate student at the University of California-Santa Barbara and workers' rights activist collaborating with Rosalinda Guillen of Community to Community and the the Mixtec/Triqui organization known as Familias Unidas por la Justicia (United Families for Justice).   This report focuses on how indigenous peoples themselves define autonomy and what this means for an understanding of the current struggle of the berry pickers in Burlington, Washington. We make the road by walking INDIGENOUS FARM WORKERS EMBODY THE ETHICS OF AUTONOMY Tomás Madrigal | Seattle, WA | October 3, 2013 A los compañeros del CNI y La Otra: Unir y no dividirnos. ¡Hoy es el tiempo de luchar! ¡No estan solos! ...