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Exploding Myths and Inspiring Change for 40 Years

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Exploding Myths and Inspiring Change for 40 Years INSTITUTE FOR FOOD AND DEVELOPMENT POLICY SPRING 2015 VOLUME 21 • NUMBER 1 Grade school class after a lesson from the Food First social studies curriculum, 1988 Food First: Exploding Myths and Inspiring Change for 40 Years or four decades, Food First has been generating progressive analyses of development issues at home and abroad, and amplifying the voices of local and global movements for peace, social justice, human F rights, and the right to food. When we look back, we are amazed at the breadth of topics Food First has taken on over the years, speaking to the timeliest challenges facing humanity while always highlighting the struggles of ordinary people. We are humbled by this remarkable history because it reminds us that we stand on the shoulders of visionary analysts and activists like Frances (“Frankie”) Moore Lappé, Joseph Collins, Walden Bello, Peter Rosset, Medea Benjamin, Anuradha Mittal, Christine Ahn, Raj Patel, and countless others—who pushed the envelope and gave us new ways of seeing the world. As part of Food First and beyond, they exploded the myths that, as Raj says, “do a lot of thinking for us.” Food First’s goal, then as now, is to give people the tools to take back the power—to think for themselves; to understand how our food (and economic) system works; and to engage in deeply informed activism. Published in 1977, Food First: Beyond the myth of scarcity is Food First’s hallmark (and namesake) publication. Frankie and Joe’s pioneering book argued that the root causes of hunger were not to be found in underproductive agriculture, the whims of nature, or insufficient food aid, but rather in an unjust distribution of wealth, resources, and political power. The implications of this analysis are far-reaching: only through a radical reorganization of society will we achieve genuine solutions to poverty and hunger. The 1970s and 80s saw a number of struggles around the world fighting for precisely this kind of radical change including revolutionary movements in Central America. Through its solidarity activism and publications, Food First provided a window onto these globalization, including Chile’s Free teaching courses, leading delegations, movements and the US-supported Market Miracle by Joe Collins, A Siamese and facilitating workshops. In recent campaigns to crush them. Foreign aid, Tragedy by Walden Bello, and Shafted: years, we have witnessed and celebrated Food First pointed out, often worsened Free trade and America’s working poor by the unprecedented advance of people hunger and dependency, fanning Christine Ahn. From the wreckage of power around the world. In the US, the flames of conflict rather than neoliberal globalization, which pushed Occupy Wall Street, the climate justice promoting peace and development. people—especially communities of movement, food and farm worker And in the 1980s and 90s, when the aid color, women, peasants, and indigenous organizing, and anti-racism protests agenda turned into a “free trade” agenda people—to the edge of survival, new have contributed to a richer definition with the creation of the World Trade movements emerged such as the of “food justice” and broader alliances Organization (WTO) and the North Zapatistas in southern Mexico; the for transformation. Informed by global American Free Trade Agreement international peasant movement La peasant movements, the UN now touts (NAFTA), Food First continued to Vía Campesina with its cry for “food agroecology and peasants’ rights as the inform the public about the devastating sovereignty”; Brazil’s Landless Workers way forward. consequences for countries of the Movement (MST); and the US Global South as well as for workers and community food security movement. As we look around us in 2015, we are farmers in the United States. energized, inspired, and eager to face Food First participated in many of these the future arm-in-arm with the vast In numerous publications, Food First movements—organizing, protesting, family of supporters, allies, and friends outlined the disaster of neoliberal debating, giving congressional testimony, who have shaped 40 years of Food First. FOOD FIRST TIMELINE: BOOKS, ACHIEVEMENTS & WORLD EVENTS 1971 1984 Food First co-founder Frances (“Frankie”) Food First publishes an integrated social Moore Lappé publishes Diet for a Small studies curriculum designed to help sixth Planet, which has now sold over three grade students understand their food’s million copies. journey from the farm to the dinner table, and the causes of hunger at home and 2 1975 abroad. Food First founds the Television Joseph Collins and Frances Moore Lappé Organizing Project, which splits off in 1986 meet at the first World Food Conference as Neighbor-to-Neighbor, to put political in Rome and found the Institute for Food pressure on Congress to stop US military and Development Policy, aka Food First. aid to right-wing forces in Central America. 1977 1986 Medea Benjamin accepts the Bay Area Book Award for Food First publishes Food First: Beyond the Food First co-founders publish World Don’t Be Afraid Gringo, 1987. Photo by Elliott Smith myth of scarcity by Frances Moore Lappé Hunger: 12 Myths, which examines the 1988 and Joseph Collins and Needless Hunger: policies that have kept hungry people from Food First publishes A Fate Worse than Voices from a Bangladeshi village by James feeding themselves around the world. World Debt by Susan George, which analyzes Boyce and Betsy Hartmann. Hunger is now in its third and revised edition the World Bank and IMF’s structural (forthcoming 2015). Food First publishes adjustment programs in the Third World. 1979 Alternatives to the Peace Corps. Now in its Food First staffers Kevin Danaher and The Sandinistas overthrow the Somoza 12th edition, it was the first guide to offer Medea Benjamin start the human rights dictatorship in Nicaragua and establish options for volunteer service focused on organization Global Exchange. a revolutionary government, which lasts social change. until 1990 in spite of a US-funded and 1989 trained militia known as the Contras. 1987 The Soviet Union falls. Cuba loses Frances Moore Lappé accepts the Right access to petroleum inputs, leading to 1981 Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) its widespread adoption of sustainable Food First publishes the book Circle of on behalf of Food First “for revealing the agriculture. Food First publishes Kerala: Poison by David Weir and Mark Schapiro, political and economic causes of world Radical reform as development in an Indian which leads to the formation of Pesticide hunger and how citizens can help to remedy state by Richard Franke and Barbara Action Network, an international coalition them.” Chasin. concerned with pesticide poisoning. Food First publishes Don’t Be Afraid Gringo 1990 1982 by Elvia Alvarado, translated and edited by Frances Moore Lappé founds the Food First publishes Nicaragua: What Medea Benjamin which tells the story of Center for Living Democracy. Among its difference could a revolution make? by peasant struggles and US intervention in publications is the 1997 report Bridging Joseph Collins with Frances Moore Lappé Honduras. The book wins the Bay Area Book the Racial Divide describing how citizens and Nick Allen. Publishers best biography of the year award. Collins and John Lear, which examines the Institute and Small Planet Fund, channeling gap between free market rhetoric and resources to social movements worldwide. socioeconomic realities in Pinochet’s Chile. Former Food First staffer Medea Benjamin founds Code Pink: Women for Peace, a 1996 grassroots organization working to end La Vía Campesina launches the concept US-funded wars and occupations. of “food sovereignty” at the World Food Summit: “the right of all peoples to healthy 2003 and culturally appropriate food produced Activists shut down the WTO in Cancún. through sustainable methods and their right Food First works with indigenous and to define their own food and agriculture peasant activist groups protesting the systems.” inclusion of agriculture within WTO trade rules and, as a UN NGO on the inside, Walden Bello, TV interview with Edward Klamm, 1990 1997 influences India to withdraw. Talks collapse. Food First publishes Benedita da Silva: An across the country are sponsoring Afro-Brazilian woman’s story of politics and 2004 interracial dialogues. love, which tells the story of the first Black Food First publishes Genetic Engineering in woman from a favela to become a congress- Agriculture: The myths, environmental risks, 1992 woman and senator in Brazil. Starting in and alternatives by Miguel Altieri. Food First publishes Dragons in Distress Thailand, a devastating financial crisis strikes by Food First Executive Director Walden East Asia. 2006 Bello and Stephanie Rosenfeld, which Food First publishes Campesino a challenges prevailing wisdom on Asia’s 1999 Campesino: Voices from Latin America’s “miracle economies.” Global Exchange Executive Director Peter Rosset and board farmer to farmer movement for sustainable and Food First co-organize the first US vice-president Miguel Altieri are invited agriculture by Eric Holt-Giménez and delegation to Cuba focused on sustainable to the Vatican to provide a consultation Promised Land: Competing visions of agriculture. on hunger in the 21st century. Food First agrarian reform edited by Peter Rosset, Raj publishes three books: America Needs Patel, and Michael Courville, produced in 1993 Human Rights, which argues that human partnership with organizations in Thailand, The international peasant movement rights are routinely violated in the US; Brazil, and South Africa. The Bill and La Vía Campesina is founded in Mons, A Siamese Tragedy: Development and Melinda Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Belgium, which now includes over 150 degradation in modern Thailand, which looks Foundation come together to form the member organizations in 70 countries at the role of foreign investment in causing Alliance for a New Green Revolution in 3 representing 300 million farmers. that country’s economic collapse; and Basta! Africa (AGRA).
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