s you know, we've been gone for a rial skills and strategic thinking were while. We offer our sincere central to developing each issue. To A apologies to our subscribers for honor her, we renew our commitment to not writing sooner to explain the lapse in WE's vision, and work to make the jour- publication. We now have two issues in nal even more effective in the struggle route to you, this one on Food Security for environmental justice. To do this, we and another at the printers on Brown- ask for your support, and hope that you fields, Urban Land and Justice. With this, consider subscribing at any rate - we make a commitment to fulfill every- $5/year for low incornelfixed income; one's subscription and RPE's mission to $15/regular subscription; and $40 insti- serve the movement for environmental tutions and organizations. We send WE justice. free of charge to any grassroots group We hope that soon we will be able to that requests it. Subscriptions and con- reinstate our quarterly publishing sched- tributions will ensure that we continue ule. Several things have had an impact sending WE to everyone who requests a on RPE's publication - shortages of staff, COPY. funding, and resources. These shortages Our journal will continue bringing have also meant an almost snail's pace in the voices and dreams of our communi- delivering each WE to your mailbox. In ties who struggle for environmental jus- spite of these limitations, we have put tice for all. together some breakthrough issues, and contributed to the growing perspectives Sincerely, on environmental justice. We hope that you will not lose faith in RPE. Additionally, in 1998 we suffered a deep loss - the death of Hannah Creighton, Managing Editor. Her edito- Girl selects tomatoes at the Carrboro Farmers market in North Carolina. Food 6 Environmental Justice 1 IS LSSUE by Michael Ableman ood is something many of us take food security, self sufficiency, and an issue with current information. As for granted. Supermarkets are open agrarian society the basis of a sound expressed earlier, the publishers of this F24 hours a day, 365 days a year, democracy. As we scurry about in a mad magazine were delayed due to staff and stocked with foods shipped in from all race for more, we forget that the most funding limitations. We hope you will over the world, providing us with the basic components of a good life, pure recognize, as we have, that the concerns illusion of health and abundance. We do food and water, are the birthright of relating to food and social justice are as not often stop to consider where that every individual. critical today as they were when we first food came from, whose hands harvested In this issue of Race, Poverty, & the began this project. it, how it was grown, and whether it is Environment we learn how black farmers safe, equally available to all, and pro- in the South are being squeezed from Michael Ableman has farmed 12 acres of land duced in a manner that does not degrade their land, how farm workers are poi- near Santa Barbara, California for the last 20 years. He is the founderldirector of the Center and destroy resources and communities. soned and underpaid for their work, and for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens, a As an organic farmer for twenty years, how low income people are distanced non-profit community1education center and I have been painfully aware that the from safe, nutritious, and culturally national model for urban agriculture. Able- majority of the high quality food that I appropriate food. Mk find out the results man is the author of From the Good Earth produce is only available to a narrow of corporate control of our food system, (Abrarns 1993) and On Good Land: The Auto- biography of an Urban Farm (Chronicle Books segment of the society: those who can about the threat to the future of the 1998). afford it. Our survival as a small farm is world's food supply through the loss of staked on being paid enough to grow our genetic diversity, and about the "green food responsibly. In contrast, most revolution" with its high tech, Franken- Americans have been under the spell of stein approach to food production. an unwritten "cheap" food policy. We pay There is a pervasive paralysis associ- less for food than any country in the ated with social and environmental world. But the costs of that system are reportage - the result of too much focus enormous. When we buy "cheap" food on the problem and too little attention to we pay for it many times after we leave the solutions -so we have offered you a the checkout counter; in our taxes to the section called "Grassroots Models for tune of 46 million dollars per day in sub- Change," examples that can give us all sidies to large scale industrial farms, in some sense that, even under the most our personal health, through the degra- challenging odds, low income communi- dation of soil and water, and by harm to ties can gather together and create posi- those whose hands are producing that tive change. food. It is my hope that through these We pay for it as a society in other diverse perspectives we will discover that ways as well. For many poor people a healthy society cannot be separated "cheap" food is not cheap enough. The from a healthy food system, and that a economic system that has artificially held healthy food system must not only sus- down the price of food has also held tain human, natural, and biological sys- down low income communities. While a tems, but must also be equally available renaissance of interest in high quality to all. fresh food, free of poisons, is taking place I extend my special thanks to Andy in America, not everyone is able to take Fisher, Dona Haber and Enrique Gal- part. Low income urban neighborhoods lardo for their work and support in mak- have fewer places to shop and the quality ing this issue happen. of food available to them is poor. Most of the articles for this issue of This country was founded in part on Race, Poverty and the Environment were the principle that every family should compiled in 1997 and 1998. We have have their own agricultural holding, with done our best to update the original 2 Race Povertv and the Environment Winter 2000 Land ownership and the control of water resources is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. Many low income people and peo- ple of color have been eco- nomically forced off the land. The industrialization of agriculture and the narrow- ing of its control not only challenge our ecological and social well-being but put into question one of the founding principles of this country: that a healthy democracy is dependent on a healthy agriculture. The following articles by E.G. Vallianatos, Jerry Pennick, and Santos Gomez offer insight into these core Issues. RECONNECTING The Need for Agrarian Reform by E.G. Vallianatos I uring my travels in Colombia, I power for the control of the world by the I learned that the peasant and the white corporate elite of North America Dland are inseparable. In fact the and Europe. Dispossessing the peasant is I peasant is the most efficient and produc- a policy of that system. tive farmer on Earth. It is the greed and In the United States and other indus- I outright violence of the land-owning oli- trial countries, the peasants have been garchy that undermines the ability of the replaced by farmers and agribusiness peasants to end hunger throughout the managers who use synthetic fertilizers, world. To the degree, therefore, that pesticides, machines, and factory tech- North American and European develop- nologies for the production, processing, ment assistance strengthens the ruling and marketing of food. In other words, landed class of the Third World at the industrial societies destroyed their peas- expense of the peasant majority and ants and in their place they put farmers, nature, violence and hunger will con- ranchers, and agribusiness men. These tinue to dominate the political economy new agriculturalists are, above all, the of huge swaths of planet Earth: it is antithesis of traditional peasants: their agribusiness for the white, affluent class consciousness and allegiance are North, but "green revolution" for the with predatory capitalism. They strive non-white,poor South. Yet whatever the continuously to expand their land and name, industrial agriculture is the most other resources. They focus their techni- aggressive and colonizing impulse of cal expertise in the production of one Western culture. It is a global system of crop at a time. They clearly reject the I I I Food b Environmental Justice I Land 6 Water 3 I notion that farming is or could be any- agribusiness giants. My reaction to this larger than 160 acres. And tax the very thing more than business. Their model massive American self-inflicted wound rich - the 0.5 percent of the wealthiest of work is the factory. has always been the same: industrial American families - to pay for at least a In the United States these industrial- agriculture is a child of the Cold War in 20-year effort of recreating a vibrant ized farmers have made rural America the United States. It is the food system of rural America for both sustainable agri- into an immense agro-factory ghetto - an empire, the strategic asset of a state culture and human development that is with all the ecological and social charac- with global hegemonic policies, the sci- pro-family farmer, pro-indigenous peo- teristics of a culture falling apart: land ence linchpin of a vast corporate devel- ple, pro-black, pro-woman, pro-environ- and water are contaminated with the opment bureaucracy out to convert the ment, pro-poor.