Community food security and environmental justice: Searching for a common discourse

Community Food Security and Environmental Justice: Searching for a Common Discourse

Robert GottIieb andAndrew Fisher

Robert Gottlieb is the coordinator of the Environmental Analysis and Policy Area of the Department of Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of several books on environmental and resource policy, including Forcing The Spring: The Transformation of The American Environmental Movement (Island Press: Washington, DC, 1993).

Andrew Fisher is the coordinator of the national Community Food Security Coalition, the organization that initiated the Community Food Security Empowerment Act. He is a coauthor Of Seeds Of Change: Strategies For Food Security For The Inner City (UCLA Department of Urban Planning, 1993), a policy consultant for the Southern California Interfaith Hunger Coalition, and a member of the steering committee of the California Sustainable Agriculture Working Group.

ABSTRACT Community food security and environmental justice are parallel social movements interested in equity and justice and system-wide factors. They share a concern for issues of daily life and the need to establish community empowerment strategies. Both movements have also begun to reshape the discourse of sustainable agriculture, environmentalism and social welfare advocacy. However, community food security and environmental justice remain separate movements, indicating an incomplete process in reshaping agendas and discourse. Joining these movements through a common language of empowerment and systems analysis would strongly enhance the development of a more powerful, integrated approach. That opportunity can be located in the efforts to incorporate community food security and environmental justice approaches in current Farm Bill legislation; in particular, provisions addressing community food production, direct marketing, community development, and community food planning.

In the last decade, two important social movements have emerged to help recast the discourse around food and environmental issues. These movements, operating inde- pendently of each other, have sought to accomplish this shiftbyincorporating considerations ofeqnity and justice, by establishing linkages between disparate constituencies, and by identifying crucial, system-wide factors as part of their approach.

These movements m for community food security and for environmental justice - - share a concern with issues of daily life. They see the need to establish new forms of community empowerment. Both movements also seek to broaden the agendas of the various move- merits they mostly closely correspond to, and, at times, challenge (e.g., sustainable agriculture, anti-hunger, mainstream environmentalism). In the short period of time they have become prominent, community food security and environmental justice have already and significantly influenced the nature (who participates) and terms (what issues) of that discussion about the future direction of sustainable agriculture, environmentalism, and social welfare advocacy.

Yet community food security and environmental justice continue to remain separate movements, despite parallel goals, a potential common language, and inter- secting agendas. This separation is particularly significant in the wake of the 104th Congress, with its height- ened political and policy tensions and the sharp attacks on environmental, sustainable agriculture, and anti-hunger programs. Without the ability to overcome such separa- tions, the shift in discourse that has begun with such promise is likely to remain incomplete, the search for empowerment strategies and broadened agendas not fully accomplished. On the other hand, the ability to join community food security and environmental justice, through a common language of empowerment and a systems analysis, offers enormous opportunities for furthering the development of a more powerful, integrated approach.

Community Food Security: Definitions and Policy Implications

Community food security, similar to its conceptual counterpart "sustainability," has multiple reference

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points. The concept of food security has been most directly linked to international development literature, and, in a policy context, most often associated with anti-hunger and social welfare advocacy. However, community food security, as a conceptual framework for action, differs from hunger intervention in certain crucial ways. For one, food security represents a community need, rather than an individual's condition, as associated with hunger. A def'mition of food security in this context refers to the ability of "all persons obtaining, at all times, a culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through local, non-emergency sources." In contrast to hunger policies (which seek to identify and address the problems associated with individuals who do not have enough to eat as measured over time), food security casts a wider net. It does so by enlarging the def'mition of what constitutes insecurity and in proposing potential strategies for intervention, many of which are likely to be prevention-oriented. (Ashman et al., 1993)

Food security analysis evaluates the existence of resources, both community andporsonal (the "basket of strategies" for sustainable livelihood) (Chambers, 1988), to provide an individual with adequate, acceptable food. Thus, in terms of both definition and policy implications, food security can take into account such factors as income, transportation, storage and cooking facilities, food prices, nutritious and culturally acceptable food choices, food safety and other environmental hazards, questions of ownership, production and processing methods, and the existence of and access to adequate, local, non-emergency food sources (Cohen and Burt, 1989; Ashman et al., 1993). This analysis of food security (and its absence) can be defined as the need "to establish command over an adequate amount of food and other necessities," the equivalent of the need to secure "entitlements" of people and communities (Sen, 1993; Dreze and Sen, 1989). Food security, particularly in the context of surplus food production but inadequate access and availability and affordability, becomes both an individual's right and a focus for community action.

Community food security analysis, however, can also extend beyond such basic questions as adequacy of personal resources into an examination of the food system itself. Questions of equity and susm_inability are vital to the development of food security and have increasingly been linked to food system analysis. As B arraclough argues, a food system based on the concept of security should have "sustalnability such that the ecological system is protected and improved over time, [with] maximum autonomy and self-determination, and equity, meaning, at a minimum, dependable access for all social groups." (Barraclough, 1991) An understanding of food security based on food system analysis refers directly to issues of production, distribution and transportation, and cultural heteroge- neity and homogeneity. It becomes significantly influ-

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enced by what Friedmann has characterized as the structural variables of distance and durability in the global food system, in contrast to the alternative variables of locality and seasonality, which can directly enhance community food security (Friedmann, 1993; Friedmann, 1994). In distinguishing between a global and regional food system, food security can also be seen as having powerful environmental implications.

Thus, on the one hand, community food security can be distinguished from an environmental approach with its focus on the adequacy of food for specific constituencies, a focus that has been the domain of traditional social welfare advocacy. However, community food security, as a strategy for community empowerment and with its regional food systems approach, resonates with environmental considerations, including various land use, transportation, production, and public health concerns.

Environmental Justice: Historical Roots and Policy Implications

Enviromnentaljustice is most frequently associated with community-hased, anti-toxics movements thathave chal- lenged the unequal geographic distribution of risks that have impacted such communities directly. (Bullard; Heiman) Yet, environmental justice can also be seen as having crucial roots in earlier movements addressing the environmental conditions of urban and industrial life, referring to what Jane Add ores called "the certain minimum requirements of well-being" in the industrial city (Davis, 1984). Several of those earlier movements and advocates also sought to address questions of food growing, distribution, access, and preparation.

As one important example, the regional planning movement of the 1920s, which included such figures as Lewis Mnmford, BentonMacKaye, and Catherine Bauer, distinguished between what was called the "overcity," with its cycles ofecologicalimbalance (reaching further and further for food, water, fuel, building materials, or, reversing the flow, seeking outlying areas for waste and sewage disposal), in contrast with the "cosmopolitan city of scale," where jobs and housing would be in greater balance, where roadless highways would complement recreation wails consisting ofwildreservations, and where the potential for comm unity living and cooperative food raising would also suggest a reintegration of city and countryside or of urban and natural environments (Miller, 1989; Mumford, 1925; Lubove, 1963). RPAA planners also pointed to the English "garden city" model of development as reinforcing the link~ between urban inner cities and surrounding agricultural areas. By making the "connection between farm and table more direct and efficient," Benton MacKaye wrote in 1919, it would facilitate "lowering the price to consumer and raising the pay of producer." (MacKaye, 1919; Howard, 1946)

These crucial but poorly understood historical link~ between the contemporary environmentalj ustice move-

Gottlieb and Fisher: Community Food Security and Environmental Justice

merit and earlier urban and industrial movements such as the regional planners, the settlement house activists like Jane Addams and Mary McDowell, or the "earth house- hold" ecologists such as Ellen Swallow Richards (who focused considerable attention on questions of food and nutrition) (Richards & Woodman, !901; Merchant, 1981), provide one important explanation as to why a relatively narrow definition and policy focus of environmental justice prevails today. Policymakers, for one, have primarily associated environmental justice with equity considerations in the distribution of risks (US EPA, 1992). For example, President Clinton's February, 1994 Executive Order on Environmental Justice instructed federal agencies to identify and address "disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of their programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low income populations in the United States." (Clinton, 1994) A number of the community-based environmental justice groups have descried these arguments of "environmental equity" as inappropriately seeking to "share" rather than reduce or eliminate risks (BuUard; Pulido, 1994).

Beyond the question of"risk" itself, such groups also see environmental justice concerns as part of a broader pattern of socialinjustice and community need. In seeking to create this broader focus, however, community-based environmental justice groups have often defined their efforts as a pursuit of parallel concerns, such as housing or community economic development advocacy, rather than an attempt to integrate their separate environmental and social justice agendas. The relative absence of environmental justice groups from direct involvement in community food security advocacy represents one example of this lack of an integrated approach.

Thus, environmental justice can be framed as part of a civil rights discourse, with its attention to risk discrimination. However, environmental justice also represents a search for community empowerment, and its advocates have frequently embraced a number of community food security issues and approaches as part of that search. Yet that very search for community empowerment, with its links to community food security, has been posed as part of the social justice framework these advocates have embraced, seen as separate and more encompassing than their environmental justice/risk discrimination activities. This distinction between social justice and envi- roumental justice becomes additionally significant when examining the rise of sustainable agriculture advocacy, the most commonly identified link between food and environment.

Environmental Agendas Within the Farm Bill Process

The environmental link to food systems issues has, in the past fifteen years, most directly occurred through the Farm Bill process. This legislation, adopted

approximately every five years, covers a range of agricultural and food-related programs within USDA, such as the commodity support programs. By the 1980s, the decline in numbers and importance of farmers as their own distinctive political force (as opposed to global food industry operators such as Cargill and ConAgra) had also resulted in the ability of new constituencies, broadly linked to what came to be called the sustainable agriculture movement, to emerge as significant new players in the Farm Bill process. Within that new strategic bloc, mainstream environmental organizations especially became powerful players in the farm bill debates. Their alliance with progressive or populist small farm or family farm interests, primarily from the Midwest, further advanced the sustainable agriculture agenda in the 1981 and, more notably, in the 1985 and 1990 legislative debates over agriculture policy (Strauss, 1993).

The sustainable agriculture movement, often described, prior to the 1980s, as the organic farming move- merit, has been a food production and predominantly grower-focused, rather than food systems-oriented, movement. This movement has had significant environmental grounding. It has focused most notably on issues of pesticide contamination of land and water and air as well as farmer and wildlife exposures. It has also reflected a long, though sometimes uneasy, coalition between mainstream environmental groups and small family farm groups who have seen the environmental problems as a proxy for the rapid decline of the small farm as a viable production unit. Yet, with the exception of their advocacy regarding the risks experienced by farmworkers and rural farmworker communities, enviroumentaljustice groups have largely remained absent from sustainable agriculture coalitions. Similarly, community food security advocacy has remained, until recently, largely tangen- tial to the development of sustainable agriculture coalitions, though such issues as direct marketing and, to a lesser extent, food stamps and various commodity support programs, have been of concern to both sets of movements. Sustainable agriculture had become defined primarily as rural-based; community food security as an urban movement (Allen and Sachs, 1993; Strauss, 1993).

The Farm Bill process did, however, offer significant opportunities for linkage, particularly in terms of strengthening an environmental connection to sustainable agriculture advocacy. In 1981, for example, environmental organizations focused on preserving farm land in the face of rapid urban expansion, enlarging what had previously been rural and agriculture-related areas. Environmental concerns, further elaborated in the Farms for the Future Act within the 1990 bill, were related to open space and natural environment protection goals as well as concerns about urban edge development (Lehman, 1990; Nelson, 1992; Nauer, 1994). In the 1985 bill, a Conservation Reserve Program was

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established to promote soil conservation techniques for such highly erosive row crops as corn, soybeans, and cotton. It also established "sodbuster" and "swampbuster" provisions to ensure compliance by farmers with approved soil conservation plans in con- verted range and wetlands areas. The 1990 bill ex- tended the focus on "sustainability" practices by providing research support for reducing the use of toxic chemicals in production, improving low input farm management, and promoting crop diversification. It also established national standards for "organically grown" food and developed a program designed to tie commodity price supports to crop rotation and other farm resource management approaches. Many of these programs testified to the growing strength of this new complex of interests associated with sustainable agriculture, and meant that the mainstream environmental agendas would undoubtedly continue to be considered in the numerous trade-offs and deals defining the Farm Bill process (Youngberg et al., 1993; Cook, 1986; Zinn and Can', 1988). What continued to be absent from sustainable agriculture advocacy was any urban link, with its social justice, environmental justice, and community food security dimensions (Allen and Sachs, 1993; Fisher and Gottlieb, 1995).

In advance of the debates over the 1995 Farm Bill, a new coalition began to emerge that hoped to broaden the sustainable agriculture coalition as well as link it with such separate constituencies as anti-hunger, enviroamen- taljustice, and community economic development groups. This effort was based on establishing amore expansive commuhity food security agenda. While a few of the same environmental issues have been addressed in this effort as in previous Farm Bill legislation (e.g., urban edge devel- opmen0, the community food security approach has been more directly focused on the urban or downstream side of food system issues. This has included considerations of community food production and urban greening, direct marketing and related strengthening of grower-to-consumer relationships, and community development strategies associated with food retail, marketing, and production (Community Food Security Coalition, 1995; Fisher and Gottlieb, 1995). Many of these urban issues and approaches, however, have been seen as residing outside the environmental discourse, and, as a conse- quence, have seen only limited environmental partici- p a t i o n - whether from mainstream environmentalists or environmental justice advocates - - in the development of this community food security agenda. However, the sustainable agriculture groups, such as the Sustain- able Agriculture Working Group, with their important environmental links, have largely embraced the community food security approach, recognizing the importance of a grower-to-consumer or rural-urban approach. Ulti- mately, the Farm bill process, including these current efforts to incorporate urban food security agendas into Farm Bill legislation, has demonstrated that while oppor-

tunities for shared agendas are strong, the efforts to link environmental with food system-related advocacy remain complex and still incomplete.

The Environmental Justice Dimensions of Community Food Security

The issue of discourse remains central to the question of whether environmental justice and community food security can locate a common language and purpose and thus have a basis for linkage in social action. This matter of discourse is related in part to how specific approaches get to be defined: that is, what makes a food security issue an environmental justice issue, or, con- versely, whether environmental justice can be defined as appropriately belonging to a community food security discourse. An examination of some of the central tenets of the community food security agenda (specifically, community food production, direct marketing, community development, and community food planning) are relevant to such a discussion of definition.

Community Food Production Community food production strategies as part of a

community food security approach have included most notably community gardening, urban farms, and food processing. Community gardens represent one direct and clearly defined method of reconnecting urban residents with their food system. On the one hand, urban based community gardens can provide modest amounts of fresh produce for urban residents, including those whose diets, because of income, access, or behavioral reasons, may be nutritionally inadequate. At the same time, community gardens are directly associated with urban greening objectives. In neighborhoods where parks and recreational opportunities are scarce, community gardening provides inexpensive, productive recreation, while creating urban green space in otherwise bleak urban landscapes. And as community institutions in which residents can make place-related collective de- cisions, they become an important forum for community development and empowerment. The transformation of a blighted empty lot into a flowering productive space, which is nurtured by and in turn nourishes residents, lends communities a sense of ownership and responsibility that otherwise may not be present (Nauer, 1994; Fisher & Gottlieb, 1995). As Brenda Funches, former executive director of Los Angeles's Common Ground (community garden) program, has stated, community gardens, particularly in an inner city context, provide one of the best examples of how to combine environmental (e.g., urban greening) and justice (food and diet benefits, community empowerment) goals (Funches, 1992).

Urban farms provide another dimension of that type of environmental/socialj ustice linkage. In several cities across the country, institutions such as food banks, social service agencies, and individuals have established ur-

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ban farms, or established relations with nearby working farms. Urban farming projects combine traits from community gardens and local small farms. They usually produce under contract, sell at farmers' markets or through community supported agriculture arrangements. They bolster local agriculture, establishing a further source of locally grown food. Atthe same time, they fulfill community oriented aims, acting as a form of economic development and training for possible food-related employment. In environmental terms, urban farming projects, most notably CSAs, offer an expanded venue and market opportunities for pesticide free and/or integrated pest management strategies for production, a centerpiece of the sustainable agriculture agenda.

Community-based food processing enterprises, some of which could be related to urban food production, provide another entry point for environmental and social justice linkage. For one, the expansion of local food systems into the food processing arena greatly enlarges markets for locally grown products. Food processing can also enhance the economic viabil- ity of local agriculture through the addition of value to local products. While upscale natural/health food items are often produced locally, local food processing enterprises can produce for working class and inner city populations as well. Bakeries and tortillerias are two current success ful examples (Fisher & Gottlieb, 1995).

Located in the inner city, food processing micro- enterprises (i.e., those with less than five employees) represent a way to link rural and urban constituencies as well as to provide economic development opportunities. As with urban farming projects, food processing micro- enterprises lend themselves to community projects, em- ploying gang members, youth, and otherwise disadvan- taged persons. At a larger scale, community input into food processing (who is employed, how the food is pro- cessed, etc.), represents a major arena for both environmental, community economic development, and community food security assessments (Nauer, 1994).

Direct Marketing Direct marketing strategies, including though not

limited to farmers' markets, provide major environmental as well as community food security benefits. Farmers' markets are perhaps the most visible current form of direct marketing in the city. When located in low income neighborhoods, as they have been in Hart- ford, Los Angeles, New York, Pittsburgh, and other cities across the country, farmers" markets have pro- vided access to high quality produce at affordable prices where such access may be severely limited.

Farmers' markets introduce anumber of educational and community functions apart from their role as food delivery vehicles. As most Americans become increasingly ignorant of the source of their food, farmers' markets personalize the food system, providing direct, or face-to- face, selling and buying relationships between farmer and

Community Food Security and Environmental Justice

consumer. In contrast to "distance and durability" factors (e.g., imports, or standardized, domestic-produced and long distance delivered products that allow many fruits and vegetables to become available on a continuous year- round basis), farmers' markets reestablish for consumers the seasonal rhythms of local food production. This seasonality factor also enlarges the opportunities for region- specific (and culturally-specific) diets that can establish crucial nutritional benefits lost through the distance and durability features of the food system (Gussow, 1994; Smith and Kelly, 1993).

Farmers' markets also establish new kinds of public spaces in highly differentiated and fragmented urban settings. With an increasing privatization of city space, where even supermarkets may be built in high security plazas with ten foot fences and police substations, urban farmers' markets represent a contrasting public environment that fosters social interaction. As such, they become fertile ground for cross-cultural communication and exchange through such activities as swap- ping recipes and trying new foods (Strainer, 1989).

With the modest growth in direct marketing opportunities in the 1990s (as of 1993, USDA estimated there were 1,755 Farmers' Markets in the US) CUSDA, 1994), a number of small and medium sized local growers have become significantly dependent on the ability to market their products directly. Farmers' markets allow growers to earn approximately 50% more than they would selling wholesale, in addition to reduced packing costs. They also provide an outlet for organic and other environmentally concerned growers. Environmental benefits might also include reduced pack- aging, reduced energy use by reducing storage requirements, and, in most parts of the country, significantly reduced transportation (Ashmzn et al., 1993).

Community Development Anumber of community development strategies have

been proposed as part of a community food security agenda that would have direct environmental justice implications. These include proposals for joint ventures between community groups and food retail establish- ments, and, more broadly, the integration of community enterprises (such as farmers' markets, community gardens, and food processing ventures as described above) with various community development programs such as Community Block Development Grants or the En- terprise and Empowerment Zone-type programs. One of the most significant opportunities for joint venture arrangements with direct environmental justice implications is in the area of transportation, regarding improved access to places like supermarkets or farmers' markets. The lack of transportation has emerged as a critical barrier faced by inner city residents in their efforts to obtain a nutritionally adequate diet through local non-emergency food sources. The small number of supermarkets in the inner city limits the ability of resi-

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dents to shop at large, often less expensive full service markets. South Central Los Angeles, for example, lost 30% of its full service chain supermarkets from 1975 to 1991. As aresult, stores in South Central serve on average 22% more customers than chain supermarkets in Los Angeles County as a whole. According to census infor- marion, South Central residents also own fewer automo- biles than county-wide averages. Thus, inner city residents must travel farther to reach a full service supermarket than those residing outside inner city areas (Dohan, 1994; Ashman et al., 1993).

Supermarkets have traditionally relied on shop- pers to provide their own transportation to the store. This practice has required stores to dedicate over half their lot size to parking. It has also hindered the development of inner city stores by making it difficult for supermarkets to acquire lots that can meet the store's large parking requirements, and by increasing the cost of the store (Dohan, 1994).

Experiences at a few supermarkets, including most notably a Pathmark store in Newark that has established a joint venture with a community organization, have indicated that a private van that shuttles customers to and from the supermarket can be a cost effective alternative transportation policy by increasing the number of patrons and boosting the average size purchase. A joint venture concept, where community linkages provide benefits (e.g., reduced parking requirements) in exchange for more intensive efforts to secure alternative transportation (such as van services) would provide substantial environmental as well as equity or social justice benefits (O'Connor and Abell, 1992; A s h m a n et al., 1993)

Community Food Planning Community food security planning is an emerging

field. It has brought initial community, municipal, and regional attention to the structure and operations of the food system, from grower to consumer. Ithas involved both the private for-profit sector as weLl as the public and private not-for-profit sectors, and has been primarily associated with coalitions between anti-hunger advocates, emergency food providers, nutritionists, health providers, local agriculture supporters, and community development institutions (Winne, 1994).

The most visible, contemporary forms of food security planning involve the development of Food Policy Councils (FPCs) that have been established in several different communities and regions (Hartford, Knoxville, Pittsburgh, St. Paul, Toronto, and Washington, DC, most notably). FPCs first emerged during the 1980s, primarily to address rapid increases in food insecurity indicators, such as the increase in orders of magnitude of demands on the charitable food sector. FPC struc- tures and activities have varied, with the two most prevalent models involving those functioning within municipal governments and others operating as non-

profit organizations. Their roles also vary, whether in terms of policy development or program implementa- tion, or whether they serve as catalyst or facilitator. All, however, have sought to construct what they consider to be a comprehensive approach to agriculture and food related problems (Dahlberg, 1994).

Despite their system-wide focus, Food Policy Coun- cils and community food planning efforts have tended to remain margiBalized efforts at advocacy and intervention due to alackoffunds and institutional support. However, increased re cognition of the need for greater coordination between the diverse sectors of the food system, due in part to diminished resources and the need to maximize benefits from minimal dollars, has significantly expanded the interestin community foodplanning. While food security and community food planning may be new concepts for local, state, or national policymakers, the growing and now possibly endemic features of domestic food insecurity have increased interest in new forms of planning and food system intervention. Community or regional food security planning, directly linked to the reconnecting or regionalizing of agro-food relations, thus begins to provide a crucial institutional mechanism for furthering both environmental justice and community food security agendas (Fisher and Gottlieb, 1995).

Community Empowerment and Food Systems Analysis: A Basis for Linkage

The separate identities and distinctive agendas of environmental justice and community food security advocates reveal a major gap in the discourse of both movements. On the one hand, environmental justice seeks to broaden its focus and purpose to address such core urban daily life problems as jobs, housing, transportation, and environment, but has largely failed to create an integrated framework in addressing what appear to be distinctive concerns. Community food security, on the other hand, has sought to broaden the sustainable agriculture agenda to include urban food concerns. But, as a movement, it has had only limited success in making common cause with environmental justice advocates (as well as mainstream environmentalists) for its coalition building process. This gap remaing prevalent, despite the clear links available in both the commtmity food secm'ity and environmental justice dis- courses. The task for both groups, then, is to find ways to reinterpret their own approaches and agendas in order to locate a common frame of reference.

That common reference point can be situated in the language of community empowerment and food systems analysis. Environmentalj ustice advocates, for example, have strongly elevated public participation in environmental decision-making as a core goal (Cole). At the same time, the strong desire to address community-wide problems offers environmental justice groups the opportunity to link participation objectives to a community planning framework. Community food se-

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Gottlieb and Fisher: Community Food Security and Environmental Justice

curity then provides a well developed framework for pursuing communi ty planning, with environmental justice objectives at the core o f such efforts. This framework is further enriched when empowerment concepts are linked to communi ty economic development concerns, perhaps the strongest need-based objective identified in urban (and rural) low income communities. The value o f such a link was explicitly identified in a 1995 article on community food security in Environmental Action, the journal of one o f the mainstream environmental organizations that has embraced much of the environmental justice agenda (Ruben, 1995).

Similarly, community food security advocacy is based on two crucial empowerment objectives. On the one hand, food security is defined as a community objective rather than simply an individual entitlement. Drawing on both the language of civil fights as well as empowerment, food security advocacy leads directly to community strategies for intervention, many of which have powerful environmental implications, as noted above.

At the same time, community food security advocacy proposes a regional approach to such intervention, em- phasizing a"regional foodshed" approach. The regional or"foodshed" focus, furthermore, provides a directroute towards the establishment o f food systems analysis as a centralpart o f this language ofcommanity empowerment. B y exploring food production, processing, marketing, and consumption in system terms (incorporating its economic, social, cultural, environmental, and biologic dimensions), the contrast can be made explicit between the non-sustainable, inequitable, and environmentally destructive global food system and an alternative regional system based on the principles o f communi ty food security and environmental justice. And while both community food security and environmental justice advocates have recognized the continuing significance of national and global policies in their respective arenas, as movements they still draw their strength and have defined their discourse largely in community orregional terms. Controlling the terms of development, whether defined specifically in relation to environmental or food system objectives, succeeds best at the regional level. This can be seen not only in relation to participation criteria but as a function o f the nature o f the development itself and the unfolding of alternative approaches. Thus, by finding a common ground in discourse and social action between community food security and environmental justice, a discourse located in the language of empowerment and food systems analysis, the development of a more integrated and powerful food system-based movement can be enormously enhanced.

Notes 1. The discussion of social movements, including the elabo-

ration of the concept of the "new social movements" of the 1960s and 1970s, has evolved significantly in social

science literature. In a previous publication (Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Envi- ronmental Movement, Robert Gottlieb, Washington, DC: Island Press, 1993), one of the authors sought to distinguish between environmentalism as a social movement ("democratic and populist insurgencies seeking a fundamental restructuring of the urban and industrial order") and as an interest group ("groups influencing policy to better manage or protect the environment and help rationalize that same urban and industrial order") (pp. 314-315). A parallel distinction could be developed in the food advocacy arena, using Friedmann's typology, as discussed in this article, of global food systems (linked to the contemporary urban and industrial order) and regional food systems (seeking to re- structure agro-food relations). In that context, community food security and environmental justice both em- body this characterization of social movement.

2. The definition of food security by the World Bank - - "access by all people at all times to enough food for an active and healthy life" - - is similar in some respects to our definition, but differs in two key respects: the absence of "culture"-specific criteria, and the failure to explicitly specify food security as a "non-emergency" form of access. The World Bank definition can be found in their publication, The Challenge of Hunger in Africa, (Washington, DC: World Bank, December, 1988). See also "Overcoming Global Hunger: A Conference on Action to Reduce Hunger World-Wide," An Issues Paper, Prepared by Harry Waiters for the World Bank for the Conference to Overcome Global Hunger, Wash- ington, DC, November 30-December 1, 1993.

3. We ate distinguishing between a mainstream environmentalism, consisting of the national, primarily Washington, DC-based organizations that have relied significantly on a professional staff with scientific, legislative, liti- gant, and lobbying skills, and an alternative environmentalism (including, but not limited to environmental justice groups) that has been primarily community- based, often single issue in origins, with strong participation and leadership of women and people of color. The alternative environmental groups have largely been removed from the Farm Bill process and the "sustainable agriculture" coalitions that have formed around it, with the important exception of those advocates concerned with farmworker hazards from pesticide exposures. See Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement, Robert Gottlieb, Washington, DC: Island Press, 1993.

4. The authors have been participants in the Community Food Security Coalition process. Our observation has been that the coalition itself has yet to make significant inroads in developing environmental support, with part of its diffi- culty residing in the separation in discourse and political language and the absence of any effective ongoing political intersection of groups and constituencies. For example, one staff member of the Natural Resources De- fense Council (NR[~), a leading mainstream environmental organization that has played a prominent role in pesticide legislation and regulation, told one of the authors: "We would like to endorse the Community Food Security Empowerment Act, but we need to keep to our [environmental] agenda." (Personal communication with

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Lawrie Mott, June 6, 1995). 5. One such project, the development of a market basket

subscription program linking growers selling through the inner city-based Gardena, California farmers' market in southwest Los Angeles with area residents and institutions (particularly those with low income constituencies) was designed in part to encourage growers to reduce pesticide use as well as expand market opportunities for pesticide free products. On that basis, the project received initial funding through USDA's Sustainable Agriculture Re- search and Education Program (SAREP) and a pollution prevention program of US EPA. See "Direct Marketing Opportunities for Reduced Pesticide Use and for Commu- nity Food Security," Progress Report, UCLA Pollution Prevention Education and Research Center, July, 1995.

6. The Pathmark arrangement with a Newark community development organization, the New Communities Corpora- tion, has served as a model joint venture arrangement. In Newark, ten years of advocacy and negotiations, including strong community support (at one point 12,000 residents signed a petition declaring a need for a supermarket) finally resulted in the July, 1990 opening of the 49,000 square foot Pathmark store and an additional 13,000 square feet of satellite shops. New Communities owns all the shopping center property and has a two-thirds share in the Pathmark store. Pathmark in turn is paid a fee for managing the store. The arrangement has proven quite successful, both in terms of the services associated with the arrangement, such as the van service and a job training program, and as a commercial operation that is perceived as "community owned." The environmental and land use benefits of such an arrangement (addressing transportation needs, urban greening possibilities, nutrition benefits), although often implicit in the structure of the arrangement, could be more elaborated and explicit through the participation of community-based environmentaljus- rice advocates. In Los Angeles, several environmental justice oriented Latino and African-American community based groups, including La Colectiva, Mothers of East Los Angeles, and Concerned Citizens of South Central, have expressed interest in a food store/food service joint venture concept that could more explicitly include environmental benefits. See "Pathmark and New Communities Corporation m Joint Venture Helps Revitalize Newark," FMI Issues Bulletin, Food Marketing Institute, January 1993; Testimony of Rev. Msgr. William J. Linder, before the US House of Representatives Select Committee on Hunger, September 30, 1992; Stephen Bennett, "Making i t Work in the Inner City: A Partnership with a nonprofit community group helps pathmark score with an urban store," Progressive Grocer, voL 70, no. 11, November 1991, p. 22

7. In 1994, the City of Los Angeles established a nine member advisory body (the Voluntary Advisory Council on Hun- ger or the VACH) to develop a hunger and food security policy for the city. A significant aspect of the VACH's deliberations concerned the creation of a Food Security Council-type body (the Los Angeles Food Security and Hunger Partnership) that would emphasize policies based on "empowerment and community and economic development strategies" in order to, among other tasks, "promote food production and distribution systems which are community-controlled, equitable, and nutritionally and

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environmentally sound." ("Draft Plan for the Creation of the Los Angeles Food Secm'ity and Hunger Partnership," Los Angeles, August, 1995.) Similarly, a meeting in St. Paul, Minnesota, sponsored by the Kellogg Foundation, which brought together food policy council advocates from six differentcities (and which was attended by one of the author's of this article), included discussions of the linkage between environmental and community development initiatives through the planning strategies of a Council.

8. The term "regional foodshed" was developed by a team of University of Wisconsin researchers who sought to integrate food system-related regionality concepts while bor- rowing from the language of environmental systems (e.g., watershed analysis and advocacy). See Jack Kloppenburg, Jr. John Hendrickson & G. W. Stevenson. "Coming into the Foodsbed," Agriculture and Human Values, 13, 3 (Summer, 1996): 33-42,

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A G R I C U L T U R E A N D H U M A N VALUES - S U M M E R 1996 (Vol. 3, No. 3)

Sustainable Agriculture Organizations

Tim Warman American Farmland Trust 1920 N. St. ~ #400 Washington DC 20036 202-659-5170

Amy Little Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture 32 N Church St. Goshen, NY 10924 914-294.0633

Chuck Hassebrook Center for Rural Affairs PO Box 406 Walthill, NE 68067

Tom Hailer Community Alliance with Family Farmers PC) Box 363 Davis, CA 95617 916-756-8518

DeborahWebb Community Farm Alliance 311 Wilkinson Frankfort, KY40601 502-223-3655

Kathleen Merrigan Henry Wallace Institute 9200 Edmonston Rd., # 117 Greenbelt, MD 20770 301 441-8777

Gaff Kahovic Michael Fields Institute W2493 County Rd., ES ETroy, W153120 414-642-3303

Kathy Ozer National Family Farm Co alition 110 Maryland Ave. NE #307 Washington DC 20002 202-543-5675

Environmental Organizations

Pat Carney Earthsave 706 Fredrick St. Santa Cruz, CA 95062 408-423-4069

Community Food Security/Environmental Justice Linked Organizations

Hawley Truax Environmental Action 6930 Carroll Ave. #600 Takoma Park, MD 20912 301-891-1100 Northwest Coalition for Alternatives Pesticides PO Box 1393 Eugene, OR 97440 503-344-5044

Ellen Hickley Pesticide Action Network of North America Regional Center 116 New Montgomery St. #810 SF, CA94105 415-541-9140

Mark Winne Hartford Food System 509 Wethersfield Ave. Hartford, CT 06114 203-296-9325

Carolyn Olney Interfaith Hunger Coalition 2449 Hyperion #100 LA, CA 90027 213-913-7333

Jim Hanna Maine Coalition for Food Security PO Box 4503 Portland, ME 04112 207-871-8266

Other CFS Related Organizations Jack Hale

American Community Gardening Association 150 Walbridge W. Hartford, CT 06119 203-233-6351

EdBolen California Food Policy Advocates 57 Post St., Suite 804 SF, CA 94104 415-291-O282

Lynn Brantley Capitol Area Community Food Bank 645 Taylor St., NE Washington, DC 20017 202 526 5344

Kathy Goldman Community Food Resource Center 90 Washington Street NY, NY 10006 212-344-0195

Linda Hamilton Food for All POBox 1791 Redlands, CA 92373 909-792-6638

Joyce Rothermel Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank PO Box 127 McKeesport, PA 15134 412 -672-4949

Anne de Meurisse Minnesota Food Association 2395 University Ave., Room 309 St. Patti, MN 55114 612-644-2038

Alison Clarke Politics of Food 243 Rosedale Street Rochester, NY 14620 716-271-4007

Zy Weinberg Public Voice for Food and Health Policy 1101 14thSt.NW#710 Washington, DC 20005 202 371-1840

Lorette Picciano-Hansen Rural Coalition PO Box 5199 Alexandria, VA 22205 703-534.1845

San Francisco League of Urban Garden- er$ 2088 Oak.dale Ave. SF, CA94124 415-285-SLUG

Southland Farmers' Market Associa- tion 1308 Factory Place Box 68 LA, CA90013 213-244-9190

Sustainable Food Center 1715 East 6th Street, Suite 200 Austin, "IX 78702 512-472-2073

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Community food security and environmental justice: Searching for a common discourse

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