Blog

The CIW's Campaign for Fair Food has received an incredible amount of national attention in the past few weeks. Last week, Gerardo Reyes was featured in an extensive interview on the NPR program "The Story." This followed two high-profile articles in the Atlantic and on CNN. Here's an excerpt from the CNN article as highlighted on the CIW website:

"... Here's what happens in the supply chain: major corporate buyers such as supermarkets, fast food chains and food service companies regularly purchase a massive amount of produce. Their huge purchases allow these companies to leverage their buying power and demand the lowest possible prices from tomato growers. This, in turn, exerts a powerful downward pressure on wages and working conditions in tomato suppliers' operations...

... It's a dynamic that has existed for decades. But over the past few years, one grassroots organization has started to challenge the big buyers. And they're winning.

The Campaign for Fair Food

To help fight the rampant human trafficking and other injustices in the...

IATP Food and Community Fellow Roger Doiron and Kitchen Gardeners International(KGI) have recently introduced Fork It Over, Part 2 in a series of major food garden promotion campaigns they've got up their sleeves. (Part 1 was their successful campaign to inspire the First Family to plant a kitchen garden at the White House.)

The Fork It Over Campaign seeks to strengthen the global homegrown movement by 1) raising awareness about food gardens and their many social and environmental benefits and 2) raising funds that will allow KGI to help more people around the world to grow their own healthy food.

In this campaign, KGI is respectfully asking gardeners and public figures from the US, Canada and overseas to “fork over” some of their bucks and online buzz to the food garden cause. Celebrities like Alicia Silverstone have already been spreading the word, and you can vote on which public figure could make the next big impact here.  Check it out and add your voice to the buzz....

The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy announced today that IATP Food and Society Fellow alum LaDonna Redmond will lead a new project focusing on health, justice and the food system.

The project will center on health disparities resulting from the food system, from the farm to consumers—particularly as they affect low-income populations and communities of color.

“We are excited to have LaDonna lead this area of work,” said IATP President Jim Harkness. “A more fair and healthy food system has to include everyone, not just those who can afford it. LaDonna’s extensive experience working at the community and policy level will be a tremendous asset.”

Redmond is a long-time community activist who has successfully worked to get Chicago Public Schools to evaluate junk food, launched urban agriculture projects, started a community grocery store and worked on federal farm policy to expand access to healthy food in low-income communities. Redmond is a frequently invited speaker and occasional radio host. In 2009, Redmond was one of 25 citizen and business leaders named a Responsibility Pioneer by Time Magazine.  

“We have a food system that has largely been built on the backs of people who don’t have a lot of rights and access to our public policy infrastructure,” said Redmond. “We need to collectively better understand the inequities in the food system and make sure we...

Robert (Bob) Gottlieb has been on the front lines of the food justice battles since the 1960’s as a concerned parent, educated activist, and inspirational educator. Gottlieb is Director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute and Professor of Urban & Environmental Policy at Occidental College. He is the author of a dozen books, including Food Justice (MIT Press); Reinventing Los Angeles: Nature and Community in the Global City (MIT Press), and Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (Island Press). He is the editor of two series from MIT Press: Urban and Industrial Environments, and Food, Health, and Environment, and is a long-time food and environmental justice activist and historian of social movements.

Deb: How did you get started in the food justice arena?

Bob: My first foray into the food justice world is profiled in my new book, Food Justice. In 1992, I was writing Forcing the Spring, getting involved in the environmental justice world, and supervising the Seeds of Change study that was pulled together by six of my students, a study which became a major contributor to the emerging food movement. That study and my new interest in food issues became an epiphany for me: it resonated with the argument I was making about...