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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Henry Herrera, MD, New York Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, The Center for Popular Research, Education and Policy, 693 East Avenue, Suite 101, Rochester, NY 14607, 585-473-4630, hank@c-prep.org

In Pathologies of Power Paul Farmer examines the relationship of illness to the abuse of power. This analysis of structural violence applies as much to the food system as it does to disease. Slavery and the expropriation of native land are historical examples of structural violence in the food system. Structural violence in the modern industrial food system includes the destruction of biodiversity; the abrogation of the basic right of communities to produce their own food; the subversion of local ownership of production and exchange by global supply chains; the disruption of local economies and the substitution of potentially harmful manufactured edible substances for “food” that appears to contribute to the childhood obesity epidemic. In response to these problems grass roots organizations have begun to construct alternative community-based local food systems. This paper reports on the values, goals, objectives, values and accomplishments of three such community-based alternative local food systems: Added Value in Red Hook, Brooklyn; the People's Grocery in West Oakland, and Growing Power in Milwaukee. The methodology includes demographic and economic analysis of the communities served by these programs as well as interviews with their leaders and workers. These programs aim to bring local fresh, whole food to local consumers at affordable prices, in a variety of retail channels that increase access to good food, particularly in low-income communities. The programs emphasize democratic local control, fair-trading and economic development. They involve local youth and promote leadership development. These programs constitute constructive actions that resist structural violence and restore justice in the food system.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize at least five elements of the global, industrial food system that cause damage to individual health, interfere with community self-reliance and disrupt community economic self-sufficiency
• Articulate values, goals, and methods of new community-based, local food systems that represent an alternative to the global food system
• Develop public health action strategies to construct these alternatives

Keywords: Nutrition, Self-sufficiency and Empowerment

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation