From a food justice perspective, it’s far past time to acknowledge inequities in how food is brought to the table in Oregon and across the world, said Venus Barnes, who works with college students as an outreach coordinator at Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon.
“This pandemic is really exposing the haves and have nots, and guess what: The majority of even white farmers, right here in Oregon, are missing out. And they’re realizing that white supremacy isn’t good for them in the first place,” Barnes said at a recent livestream discussion on food justice, hosted by Two Rivers Bookstore and Weird Sisters Yarn in St. Johns.
The food justice movement prioritizes access to healthy and culturally appropriate foods in a system that puts social and environmental concerns — like Black land ownership and better conditions for farmworkers — at the forefront.
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In the U.S., more than half of initial federal bailout dollars meant to help farmers was allocated to top agricultural producers rather than smaller operations, according to an August analysis from NBC News.
But for many decades before that, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has disproportionately denied and delayed farming subsidies to Black farmers, which has heavily contributed to the erasure of Black-owned farms in the U.S., with just 1.4% of producers identifying as Black in 2017, according to the U.S. Agricultural Census.
The food justice movement also recognizes that the food system, as it currently operates, is embedded in white supremacy upheld in the U.S. with purposefully exclusionary policies like the 1830 Indian Removal Act, which displaced Native American tribes from land they’d cultivated and inhabited for generations.
The pandemic is poised to increase the vulnerability of those disproportionately bearing the brunt of the food system already made fragile by impending climate changes across the globe. The U.N. predicts that this year, the COVID-19 pandemic could leave between 83 million and 132 million additional people undernourished.
In the U.S., disruptions in transportation and coronavirus outbreaks among food workers has contributed to a spike in consumer food prices — from a 4% increase among cereal grains and vegetables to a 20% increase for beef and veal between February and June, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Compound that with massive unemployment numbers, an increase in reliance on social services, slowdowns at the post office and increased attention on police brutality, and Barnes believes that white Portlanders may finally be waking up to flaws in a greater system that has disproportionately affected Black and brown people for centuries, as recognized by the food justice movement.
And, she said, it’s no accident the food system is set up this way.
Barnes likened the trajectory of the current food system exacerbated by the global health crisis to the Titanic. She’s been long thinking about how she’ll navigate the icy waters and said knowledge about growing food is a must for the future.
“It’s a wakeup call, that everyone is realizing the boat is going down,” Barnes told Street Roots.
A decade ago, Multnomah County sought answers to inequities in the local food system, with the creation of the ambitious and wide-sweeping 15-year Multnomah County Food Action Plan. When it was released, The Oregonian called it a “David-and-Goliath food fight.
“It has become evident that the hidden costs of our broken food system are soaring,” the 2010 plan stated. “Health impacts and costs resulting from the ‘western diet’ are at a crisis level, the poor have few healthful food options in their communities, and the industrial food model has undermined local food system jobs. …
“We invite you to imagine what a local, healthy, equitable and regionally prosperous food system economy could look like in the year 2025 and to use the strategies below for creating that intentional future.”
The plan presented a pathway for stakeholders and local government to secure funding and grants, demolish barriers and inequities, and raise awareness around the state of the food system.
It aimed to increase the amount of farmland, farms and community garden spaces in the county to encourage local food production and consumption and to improve on metrics such as the number of low-income households more than a mile away from a grocery store, which in 2010 stood at nearly 22,000.
The county was unable to provide Street Roots with updates on these goals in part because it abandoned the plan when Multnomah County Chair Jeff Cogen, who had committed to updating it, resigned in 2013.
The county was also unable to provide Street Roots information about what the 40-page plan, which utilized the work of 200 area organizations, cost taxpayers to create.
But one thing that’s clear is that food insecurity and access continue to be an issue in the region, especially now, and a mixture of grassroots organizations and governmental agencies, many of which were doing the work already, have amplified efforts to tackle it in recent months.
In August, Eater Portland published “The Eater Portland Guide on How to Help,” an article highlighting nearly 40 different organizations working to fight food insecurity in the midst the pandemic. That includes local farms like Mudbone Grown — which is providing fresh produce to Black families in the area through its Solidarity Love Shares program and investing donations in the work of Black farmers. It also includes collectives like Equitable Giving Circle, which is working to distribute community supported agricultural — local, seasonal produce that goes directly from farmers to consumers — from farmers of color to communities of color in the area.
Other efforts operating from the ground up, like Free Hot Soup and Food Not Bombs PDX, are distributing meals or holding meal services for hungry Portlanders. This summer, a group called Portland Free Fridge drew inspiration from other cities and is working to install refrigerators and pantries around different parts of Portland to promote food access and mutual aid. The Municipal Eco-Resiliency Project distributed plant starts this spring to Portlanders looking to cultivate food at home.
In March, organizers at Symbiosis PDX, which describes itself on Facebook as a “local chapter in a confederation of community initiatives focused on building a directly democratic community,” established a resource exchange hub to feed Portlanders and provide other resources as well.
“What we’re thinking of is the broad picture of a revolutionary movement and what is needed to build the dual-power needed to basically create a better society for us all to live in,” said a representative from the organization, Rebecca, who declined to share their last name out of safety concerns sparked by death threats against organizers at Symbiosis PDX.
The Symbiosis Hub and Resource Exchange is focused on resource distribution, storage and acquisition. A team of more than 20, it has provided items such as fresh food and personal hygiene supplies to anyone who needs them in collaboration with other mutual aid hubs in town.
In some ways, Rebecca said, the organization is operating like a community-based foodbank. The group operates solely on donated food and produce grown in local backyards.
It serves meals from 1 to 3 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays out of the Social Justice Action Center at 400 SE 12th Ave. and from noon to 6 p.m. every first and third Sunday. Attendance has more than doubled since the pandemic began, sometimes serving more than 100 meals a day.
And while Multnomah County may have walked away from its ambitious plan around food equity, under Chair Deborah Kafoury, it has shifted its focus from food planning to economic development assistance to farmers of color and direct food delivery through its Community Supported Agriculture Partnerships for Health program. The program is a multi-agency collaborative that distributes locally grown produce shares — a “share” is typically a box or bag of produce — to patients experiencing food insecurity at different medical clinics across the Portland area. And it had to act quickly during the onset of the pandemic.
The program utilizes the community-supported agriculture system, wherein participants, who are low-income residents experiencing health issues, pay $5 a week to subscribe to $28 worth of locally grown produce.
In a normal year, the partnership supplies local produce to nearly 1,000 people, or around 250 households, farmers market-style, and hosts food tastings. This year, due to budget cuts from health care partner grants spurred by the coronavirus pandemic, the program is serving just 60 households through deliveries from Beaverton to the Gresham area.
“There’s nothing normal about this year,” said program director Lauren Lubowicki, who works out of Zenger Farms in Multnomah County.
Zenger Farms accepts Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, dollars and provides low-income agriculture shares as well.
Lubowicki said that among those who were able to participate this year, food security improved before the end of July as SNAP benefits were increased, and an additional $600 was available each week to those who qualified for unemployment. As a result, some opted to pay for their full year of community-supported agriculture shares up front.
“What we saw was that people had way more food resources than they have in a normal year,” she said.
But she worries about what the future may hold without the supplementary income.
In late August, the Oregon Department of Human Services announced that with $30 million in additional funding, SNAP benefits would be extended to the full amount for all participants regardless of income during the month of September, but the extension is temporary.
Lubowicki said the community supported agriculture program is piloting the use of Medicaid flexible services dollars, which are applied to services that help reduce medical visits for patients. She hopes that next year the program can see an increase in participation once more.
Ultimately, she said, organizations of varying sizes, from the Oregon Food Bank to curbside free food boxes set out by neighbors, are helping to keep people in the Portland metro area fed through the duration of the coronavirus pandemic.