Karen Washington: Food security, justice, sovereignty (ep325)
What are the differences between “food security”, “food justice”, and “food sovereignty”? While food aid and soup kitchens play a critical role in the immediate term, how might they still help to uphold the same power dynamics that historically marginalized communities wish to compost?
In this episode, we welcome Karen Washington, a farmer and activist, to Green Dreamer. Karen is a co-owner/farmer at Rise & Root Farm in Chester, New York, and in 2010, she co-founded Black Urban Growers (BUGS), an organization supporting growers in both urban and rural settings. Karen currently serves on the boards of the New York Botanical Gardens, Mary Mitchell Center, Soul Fire Farm, and Black Farmer Fund, and is widely recognized for her community leadership and organizing.
Musical feature: Trust The Sun by Indigenous Cloud
“We need to get back into the culture aspect of agriculture: the healing, the land stewardship, the diversity, and the inclusiveness. How do we think about climate change, ecology, based on the fact that it’s these ecosystems of diversity and inclusion that make the world work?”
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Transcript:
Note: *Our episodes are minimally edited. Please view them as open invitations to dive deeper into each resource and topic explored. This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Karen Washington: While I was in the garden, I started to look at the relationship between food and health, because so many people within the garden had diet-related diseases. These included my patients who, believe it or not, were once farmers.
Many of my patients came from the South, Latin America, or from Puerto Rico. They were farmers, and they grew food. I would have conversations with them, and I told them that I was a gardener and a farmer, and that it was such hard work, but that the food would always be so fresh and good. And they would say, "Ms. Washington, you're absolutely right. The food was so fresh we never went to a grocery store. We got everything from the farm. And look at me now." Most of them had type two diabetes, hypertension, obesity, heart disease. A lot of it was related to food.
In my neighborhood, when you went into supermarkets or the bodegas, you would see mostly processed food, junk food and fast food.
I became an activist, because in the "greatest country in the world", where we grow enough food and we waste enough food, that food is not getting down to the people who need it the most.
Why is it that healthy food is so expensive? We all know where the crappy food ends up: in low-income neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color. Meanwhile, all the fresh, locally-grown produce ends up in more affluent, white neighborhoods.
Kamea Chayne: Can you talk about what you noticed as a farmer serving a lower-income neighborhood, in terms of the roadblocks preventing food justice and reclaiming community-based agency over food and healing?
Karen Washington: I live in an area in the Bronx where I'm surrounded by a charity-based, subsidized food system, with food pantries and soup kitchens. And don't get me wrong, they do an excellent job. But they've been inundated in our communities, and people have been using them as grocery stores...
There came a time when I had to have a hard conversation with my community about the cost and value of food because as a farmer that runs with my friends a for-profit farm, we're out to make money to sustain ourselves as a way of living... We have to talk about how food is not free, but that you have to pay for, whether in cash or with coupons or otherwise. But that's very hard to communicate within communities that, for so long, have been under this charity-based system of free food.
Having that hard conversation with my peeps was very important, especially when they would be haggling over the cost of beets and carrots, while I'm looking down at their feet and seeing Jordan sneakers, or I'm looking at their hands and they're holding a Samsung Galaxy or iPhone. Yet they would be talking about having a problem with paying two dollars for food.
So we need to have that conversation within our community about the cost and value of food, especially when food is being dumped and given out for free. It's a subject that's really delicate, but that we need to talk about.
Kamea Chayne: I wanted to ask you about that, because you've shared how a lot of these food pantries and food kitchens are meant for emergency situations, and yet they've increasingly been normalized as what many rely on as a part of their day-to-day lives.
And again, this isn't to say that food aid doesn't have a role and hasn't helped feed people who are food-insecure. But I also wonder if these forms of charity have become a part of this nonprofit industrial complex that is actually helping to uphold the existing system?
Karen Washington: Yes. I'm now very vocal about the nonprofit food system.
The nonprofit food system is predominantly white-led folks working in communities of color. It's time for y'all to leave. It's time for the umbilical cord to be cut. You come under the auspices of developing leadership, educating communities, building equity and food justice. And yet you're still here, ten, even twenty years later.
When is it time for that leadership to shift? And when is it time for us to start dealing with the causes of hunger and poverty?
Like you mentioned, there is a place for soup kitchens and for food pantries. We saw that being played out during COVID. But it's not there for you to use Monday through Saturday, each and every day to get groceries. There has to come a time where you're asking people exactly what is it that they want, and why it is that they are on this line.
If you're in the line because you don't have a job, we have services right here that can help you with finding a job. Or if you're here because you're homeless, we have services right here that can help you with your housing situation. Or if you're here because of domestic violence, we have services right here that can help you with that, too.
We need to have social services within food pantries and soup kitchens. We need to ask the question, “Why are you in this line?” instead of just handing out food and making yourself feel good.
Kamea Chayne: It's always important to keep contextualizing the problems and understanding the underlying conditions that lead people to where they are.
As we orient towards the visions that we want to work towards, there are different terminologies that people will use. There's "food security", which might be more so the food aid forms of charity that we talked about. There's also "food justice" or "food sovereignty".
I know you've mentioned that a lot of these words with meaningful movements behind them have been co-opted. But I wonder if you could first speak to the differences between these visions of food security, justice, sovereignty, and how they might have been watered down in ways that actually take away from the movement's power.
Karen Washington: So with "food security", in order to be more secure, the powers that be are like, "All you got to do is give up soda, and drink water, and maybe have a plot and grow some vegetables, or eat more fruits and vegetables"... without looking at the social determinants that reinforce racism
And with "food justice", it works on the inequities we see in the food system, to try to eliminate these inequities. But if you look closely at the definition, food justice is really about the transformation of those inequities. I always focus on the word "transformation", because it's not a passive movement—which tends to be how people talk about it. It's an active movement. You're talking about how you are actively participating and working on the injustices that you see, the social injustices that you see around race, gender, access to land, wealth inequality...
And when we talk about "food sovereignty", that definition came out of the Global South, from peasants. La Via Campesina really was the group that brought food sovereignty to the forefront. They talked about self-governance, about the ability to transfer power back into the hands of marginalized people, about ownership and controlling their own food system. Here, again, the powers that be tagged onto these little buzzwords, made themselves feel like they're in the in-crowd. That means nothing to me.
I want to know: What are you actively doing to help eradicate hunger and poverty, to help develop leadership within marginalized communities, to help transfer power back into the hands of people who have been marginalized by people who have power over them for so many years?
What does it mean to build social capital and communal wealth? What does it mean to invest in the community? What does it mean to let go of extractive corporations and extractive capitalistic ideals that continue to take wealth away from our community?
When are we going to start having these hard conversations?
So those words mean nothing to me, unless I see you actively doing something to change the system. A lot of the focus, for so long, has been on people of color who are "supposed to be" helping whites figure out things. We're tired of having those conversations, because the conversations don't need to happen within communities of color—we already know what our problems are.
The conversation needs to happen within wealthy white communities. The questions that they need to answer are: Why is there hunger and poverty? Why are there differences in the food that we eat based on race? Why is it that affluent people have more access to wealth, to housing, to food, to education, you name it, all those materialistic things? Why is there such a discrepancy because of race?
There is a big difference, and that's a conversation that Black and Brown people don't need to have because we've been having it for centuries. That's a conversation that whites and people in power need to have among themselves.
Kamea Chayne: On that note, there are a lot of people and conferences talking about all sorts of food issues, food justice, the future of food, who are personally very removed from the communities or farm workers who face the brunt of these crises.
And a lot of these discourses, unfortunately, are being driven also by moneyed interests. This skews the conversation towards individualistic and consumerist interpretations of systemic and social crises...
So I'm curious to hear your perspectives on what is often left out in those dominant narratives around what needs to be done, or the reasons for the crises to begin with, that you feel aren't being addressed.
Karen Washington: What's not being addressed is the voices of the communities that are being affected.
Policy and laws are made top-down. You're never asking the people who are affected, the people to which the harm is being done.
Where, in the food system, are the voices of people of color in the decision-making process? I'm saying that to the board of directors, to people within upper management, to people in policy. For so long, these conversations have been had by outsiders. Things have to change, and things are going to change.
I'm 67 years of age, and people ask what the future looks like. I am so glad to see this robust young movement that is out there, that wants to see change, and that is marching for change, demanding change and conversations, demanding to be brought into conversations and decision-making processes. That's what I see within my community: this sort of activism where people understand the power that they have.
Kamea Chayne: Whenever I speak to people who focus on and understand the true vision, not the watered-down versions, of food justice and food sovereignty, the conversations are always centered on power, rather than the technical practices of land care being used.
And more importantly, the ideas of health, ecology, culture and power aren't separated into different conversations, but rather are really wrapped together in the same vision.
I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how power disparities within the food system relate to how the land is being treated through the practices, and whether healing the land, and therefore helping to address ecological breakdown and the climate crisis, might be an eventual byproduct of first decentralizing power.
Karen Washington: First of all, we have to talk about the word "agriculture".
We have lost the root definition of agriculture, and that is "culture". We need to get back into the culture aspect of agriculture: the healing, the land stewardship, the diversity, and the inclusiveness.
We need to start having hard conversations about how this country was built—on the backs of enslaved and Indigenous people. Let's talk about the different ethnicities that have built agriculture. Let's talk about how to change the food system into one that dignifies all types of inputs.
How do we think about climate change, ecology, based on the fact that it's these ecosystems of diversity and inclusion that make the world work? And I say that because for so long we have been working in silos, working towards individualism. As a result, we've come to view the world through monoculture, in terms of individualism... But we should admire diversity.
And the other thing is, we need to go back to the basics of the land and how we even think about land ownership. For me, it boils down to not owning land, because let's face it, folks.
Life is short on this planet. How can you own land, when after maybe 80, 90 years, you're off of the planet? How can you own it? We don't live long enough to own anything! And so if it's not about owning the land, then the question is, how do we become stewards of the land?
Even land that we get from reparations, we have to make sure that we never replicate the oppressor. If land goes back into the hands of Indigenous people, Black and Brown people, whoever, it is no longer about land ownership, it is about land stewardship.
And if we can talk about land stewardship, then we can also talk about bringing in healing and love into the equation.
Kamea Chayne: In my past conversation with Leah Penniman of Soul Fire Farm, we had touched on how generational traumas for descendants of enslaved peoples forced to work on plantations may have played a role in furthering the present-day disconnection that a lot of people have with the land, due to that painful association.
So what has it meant for your personal healing to have cultivated this intimate relationship with the land, which has also allowed you to create space to connect with and build community?
Karen Washington: I had moved away from the land, so I had no idea how important a connection to land was. I grew up with people telling me that the land was harmful, that farming was slave work, that I should never think about owning land back in the South, that I should move away from the land, that the best way of life, the way towards liberty and happiness was to get a job, have a nice house, and a nice car.
It wasn't until I became more involved in farming and started to understand and read about the history of agriculture through the lens of a Black person that I was able to step away from [the dominant] white frame of reference, and really dig into my own history as a Black woman, as an African American woman.
I began to honor the fact that my ancestors came here because of their knowledge of agriculture, and taught this country how to work on fields, how to sow seeds, how to cultivate and how to irrigate, from the management of soil, down to the culinary foods that we eat...
The African American experience has been negated when it comes to the history of agriculture and the history of culinary foods. And for most of my life, I had no idea that the truth was hidden. But now that I know the truth, it's time to open up that Pandora's box, shine light into the true meaning of why we were brought here, as Africans. Our contribution is not only to Black history, but to American history.
We need to have these hard conversations around the facts: that we are people who've had our wealth, our land taken away from us. We need to talk about how this country was built. A lot of this stuff has been negated from us. To finally have this understanding is a breath of fresh air. It's freedom. Understanding the true meaning of American history, and our place in history, has been powerful.
Kamea Chayne: Before we go into our lightning round closing questions, as we look to our paths forward, what are some of your calls to action for our listeners and some of the most impactful ways you think people can support the decentralization of power in the food system?
Karen Washington: To the people in power, you've got three choices. Either you share power, give it up, or it's going to be taken away from you.
It is going to happen, whether you like it or not, especially as the country becomes more diverse. I would say 15, 20 years from now, the majority of people will be people of color, and the minority will be white. So let's start talking now about how that power shift is going to happen.
But as I always say, we should not replicate the oppressor. People are scared that with diversity coming to the forefront now that what they did to us, we're going to do to them, which is why there's all these scare tactics and growing fears of us moving into their neighborhoods, taking their jobs... instead of just embracing diversity and inclusion.
I would love for everybody to be a farmer, but what we can all do is start being conscientious consumers.
Start asking those hard questions, even when you're going to a grocery store. Ask where the food comes from. Especially for those with power and privilege, ask, why is there a difference in the food system, for Black and Brown people, for low-income people? Why is it different from the food that we have in our neighborhood?
A call to action would be: Come into to communities of color or into communities that are not like your community, and see this. It's a robust community of people getting by, with limited resources, but yet have the same values, of wanting to live the beautiful life that you have. They're not given the opportunities, the resources, the capital to do that. So how do people with power and privilege shift things to make sure that the people in the lower rung are given the opportunity to move up within the system?
And lastly, it's to be proactive instead of reactive. Don't wait for things to happen.
Right now, for example, there's a bill before the USDA about Black farmers getting debt relief. And there's also the Justice for Black Farmers Act, which is being criticized mostly by white farmers who claim that that is racial discrimination. And yet, whites have 10 times more wealth than Blacks when it comes to land ownership.
We need to talk about these things. Get involved locally. There are so many federal and state laws and regulations. And I tell people to start local. I love to say more urban spaces for community gardens and urban farms, more opportunities for people to have ownership of their businesses, more capital coming into low-income neighborhoods, to talk about investment and what that looks like.
*** CLOSING ***
Kamea Chayne: What's an uplifting social media account or publication you follow or a book that's been really profound for you?
Karen Washington: I'm reading We Are Each Other's Harvest, by Natalie Baszile. She talks about the plight of the Black farmers, and their stories, how they were able to obtain land, and the difficulties they had getting land. And some farmers have lost land, but you see the resilience of Black people, you hear from voices that people have not heard, on why land is so important to them.
And then another book that I'm trying to finish is The Sum of Us, by Heather McGhee. And what she's trying to say is that if you give people in poverty the opportunity to build wealth, everybody succeeds.
Kamea Chayne: What are your personal mottos, or what practices do you engage with to stay grounded?
Karen Washington: I pray every day. I wake up, I'm thankful for my life, I'm thankful for the environment around me. I stop and I notice clouds, the sky. I take a moment to look at what God has given, and be thankful. And when I'm on land, upstate, I'm thankful. I say to the ancestors out in the air that I'm thankful for the privilege of being a steward of the land that I'm on.
Kamea Chayne: And what have been some of your biggest personal inspirations lately?
Karen Washington: The Black Farmer Fund, that a group of us started in late December 2019... When we had this idea of starting a fund for Black farmers and Black businesses in New York State, people thought that we were crazy because we had no financial background.
We got a young person by the name of Oliva, we call her Olive, coming in to talk about financial literacy, social capital and communal wealth. So we were able to accrue over 1.5 million dollars. Seeing Olivia Watkins as this new CEO... she's on the Forbes 30 under 30 list, and I recently made the Forbes 50 over 50 list.
To see both of us make Forbes lists, and having this Fund now giving out grants and loans to Black farmers has been very inspirational, because so many people didn't believe in us. And the fact that it comes from the decision-making process of the community too—it's not in a room with some four or five people making the decisions, it's the community at large that's making the decisions.
Kamea Chayne: Thank you so much for this nourishing and enriching discussion. And thank you so much for your leadership in orienting food activism towards justice and sovereignty. What final words of wisdom do you have for us as green dreamers?
Karen Washington: Believe it or not, I'm just an ordinary person. I just saw injustice, and I found a way to call it out. So green dreamers, when you see injustice, call it out. Say what it is, and work on that.
