July Resources

Rise Up! Summer School 2020: Cultivating Resilient Food Systems in Times of Crisis

CAGJ is hosting Rise Up! Summer School during the summer of 2020. Registration is now full. However, we are making all curriculum available to everyone interested!

Presentations from July Session:

Presentation #1 – Food Systems and You: A Mini Primer by Mary Purdy
Presentation #2 (starts 18:31) – Overview of CAGJ’s AGRA Watch Program by Heather Day
Presentation #3 (starts 33:35) – Crisis Convergence in Globalized Food Systems by Noel Hutton, Lisa Colligan, and Sam Shafer

Overview:

JUNE: Past/Laying groundwork & Foundations
Topics: Food Sovereignty, Food Justice, Agroecology, Seed Sovereignty, Decolonization, Racist & genocidal roots of US food system
Highlighted CAGJ Campaign: Solidarity with Farmworkers

JULY: Present/Current state of food system
Topics: Corporate control of the food system, Agribusiness impact on climate crisis, Food workersโ€™ rights and food security in a pandemic, Philanthrocapitalism
Highlighted CAGJ Campaign: Solidarity with African food sovereignty movement

AUGUST: Future/Paths Forward
Topics: Just Transition, Climate Justice, Movement-Building
Highlighted CAGJ Campaign: Solidarity with NW tribes in opposition to GE Salmon

 

Overview of July Resources:

    • Foundational
    • Supplemental
    • Engage
    • Reflect

1 – FOUNDATIONAL

Corporate Power

Climate & Environmental Crisis

 

COVID-19

 

Philanthrocapitalism

 

Solidarity with the African Food Sovereignty Movement

 

2 – SUPPLEMENTAL

Solidarity with the African Food Sovereignty Movement

 

Corporate Power

Climate & Environmental Crisis

 

Industrial Model

COVID-19

 

Philanthrocapitalism

 

ENGAGE

Choose one or more of the following activities to deepen your connections:

  • Globalization has had a major impact on our food system in recent decades. Think about where the Global meets the Local for you.
    • Especially during this pandemic, we are increasingly called to โ€˜stay localโ€™, from our relationships to our food choices. In what ways are your habits, food choices, or spending (hyper)local, and in what ways do you remain connected to the global? What feelings or reactions come up around these observations? Where do you feel power to change or control the patterns you observe? What feels outside of your control?
  • Challenge: Keep track of where all of your food comes from for a day, or a week.
    • If you are shopping for vegetables and fruit at a grocery store, where were they grown? Is this information easily accessible?
    • What can you find out about the agricultural models used and working conditions where one or more of the foods were grown?
    • Are you finding opportunities to support food justice and food sovereignty in your day to day life through eating? What are the challenges/obstacles/opportunities? What are the limitations to changing the world through our forks?

REFLECT

Here are some guiding questions just to get you started. We encourage you to keep a journal or some other way to express and process your thoughts.

  • How might you begin to explain the following themes we covered to someone unfamiliar with these topics? What components do you find most compelling, surprising, or new to you?
    • Corporate control of the global food system
    • Agribusinessโ€™ impact on the climate crisis
    • Food workersโ€™ rights and food security in the pandemic
    • Philanthrocapitalism
  • ย Remember this from our course description?:
    โ€œAcross the world, we are facing a confluence of crises. The COVID-19 outbreak is magnifying racial and economic inequality. Industrial food production is accelerating climate change and increasing global food insecurity. These crises incite political instability and mass human displacement at an unprecedented scale, and now the pandemic is exposing the vulnerability of our globalized food system to collapse.โ€
    • Can you think of three specific ways in which these crises are interconnected in relation to global and/or local food systems? How is the food system impacting and being impacted by these crises?
      • Consider structures, e.g. free trade, racial and economic inequality, capitalism
      • Consider actors, e.g. multinational corporations, philanthropists, farmers, farmworkers
      • Consider symptoms, e.g. climate change, COVID-19, mass displacement, exploited labor, food insecurity
  • Draw it out: How would you illustrate the web of relationships between people, land, policy, and pandemic as it relates to African Food Sovereignty movements?
    • Try a mind map or a geographical map, and attempt to draw the connections between these elements.
    • What questions arise as you do this exercise? Where are there gaps in your understanding?