Food Justice
In conversation with Ian Marcuse
Ian Marcuse (he/him) is a second-generation settler from Jewish, English, and Welsh heritage, born in Vancouver. As a privileged white male, he has always been aware of social justice issues and focused on promoting grassroots-driven social change. With a graduate degree in Urban Planning from UBC, Ian manages Vancouver's 14 neighborhood-based food networks, addressing access and equity challenges. Leveraging community centers and neighborhood houses, he supports vulnerable individuals and advocates for systemic change. Ian's role involves higher-level planning, policy advocacy, communications, and fundraising. He recognizes the urgency of addressing climate change, food inflation, and gentrification in his work.
Q: How does promoting food justice intersect with building a more resilient community?
A: There's the obvious one, of course, climate disasters and climate impacts. They will impact our food access, just our ability to access food. They may cut off the supply chain. I remember the floods in the Sioux Mass Valley, it was really intense. There were massive landslides all over the province, or at least the southern area. Dozens and dozens of roads and bridges were washed away. There was flooding in the Sioux Mass Valley, which is out by Abbotsford, and it killed millions of chickens. It cut off all the transport. Cars and trucks were literally cut off. Other communities were literally cut off for like a year. We don't even know if all the roads are built yet. Everyone was starting to hoard food, and stores in the Valley ran out of food quickly. It wasn't as bad in Vancouver because we still had supply coming up from the South, so we weren't entirely cut off.
The pandemic was another climate-related issue. You have these viruses that are being fueled by climate change, weather change. So yeah, there's the obvious food shortage when we talk about food access. There's availability, affordability, and accessibility. Availability was the problem. There simply wasn't enough food available for anyone. It didn't even matter if you were low income or not. When the pandemic first hit, a lot of the food shelves in most cities were empty pretty fast. We dodged a bullet with this pandemic; it could have been far, far worse, but there's still a lot of people who have died and gotten sick.
The food system is a remarkable system. It is fairly resilient. It's a very well-oiled machine. It's remarkable how fast they can pick the food in California, package it, truck it, and ship it up here, literally three to four days. But there are problems too. If there was a massive emergency disaster and our borders were closed, we would be in trouble. Canada has a lot of wheat and grain, animals, poultry, dairy,--- some resilience. But when it comes to fruits and vegetables, no resilience, not in the winter. I think 90% of our fruits and vegetables come from the South. So we rely on more imports than exports.
The equity aspect is another piece of the puzzle. How do we ensure that everyone has the ability to preserve food, and has the resources to withstand these climate-related events? We know that marginalized communities are often the ones that are hit first and hardest. So it's about how do we ensure they have the resources, financial and otherwise, to be able to withstand these challenges? How do we build equity into our food systems?
I do a lot of community garden support. I work with schools and teach students about gardening, growing their own food. I think that's a long-term solution, really building awareness, building skills around growing your own food, whether it's at the individual level or the community level. I've seen the impact it has on students. It's amazing to see young people, especially in urban areas, who have never grown anything, when they start to grow their own food and see that process. When they save seeds, plant, and harvest, it's really empowering.
A: There's the obvious one, of course, climate disasters and climate impacts. They will impact our food access, just our ability to access food. They may cut off the supply chain. I remember the floods in the Sioux Mass Valley, it was really intense. There were massive landslides all over the province, or at least the southern area. Dozens and dozens of roads and bridges were washed away. There was flooding in the Sioux Mass Valley, which is out by Abbotsford, and it killed millions of chickens. It cut off all the transport. Cars and trucks were literally cut off. Other communities were literally cut off for like a year. We don't even know if all the roads are built yet. Everyone was starting to hoard food, and stores in the Valley ran out of food quickly. It wasn't as bad in Vancouver because we still had supply coming up from the South, so we weren't entirely cut off.
The pandemic was another climate-related issue. You have these viruses that are being fueled by climate change, weather change. So yeah, there's the obvious food shortage when we talk about food access. There's availability, affordability, and accessibility. Availability was the problem. There simply wasn't enough food available for anyone. It didn't even matter if you were low income or not. When the pandemic first hit, a lot of the food shelves in most cities were empty pretty fast. We dodged a bullet with this pandemic; it could have been far, far worse, but there's still a lot of people who have died and gotten sick.
The food system is a remarkable system. It is fairly resilient. It's a very well-oiled machine. It's remarkable how fast they can pick the food in California, package it, truck it, and ship it up here, literally three to four days. But there are problems too. If there was a massive emergency disaster and our borders were closed, we would be in trouble. Canada has a lot of wheat and grain, animals, poultry, dairy,--- some resilience. But when it comes to fruits and vegetables, no resilience, not in the winter. I think 90% of our fruits and vegetables come from the South. So we rely on more imports than exports.
The equity aspect is another piece of the puzzle. How do we ensure that everyone has the ability to preserve food, and has the resources to withstand these climate-related events? We know that marginalized communities are often the ones that are hit first and hardest. So it's about how do we ensure they have the resources, financial and otherwise, to be able to withstand these challenges? How do we build equity into our food systems?
I do a lot of community garden support. I work with schools and teach students about gardening, growing their own food. I think that's a long-term solution, really building awareness, building skills around growing your own food, whether it's at the individual level or the community level. I've seen the impact it has on students. It's amazing to see young people, especially in urban areas, who have never grown anything, when they start to grow their own food and see that process. When they save seeds, plant, and harvest, it's really empowering.
Q: How important is it to use an intersectional lens when addressing food justice in the community?
A: Food security is one of those social determinants of health that intersects with everything else: your employment status, your educational status, your housing status, and those determinants would impact your ability to survive or cope with a climate impact. Just acknowledging that food is a very key social determinant of, not just health and well-being, but our general resilience to cope with stressors in life, including climate-related ones. One of the critiques made of resilience was that it typically conceptualized the ability to adapt to extreme weather, but it overlooked equity issues. Resilience should be about supporting all determinants of well-being, including housing stability, economic stability, health stability, education, and food security, to ensure equitable resilience. Nowadays, resilience is more aware of the equity piece.
So, with food, whether we're talking about food insecurity, health, or climate change, a lot of the food work we do is oriented towards supporting equity development. We work with communities that struggle to access food or face challenges related to food, such as lower-income or newcomer communities. Our focus is on ensuring these communities have increased access to food and the means to purchase their own food. Ideally, they have incomes that allow them to buy food even in the worst-case climate emergency or during food shortages. Many people living paycheck to paycheck don't have the financial capacity to stock up on food like wealthier individuals, which can leave them starving or relying on food lines during emergencies. Income equity is a significant aspect of promoting equity, and we advocate for social policy changes such as a basic minimum income floor or a guaranteed or universal basic income. These measures would provide individuals, particularly those with lower incomes, with the financial resources needed to buy food and improve their resilience. We recognize the challenges faced by individuals who are deeply impoverished and believe that income stability is a crucial determinant of health and well-being.
In addition to income equity, we also highlight the importance of addressing debt and time constraints that hinder individuals from engaging in climate activism and community work. Many people are burdened by debt and are working multiple jobs, leaving them with little time or energy to contribute to climate action. This points to the need for systemic change and the creation of policies that alleviate debt burdens and provide individuals with the resources and time to actively participate in climate justice work.
A: Food security is one of those social determinants of health that intersects with everything else: your employment status, your educational status, your housing status, and those determinants would impact your ability to survive or cope with a climate impact. Just acknowledging that food is a very key social determinant of, not just health and well-being, but our general resilience to cope with stressors in life, including climate-related ones. One of the critiques made of resilience was that it typically conceptualized the ability to adapt to extreme weather, but it overlooked equity issues. Resilience should be about supporting all determinants of well-being, including housing stability, economic stability, health stability, education, and food security, to ensure equitable resilience. Nowadays, resilience is more aware of the equity piece.
So, with food, whether we're talking about food insecurity, health, or climate change, a lot of the food work we do is oriented towards supporting equity development. We work with communities that struggle to access food or face challenges related to food, such as lower-income or newcomer communities. Our focus is on ensuring these communities have increased access to food and the means to purchase their own food. Ideally, they have incomes that allow them to buy food even in the worst-case climate emergency or during food shortages. Many people living paycheck to paycheck don't have the financial capacity to stock up on food like wealthier individuals, which can leave them starving or relying on food lines during emergencies. Income equity is a significant aspect of promoting equity, and we advocate for social policy changes such as a basic minimum income floor or a guaranteed or universal basic income. These measures would provide individuals, particularly those with lower incomes, with the financial resources needed to buy food and improve their resilience. We recognize the challenges faced by individuals who are deeply impoverished and believe that income stability is a crucial determinant of health and well-being.
In addition to income equity, we also highlight the importance of addressing debt and time constraints that hinder individuals from engaging in climate activism and community work. Many people are burdened by debt and are working multiple jobs, leaving them with little time or energy to contribute to climate action. This points to the need for systemic change and the creation of policies that alleviate debt burdens and provide individuals with the resources and time to actively participate in climate justice work.
Q: You worked with Our Place which was dedicated to promoting local access and community empowerment. How did this relate to sustainable food systems?
A: Our Place was an amazing place-based initiative, very Indigenous-led, that came together as a response to various social issues. It aimed to address problems like the opioid crisis, homelessness, youth suicide, and indigenous incarceration, which were not being effectively solved by the top-down social service system. It sought to create a new community-based governance structure. Instead of the typical procurement process where the biggest organizations with the most power win contracts, Our Place wanted a new type of procurement program that allowed communities to decide on effective programming. I led some work focused on food security in collaboration with organizations like YWCA Crabtree Corner, Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, and Strathcona Community Centre. This work aimed to create a Downtown Eastside Indigenous food sovereignty hub, centered around Indigenous values and principles, and focused on having control over the local food system. The hub would provide long-term storage and distribute food in a dignified and just manner, departing from the undignified traditional food bank model. The goal was to upend power systems and give traditionally disenfranchised communities more agency and decision-making power. Through localized food hubs, food would be distributed through ceremony, sharing, and cooking together, strengthening community resilience and fostering relationships. This approach also aligned with the need to adapt to climate change. Social connectedness and community-building were seen as key determinants of health, and food served as a means to bring people together. Our Place aimed to develop stronger, culturally sensitive localized food systems in different neighborhoods, with a particular focus on supporting indigenous communities in the Downtown Eastside that had been left out of the dominant food movement. Q: What role do youth play in improving food access in their local community? A: Youth are a hard demographic to engage. I was a youth once before and when I was a youth, I wasn't interested in gardening. I was into sports and other things, but I think leading in urban agriculture initiatives and piloting really innovative ideas like aquaponics could be done at the school. I ran an aquaponic project with a school. It's like a symbiotic relationship where the fish feed on the roots and the fish's poop nourishes the roots. We had a small aquaponic system in the community center and also a smaller one in the school, with goldfish in the bottom and little plants growing on top. The students who worked on this project actually won the DC Science Fair project and went to the Nationals. I think getting students and schools involved in hands-on innovative projects like setting up microgreens or hydroponic systems, and promoting school gardening, is what they want to do. They may not be interested in attending meetings or getting involved in political work, but they can advocate for ideas like having a greenhouse on the school grounds, which can enable year-round food production. |
Ways to Take Action
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Bridging the Intersections between Food Justice and Climate Justice
Beef Production
Beef production is the largest cause of tropical deforestation, which overlaps with the most biodiverse land in the world (Ritchie and Roser 2021). Livestock are responsible for over half of the food industry’s emissions but only provide 18% of global calories (Garnett 2021). In order to protect nature, reduce carbon and methane emissions, and promote food justice, a reduction in personal meat consumption |
Food Sovereignty
A just transition will apply to our food industry and moving toward food sovereignty is one avenue to do so. In a shift away from corporate power, food sovereignty is a framework that puts the production and distribution power in the communities who produce and consume food (Salerno 2021). Food sovereignty as an aspect of climate justice means that family owned farms, which feed the majority of the world, cannot be used by corporations or governments to feed technologic ‘green fixes’ and prevents further land grabbing and assimilation by colonialist powers (Peck 2016).
A just transition will apply to our food industry and moving toward food sovereignty is one avenue to do so. In a shift away from corporate power, food sovereignty is a framework that puts the production and distribution power in the communities who produce and consume food (Salerno 2021). Food sovereignty as an aspect of climate justice means that family owned farms, which feed the majority of the world, cannot be used by corporations or governments to feed technologic ‘green fixes’ and prevents further land grabbing and assimilation by colonialist powers (Peck 2016).
Crop Production and Costs
Part of food justice is ensuring that all people have access to affordable food. When climate disasters like droughts or heat waves affect farmlands across the globe, crops will generally yield less (De Guzman 2022). With smaller yields and supply chain disruptions due to climate disasters, the overall price of food increases. This makes it increasingly difficult for many people to be able to access nutritious and culturally appropriate food. It is even more difficult for people in food deserts, which are areas that have limited easy access to nutritious food (Indiana University 2023). As costs of food increase, we must ensure that economic equity is incorporated in food and climate justice.
Part of food justice is ensuring that all people have access to affordable food. When climate disasters like droughts or heat waves affect farmlands across the globe, crops will generally yield less (De Guzman 2022). With smaller yields and supply chain disruptions due to climate disasters, the overall price of food increases. This makes it increasingly difficult for many people to be able to access nutritious and culturally appropriate food. It is even more difficult for people in food deserts, which are areas that have limited easy access to nutritious food (Indiana University 2023). As costs of food increase, we must ensure that economic equity is incorporated in food and climate justice.
Food as Community Resilience
Community resilience is a community’s ability to recover from stressors. It is increasingly being considered when talking about climate change because it focuses on social cohesion, local mutual aid, and self-sufficiency (Global Climate Action 2021). Local food systems not only help promote food security; they also foster social connections and can therefore improve community resilience (McDaniel et al. 2021). Even in urban settings, food systems such as community gardens can help foster community connections and increase food stability, thus increasing community resilience (Mohd Salleh et al. 2020). |
Resources