Synergy – where the sum is greater than the parts. If we can connect the dots at the grassroots level, we can amplify our collective voices.
I recently returned from a Witness for Peace-sponsored delegation to Oaxaca, Mexico that focused on sustainability, trade policy, food sovereignty and the roots of migration. I returned with lots of questions: How does the local fit into the global? What lessons can we learn from others? What can “DC Food for All”, a local initiative, bring to national and international conversations about hunger?
As it turns out many people in Oaxaca face similar problems to people in DC, including:
- lack of access to healthy local food because of its cost;
- increasing prevalence of imported foods (grown far away) in markets;
- corporate agriculture making it hard for small and local farmers to compete;
The root causes? Lousy policy. In both DC and Oaxaca. And a prevailing worldview that favors corporate profit and efficiency over people and planet.
In Mexico, many of these problems are fairly new. In 1982, Mexico took out a loan from the International Monetary Fund, and in exchange had to start opening up its markets to foreign imports. This also started a trend of privatization, and the forced removal of price supports and subsidies to Mexican farmers.
Trade liberalization, privatization, and the stripping away of subsidies all accelerated with the passage of NAFTA – a free trade agreement amongst the US, Canada, and Mexico which promised to reduce poverty and create jobs. Instead, food prices have skyrocketed – as have unemployment rates. Some food-related changes in Mexico since NAFTA include:
- an average food price increase in Mexico of 257%;
- heavily-subsidized US grain/corn products undercutting unsubsidized Mexican products – making it impossible for Mexican farmers to compete;
- an influx of genetically-modified, corporate-grown corn;
- the displacement of thousands of Mexican farmers;
- increases in both hunger and obesity;
In Oaxaca, as in DC, dedicated people have demonstrated several approaches to tackling problems of food access, nutrition, and farmer rights. 1) At one level, there is the ability to take things into one’s own hands: growing one’s own food, gardening, learning about nutritious options, and supporting local food. People in Oaxaca, like people in DC, are organizing themselves to increase their food sovereignty by growing their own.
There are organizations such as RASA (Red Autonoma para la Soberania Alimentaria/Autonomous Network for Food Sovereignty) and CEDICAM (Center for the Integral Development of the Mixteca) that support people who want to grow their own food on rooftops and in backyards, and also work on saving seeds, conserving soil, and harvesting rainwater. These examples are strong evidence of how much we can learn from people in Oaxaca, and how in general the best sustainable development usually comes from the bottom up – from the people whose daily realities are most directly affected.
While these are good solutions, there is a need to change the fundamentally unjust free trade systems that create these conditions in the first place. Therefore, 2) at another level, in DC and in Oaxaca, let’s organize to push for policy change: policies that support universal access to local and organic foods, policies that protect small and organic farmers, fair trade, and a sharp turn away from corporate food systems that hurt both producers and consumers. In both cities, there is also a need for immediate assistance with food access for low-income people.
The parallels between the struggles for food sovereignty in Oaxaca and DC are plentiful; and offer us opportunities to share ideas and build alliances. We need to take a multi-tiered approach to progress – creating our own solutions; and also demanding policies that obliterate the root causes of poverty, hunger, and landlessness – and always seeking justice at the local, national, and international levels.
