Thirty Years of Fighting for the Right to Feed Oneself
A farmer in Honduras harvests mangos. Photo by Jennifer Tong, from the documentary project “Growing Hunger: The Struggle of Small Farmers in the 21st Century.” See www.foodfirst.org/growinghunger.html.
This year marks the thirtieth anniversary for the Institute for Food and Development Policy, founded by Frances Moore Lappé and Joseph Collins “to engage in research, studies, seminars, and the preparation and dissemination of publications and other educational activities in the field of agricultural policy, food distribution, world development, and foreign and domestic policy issues relating thereto.”
The organization’s first book, Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity, though out of print for more than a decade, is still copied and passed around by people in the Third World.
In the introduction to the Institute’s book, Aid as Obstacle: Twenty Questions About Our Foreign Aid and the Hungry, published in 1980, Lappé, Collins, and David Kinley get to the root of the problem: “The official aid agencies’ diagnosis is that the poor are poor because they lack certain things—irrigation, credit, better seeds, good roads, etc. But we ask: Why are they lacking these things? In studying country after country, it becomes clear that what the poor really lack is power—power to secure what they need. The aid agencies focus on the lack of materials; we focus on the lack of power. Therein lies the fundamental difference.”
The Institute, commonly known as Food First, aims to change consciousness, awakening people to the possibility of social change and their own power to bring it about. For thirty years, we’ve been exposing myths and championing groups and communities who are fighting back (and sometimes winning). You, our members, have been right there with us.
One of the rewards of having worked at Food First for the past twenty years has been reading the letters from students, activists, Food First members, and fans from around the world who are inspired by our work. I would like to share pieces of just a few of these “love letters:”
May 23, 2004
I am sending along this small contribution to mark the beginning of my support to Food First. In one week I will graduate from College. I have spent my time studying agro-ecology and food system issues. I would like you to know that your publications and efforts have given me endless inspiration. I hope I can, in return, offer you inspiration with the fact that I am one of many young Americans who is inspired and dedicated to improving the current systems of food production and distribution. Buy locally grown!
—Loudler
November 25, 1998
I turned on my car radio this afternoon and found the unbearable voice of Robert Rector [of the Heritage Foundation]…It was then a wonderful surprise to hear you, whose work I have long admired. You were clear, courageous, and convincing.
Hunger is a direct challenge to the complacency of the well fed: they must either deny the humanity of the hungry (as Rector did) or admit that something is wrong with the system and their part in it. All of you at Food First are doing some of the most important work in the world today.
—David Keppel (long-time donor)
October 4, 2004
Food First provides an extremely important voice in a discussion that mainstream elites continue to ignore. Addressing disparities in food production is not only important because of the destruction caused by hunger, malnourishment, and the intensive agri-industry on a very large fraction of humanity. Food is also a very salient issue for affluent consumers, who are understanding the connection between profit-seeking and decreasing food quality. As such, the topic of food production has the potential to build bridges across political and economic boundaries.
—Matt Clement
To read more of these letters from Food First supporters and fans, go to www.foodfirst.org/30years. There you can write us a letter telling us about why Food First’s work is important to you.
Thank you so much for joining me in this journey in building a world where every person has access to healthy, adequate food.
Marilyn Borchardt
Interim Executive Director
Food First Releases New Edition of Classic Book on Zapatistas
Are the Zapatistas set to change the world again?
In mid-June 2005, Mexico’s Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) issued a “red alert” for their territories, as they gathered to discuss the course their movement for indigenous rights will take. In recent years, the Zapatistas have become isolated within Mexico, keeping their activities chiefly within the areas they control.
Ten days after they announced the red alert, the EZLN issued the Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona. In it, they vowed to renew their 11-plus-year struggle for social and economic justice, first recounting the history of the Zapatista movement and attacking the forms of economic globalization that crush the poor. The Zapatistas have called on indigenous peoples, workers, farmers, students, teachers, urban dwellers, and others to unite in a larger struggle against these “neoliberal” economic policies, which are epitomized by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and such trade agreements as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR).
The Sixth Declaration states in part that “The hour has come to take a risk once again and to take a step which is dangerous but worthwhile.”
On January 1, 1994, the day NAFTA came into effect, the Zapatistas took their first dangerous step. They seized towns in Chiapas, in southern Mexico, and demanded that the Mexican government honor their political and economic rights. Though the Zapatista army retreated before Mexican troops days later, the Zapatistas continue to occupy much territory in Chiapas and remain a formidable moral and political force in Mexico.
The rebellion also electrified the world and sparked a new global social movement. The movement that burst forth in protest at the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle in 1999 has roots in Chiapas, according to George Collier, author (with Elizabeth Lowery Quaratiello) of the Food First book Basta! Land and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas, just published in its third edition.
The first edition of Basta! was published in 1994, months after the uprising. Noam Chomsky had this to say about the book: “[This] inquiry into the roots of the Zapatista rebellion lucidly reveals their depth and intricacy. But it goes well beyond these fascinating and inspiring developments in rural Mexico, illuminating fundamental and I think ominous tendencies in the socioeconomic order. It is a penetrating and thoughtful study, with far-reaching implications.”
In the fully revised third edition of their now-classic study, Collier and Quaratiello
paint a vivid picture of the historical struggle for land faced by the Maya Indians, who are among Mexico’s poorest people. Examining the roles played by Catholic and Protestant clergy, revolutionary and peasant movements, the oil boom and the debt crisis, NAFTA and the free trade era, and finally the growing global justice movement, the authors provide a rich context for understanding the uprising and the subsequent history of the Zapatistas and rural Chiapas, up to the present day.
The result of forty years of research in and about Chiapas, Basta! offers a unique depth of context for understanding where the Zapatistas came from and how their organization has developed since they first rose up.
To read the Zapatistas’ most recent declaration, go to www.foodfirst.org/sixthdeclaration (English) or www.fzln.org.mx (Spanish). To read an excerpt from the new edition of Basta! Land and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas, go to www.foodfirst.org/bookstore/pdf/basta3_full.pdf . To order the book, go to www.foodfirst.org/books.
Introducing the Food First Board of Trustees
The seasoned activists on Food First’s Board of Trustees bring the organization a great depth of experience in the areas of local food security and health, international exchange, and grassroots community organizing. Here are a few words about each (read more at www.foodfirst.org/boarddirectory ):
Board president Shyaam Shabaka is founder and executive director of the EcoVillage Farm Learning Center in Richmond, California.
Board vice president Joyce King holds the Benjamin E. Mays Chair of Urban Teaching, Learning, and Leadership in the College of Education at Georgia State University.
Board treasurer Dyanne Ladine teaches ethics and law at Notre Dame de Namur University and is a community organizer in East Palo Alto, California.
Board secretary Malía Everette is the director of the San Francisco organization Global Exchange's Reality Tours program.
Isao Fujimoto is professor emeritus of community development and Asian American Studies at University of California, Davis.
Hank Herrera is a practicing psychiatrist and community organizer and activist in Rochester, New York.
LaDonna Redmond is a community food security activist working on Chicago’s west side.
Jeffrey Ritterman is a practicing cardiologist and community health activist in Richmond, California.
From left to right: Karl Beitel, Melissa Moore, Marilyn Borchardt, Clancy Drake, Hank Herrera, Isao Fujimoto, LaDonna Redmond, Kirsten Schwind, Dyanne Ladine, Malía Everette, Joyce King, Jeffrey Ritterman, Shyaam Shabaka. Not pictured: Rowena Garcia and Martha Katigbak-Fernandez.
“Growing Hunger” and “Postcards from the Heartland”: Two Multimedia Features Only at www.foodfirst.org
In April of this year, Food First was privileged to web-publish the first in a series of photographs entitled “Growing Hunger,” which is an ongoing documentary project by writer/researcher (and former Food First intern) Michael Courville and photographer Jennifer Tong. In August, we are putting up more photos in the series, which can be viewed at www.foodfirst.org/growinghunger.html .
The project explores the contradictions of hunger and poverty in an era of global food production and economic interdependence. The first phase of the project focuses on small farmers in Honduras after a decade of free market agricultural policy. Future phases of the project will include coverage of small farmers in China, the Philippines and the United States.
In 2004, Ingrid Evjen-Elias, an urban farmer in Oakland, California, and also a current Food First intern, cycled with a friend 500 miles through midwestern farm country. They talked to farmers, activists, biotech executives, rural youth, and many others, gathering audio clips and photographs and assembling a striking portrait of the challenges and possibilities facing the people who grow our food.
The first two segments of Ingrid’s multimedia essay, “Postcards from the Heartland,” are now available on the Food First website at http://www.foodfirst.org/postcards1 and http://www.foodfirst.org/postcards2. (Residents of the San Francisco Bay Area may recall hearing the radio version of “Postcards from the Heartland” on KPFA’s Morning Show on June 29, June 30, and July 1 this summer.)
