In our fast-paced culture of product-based outcomes, one Minnesota group is cultivating something you can’t hold in your hand: relationships that break down barriers to food justice for people of color, women and the poor.
Giles, Claassen and Guettler at the Oxford-Dayton Community Farm. Photo | Monique Dubos
The Minnesota Food and Justice Alliance (MFJA) is a loose affiliation of groups that cultivate community gardens, typically in urban settings, but recognize that the gardeners involved are mostly white and middle class. The groups “each have a special interest in training people of color to garden” and get access to fresh, healthy food, said Melvin Giles, a self-described community peacemaker and coordinator for MFJA. Tom Guettler, the group’s volunteer and workshop coordinator, said, “White folks show up first because we are already tapped into the system. But there’s something more than just saying we want to be diverse.”
The white middle class can easily drive to a grocery store that stocks locally-grown produce, eggs and meat. But in poor and working class neighborhoods, limited availability of fresh food increases rates of fast-food consumption. This leads to higher instances of diabetes, heart disease and obesity in neighborhoods whose residents are mostly people of color. The food justice movement is attempting to address these food access issues. Sarah Claassen, Minnesota-based Land Stewardship Project organizer and MFJA member, said, “There are huge racial disparities in our food and agricultural system today. It’s working real well for some people [factory farms], and not well at all for [small] farmers, for eaters, for people who want to grow our food here and for people who want to be in control of their food system.” She believes that the remedies to these problems have to be community-based. “Where there are the biggest barriers, there is the biggest innovation.” Solutions such as how to grow a lot of food in a small space with very little waste must be developed for each community’s needs.
