US Food Sovereignty Alliance

Category: Popular Education

  • Call to Action

    Call to Action

    The following Call to Action is adapted from the Call to Action to End the Food Crisis issued by the US Working Group on the Food Crisis in 2008 and endorsed by several thousand organizations and individuals. It is included here as a springboard for future action of the Alliance, with the understanding that it will evolve to reflect new ideas, voices, and perspectives as the Alliance develops.

    We call on people across the United States to use our political power and actions to fight poverty by rebuilding local food economies, and specifically for food system changes that:

    1) Stabilize prices for farmers and consumers locally, nationally and globally by:

    • Ending rampant financial speculation in food;
    • Establishing and strengthening publicly-owned domestic, regional, and international strategic food reserves;
    • Suspending international trade and investments in industrial-scale biofuels (a.k.a. agrofuels);
    • Transforming corporate-oriented food aid;
    • Ensuring fair prices to farmers, fishers, pastoralists and other food providers;
    • Establishing equitable regional and global trade arrangements that enable countries, communities, and all farmers, fishers, pastoralists and other food providers to meet food and livelihood needs.

    2) Balance power in the food system by:

    • Reducing the political influence of agrifood corporations on public policy, e.g., by strengthening antitrust enforcement on those corporations and reducing their unregulated market power;
    • Convening multi-stakeholder, representative food policy councils at state and local levels.

    3) Make agriculture environmentally sustainable by:

    • Supporting family farms’ transition to agroecological practices through incentives, purchasing and procurement;
    • Halting expansion of government-supported agrofuels (biofuels) and transgenic seeds programs, mandates, and tax incentives and other subsidies
    • Directing state and national farm policy, R&D, education and investment toward agroecological farming and sustainable food businesses.

    4) Guarantee the right to healthy food by building local and regional food systems and fostering social, ecological and economic justice by:

    • Calling on the US to join the community of nations to support the human right to food;
    • Supporting domestic food production and independent, community-based food cooperatives and businesses in the United States and around the world;
    • Establishing living wages, so that everyone can afford healthy food;
    • Implementing full workers’ rights for farm workers and other food system workers;
    • Implementing agrarian reform that takes land out of the hands of large corporations and puts it in the hands of communities for local food production.
    • Strengthening the social safety net for low-income people across the US;
    • Creating a solidarity economy that puts people before corporate profit in the US and around the world.

    Through food sovereignty, the Earth can feed all living things.

  • Our Work: Current Collectives

    The five collectives became integrated into the USFSA’s structure during the IV National Assembly of the Alliance (October 2018).  Collectives meet monthly and are open to participation from representatives of member and ally organizations as well as individuals unaffiliated with an organization. Each of the five working groups has representation on the USFSA’s national coordination team.

    Youth Process

    The Youth Process began in early 2018 prior to the IV National Assembly as an autonomous space for young adults (ages 18 – 35) in the USFSA to build relationships, engage in political education, and explore what a youth articulation of the USFSA could look like, inspired by one member’s experience in youth trainings with other international food movement spaces. After formally being recognized as a collective at the IV Assembly, it has grown and continued to function as a platform for peer-to-peer learning, building leadership and political analysis, and for strengthening organizing skills such as facilitation, note-taking, and collective decision-making. Throughout the Youth Process’s existence, guest speakers from other youth formations have been invited to build relationship and dialogue with members about the role of youth in our movements. The Youth Process has determined its structure, values and principles with a vision to bring important intersectional issues into the USFSA, especially those voiced by young leaders in this political moment, including climate justice, queer ecology, decolonization, dismantling white supremacy, racial justice, and creative, liberatory imagination.

    Narrative Strategy

    The narrative strategy collective coordinates the production and distribution of content through the Alliance’s website and social media platforms. Participants mostly write blogs, create videos, and manage the website. Regular meetings allow for defining the Alliance’s strategic goals and tactics with regard to contesting the hegemony of industrial agribusiness by uplifting the visionary narratives and oppositional actions of grassroots member organizations in particular.

    Political Education

    The political education collective focuses on infusing popular pedagogy and critical perspectives across the Alliance. Participants work on the creation of educational materials pertaining to food sovereignty and agroecology, in addition to hosting webinars and planning a national course for enhancing the capacity of grassroots leaders and grassroots-support networks to advance strategies for consciousness-raising and base-building in the food sovereignty movement. The collective aims to collaborate closely with the narrative strategy and agroecology collectives, specifically in terms of amplifying the role of political education in internal and external communications and agroecology encounters held in the four regions of the USFSA.

    Agroecology, Land, and Water

    The agroecology, land, and water collective has identified encuentros (encounters) as a top priority, along with the sharing of knowledge and skills concerning socially-just, ecologically-sound farming and fishing practices. Participants emphasize that agroecology is not only a science but also a political movement of smallholder producers committed to transformative social, economic, and environmental change. To that end, the agroecology collective seeks to create a land trust in accordance with the principles of food sovereignty, and this long-term project merges with USFSA member organization’s broader work of upholding the rights of workers, demanding justice and legal protection for immigrant families, and standing in solidarity with indigenous communities who continue to resist centuries of violence imposed by settler colonialism and capitalism.

    International Relations

    The international relations collective prepares USFSA members to represent the Alliance abroad in meetings, trainings, delegations, learning exchanges, and policy processes. The working group intends to establish a well-informed cadre of participants who can speak on behalf of the USFSA and report back to the national coordination team following involvement in such international spaces. In addition to bilateral relationships with rural movements such as the MST in Brazil and the ATC in Nicaragua, the international relations cohort aims to strengthen the USFSA’s participation in multilateral spaces, such as the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty and the Civil Society Mechanism through the North American region.