Food Sovereignty in New Orleans

Found at the Biodiversity Library's Grapevine comes this article from Grist on Food Sovereignty.
I put it on my Facebook page and then thought I would share it here as well...

Food sovereignty has been a massive issue where multinational corporations like Monsanto, Dupont and co, amongst their many highly contentious moves, have been dismantling age old farming traditions in countries like India in a way that has been well documented.

They've met their fiercest and most able opponent in India in the form of Vandana Shiva who's worked tirelessly on preserving food sovereignty not just in her country, but globally, linked with Slow Food International and many other vital organisations to do so. Her work on the Manifesto for the Future of Seeds from the last decade made it a global concern to know about Food sovereignty, seed copyright and loss of biodiversity.

IN the west our arguments against these companies focus very largely on the GMO's/Organic debate and our food chains... failing to even mention the broader issues at stake. The more I pursued what was going on globally with seeds the more I wondered why we rarely mention food sovereignity and discuss seed copyright issues in relation to the transnational companies. I also wondered why we drown out important input from within the the Science community where independent work is carried out, not to serve corporate interests but to investigate a whole range os concerns around seeds and plants.

Biodiversity loss is what I find personally most concerning as it covers many, many issues that I believe we could be more aware of and use our influence to fight. I would ask anyone focusing solely on the gmo vs organic story to see that as one aspect of a much bigger thing that is at stake.

Here below is the story I wanted to share:


Editor’s note: This is the second in a weekly installment of images from Douglas Gayeton and Laura Howard-Gayeton’s Lexicon of Sustainability. We’ll be running one image every Friday this winter, so stay tuned. If you have your own sustainability terms, you can add them yourself to the Lexicon of Sustainability.

Xuyen Pham’s Garden
East New Orleans, LA

After Xuyen Pham lost her New Orleans home to Hurricane Katrina, she turned the property into a farm to feed her community. She fled Vietnam with her husband and children at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. After months in Southeast Asian refugee camps they were moved to Fort Chaffee in Arkansas. The family was eventually sponsored by a hotel owner in Oklahoma, but the cold proved too much so they moved yet again, settling in the “Mary Queen of Vietnam” community in East New Orleans.

This farm is surrounded by houses (we are right in the middle of a suburban housing tract in East New Orleans).

Xuyen stands amidst taro plants in her home garden. The plant stems are a base ingredient in traditional soups and congees found on most Vietnamese dinner tables. By growing taro and other vegetables, she keeps Vietnamese traditions alive in her community.

Xuyen’s definition of “food sovereignty”:
The ability of community members to control food access (both effluent and influent) independent of outside food sources (such as supermarkets). Members of the community grow traditional fruits and vegetables and fisherfolk go shrimping, fishing, and crabbing to sell at local stores, the local Saturday farmers market, and most importantly, to feed their families and community members.

Xuyen is also a participant in a local New Orleans East aquaponics project. The project is being implemented by MQVN Community Development Corporation and was established originally by fisherfolk displaced by the BP oil drilling disaster as a way to create jobs and to ensure adequate food access in New Orleans East (a USDA-identified food desert). In the near future, she and her husband, with the help of MQVN Community Development Corporation, will construct greenhouses and an aquaponics growing system on their farm plot.

The Lexicon of Sustainability Project is based on a simple premise: people can’t be expected to live more sustainable lives if they don’t even know the most basic terms and principles that define sustainability. For the past three years Douglas Gayeton and Laura Howard-Gayeton have crisscrossed the USA to learn this new language of sustainability from over one hundred of its foremost practitioners in food and farming — from Alice Waters, to Wes Jackson, Joel Salatin, Vandana Shiva, and Will Allen.

These insights have been translated into large format “information art” photo collages and a series of short films. Study guides, a book, a traveling show, installations, and lastly a website where people can dig deeper into these terms (and even add to our ever-evolving lexicon) are also under development.