Going to keep this even shorter, by sharing short summary of the day and few powerful statements heard yesterday, for Day 2 of Community Food Systems Conference.
For opening day of workshops for conference, I attended workshop session on:
- Building Power to Change the Food System: Grassroots Organizing Towards Food Sovereignty in the United States
- Youth Engagement in Building Sustainable Food Systems: Higher Education, Sustainability and Justice
- The Farm Bill is Coming! Make Your Voice Heard
For final keynote, Winona LaDuke, environmentalist and political activist, gave beautiful speech and presentation. Many of key points I'll share in my key take-aways for the day below.
- We need to include fishing and fisheries within food justice movement (often overlooked)
- Innovation does not always mean new. It can also mean returning to way things were done before, say, colonization
- Let's redefine local; local more about who owns business, what are their stories... it's about ownership and push against corporatization of our food system
- Make American Great Again by returning back to agroecological diversity. (We once grew nearly 300 different varieties of corn. Now, only a few.)
- The seeds remember the land they came from (take literally or metaphorically, or both) (Winona)
- The answer is not found within the paradigm that exists today (Winona)
- Seeds are about hope (Winona)
- Don't get so smart that you don't know how to grow your own food (Winona)
Also, shoutout to these organizations I learned about, please check them out:
- Grow Dat Food out of New Orleans
- Appetite for Change out of Minnesota
- Boston Public Market