Charla de Merienda Presents: Food Security in the Americas

Food Apartheid in America | Pantaleon Florez III

Food apartheid is alive and well in the United States, and US agriculture has never been oriented around actually feeding people. Through centuries of oppression, the food system in the US has been predominantly set up to benefit capitalist cishet masculine white supremacy. The nature of this oppression is older than the United States itself, and the US has utilized both pen and sword to inequitably control food and land access. As grim as this may sound, there are steps we can take to push back against a system born of Indigenous genocide and slavery of the African Diaspora.

Understanding the progression of events leading to today requires following an ever evolving system of white supremacist legislation and violence. Prior to the establishment of the imperialist nation state known as the US, European settler colonists committed acts of genocide and land theft against Indigenous peoples. These settler colonists also brought chattel slavery of the African Diaspora. Once the US was founded, the Naturalization Act of 1790 worked in tandem with Alien Land Laws to ensure that only “free white men” would have access to stolen land. Genocidal efforts continued to thrive with the 1830 Indian Removal Act wherein the way was paved for white settler-colonists to take advantage of the Homestead Acts about 30 years later. Additionally, the Homestead Acts established colonial outposts such as agricultural extension offices and land grant institutions.

These institutions served to ensure and establish colonization of stolen land primarily for white men. The 1914 Smith-Lever Act would further formalize agricultural extension offices and President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson would later use this act to support capitalist agribusiness through “get big or get out” policies. President Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz would go one step further and tell farmers to “adapt or die”. Given the legacy of genocide, slavery, and civil rights violations, we can easily see how Black and POC communities have been impacted the most. In just the past 20 years, we have also seen the largest civil rights settlements to date which went to Black farmers in 1999 and 2010 for farm loan and subsidy discrimination by the USDA to the sum of $2.2 billion.

As if the perniciousness of white supremacy in US agriculture were not already enough, the United States’ legacy of segregation compounds the specific issue of food apartheid. With Black, POC, and poor communities historically delineated by segregation, reinforced by redlining, and held in place by income inequality or torn apart by gentrification, corporate agribusiness can do as it pleases all while soaking up billions in federal subsidies. This translates into an outright lack of access to land to grow our own food. This also means that corporate agribusiness can set up nutrient dense grocery shops in areas of concentrated wealth and whiteness while posting up nutrient deficient convenience and dollar stores in Black, Indigenous, POC, and poor neighborhoods. When there is no monetary incentive to do otherwise, capitalist interest has operated and will operate in this way. We are so entrenched in capitalist interest that even our federal food assistance program (SNAP) is a model that subsides consumption rather than production for the sake of feeding people. We deserve systems that put the people who are most in need first. 

There is no time for devil’s advocacy on this issue. There are 40 million people (12 million children) who do not eat enough each day in the United States. When food (and land) access is so clearly restricted as it is here in the US, drastic and overdue measures must be taken. We must look to historical oppressive measures to find suitable, restorative actions. There must be repatriation of land, reparations, and treaty acknowledgements to Indigenous peoples. There must be reparations and land distributions in accordance with the production and promises to the descendants of the African Diaspora. We must stop subsidizing corporate agribusiness that places profits above both people and the environment. We must shift to food distribution models that heavily localize food production while sequestering carbon and caring for the environment. In order to take these actions, we need more hands doing the work of production, distribution, service, and food waste and recovery. We need programs that open up equitable land access to Black, POC, and poor communities. We also need more voices to spread the truth to the people that the conditions that exist are a product of colonial, imperialist actions rooted in white supremacy. Those born into food apartheid are not at fault, and both the government and corporate agribusiness need to be held accountable for their actions.