Food Voices

* Book: Food Voices: Stories From the People Who Feed Us. Edited by Andrianna Natsoulas.

URL = http://www.foodvoices.org/face.html

Description

"At the 2009 Community Food Security Coalition’s annual conference, Andrianna was amazed by the swell of interest in local foods and food policies. What struck her even more was the absence of the people who provide the food. Often farmers and fishing men and women do not have the time or money to attend meetings, so she went to them and captured their testimonies. The result was Food Voices: Stories From the People Who Feed Us.

Food Voice praises the farmers and fisherfolk who are fighting with their sweat and hands, trying to create – or actually re-create – a food system that values quality over quantity, and communities and the environment over the corporate bottom-line. Town-by-town, these front-line players are working to change how food is provided, processed and distributed.

Food Voices introduces the concept of food sovereignty and highlights farmers and fishermen pursuing this movement. The stories of their struggles and triumphs are part of a comprehensive book to strengthen and enhance the global movement towards food sovereignty. As the movement grows, there is a thirst to hear and share personal experiences and to further explore the concept. Through story telling, people can learn from each other and empower the broader movement. The book helps engage and build the movement, while offering information and resources on how to create food sovereignty in any community.

Food Voices concentrates on the men and women reclaiming their right to provide food for their communities in the United States, and offers a glimpse of the movement in four other countries to illustrate it is a global phenomenon that has been building in some places for years. Over 80 interviews collected from the United States, Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil and Haiti indicate that food sovereignty is spontaneously growing stronger throughout the Americas. Their voices have been featured on blogs, in newsletters and on the radio. Thirty of them are presented through the book." (http://www.foodvoices.org/face.html)

Interview

Conducted by KATRINA MOORE of WhyHunge, DECEMBER 8, 2014:

* What inspired you to write this book?

I had been working in food, agriculture and fisheries policies for over a decade. Over those years, I watched the local food movement intensify. Then, in 2009, I attended a Community Food Security Coalition conference in Des Moines, IA. I was amazed at the number of people participating in the event and talking about food-related policies. But what surprised me even more were the absence of the people whose lives those polices would impact on a daily level. There was one table of farmers, one fisherman’s wife and about five farm workers. So, I decided I was going to collect their stories, their viewpoints, their struggles and their successes and raise their voices.

* What do you hope is its impact?

First and foremost, I hope the people who are in the trenches are heard. The farmers and fishermen who feed us. One of my biggest goals for this project was to strengthen the food sovereignty movement in the United States – both among food providers and food advocates. Food sovereignty is a concept that is slowly gaining an understanding here, but it is not a framework that either food providers or local food advocates embrace. I hope the food movement relates to the food sovereignty framework in a way that the big box stores and transnational corporations will not be able to co-opt for their own financial gains. I also hope it will unite the efforts here to the larger movement, thus acting in solidarity and mobilizing with farmers and fishermen around the world.

* How did you connect with the people interviewed in the book?

Over the course of nearly 15 years, I had been working with small-scale farmers and fishermen around the world. I chose the places I went based on contacts I directly or indirectly had. At times, I would connect with one person and I suddenly was connected to three to five more people. And, it could have kept going infinitely.

* How do you see this book connecting to the larger discussion about global food sovereignty?

The stories heard in Food Voices, whether from a farm worker in Florida, a farmer in Venezuela or a fisherman in Haiti, all have the same basic messages, framed around Via Campesina’s seven principles of food sovereignty. This book supports the food sovereignty movement by simply illustrating that we all have a lot more in common than not. It also illustrates the principles of food sovereignty in very simple ways that people can easily relate to – and that was one of my goals." (http://blog.whyhunger.org/2014/12/conversation-andrianna-natsoulas-new-book-food-voices/)

More Information

• For more information or to help support the project, please contact Andrianna at [email protected]