California’s Food System is one of the most integral in the United States and sets the tone for food systems throughout the country. As such, Camber Collective and the Educational Network for Global and Grassroots Exchange hosted a virtual event to make space for conversation and collaboration around creating a more equitable and resilient food system in the Bay Area. We invite you to view the full video below, as our panelists brought so much meaning to this conversation in such a short amount of time.
Our Call to Action. Our appreciation for the power of narrative and conversation comes from our understanding of its power to move people to action. Here are a few actions the panelists have shared for your consideration in continuing to do our parts in creating a more equitable food system:
- Leverage your consumer power. It is stated so often because it is undeniably true, especially in the Bay Area: Consumer power should not be underestimated or taken for granted. If you have the ability to shape your consumption patterns around local, sustainable products, learn more and take action as you can.
- Engage beyond consumerism. It’s important to recognize and reflect on your roles in and relationships with your food communities, and in your communities more generally. How can you engage with and participate in your communities not just as a consumer, but also as a shaper of the culture around you?
- And engage long-term. One monumental way to engage with and support your community outside of local consumerism is to support in perpetuity a non-profit or other mission-driven collaborative that you really believe in, rather than one-time giving.
Powerful Quotes from the Panelists:
“Food systems, like every system, are born from culture… If you’re going to change a system, you need to look at the culture it’s feeding from.”
– Ada Cuadrado-Medina
“From a growing standpoint, we live in this incredibly amazing Mediterranean climate that allows for so many different types of things to be grown. Combine that with – and this comes from the next generation of people doing work in the tech sector or Silicon Valley – a growing demand from people who care more about where their food is coming from and who want a high quality of food, which is also a function of affordability and access… What I would love to see is all [these resources] being leveraged into this opportunity to overhaul the food system status quo as it is and create alternative and collaborative approaches. How do we all navigate this capitalist system in an ethical and equitable way where we hold institutions and governemtns accountable and change who some of the gatekeepers and rule-makers are in the food system?”
– James Nakahara
“The food system has been always a very difficult system for working people. It has always tried to extract the most amount of labor for the least amount of renumeration”
– Perri Kramer
“We tend to think of the world as a series of objects with boundaries, and not as the relationship between features. The more we lean into realizing everything is connected more so than we know there is a lot of wisdom in shifting the paradigm from ‘this is mine and that is yours’ to ‘What are our responsibilities to each other and what is best for the planet and our communities?’ The way that can manifest is through collaboration between these different entities – be they corporate, institutional, governmental, or non-governmental.”
– James Nakahara
“All of us are working within the constraints and challenges of the capitalist system to try to create a more equitable and just existence for the people we serve. Food System 6 does a lot of work with corporate partners to try to educate them on the way in which we view entrepreneurship and innovation; we focus on food sovereignty which is people owning the means and ends of their own production, and food ownership stays within communities and that allows them to be empowered.”
– Perri Kramer
“Rudy Jimenez, a fourth generation farmer, spoke at a recent event for Real Food Real Stories and had this moment of realization when he decided to become an organic farmer that it was spiritual work that he was doing: he wanted his community to have access to that food, and was asking the question ‘How can this place that has so much abundance have such little access to that same food? And why are we letting corporations decide stories for us?’ That is beautiful to me and really captures the spirit of what democratizing really means – giving people the ability and tools to take that power and make the story for themselves and their community.”
– Ada Cuadrado-Medina