Land, Power, and the Plate: Ending Food Apartheid with Regenerative Justice

Many communities face an uneven food landscape: plenty of cheap
junk food, but few places to buy fresh, healthy food. This
pattern—often called “food apartheid”—doesn’t happen by accident;
it grows from redlining, unfair rules, and corporate control. The
impacts are steep: higher rates of type 2 diabetes, kidney failure,
and learning problems in Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities,
along with unsafe conditions for farmworkers. These harms have a
long history, and government subsidies and convincing marketing
keep ultraprocessed foods on top. However, we take practical steps
to make change including investing in regenerative and community
farms, protecting and fairly paying farmworkers, and enforcing
civil-rights laws so public dollars support real food, healthy
soil, and communities that thrive. In this episode, Leah Penniman,
Dr. Rupa Marya, Raj Patel, Karen Washington, and I discuss why food
injustices exist and how we can create regenerative food systems to
serve everyone. Leah Penniman is a Black Kreyol educator,
farmer/peyizan, author, and food justice activist from Soul Fire
Farm in Grafton, NY. She co-founded Soul Fire Farm in 2010 with the
mission to end racism in the food system and reclaim our ancestral
connection to land. As co-Executive Director, Leah is part of a
team that facilitates powerful food sovereignty programs -
including farmer training for Black & Brown people, a
subsidized farm food distribution program for communities living
under food apartheid, and domestic and international organizing
toward equity in the food system. Leah has been farming since 1996,
holds an MA in Education and a BA in Environmental Science from
Clark University, and is a Manye (Queen Mother) in Vodun.  Dr.
Rupa Marya is a physician, activist, mother, and composer. She is
an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California,
San Francisco where she practices and teaches Internal Medicine.
Her research examines the health impacts of social systems, from
agriculture to policing. She is a co-founder of the Do No Harm
Coalition, a collective of health workers committed to addressing
disease through structural change. At the invitation of Lakota
health leaders, she is currently helping to set up the Mni Wiconi
Health Clinic and Farm at Standing Rock in order to decolonize
medicine and food.  Raj Patel is a Research Professor at the
University of Texas at Austin’s Lyndon B Johnson School of Public
Affairs, a professor in the University’s department of nutrition,
and a Research Associate at Rhodes University, South Africa. He is
the author of Stuffed and Starved, the New York Times bestselling
The Value of Nothing, co-author of A History of the World in Seven
Cheap Things. A James Beard Leadership Award winner, he is the
co-director of the award-winning documentary about climate change
and the food system, The Ants & The Grasshopper.  Karen is
a farmer, activist, and food advocate. She is the Co-owner and
Farmer at Rise & Root Farm in Chester, New York. In 2010, Karen
Co-Founded Black Urban Growers (BUGS), an organization supporting
growers in both urban and rural settings. In 2012, Ebony magazine
voted her one of the 100 most influential African Americans in the
country, and in 2014 Karen was the recipient of the James Beard
Leadership Award. Karen serves on the boards of the New York
Botanical Gardens, SoulFire Farm, the Mary Mitchell Center, Why
Hunger, and Farm School NYC. This episode is brought to you by
BIOptimizers. Head to bioptimizers.com/hyman and use code HYMAN to
save 15%. Full-length episodes can be found here:Why Food Is A
Social Justice Issue Food Justice: Why Our Bodies And Our Society
Are Inflamed A Way Out Of Food Racism And Poverty