Jahi Chappell
Executive Director, Southeastern African American Farmers Organic Network; Durham, NC
"Can we have agroecology without food justice and food sovereignty? The answer is: No."
It is increasingly accepted that radical changes to our food and agriculture systems are necessary. Mainstream state and corporate actors nevertheless often attempt to paint recommendations for all but the mildest of adjustments as "political” and thus, somehow, presumptively invalid. Yet malnutrition and sustainability are unavoidably political. Agroecology is a field that, in some cases, acknowledges this inevitability, and encourages deliberation and debate, particularly through the lenses of food justice and food sovereignty. This presentation explores these dynamics, and considers them practically in the contexts of municipal anti-hunger policy in Brazil, and small-scale Black farmers in the US South.