Table Justice — The EnviroJustice Campaign for Safe, Sustainable and Just Sources of Food and Water
Safety, sustainability, and justice apply not only to communities, but to the food and water that nourishes them. The EnviroJustice Table Justice campaign for safe, sustainable and just food and water seeks a faith-based approach to environmental justice that impacts our own personal choices of what we eat and drink, agriculture and the supply of water.
To that end, EnviroJustice helped develop and support the adoption of Concerning a Movement to Reconnect with our Food and the Natural World, a resolution presented at the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a major mainline Protestant denomination, in July 2007 that encourages addressing issues of food quality and community food security from a faith-based perspective by participation in sustainable, local food systems, including community gardens, sustainable small farms, and farmers markets. Concerning a Movement to Reconnect with our Food and the Natural World also urges support for national movements toward the passage of legislation requiring that a certain percentage of food consumed annually is sustainably produced locally.
As people of the table, who recognize the spiritual and physical importance of our connection with the source of our food, eating is a moral choice. To eat and drink is an act of communion, a witness to creation, and we need to be aware of the source of our food and water, how far they have traveled to our table, how they were produced, and how the workers and animals who produced what we eat and drink were treated.
Agriculture and the food system in the United States have changed dramatically over the last half century. After the Second World War, new technology and advances in agriculture—including internal combustion engines, electrical machinery, hybrid seeds, and improved livestock breeds—were widely adopted by farmers across the U.S. Yields and labor productivity improved dramatically, allowing—some say forcing—farmers to specialize in one crop on a much larger scale, or to diversify the variety of crops they planted.
Agriculture was revolutionized across the country, but these changes imposed other consequences as well. Since the 1950s, the number of small– and medium–scale farms in the US has decreased dramatically. In addition, as commodities have become increasingly processed, packaged, and marketed, farmers have received a smaller and smaller fraction of the consumer’s food dollar.
Strained by these two trends—the decline in the number of smaller farms and the falling return to farmers for their products—agricultural communities throughout the country face an uncertain future.
Today's global food system began taking shape in the 1950s as well. Advances in technology allowed food to be stored longer and shipped farther at less expense. Major food manufacturers expanded dramatically and grew from local or regional businesses into sizeable corporations with a national reach.
In the 1980s, a wave of mergers consolidated a tremendous amount of power in the food processing sector. Today’s typical supermarket, for example, carries more than 30,000 products, but about half of these items are produced by only ten multinational food and beverage companies.
In addition, food is traveling farther than ever from farm to table. The average food item in the United States travels between 1,500 and 2,500 miles from producer to consumer, about 25 percent further than even in 1980. Such large food processors and retailers also purchase enormous quantities of standardized, uniform products and have a significant amount of power in determining how and where agricultural production takes place.