What Is Food Justice?

What Are Ways to Get Involved?

Food justice recognizes the food system as "a racial project and problematizes the influence of race and class on the production, distribution, and consumption of food."

​More simply put...

        Food Justice is communities exercising their right to grow, sell, and eat healthy food. 

A just food system is one in which the ways we produce, distribute, and eat food is not affected by systematic inequality or oppression based on race, class, gender, ability, or anything else.
This also leads to the discussion of Food Insecurity:

• which is the lack of access, at times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members and limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods. Food insecure children are those children living in households experiencing food insecurity.​

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Food insecurity may reflect a household’s need to make trade-offs between important basic needs, such as housing or medical bills, and purchasing nutritionally adequate foods.
There is a variety of reasons for food insecurity such as:

1. Unexpected bills
2. Physical and Mental Health of heads of households/caregivers
3. Distance from food sources

Food insecurity greatly impacts especially children and their education.
How does this relate to Athens?

• According to state test scores, 33% of students are at least proficient in math and 31% in reading.
• Students: 13,447 Free & Reduced Lunch: 92.1%
  • This is within the Athens Clarke County school district. 
• Minority enrollment is 79% of the student body (majority Black), which is more than the Georgia state average of 60%.
• Clarke County School District, which is ranked within the bottom 50% of all 198 school districts in Georgia (based on combined Math and Reading proficiency testing data) for the 2015-2016 school year.

​Student Organizations 

• UGArden Club: The mission of UGArden is to build a community of students centered on a sustainable food system. The goals of UGArden are: 1) to teach students to grow food using organic practices through experiential learning; 2) to share healthy, sustainably grown food with members of the local community who are facing food insecurity; and 3) to provide an opportunity for engagement, service and experimentation.

 

• Campus Kitchen: The Campus Kitchen at UGA is the student-powered hunger relief program of the UGA Office of Service-Learning. Campus Kitchen runs a weekly food recovery and redistribution enterprise led by UGA student volunteers. Student leaders and volunteers together transform unused food from grocery stores and farms into meals and groceries that are delivered to older adults and human service agencies in Athens, Georgia.
  • You can sign up to volunteer in the kitchen on Campus Kitchen’s GivePulse page, but you must request to become a member first!

 

• Food2Kids: The Food 2 Kids program provides weekend meal bags to over 1,500 students per week identified by teachers and school counselors and chronically hungry. These bags contain six meals and healthy snacks and are delivered directly to students at school by volunteers.

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Community Organizations
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• Athens Land Trust: “With land that is community-owned and driven by community interests, our goal is to create healthy communities and forge partnerships to effect positive change across Athens, Georgia.”
  • For questions about volunteering, contact Morgan Watson, the Athens Land Trust volunteer coordinator!

 

• Geography Green Roof: The green roof garden is on the rooftop of the geography geology building and is a fruit and vegetable garden maintained by students, volunteers, faculty, and interns. They have tours as well as volunteer work days where people can learn about urban food production and pollinator conservation. Their produce is donated to  Campus Kitchen at UGA. 

 

• Athens Farmers Market: Athens Farmers Market's mission is to foster a dynamic economic and educational connection between community members, farmers, and artisans by providing a marketplace for food grown locally using sustainable farming methods and for locally produced hand crafted goods and prepared foods​

Courses at UGA

• ALDR (AFST)(LACS): Reflections on Fighting Hunger
  
• GEOG 4860: The Industrial Agro-Food System and Its Alternatives
  
• GEOG 4890S: Athens Urban Food Collective (AUFC) Service-Learning