Pillar I. Focuses On Food For People

• Puts people’s need for food at the centre of policies 
• Insists that food is more than just a commodity

Did you ever go hungry?

“Never go hungry… there’s always fruit tree… you just pick from that tree. You could pick breadfruit, coconut, banana…We eat it till we bringing it up and take home what we couldn’t eat. But there was always incident like that.…”

Food is an inherent right and a public good, not a commodity. Due to Jamaica’s geography, fruit trees can be planted and thrive, so many people have their own trees or pick from others’. Access to this is fundamental to living in Jamaica, and this highlights a difference from Toronto’s reliance on money to unlock grocery store doors for food that could be grown more locally in this urban city.

“…You cook enough and everybody eat…what food you have, you share it.”

Access to food also extends past self-reliance to the community. When asked about sharing food, Grandma noted, “If say a child had no mother, [my] mommy would have lunch for you to take to school.” Likewise, in Toronto, my grandma would cook enough on Sundays that if an unexpected visitor came by, there would be plenty to share. This care for the community is what is needed to survive in a world where we are at the whims of the market. Putting people’s needs at the centre of policy ensures a system in which food is shared rather than hoarded.

Pillar II. Values Food Providers

• Supports sustainable livelihoods
• Respects the work of all food providers

So what did people do for work in Jamaica at that time?

“Daddy used to cut Pastor’s lawn… He will work for ten men… and then he bring them to work for him…then him feed them…what a feast”.

Food sovereignty honors the labor of those who feed the community. My great-grandfather’s farming was strenuous, yet it existed in a system of direct exchange. Labor was often paid in food, community support, and personal connection.

When she moved to Canada, my grandmother secured a factory job at Consumers Glass. Her work was reduced to monitoring a machine for “scratch marks and breakage”; her wages would be converted into food she could access in Canada, replacing communal exchange with payroll.

Pillar III. Localizes Food Systems

• Reduce the distance between food providers and consumers
• Rejects dumping and inappropriate food aid
• Resists dependency on remote and unaccountable corporations

How was the food in Jamaica? 

“You don’t find it anywhere else… When he [her father] go to reap, he reap three, four banana, three, four breadfruit.[…] And he would send off breadfruit, cane, banana…And [a woman who lived by the water] would cure the fish and send them up [to him]. “

My grandma was able to feed herself from the immediate environment (on her property or others). The value is determined by the community, not the global supply chain, as seen in the trade of fish for breadfruit and bananas.

My grandmother longs to eat again her favourite variety of breadfruit (which she says is ‘big like a cow’), showing the intimate connection we can have with varieties and flavours that might not be as accessible here. So, localizing urban food systems can also decolonize our palates to value local produce.

Pillar IV. Puts Control Locally

• Places control in the hands of local food providers 
• Recognizes the need to inhabit and to share territories
• Rejects the privatization of natural resources

“When they [farmers] plant… government would send a truck…to pick up the corn…Pimento too…and you get big money for the pimento…But some people have nothing. So they make nothing…They have to steal to make money for themselves.”

For my Grandma’s family, they could own or rent land from neighbours; as a result, they had a way to control production. This allows for decision-making at a family or community level, defining the food system from the seed up.

People without access to property would have to steal, as Grandma noted, showing that when land is privately controlled, it can lead to inequity even on a small scale. In Toronto, food policy is dictated by corporate agriculture and distant bureaucratic decisions, compounding the same inequity of privatization at a larger scale.

Pillar V. Builds Knowledge and Skills

• Builds on traditional knowledge 
• Uses research to support and pass this knowledge to future generations
• Rejects technologies that undermine or contaminate local food systems

Did you ever grow anything?

“…Yeah, some pigeon pea I would plant with Dad up top…”

How did you cook Ackee and Saltfish?

“…Fried fish. Fried up a bit. Garlic, onions…Pepper, cut up…Mm-hmm. Tomato?…If you have a fresh tomato, you can cut it up, throw it in and let it, let it sit. And the hard dough bread, What a meal.”

Knowledge from helping her father plant crops or from cooking her favorite meals is an example of how traditional knowledge is passed down.

In contrast, over the course of her 30+ years in her factory job, she built knowledge of “union law” to survive. Her work at Consumers Glass was necessary for our family’s survival in a capitalist city, but working long, tiring shifts left little time for her to pass down her recipes. To continue our ancestors’ legacy, we must prioritize sharing and revitalizing these ancestral food skills.

VI. Food is Sacred

• Recognizes that food is a gift of life, not to be squandered
• Asserts that food cannot be commodified

What is your favorite food?

“Roast breadfruit. Ackee and saltfish… Cuz I love them and I grew on it.”

The food my grandma ate appears in many of the stories she shares with me: her cultural food is inseparable from her sense of self. One story about her family going to a fair, catching and cooking a “wild, well, he really no wild, but he is somebody’s goat,” speaks to a deep connection between access to food and their culture. 

As my grandma’s health impacted her ability to cook her own cultural foods, access to the ingredients she would use has also become limited. Like most places in Toronto, her neighbourhood is experiencing rapid and ongoing gentrification. A block away from where she lives in the city, her go-to store for Jamaican produce has closed, making access to those foods more difficult. Reclaiming the food system is a cultural imperative; the land and resources nourish the body, memory, and identity. 

VII. Works with Nature

• Optimizes the contributions of ecosystems
• Improves resilience

“Every child him has… he plants the navel string underneath a coconut tree, every baby.”

The act of planting the umbilical cord under a fruit tree embodies a spiritual and cyclical relationship with the land. My grandma and her siblings’ future, sustenance, and history are literally tied to the life of the coconut tree. 

We can compare this to how land in a capitalist society is seen as a resource to be extracted and controlled. These lessons from my grandmother’s life gave me an insight into a world in which life is taken from the soil and returned to it. Creating a system of reciprocity with the land is a possibility our society can cultivate, to actualize a sacred relationship with the land we live on.