Let’s Free Our Food

An Introduction to Get Free Food

I dream of a dinner table adorned with food grown by people I’ve gotten to hug or shake hands with personally. I dream of food grown on lands we’ve labored collectively to preserve or regenerate. I dream of food aligned with the deepest desires of my body. I dream of food my ancestors would be proud of.

I believe we can get there.

As an emerging environmental justice educator, I’ve learned to pose a pair of questions to encourage students to connect to their own vision of a “Free Food Future.” The first question we explore is, “What is your current relationship to food and land?” In reply to this question, many students have shared how they feel disconnected from food on a daily basis. We don’t often know where our food comes from or what it went through to get in front of us. Who or what planted the seeds? Where were they grown? Who or what did the harvesting? Who or what was included in the processing, packaging, and shipping of the food? Often, we have no clue. And often, we don’t want to know. From facilitating this workshop over the past few years, there’s no question for me that the prevailing sentiment surrounding our food today is numbness.

Then we ask a second question: “What is your ancestral relationship to food and land?” This is when the possibilities for change enter the room. Students will speak to the moments they’ve felt closest to food, which is often when it’s prepared in the way of their family or cultural traditions. I’ll hear how one student would do her best to approximate her grandmother’s homemade dumpling recipe, making substitutes for the homegrown ingredients she can’t find in the States. I’ll hear students share the stories of innovative sharecroppers, the nostalgia of family fishing boats, or the giving tree that bore fruit for two or three generations. These narratives transform the spirit of the room from one of despair to one of possibility. I feel that our ancestors show up in these moments to encourage us to see our food (and land and water) systems as they could be.

We find ourselves at this crossroads, where the food on our plates often travels thousands of miles, laden with both visible and invisible costs of industrial farming—labor abuses, greenhouse emissions, and chemical residues that our bodies and our planet bear silently until they no longer can. As Wendell Berry states in The Pleasures of Eating, in our food system both eater and eaten have been rendered “in exile from biological reality.” It's easy to feel disconnected, to view food as mere sustenance, or worse, as a product of convenience. Yet, I’ve also heard the yearning, the quiet whisper in many of us for something more authentic, more connected. This yearning isn't just for the taste of fresh, vibrant produce but for the stories of the land, the farmer, the community, and the hands that bring these gifts to our tables. This is the pathway I am desperately trying to uncover, interrogate, and reconcile through this project and others. In this moment I believe in a combination of personal and collective actions that will help us to imagine alternatives and march furiously toward them. For me, it starts with asking all the questions that may point us toward possibility. “Get Free Food” is answering a call I’ve heard from within me to give light to the good in order to help it grow. 

What is my ancestral relationship to food and land? As a child in diaspora from out the south and across the Atlantic, I’ve felt a generational fear of losing touch with my people’s language, traditions, and wisdom.  By way of my father, I am a child of Esanland, in Edo State, Nigeria. To the Esan, the soil beneath our feet and the crops that spring forth are a testament to our deep connection with Mama Earth. I am also a descendant of enslaved Africans by way of my mother. Our people wove the scraps of their forced labor into a rich culinary tradition known as soul food. When my parents had the time, they nourished us with the flavors of West Africa and The Black Atlantic. In studying the roots of our food traditions, I’ve come to understand that our ancestors intuitively understood the importance of working with nature to ensure bountiful harvests and stretching every part of a harvest to make it last. They knew what, when, and how much to plant and harvest by observing the seasons, the cycles of the moon, and the language of the soils. They utilized practices that preserved the land's fertility and biodiversity. And they treated food like the medicine it was meant to be. 

By reconnecting with these traditions, I hope to conjure valuable lessons for contemporary movements toward food and land sovereignty, all as I reconnect with my roots. As my Native comrades and friends have been saying, turning towards a right relationship with land and food isn't just about sustainability and climate-smarts, and it certainly ain’t a new struggle. This movement is also about rediscovering and repopularizing the joy and healing of sharing meals that are grown and prepared with love, with an understanding of the land’s unique rhythms, and with future generations in mind.

I dream of a dinner table adorned with food grown by people I’ve gotten to hug or shake hands with personally. I dream of food grown on lands we’ve labored collectively to regenerate. I dream of food aligned with our bodies’ deepest desires. I dream of food our ancestors would be proud of. I believe that we can make this dream, and others, a reality in our lifetimes. How do you dream of food freedom?

For further reading on (re)connecting to food sovereignty: 

• The Pleasures of Eating, Wendell Bery 

• Advancing Equity In Food Systems: Supporting Food Justice And Food Sovereignty, And Ending Food Apartheid 

• How tribes, local organizations are bolstering food sovereignty, Luna Reyna

Be well,