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Food Justice and Food Sovereignty

Food Justice

Food Justice is a holistic and structural view of our food systems that sees healthy food as a basic human right and addresses the structural barriers that obstruct this right. These structural barriers include poverty, racial inequity, and social injustice.

Food Lifeline believes these are the “root causes” of hunger.

We also believe we can address these root cause through advocacy efforts to shape local, state, and federal policy, by partnering with organizations that are addressing other causes of poverty, and through engagement and bundling food assistance with other community-based programs and services.

Food Sovereignty

Food Sovereignty is the right of individuals and communities to define and control their own food systems. This results in the production of culturally relevant foods to individual communities, while allowing these communities build their own distribution systems that directly benefit them both socially and financially.

Food Lifeline promotes food sovereignty by working directly with communities. We believe that people who have experienced or are currently living with food insecurity are truly experts in what it takes to solve hunger. Yet food assistance programs are often created without the input of those with lived experience. We know all our work is made stronger by working in partnership with community organizations and listening to people who daily face hunger.

Through grant-funded research, we know that seven counties within our 17-county service area, have the highest levels of racial disparity and disproportionate levels of food insecurity. We’re building a network of local Food Access Specialists in these counties to work alongside existing and emerging programs to help co-create and invest in community-led food assistance programs, often bundled with other programs and services.

Community Food Sovereignty Fund

Launched during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Community Food Sovereignty Fund is a Food Lifeline grantmaking initiative to support neighbor- and community-driven approaches to food justice and food sovereignty.

Community Food Sovereignty Fund