Giving Compass' Take:
- Jessica Kutz shares the stories of women on U.S. island territories advancing local food sovereignty to ensure access to healthy and culturally relevant food in a changing climate.
- How can you support local leaders, especially leaders who have been traditionally excluded from leadership roles, who are advancing food sovereignty?
- Read about ending food insecurity by restoring Indigenous land rights.
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Sommer Sibilly-Brown didn’t set out to join the food sovereignty movement. The movement found her.
In 2012, Sibilly-Brown was working as an elementary school teacher in St. Croix, part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, when her students presented an idea at an agriculture fair to bring locally grown food to their schools.
Through working on their presentation, the students learned of a national initiative that could do just that. It’s called the National Farm to School Network, and it’s a nonprofit organization that works to connect local farms with school cafeterias — a model that both bolsters local food systems and provides healthier school lunches for kids — a win-win for farmers and their communities.
But the network didn’t reach the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Sibilly-Brown remembers one of her students asking: If the program was national, why didn’t it reach their territory?
“That question has been the question that has driven my work,” Sibilly-Brown said. “If we are the United States, why not here?”
It set her on a path to find answers and solutions to an important problem — an over-reliance on imported foods. She wanted her students to be able to eat food grown nearby and for the U.S. Virgin Islands to achieve a level of food sovereignty, or the ability to produce healthy and culturally relevant food on the islands.
Sibilly-Brown is not alone in her desire to see local food systems grow. Across U.S. island territories, women are forming connections with one another and working to ensure that their communities can be resilient in the face of climate change and future pandemics.
Read the full article about the food sovereignty by Jessica Kutz at The 19th.