This blog is an interactive way for me to detail my travels and the knowledge I learn while researching food security around the world. My interest began long ago when I learned about Genetically Modified (GM) seeds, the commodification of life, and the threat to survival that we all face in regards to our food. Increasingly, control over our food is out of our hands; it is shipped to us from who knows where, by who knows who, and engineered with who knows what. The more I delved into these issues the more I realized that so many other things were connected. Workers who farm the food that we eat, for instance, are often forced into slave labor or are incredibly underpaid while being exposed to toxic, deforming, and fatal chemicals. Women, due to various historical conditions of gendered norms, are more likely to be involved in this type of work, are more likely to be involved in food production at all stages, and are more likely to suffer the effects of hunger and malnourishment.
However, I have learned that we are not without hope. Around the world, from India, to Peru, to my Appalachian home, people (especially women) are coming up with creative, local solutions that return food sovereignty back to the people. They are reconnecting people with healthy, culturally relative, sustainable food that is easily accessible, gives back to the local community and treats people with dignity and respect. As more and more people become involved in these initiatives, food security and food sovereignty will increase, giving people dignity, empowerment, and the ability to survive.
The title of this blog comes from the article "Consequences of Structural Adjustment on Economic and Social Domains: Two Decades in the Life of Peru" by Orlando Plaza and Nelly P. Stromquist. In examining the detrimental Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) that afflicted Peru in the 1980s-1990s (the effects of which still remain today), the authors feature a small segment on gender, which details the increased responsibilities and gendered restrictions that women face, especially under the effects of SAPs. The authors state that "women can be expected to have borne burdens inside and outside the household that are still unmapped and undertheorized by contemporary analyses." This one line, I believe, precisely gets at the intersections of gender, poverty, and food security. These things have all been analyzed in their own, separate ways (many of which have been insightful and incredibly valuable to further analyses), yet these interconnections are much more important and much more widespread than many of us realize. This is why they are unmapped and undertheorized: they have yet to be fully explored, to be fully examined. My goal is to start charting the course and hopefully give scholars with far more brilliance than me inspiration and a starting place to begin creating social understanding of the dire importance with which gender, poverty, and food security intersect.
