TORONTO – Historically there have been models of shared identities around race in the United States and Britain, but there were none that directly reflected Black racism and food. Now, Toronto is determined to be the first to establish a tangible Black food sovereignty.
In early September, the Coalition of Black Food Societies and the Roundtable on Black Food Security published the report, Radical Implementation of Black Food Sovereignty.
The Toronto council asked staff to develop the report after a series of consultations in 2016 and 2017. The executive who developed the report, Kerry Tarabaki, chief policy officer for the city, said Toronto was forming a long-term food policy plan for Black communities which is “constantly based on principles of food sovereignty.”
“It’s not a question of just wanting to achieve Indigenous rights or racial rights,” Tarabaki said. “This is something that, first of all, is connected to Black people’s hopes for access to food, but also to social and economic justice, to environmental justice. It’s about rights that are in terms of security and power.”
The report spells out the “Ten principles of Black food sovereignty” which include a focus on the rights of Black farmers, free access to Black foods, maximum standards for food security, and racial justice, as the report states in its introduction.
