2022 Food Relatives Conference

2022 Food Relatives Conference

Grant Amount: $11,868

Project Theme: Environmental Justice, Agriculture & Food Justice, Education & Behavior Change

Project Sponsor: ASUC – Food Institute Graduate Council

Project Description:

The term “Food Relatives” signals to the alternative and Indigenous food systems that view food as more than a commodity. As a generative category and notion, Food Relatives gives insight into how various actors can decolonize and indigenize their respective Food Systems by attuning to the more-than-human as part of economic, social, and political lives.

By bridging academics, community leaders, consumers, and other vital actors within various national food systems, FIGC also sought to reinforce the goal of the Berkeley Food Institute (BFI): to understand and transform food systems in a cross-disciplinary manner in order to build a more resilient and equitable future within and beyond academic institutions.

Project Goals: The conference’s main goal is to connect scholars, community members, artists, and policy makers through varying critiques and discussions of three major systems of oppression in the global Food System: colonization, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism. In doing so, the Food Relatives conference gives focus on alternative food relations outside of Industrial agricultural practices in order to amplify existing decolonizing and indigenizing movements that may improve Food Systems across all Global Directions, such as Indigenous and Black stewardship, alternative food systems, and regenerative agriculture.

Project Leaders: Jesús I’x Nazario, Rosario Torres, Nani Conklin

Spring 2022 Final Application