DSA San Diego has adopted food sovereignty as a 2025 Priority Campaign, and the work is already rolling forward!
Food sovereignty is an idea that was first articulated by La Via Campesina movement as “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.” Our current food system, both nationally and locally in San Diego, falls woefully short of this ideal. Food is largely produced by corporations using fossil fuel intensive methods that exploit labor and Mother Earth. Despite these intensive methods, too many of our people are still going hungry, and many more lack access to healthy, locally grown food.
In January, the Ecosocialism working group put forth our Seeding Food Sovereignty priority campaign, and the chapter voted to adopt the campaign. This priority campaign builds upon the chapter’s successful ongoing work with the college area community garden and expands our involvement at several new garden sites in San Diego County. In the first half of 2025, the priority campaign will focus on the San Diego Peace Garden. The site already has some amazing features, including water lines, irrigation infrastructure, and a mature orchard of pomegranate, apple, avocado, orange, and grapefruit trees. Five immigrant farmers, elders in the community with decades of experience, have won a grant to develop the site into a food forest to feed community members directly.
In tandem we are reaching out to local public schools to help them establish their own community gardens for local food production! In February we joined 20 other volunteers at Imperial Beach Charter to help build raised beds, compost turners, and add signage to their new garden program. The program manager loved having us and they are looking at ways to foster a long-term partnership. That’s the beauty of food sovereignty.
Want to get involved with the campaign? Please fill out our interest form to help us sustain the project and join us on our next workdays: March 29th at the College Area Community Garden or April 12th at the Peace Resource Center. Curious about what else the Ecosocialism working group is up to? Join us at one of our meetings, either in person or virtually. Our meetings are posted on the DSA San Diego calendar.
You can see the result of our regular garden work days at the College Area Community Garden – here are some photos from our college area garden workday from February! The group trimmed grape vines, propagated native seedlings and cuttings, and spread mulch on the orchard. Regular workdays add up to big improvements in water use and food production!
