food justice

The Case For Universal Basic Food

March 16, 2024 Emily Settlecowski, Next City. Create! Food and Agriculture, food justice, Food Security, Health Care, Human Rights

Food is many things in our lives. It’s a cultural connector, bridging relationships with people, places, and our heritage. Food is medicine, providing us with nutrients integral to our well-being. It’s also a renewable resource; the way we grow, transport and consume food directly impacts our climate and local environment. Above all, food is a human right. Yet our food system only values food for one thing: profit. It’s become an industrialized machine that prioritizes cheap production and corporate gains over the well-being of people, local economies, and the environment. In this pursuit of maximum financial gain, food has been reduced to a mere commodity.

Dorchester Food Co-Op Is Here To Shake Up Boston’s Food Ecosystem

September 4, 2023 Punnya Kalapurakkel, Next City. Create! Boston, Cooperative, Food and Agriculture, food justice, Worker Cooperatives

Stroll down the intersection of Bowdown and Topliff Streets in Boston and you’ll see the shiny automated doors of the brand new Dorchester Food Co-op, where a few friendly faces are adding some finishing touches to the space before it opens to the public in the coming weeks. The worker- and community-owned grocery store, which aims to increase access to nutritious and culturally relevant food, is a project over a decade in the making. As Next City reported during last year’s groundbreaking ceremony, the co-op is the result of more than 10 years of organizing around investors and gathering the funds to make a dream come true.

Community Organizations Take Ownership Of Local Food Systems

September 1, 2023 Punnya Kalapurakkel, Next City. Create! Boston, Composting, Food and Agriculture, food justice, Gardens, Local Economy

What if there was a way for communities to create a food system, from land ownership to composting, that could sustain itself? Community organizations’ efforts to create a sustainable food ecosystem in Boston’s lower-income neighborhoods offer a window into resident-led food security initiatives in disinvested communities around the country. Dorchester, Roxbury and other majority-minority neighborhoods in the city are home to a grassroots, informal network of community organizations that manage food-related processes ranging from harvest to gardening to composting.

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