Horizons — Food justice

Let Justice Roll Down: God’s call to care for neighbors and all creation
Lesson 3: Food Justice, Exodus 13

My childhood home was a three-bedroom ranch on a lot that used to be part of a pecan orchard. (I shelled a lot of pecans.) My parents put in a garden with corn, tomatoes, okra, green beans, cucumbers and squash. Many evenings, we had vegetables fresh from the garden. Butter dripping off warm corn, and just-picked tomatoes with a dab of mayonnaise — there is no better eating, to my way of thinking.

God as Creator and Gardener seems to love diversity, beauty and color. According to the Crop Trust website, there are some 40,000 varieties of beans and 50 species of corn. In Genesis, Chapter 1, God forms all kinds of seed-bearing plants and fruit trees. God is into abundance.

In Exodus 16, God’s gift of manna to the Israelites in the wilderness might be viewed as a teaching lesson. Everyone can gather what they need for one day. If people try to squirrel away manna for the next day, it spoils. Some gather more and some pick up less, but when they get home, they find that it is still two quarts per person. God says this is a test to see if the people will follow God’s instructions. Their 40-year food supply dries up when the people get to God’s Promised Land, where they can settle and grow crops. Most people can get by, but inequities arise. For one reason or another, people get into debt. When kings rule Israel, people are taxed and conscripted to build palaces like other kings have.

In the first century in the Middle East, most people were farmers, working small plots. The Roman Empire levied taxes that added up to about 60% of a farmer’s income. Those with large farms began to grow cash crops like grain, wine and oil. Small farmers increasingly lost their land to taxes and exploitation.

Exploiting the poor to gain wealth for a small percentage of the population has taken many forms. In the South after the Civil War, Black people freed from slavery, with no land or money, worked on other peoples’ land or rented land to grow crops — which evolved into the system of sharecropping. Sharecroppers paid their rent with what they grew. Until harvest, the workers received credit from stores charging higher prices. It was a revolving door of debt. Greed and racism went hand in hand.

Now, large agribusinesses make it difficult for small farms to survive. They destroy soil health with fertilizers and wipe out pollinators with insecticide. As Patricia Hull notes, agribusinesses provide 30% of the world’s food but “account for 75% of the world’s ecological damage from farming.”

However, small farms produce most of the world’s food. It is often a struggle for the world’s farmers. There have been movements to buy local and guarantee a living wage through the practice of “fair trade.” There are churches that sell fair-trade coffee, tea and chocolate as a way of doing justice for those who have little voice in their economy.

Buying locally keeps our money in our community, reduces fuel used in transportation and supports small businesses and farms. Buying locally or buying fair trade products are often more expensive, but it enhances a more diversified economy and can give better quality. While I stood in line at the local farmers’ market to pay for beautiful red tomatoes, the man next to me commented, “Those are really good. The ones in the grocery stores have no flavor.”

When we pray “give us this day our daily bread,” we are asking that all people have enough quality foods to eat. We can support organizations like Fair Exchange, SERRV, and Bread for the World, as well as the projects in the Presbyterian Giving Catalog. Bethlehem Presbyterian Church – which averages 30 people in worship – raised $1,500 last year to build a garden well in a place that had no running water. It was one way that they could provide abundance for others.

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