Crystal Johnson, deputy executive director of Just Food, of The Just Food Initiative of the Fox Valley, based in Batavia, was the tour-guide for two farmers from Spain visiting the Fox Valley December 12 and 13.
The farmers Javier Fatas and Luis Perez- Portillo came to the U.S. at the behest of Family Farm Defenders (FFD) of Madison, Wis.. Crystal Johnson also sits on the FFD Board of Directors. Crystal is a natural for interpreting the missions and the focus of both these food justice organizations as they interlock for the benefit of us eaters and farmers.
She took the visiting farmers to Mighty Greens Farm in Elburn, where they met Carlos Palomares, owner of the 10-year-old farm he designed and maintains. Weekly, Mighty Greens serves at least three hundred families in the Fox Valley, with year-round greens and three seasons of vegetables, giving eaters unadulterated alternatives to the produce sold at corporation supermarkets.
Their next stop was All-Grass Farms in Dundee, where the Spaniards learned about access to daily fresh raw milk and to meats raised only on non-grain diets. No hormones, no anti-biotics, no adulterated non-natural foods for these animals or the subsequent eaters.
The next day was spent at Janie’s Farms and Mill near Kankakee. Harold Wilken, owner, has established there the first heirloom and heritage grains mill in Illinois, offering non-adulterated flours of wheat and other grains for persons with celiac disease and persons who wish to avoid harmful supermarket flours. Next they compared these wholistic approaches with a nearby conventional, typical corn-and-soybeans farm. The Spaniards were encouraged by the alternative foods provided by Janie’s Mill.
The Spaniards’ mission to America was twofold. First, to share with USA farmers the reasons why European farmers organized to demand fairer livelihoods and fairer prices for their farm products.
Second, to help USA farmers envision some world-wide systemic changes to be made in trying to achieve universal food sovereignty. “We all need to work together — eaters and farmers,” Javier and Luis emphasized.
Sharing their Spanish-Mexican heritage and language with Farmer Palomares, the Spaniards discussed challenges in their respective struggles for food sovereignty and food security for their peoples. They stressed that farmers world wide must effectively organize to release the stranglehold imposed on farmers and eaters by the monopolistic anti-competitive food barons of the U.S. and other autocratic nations.
These exploitative, and largely unchallenged, trade agreements like NAFTA, free but not fair, hurt local smallholdings like Mighty Greens and All-Grass Farms and remove food sovereignty from us eaters. They are “free” for food barons but not “fair” for farmers or eaters, who bear the brunt of inflated food prices.
The Spanish farmers are encouraging eaters and farmers worldwide to work as one to address the controlling and exploitive injustices inherent in the current food system designed by monopolistic USA food barons and agribusiness.
The year 2023 saw the beginning of farmer protests in Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, where a cheaper grain Russia exported from Ukraine that does not follow E.U. standards presented unfair competition. Farmers in Spain, Italy, Poland, France, Germany, and Netherlands are now most prominent in leading the European protests.
They seek fairer agricultural policies, less red tape, an awareness of local farmers’ financial concerns. They oppose trade agreements that give unfair advantage to the larger food barons of the USA and of Russia’s dictatorship.
While the focus of The Just Food Initiative is of the Fox Valley and their hands-on work is in local Fox River communities, their thinking and learning is world-wide. What happens in Spain, sparked by Russia’s dictatorship, happens also in America, sparked by American agribusiness’s and corporate food barons’ dictatorship. We all lose.
For more information, visit https://tinyurl.com/mdssdwan, or send to admin@justfood-foxvalley.org.
—The Just Food Initiative of The Fox Valley