The Brooklyn Food Conference took place last Saturday (May 2nd) and they’ve just posted the keynote speech from the event.  The speech, by LaDonna Redmond, talks about the immediate need to change how we look at food, where we get our food and how we treat food policy.

Ms. Redmond is the founder and current president of a grassroots, community-based organization, the Institute for Community Resource Development in Chicago. In her work, she focuses on issues that relate to the development of local sustainable food systems

One of my favorite excerpts from her speech is below:

Raj and I was just down in Florida a few weeks ago with the Immokalee farm workers. They are picking our tomatoes for 50 cents a bucket. Thirty-two pounds of tomatoes in that bucket, and they have to pick that bucket 150 times to get 50 dollars so that y’all can shop at Whole Foods. So you got to get clear about this. Where is your food coming from?

We have to ask a deeper question. Who grew this? How did it get here? You can’t just rely on the fact that you can go someplace and purchase food. An unjust food system hides the face of those that you’re too uncomfortable to see, like those farm workers down in Florida. An unjust food system doesn’t allow a farmer that’s actually growing food for his or her family to eat it. It enslaves them. That farmer becomes a slave to the corporation, which exploits his legwork, his knowledge and his or her commitment to the farm. That’s what we’re talking about. We’re not just talking about the farmers, we’re talking about the farmer who doesn’t have a choice. An unjust food system is built on the backs of people.

Read the entire speech HERE.