Food Justice

• California-Nevada Annual Conference Takes Fact Finding Trip to Kidapawan
  Members of The California-Nevada Annual Conference took a fact-finding mission to Kidapawan and Arakan in the Philippines to report on the farmers’ plight and the food crisis there. United Methodist Women is standing on the side of Indigenous people’s rights, with the Lumad Indigenous People of the Philippines at General Conference and at the U.N. at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Travel costs to come to the U.S. for the Lumad to share their story were provided by United Methodist Women. Read the press release from The California-Nevada Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church.
• Introduction to Food Justice
  Hunger and poverty have a cyclical relationship.
• The Courage to Speak
  01/01/2014: In a small room in downtown Concepción, Chile, Monica Maldonado, a self-assured woman in her 50s, recites a few lines of a poem: “1973 arrived with the Caudillo Vigueta against people unarmed. With their ideals they killed our happiness and destroyed our dreams.”
• Hope, One Head of Lettuce at a Time
  10/29/2013: This is a story about hope. Not the feel-good theoretical, wishful thinking kind of hope but the tangible kind that comes when you have a solid paycheck for the first time, when the jail time you’ve done doesn’t block you from improving your life, when you can begin to see a positive future for yourself. It’s a real kind of hope for neighborhoods that have known decades of despair, crime, racism and entrenched poverty. It’s the kind of hope for our cities and our country that offers a recipe for how we can grow a more economically and environmentally sustainable and just society together.
• Help End Hunger on World Food Day
  10/14/2013: Every year on October 16, the global community of food justice advocates committed to ending hunger and poverty celebrate World Food Day. This is a special day that mobilizes efforts around the globe to raise awareness, educate, advocate and call for action to end global hunger.
• Stories of Peacemakers: Palestine
  09/14/2013: Grassroots International uses United Methodist Women Mission Giving funds for leadership and economic development of Palestinian women. According to their Giving Coordinator, “Food is one of the key weapons being used to subjugate the Palestinian people; heavily subsidized, imported food and food aid undermines Palestine’s farming economy and creates food dependence.” The project on Women’s Empowerment and Food Sovereignty offers a different path for low-income Palestinian rural women.
• An Introduction to the Current State of Malnutrition
  08/23/2013: One of the primary challenges facing the world today is malnutrition. Malnutrition is a physical condition caused by the under- or overconsumption of essential nutrients. It is most directly caused by “inadequate availability of and access to safe, diverse, nutritious food; lack of access to clean water, sanitation and health care; and inappropriate child feeding and adult dietary choices.”
• Not a SNAP: Farm Bill Cuts Hurt Women, Children
  07/12/2013: The Senate passed the farm bill S. 954 June 10 in a vote of 66-27, approving roughly $4 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the food stamp program.
• One Cow at a Time
  06/01/2013: Through its cow bank, Acción Médica Cristiana empowers women and feeds families in Nicaragua.
• Forthspring Intercommunity Group
  05/24/2013: The region of Northern Ireland has a long history of violence between the two major political beliefs –Unionists (who want to remain a part of the United Kingdom and are mostly Protestant) and the minority Nationalist (who want to become a part of the Republic of Ireland, and are mostly Catholics).
• Food and Hunger
  02/05/2013: While overnutrition and undernutrition seem to be polar opposites, they are both forms of malnutrition.
• Hunger and Poverty
  02/05/2013: The main cause of hunger is poverty and lack of power to access nutritious food.
• Grassroots International: Palestine
  12/17/2012: In the West Bank villages of Bil’in and Nil’in, just outside of Ramallah, 30 women have used the power of honey to keep their communities – and their livelihoods – cohesive and resolute.
• Land Grabbing
  12/07/2012: The large-scale acquisition of land traditionally used by local communities, “land grabbing,” has accelerated exponentially, resulting in record levels of hunger, displacement and environmental degradation.
• The Right to Food
  12/07/2012: When the world can produce more than enough food to adequately feed the global population, it shames us all that hunger and malnutrition exist.
• Nelly's Story
  12/07/2012: In a village in Zambia, Nelly and her family once depended exclusively on chemical fertilizers to produce the crops on their farm. As years went by, the quality of their soil degraded to a point that hunger and poverty took over the family’s already precarious situation.
• The Impact of Food Prices on Peace and Security
  11/14/2012: The poorest households in the developing world spend up to 60 to 80% of their incomes on food.
• The Global Land Grab
  05/01/2012: Around the world impoverished peoples are fighting a foreign rush for wealth and control that threatens to strip them of land, food and water.
• That We May All Live Together
  03/08/2012: Three of the ten United Methodist Women supported-delegates to the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations (CSW) attended the international meeting through the United Methodist Church partner, the Asian Rural Institute (ARI) in Japan.
• United Methodist Women Explores Needs of Rural Women
  03/07/2012: United Methodist Women sponsored international participants who attended the first week of this year’s commission meeting, which began Feb. 27 and continues through March 9.
• Ana Chã: Brazilian Landless Worker Emphasizes Health and Happiness for Rural Women
  03/02/2012: Ana Chã spoke to more than 100 people on Tuesday as part of the panel, “Voices of Rural Women,” co-sponsored by United Methodist Women and World Vision International, a side event of the Commission on the Status of Women.
• Women's Division Statement to the Fifty-sixth Session of the Commission on the Status of Women
  01/24/2012: Statement submitted by The United Methodist Church General Board of Global Ministries, Women’s Division, a nongovernmental organization in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council to the Fifty-sixth session of the Commission on the Status of Women
• Rural Women Panels Raise Issues on Food Security, Violence Against Women
  11/01/2011: In observance of International Day of Rural Women and World Food Day, United Methodist Women co-organized two panel discussions highlighting issues important to rural women around the world at the Church Center for the United Nations, Oct. 14, 2011.
• International Day of Rural Women and World Food Day Event
  09/20/2011: On October 14, 2011, United Methodist Women and partners will host panel discussions on the role of rural women in food security and ending violence against women at the Church Center for the United Nations.