Episode 26 - Reclaiming Food Sovereignty, Remembering Women Farmers

Food justice interweaves with conversations about our women ancestors and motherhood in this episode of Reseed. Food is interconnected with human health, planetary health, water, soil, animals, culture, and care. At its worst, the production of food is one of the most damaging sources of climate change and biodiversity loss, and it can be cruel to animals and exploitative to people. At its best, growing food roots us into this beautiful Earth, creating a reciprocal relationship with the land, connections with community - and the reclamation of rights. 

Guest Leticia Ama Deawuo has been a leading activist for food sovereignty and food justice for the past 15 years. She is the Executive Director of SeedChange, and spent four years as the Executive Director of Black Creek Community Farm, where she worked towards greater food justice with the Toronto community of Jane-Finch. She brings a unique perspective and expertise on food sovereignty, agroecology and food justice, thanks to her childhood spent on a small-scale farm in Ghana. She is also a filmmaker, currently working on a film on Women Indigenous Farmers in Africa that explores gender, racial equality, and indigeneity in African farming communities.

Ama sheds light on food sovereignty, a grassroots worldwide movement to reclaim food systems, with a particular focus on farmers’ rights. It focuses on the right to food, and grapples with questions of land ownership, distribution of resources, workers’ rights, environmental justice, and historical injustices. Could anything be more prescient to our precarious moment when workers are rising up and the Earth cries for our radical care?