Episode #4 Notes

0:30 - Why is the Foodchain Workers Alliance relevant today?

8:00 - Why haven’t unions traditionally focused on food service workers in the past? And how are the current worker-centered efforts really moving the needle in social movement organizing right now?

13:00 - Tell us about the HEAL Alliance.

19:30 - Let’s talk about the meat industry. Tell us about your campaign around this?

25:30 - Why is it important for BIPOC folks to take part in food system organizing?

27:45 - What is your vision for a fair and just food system?

29:00 - How do you balance out the fact that people were forced to work the land here vs. the fact that land was cleared out by violence and disease?

30:30 - What’s on your bookshelf?

Fight Back

Confessions of an Economic Hitman, John Perkins

Star Wars - Aftermath Trilogy, Life Debt, Chuck Wendig

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Episode #3 Notes

1:00 - What is land reform?

8:00 - What was the intention of land reform in Guatemala? What was the goal?

11:30 - When thinking about your work in the US, in the context of your family history, how do you define food sovereignty?

21:00 - How does food sovereignty and land reform fit into the present moment?

29:00 - How do you balance out the fact that people were forced to work the land here vs. the fact that land was cleared out by violence and disease?

38:45 - Let’s talk about Chicago. Tell me about your early organizing history and how the Food Chain Workers Alliance came about?

49:00 - How does the poor treatment of food chain workers affect their personal health and lives?

Book Recommendations coming in Part 2!

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Episode #2 Notes

1:00 - What led you into the food industry?

3:30 - How did your family influence your career trajectory?

5:30 - What did you study in college?

7:30 - What were some of your initial experience working your way up a large food company?

9:50 - Did you feel like you faced additional challenges as a woman of color in the food industry?

13:45 - How do you think the natural products industry got so white? And what do we need to do to change that?

26:30 - Do you think the diversity, inclusion, and equity policies that have been applied to some procurement departments can ultimately help black farmers who have been disenfranchised?

33:30 - What inspired you to move into Organic foods?

37:45 - Under you leadership at General Mills, it embraced regenerative agriculture and responsiveness to climate change. How did you hustle that?

43:15 - What kinds of impacts do you think these progressive policies around sustainability was General Mills hoping to have?

48:45 - Are you seeing other players evolve along these same lines towards more sustainability and regenerative practices?

51:30 - How do you think large food companies are responding to a greater need for food security and food access in the COVID landscape?

57:00 - You’ve been a visible Black Lives Matter supporter at a high level in the food industry. How has this been received by your peer group in the food industry?

103:00 - Black people have been historically disenfranchised by the food system. What does a food system designed by Carla Vernon look like?

110:00 - What are three things you would recommend to a food industry leader to reverse the legacy of inequity and injustice in the food system?

114:00 - What’s on your reading list?

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Episode #1 Notes

3:30 - What is Food Sovereignty?

7:00 - What is the difference between Food Sovereignty and Food Justice?

10:00 - Who makes the decisions in our food system with regards to growing, distributing, and selling our foods?

12:30 - Why is there such disparity in food access - particularly the quality of grocery retailers - across different geographies?

16:00 - How has COVID-19 exacerbated the issues around food justice?

19:00 - Raj, please repeat that mind-bogglingly crazy statistic you just cited.

20:30 - Why hasn’t the free market solved all of our food access and food sovereignty issues?

24:00 - How does agricultural subsidies affect food pricing and, in effect, food sovereignty?

30:00 - What role do food systems workers play in achieving food sovereignty?

35:20 - What impact might something like a Green New Deal have on moving us towards food sovereignty?

39:15 - How would food sovereignty impact our cuisine and what ends up on our plates?

47:00 - The role of reparations in food sovereignty

49:40 - Raj, what’s on your bookshelf right now?

Perilous Bounty: The Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It, Tom Philpott

Various books from Nick Estes, Nick Estes

The Long Drop, Denise Mina

The Intuitionist, Colson Whitehead

Braiding Sweetgrass, Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer

Nightmarch, Alpa Shah

The Burning Forest: India’s War in Bastar, Nandini Sundar

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