A Growing Culture

Type: YouTube

Subject: Margarita Bárcena, Alejandra Bautista, Loren Cardeli, Myriam Helou, HyoJin Park, Justin Sardo, Josh To, Rohan

Year: 2019

Language: English

“We believe in food sovereignty. For everyone. Everywhere.” this motto fully expresses the vision of A Growing Culture, a global movement dedicated to food sovereignty as a basic human right. Founded in 2019, A Growing Culture supports the right of every person to access healthy, culturally appropriate food, decent wages and just living conditions. Achieving food sovereignty requires learning, perseverance and respect for ancestral wisdom.

Along with social profiles, the A Growing Culture website is a valuable educational resource that shares stories, tools and knowledge to support those fighting for just and sustainable global food systems. In addition, the platform offers a wide variety of free readings and short films that highlight the injustices present at different levels of the global food system.

A Growing Culture carries out three main projects:

• Seed is Power recognizes the vital importance of living seed systems for the conservation of biodiversity and cultural heritage. Unfortunately, industrial agriculture continually threatens these systems. This fund was created to keep control of seeds in the hands of communities, promoting a reciprocity approach that redistributes power and strengthens equity among seed custodians. Support is provided while respecting the needs and conditions of the communities themselves, thus strengthening a bottom-up driven seed sovereignty.
• Hunger For Justice shifts the focus from the simple symptoms of hunger to the systemic injustices that fuel it. This initiative provides a global, interactive platform where movements on the front lines of food sovereignty can share their stories, connect with a wider audience, and collaborate with each other. Until hunger is eliminated for every person, the thirst for justice must continue to drive us.
• Peasant and Indigenous Press addresses the great challenges of our time-climate change, hunger, inequality, and human rights-all deeply intertwined with food and land issues. Peasant and indigenous communities are responsible for feeding the majority of the world’s population and protecting some 80 percent of global biodiversity. However, their voices are often excluded from mainstream narratives. These communities possess fundamental wisdom about sustainably feeding, preserving cultural traditions, sustaining livelihoods and protecting ecosystems. The project covers this media gap through bimonthly forums, workshops for journalists, monthly dispatches and scholarship, thus promoting a more inclusive and articulate narrative ecosystem.