Food, Land, and Liberation

Navigating food sovereignty activism with Dee Woods

There is a rhythm to a life in activism. 

A drumlike pulse originating deep in the heart, echoing through the stomach towards the soul. Our steps are manifested by an unconscious, unrecognised power. 

Our groove is the homecoming. Music provides us a divine return to the source of everything we do, our hearts. 

Every step we take holds no rational explanation beyond a feeling of what is just. 

Of what is needed to make sense in a world that hardly makes sense.  

Activism is hard work. It’s about holding tensions and embracing contradictions. About exploring intersections and the vast in-between. About the search for community and common ground. The reclamation of cultures of care and mutual respect. 

We seek to embody the world we desire, without losing ourselves in our appetite for perfection. 

We talk about commitment to a struggle and a cause bigger than ourselves. We think about the elders who have struggled before us, and how to honour them.

When we talk about honouring our foremothers, we think about those who carried our collective, ancestral seeds — seeds we all inherit — in their hands while holding steadfast to their beliefs. 

When we talk about mentorship, we dream of those that allow us to make our own mistakes, and find our own ways. Those that know that the journey, not the destination, is the true work. 

At A Growing Culture, we talk about Dee Woods. 

A mother, sister, and friend. 

A comrade, co-conspirator, and board member. We couldn’t be more excited to share this conversation with Dee. Someone who knows that true activism is about intersectionality as much as it's about fun, and self-healing. 

Dee’s lifelong commitment to justice has transversed gender, food sovereignty, education, and policy. She is the co-founder of Granville Community Kitchen, a member of Land In Our Names (LION) Collective, director and Food Justice Policy Coordinator of Landworkers’ Alliance and a co-editor of A People’s Food Policy, among so many other projects. However, most importantly, those who know Dee know she instils hope that another world is possible. A world rooted in love and liberation. 

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Dee Woods. Photo: Orlando Gili

What was your introduction to the food sovereignty movement? What caused you to start seeing food as a vehicle for liberation?

It’s been a personal journey related to my health and my own research around food, culture, and ethnicity, and experimenting to control my neurological condition, recognising that epigenetics and culturally appropriate foods were the best to treat it. But my foods weren’t easily accessible. They weren’t affordable. 

As a person with disabilities who has experienced state violence in trying to access welfare, with no money, and two children to feed while trying to manage my condition, I looked around to the community I was embedded in and realised that so many people, mainly from the Majority World, were struggling to access food — because of their age, disability, long-term health condition, or issues regarding their migration status because of violent policies here in England.

As migrants or refugees, you can’t work, and you can’t access funding, and you are given a pittance to live on, so for me, it was about trying to do something that restored people’s dignity. As I got deeper into food and recognised how political it is, I became more involved in policy work — going from the boardrooms to the London authorities and local councils to bring in that voice from the ground.

So I’ve always used whatever my personal story has been to connect with others and try to shift hearts and minds in a space where people only think about the economics of things.

How did growing up in London and moving to the Caribbean shape your understanding of food sovereignty?

After spending my early childhood in London, my family moved back to Trinidad and Tobago. My dad’s a farmer, so it was like I experienced food from a different food culture. I always talk about the first time we went there. My dad took us on a tour of the island, and we tasted and smelled everything literally off the trees. Those things have always stayed with me, being in a culture where food is everything.

In the seventies, during my later childhood and teenage years, the Black Power movement and lots of anti-colonial and decolonial leaders were strong in the Caribbean, and to some degree, their ideas applied to the food space. 

I remember there was this big government-led program to buy local, and they had stopped a lot of foreign food imports. So, that was one way of witnessing food sovereignty in action. But, as I got deeper within the movement, it was also about understanding the abolitionary frameworks that informed how the food sovereignty movement began. 

When I returned to London, I realised that some people don’t look at our rural lands here as a space of colonial power, even when the British have colonised and settled other lands, and are basically the architects of the globalised food system. For me, part of the work within food sovereignty is to unpack what roles each of us plays, and to address the power structures that uphold them. 

Can you tell us more about the role of abolition in the origins of food sovereignty? 

Food sovereignty seeks not to merely reform the systems, practises and institutions that make up the industrial neo-colonial, globalised plantation food system but to uproot them, to eradicate them and replace them with just, equitable, solidarity-based, human- and earth-rights-centred, commons systems. 

Abolition must come with reparations. Being here in the heart of the empire, I am reminded daily that Britain is the great architect of this plantation food system. The philanthropic foundations whose endowments are a legacy of historical harm. The great gardens resplendent with the offspring of biopiracy. The grand estates built on sugar and slavery. A nation that built its wealth, as did most of Europe, on the human trafficking, extraction, and oppression of African people. Virtually every place and people in this world have been touched by the violence of this country. Hope lies in the abolitionist futures of liberation.

What does it mean to decolonise our food system?

I think it differs depending on where you are located, i.e. Majority World or Minority World, but also in the context of culture and heritage. As a mixed Afrodescendent/Indigenous/European person born in England, who has spent most of my life here, I had to work through the disconnections to ancestral land, ecologies, and foodways with a deeply colonised mindset of unbelonging. 

To decolonise, we need to: 

1. Understand that there are multiple food systems. 

2. Dismantle systems of racial capitalism, patriarchy, and corporate power. 

3. Relocalise food systems and give farmers and communities control.

4. Reclaim agroecological ancestral foodways in the Majority World. 

5. Support the production of culturally significant foods or trade them in solidarity with Majority World communities for the diaspora dislocated in the Minority World.

6. Shift food trade towards diverse models that create opportunities for social solidarity, economic development, ecological regeneration, and social justice. 

Food sovereignty has gained more traction within policymaking spaces after a long history of having “food security” at the centre of discourse. What are the main differences you see between these two terms/concepts?

I think big food corporations spin food security because they’ve developed a narrative based on fear, the lack of food, and the strive to produce more food. And it’s all a lie. Some statistics clearly show that small food producers, mainly based in the Majority World, feed the world. So, to regain control of our sovereignty, we need to regain control over narratives. The industrialised food system destroys biodiversity, oppresses people, and doesn’t feed anyone. 

Here in Europe, there’s a definite shift from using the term “sovereignty” to “autonomy”. And I think that’s coming from a place of not being colonised because even though there’s a shared vision of being in control of our food system, it is disconnected, in many ways, from the underlying power dynamics in the land. In contrast, colonised territories used to be independent before being subjected, so it’s impossible to separate sovereignty from the struggle to take back control over their food systems.

And what role does food aid play?

So all this is part of the industrialised food system. We have industrialised food aid to address household food insecurity. And the main driver of household food insecurity is poverty. In many cases, people try and cover most of their expenses except for food, knowing they can get it (food) from charity. But there’s this dangerous spin because governments are supposed to ensure first, in terms of national food security, that there’s adequate food available. And second, that people can access or afford food, either by themselves or in community. But, all around the world, we are seeing a growing inequality gap. 

So what you see here, especially in England, are narratives like the “deserving poor” or, on the contrary, that some people are scroungers of the welfare state and that they should be going out to work. But work isn’t secure here. Work does not pay, and welfare is not fit for purpose. If you’re an asylum seeker or migrant, it’s even worse because you have no rights. And you’re expected to live off of charity, but in terms of what the government gives you here, you’re expected to live on four pounds a week. Those are clear violations of the right to food. 

It’s also clear that governments are becoming more right-wing and authoritarian around the globe, and underlying that, there are a lot of intersectional inequities as well, like racism, which in this country is structural. You can see it within particular legislation. And you can see it in our food system: we are still a plantation system built on the labour of farmworkers, the majority of whom come from elsewhere and, every season, are treated like indentured labourers or slaves.

We constantly see the rights of historically-oppressed populations, like LGBTQ communities, Black communities, Indigenous communities, seriously under threat. For you, food, land, and culture lie at the heart of collective liberation. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?

If you look at wealth and wealth accumulation, it is about land, right? You look at the housing crisis; it connects to land. And because so many systems intersect within the food system, the liberation of land offers a way to help abolish, uproot, and dismantle oppressive systems. From social solidarity economies to land reform to different land stewardship and ownership models.

So the deeper I got into the politics of food, I recognised the power it has. Much of the work I’m doing now is around gender work within the food system. But gender doesn’t exist in isolation, and I think that’s why my hands are in so many different pies because I understood that there’s no singular view or way into food systems change.

So, for me, cooking was the entryway to organised action around food. And today, at the Granville Community Kitchen, we build community by cooking and sharing meals together. So I think it’s not just resistance, but resilience. Repair. And it’s important to cook collectively, not just as individuals.

Granville Community Garden. Photo: Granville Community Kitchen

So much of the injustice in the world is rooted in systems of uniformity. Patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism and so on. How can we make sure we are not reinforcing them and instead engaging in the radical act of word-building as a mosaic rather than a formula in our liberation work? 

I think this is where agroecology comes in. Understanding it not just as good farming methods but within the framework of food sovereignty. So agroecology is about reclamation. It is about movements and movement building. It’s science. It’s culture and diversity, and recognises our relationships with ecology and land. So, with agroecology, you’re not just accepting what comes. You’re also building on the past, on ancestral or traditional paths. And we’re just bringing those back to these times. 

Nowadays, our relationships with land can be complex, in a world where so many of us have been removed from our ancestral lands either through economic pressures, violence, climate change, etc. How do we build sovereignty in an uprooted world? 

Living in London, we experience that transitory nature of not being rooted. In this city, we have people from virtually everywhere. So it’s important to talk about community and commons and values. That gives us an opportunity to reexamine the principles of food sovereignty. 

I know they’ve added an extra one in Canada: “Food is sacred”. And I think that is the beauty of food sovereignty, that it can be adaptable. And so, people in new territories might not be able to bring much with them when migrating, but still, they carry their values, and they build their communities based on what they all believe in. When you think of it, the entire Americas and their modern formation has been created by the violent transplantation and the dehumanisation and destruction of Indigenous peoples. Yet their cultures and values remain.

If you think of businesses, you know, “core values” mean a very different thing, because food is for profit in this space. But in food sovereignty, food is for people. That’s why it’s difficult to co-opt food sovereignty, because it is rooted in the richness of our cultures and unique values. 

For so many of us, caught in the daily struggle for rights, so much of our work is in opposition to dominant systems of oppression. This can, of course, cultivate anger and resentment. What is the role of pleasure in activism/social movements? How can we centre love and unity as much as possible?

I mean, the work must be grounded in joy, pleasure, and love. People ask me what motivates me to do what I do, and if you look closely, we always celebrate within movements. We take time to honour shared practices like thanksgiving at the beginning of meetings with La Vía Campesina and bring our own beliefs and understandings. They are all grounded in the sacred, even if they’re slightly different.

It’s all about how we connect to each other. This is where culture comes in. This is where the art comes in. This is where poetry comes in. This is where music comes in. You cannot build community, you cannot build a movement without any of those things. That’s why a shared meal is so powerful because that’s what you are doing there as well.

Is there a particular story around a shared meal that comes to mind right now?

I love exploring food from different cultures and realising that within many ancestral cultures, so many of our foods and cooking methods are similar. So, at the Landworkers’ Alliance, we have our 10th-anniversary book coming out soon, and my contribution was a recipe inspired by the midnight feast I cooked at our annual meetings before COVID. 

It started off as me cooking some sausages on a barbecue because my friend had just killed a pig. I made some sauces from scratch with my own spices, we had beer and cider brewed by other members, and people would bring bread or stuff from their farms to include something that would meet the needs of vegetarians and vegans. It became a co-created meal.

For the book, I bring another midnight feast idea from my Kalinago ancestry. A dish called Pepper Pot. And it’s basically wild pork meat cooked in Cassareep, which is cassava boiled down until it’s black syrup. It takes several days for it to get to that. Then the meat is cooked in the syrup with spices and lots of chilis. Because of cassava’s preservation properties, stories say this dish can last for years, all you do is add fresh meat and bring it to heat every day, and it tastes better the longer you keep it. 

We know about your love for house music. Can you expand on the role of music and song, and perhaps even house music, in the struggle?

I love music. I have never been one for playing an instrument properly except for some percussion, really. I ran a radio station for several years, allowing me to meet many musicians and producers. I like joy-filled music. House is that for me.

Here in England, folk music vibes are very strong within land work, but we are managing to bring all types of music to our land skills fair, and the DJs who have done great crowd-pleasing sets have all been house DJs. So there’s something to house where you can just dance in your own way. And you know, to me, that literally is healing, dancing is healing, singing is healing. 

We want to end with the most important question of all. One that we need to remember to centre more often in these conversations. Dee, with all the work you are doing in the world, with all the people you inspire, can you share with us what inspires you? What gives you hope, fueling your daily work to make this world better? 

I would say it’s three things. One, my own spirituality and spiritual practice, which keeps me grounded. Two, understanding that I am the dream manifest of my ancestors — ancestors who could only dream about physical liberation. And three, children and young people. Because why else would I be doing this? If not for other generations to inherit the world in a much better way than it is, right? To be good ancestors knowing that whatever we do today will impact many generations.

I tell young people, “You inspire me”, and always make time for them. That’s really important. When I think of my own journey, even though it might not be directly related to the work I’m doing, I remember elders making time just to talk with me and listen to my dreams and hopes.

I hope to do that for others and become a movement aunty! 

It’s precious that time that we give others just to listen to them and hear from their perspective and what’s going on in their heads and hearts. We rarely do that in our family circles, even sometimes with friends. It’s so important to make space for listening to each other, and we can learn so many things from sitting for a couple of minutes with a toddler or kids and our elders. 

1. Dee’s statement on behalf of the CSIPM Women and Gender Diversities Working Group denounces the lack of transparency and democratic principles at the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) Gender negotiations on June 14, 2023. The Committee’s inaction to address structural barriers to the rights of women, girls, and gender-diverse people is of grave concern.  

2. This episode of the Land Workers Alliance podcast explores the dangers of limiting our perception of food sovereignty as solely an issue of food production and food security. The conversation also taps into the critical role of grassroots organising within the movement.

3. This playlist, curated by Dee, includes some of her favourite tunes to bring love, joy and healing into your day. Remember that pleasure is part of the work, and take time to express gratitude and celebrate with the people who have made your journey warmly unforgettable. 

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Every resource produced by A Growing Culture, whether a newsletter, article, post, or design, results from countless hours of research, reflection, and the synthesis of profound conversations held both within our team and with our partners and comrades. Behind the scenes, a wealth of effort goes into making these conversations happen, from overseeing our day-to-day operations, securing our funding, to forging deep relationships with communities around the world who are leading food systems transformation. These relationships fuel our thoughts, inform our words, and inspire our actions. 

We recognise that no single person can take credit for the work we collectively produce, which is why we prefer to sign as an organisation rather than as individuals. We believe that no idea is inherently our own and welcome anyone who sees value in our work to translate it, build upon it, adapt it to their own contexts, or share it however they see fit.