The Food Fortitude Concept
Food Fortitude is a new theory where we blend the most effective aspects of Food Security, Food Justice, Food Sovereignty, Health and Wellness, Land Access, and Conservation to ensure Farm and Food Freedom in a way that also addresses Food Apartheid, nutrition, and economic deficits in communities from the ground up. It is a Farm Based Food Security system that does not depend on imports or outside systems, but local production in a specific way. We focus on a combined approach of each one of these factors because it is possible to have one without the other.
For instance, a community has the right to grow its own food and trade culturally relevant staples, but lack the education that is needed to avoid diet related illness. High calorie foods like hand made pizza from all locally grown ingredients is consumed more than cruciferous vegetables and healthy fats. A lifestyle that does not reflect adequate calorie utilization or balanced stress load, and you may have a food sovereign people that still have high rates of diabetes, high blood pressure, and are heavily dependent on their state's healthcare dollars. Or you have a new workforce of growers without the land access they need to produce the food that their community has a demand for. If the do not have conservation training then they may create more ecological problems for the land than before by using pesticides, not building soil health, or compromising pollinators in an attempt to ensure a larger crop yield. All aspects of these systems are needed to meet the growing food, fiber, and fuel needs of humans. Food Fortitude does that.
Our Defining Foundations
The word "fortitude" derives from Latin fortitudo (meaning strength). When applied to the term Food, and our systems that govern what we grow, cook, and eat, it is apparent why Food Fortitude is needed. We at Food Fortitude feel it is the next step in changing old systems that compete with each other, or essentially fail, into a cohesive engine that fuels the future of our food and its industries.
Food Insecurity: A household that doesn’t have reliable access to enough affordable, nutritious food to meet basic needs.
Food Security: The state of having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.
Food Justice: A movement and framework that addresses the unfair social, racial, and economic conditions that shape who has access to healthy food and who bears harms in the food system.
Food Sovereignty: The right of peoples and communities to define and control their own food and agriculture systems, including what food is grown, how it’s grown, who owns land and seeds, and how food is distributed, prioritizing local needs, culture, and ecological sustainability.
Conservation: The responsible protection, management, and restoration of natural resources (soil, water, forests, wildlife, biodiversity) to sustain them for current and future generations.
Food Apartheid: A term used to describe the intentional, systemic, and racialized separation of communities from healthy food access driven by policy, planning, and investment decisions (not “natural” market outcomes). Example: (redlining, zoning, disinvestment, transportation gaps, corporate siting decisions)
