Decolonising Food

Food is more than just a biological need; it connects people with each other and with the complex ecosystems of the earth. But food also involves encounters with power, as food networks are historically shaped by global power matrices that reproduce colonial legacies such as racial capitalism and plantation legacies. Colonised peoples have borne the brunt of industrial capitalist food networks as they are disproportionately affected by food insecurity, diet-related non-communicable diseases, ecological devastation and the marginalisation of ancestral foodways. To counter such injustices, scholars and activists have taken the imperative to decolonise food. Decolonising food is a long-term, collective process of overturning colonial power dynamics inherent in global food systems by approaching food issues from the place-based perspectives of non-white, Indigenous, or other subordinated Peoples. Examples of decolonising food initiatives include collective actions for food sovereignty, climate justice, and reparatory justice. In this entry, we demonstrate how decolonising food requires new concepts and approaches to re-think food and pursue justice from the place of colonised peoples, with examples from the Indigenous and Afro-descendant Caribbean.