Food Justice and Sovereignty

The local food environment serves as a critical driver of individual and neighborhood health. Access to high quality food differs along economic and racial lines, with supermarkets or large food chain stores concentrated in Whiter, wealthier neighborhoods, contributing to severe health disparities amongst low wealth communities and communities of color. CEEJH works across the urban-rural gradient to work towards food justice and sovereignty alongside community organizations throughout the region. In Baltimore, CEEJH has conducted analyses to determine if urban agriculture enterprises are at risk for contamination due to their proximity to legacy pollution sites, including those that are known heavy metal polluters. In Prince George’s County, CEEJH has conducted analyses regarding the quantities and quality of available food options available by race, ethnicity, poverty, and educational attainment using the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future healthy food availability index (HFAI). Dr. Wilson and CEEJH have conducted a number of analyses regarding the environmental justice implications of hog CAFOs in North Carolina and Mississippi, and have concluded that they pose a threat to low wealth, Black communities in these areas. CEEJH’s current work on the Delmarva Peninsula has included similar analyses regarding industrial chicken farming. Dr. Wilson has also collaborated with Food and Water Watch, SRAP, and Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) to raise issues about the negative impacts of industrial chicken farming on the Eastern Shore including Salisbury, in Wicomico County, and in Somerset County, MD. Click here to view Dr. Wilson’s plenary speech at the 2017 Factory Farm Summit.

Food Justice and Sovereignty Research

Delmarva Rural Agricultural Collaborative

Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and the industrial poultry industry on the Delmarva Peninsula threaten air and water quality for local residents, many of whom are low-wealth communities of color. CAFOs emit air pollutants such as ammonia, hydrogen sulfides, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and particulate matter.

Urban Gardens in Baltimore

Environmental justice advocates have raised concerns regarding the harmful effects that heavy metals and other contaminants from neighboring environmental hazard facilities may have on urban farms.

CAFOs in Rural Mississippi

High density industrial hog farming operations present numerous environmental health hazards (including local air and water pollution). In 2001, Dr. Wilson and a team of researchers investigated environmental justice impacts of differential siting of hog concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) near African-American communities in Mississippi.

Conducting a Rapid Health Impact Assessment to Investigate Chicken Processing Impacts in Millsboro, Delaware

Dr. Wilson and CEEJH team members worked with the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project (SRAP), Protecting Our Indian River, and the communities of Sussex County, Delaware to protest the establishment of poultry processing plant in Millsboro, DE.

Food Justice in Prince George's County, Maryland

The local food environment serves as a critical driver of individual and neighborhood health. Research has shown that many low-income communities and communities of color have limited access to healthy food resources.