This podcast mini-series entitled ‘A Feminist Journey Through Agroecology’, co-created by AgroecologyNow and International Cooperation for Development and Solidarity (CIDSE), explores the question of what food systems would look like if they were based on feminist values.

When people hear the word 'feminism', they think of women, and of gender, but feminisms stand for much more than that.  Feminism, in the way that the authors understand it, is about changing the values around which decisions are made to give importance to processes and outcomes that may not have apparent ‘productive’ or economic benefits, but that centre on care and reproduction of life, human and non-human. Feminism offers a new set of glasses through which to look at the world outside and inside of ourselves.  

The feminist lens applies to all aspects of life. It is just as important to apply feminist thinking to health, politics, and science, as it is to food, but the fact is that food forms the basis for our survival. It is a major nexus between humans and natural ecosystems, as well as between individuals. Food is a means of domination as well as empowerment, for division as well as cohesion, and it is hard work that needs to be done daily, all year round without fail. Food is an area of historic oppression and violence against women, black, Indigenous and people of colour, and others who do not fall into the white, heterosexual, middle-class CIS-male category.  It is time for this to change. 

Through the stories of Diana Lilia Trevilla Espinal (Mexico) and Isabel Álvarez Vispo (Spain), the first episode ‘‘What does feminism have to do with the food you eat?’’ unpacks the ways in which it is necessary to go beyond gender for food system transformation, what is needed and how it can be done in practice.