The East Bay Community Law Center, UC Law San Francisco, and the Sustainable Economies Law Center are proud to co- sponsor the teach-in for food justice enterprises!

Please join us as we dig-into:

❖ CHOICE AND FORMATION OF AN ENTITY

❖ EMPLOYMENT LAW

❖ CONTRACTS

❖ UNDERSTANDING ZONING: WHERE YOU CAN OPERATE YOUR BUSINESS

❖ FOOD SAFETY LAWS FOR CALIFORNIA FOOD BUSINESSES

❖ LOWER-COST, ALTERNATIVE WAYS TO SELL FOOD

❖ FINANCING YOUR BUSINESS – SECURITIES LAW PRIMER

❖ TAX AND ACCOUNTING

❖ LIABILITY, INSURANCE, AND RISK MANAGEMENT

❖ ORGANIC CERTIFICATION

It’s not immediately apparent why people who are passionate about food justice should also care about enterprise. After all, business and enterprise are often viewed as the cause of the problem, particularly with the domination of the food industry by a few mega-corporations. And yet, we believe that creating socially responsible, community-accountable enterprises is a potent means of achieving food justice. So what do we mean by food justice? Let’s start with some definitions.

Food justice: A movement that attempts to address hunger by addressing the underlying issues of racial and class disparity and the inequities in the food system that correlate to inequities in economic and political power.

Enterprise: A business, company, or undertaking that is difficult and complicated.

Why connect these two terms?
Food justice is a vision that one day all communities will have control over their food systems, including the land base required to produce the food. Further, enterprises are not just businesses, but also community-scale projects that are complicated and risky for sure, but that can also create opportunity and ownership for the communities that most need it. We’re connecting the two terms because we see the need for more food justice enterprises to realize our vision of a just food system.

A movement for food justice enterprises envisions an economy in which food businesses are not only traditional for-profit businesses but can encompass a broad range of organizations and ventures, including cooperatives, land trusts, community-supported agriculture, urban gardens, farmers’ markets, and nonprofit organizations. The common theme uniting all of these enterprises is that they are engaging in transactions involving food, whether it is growing food, bartering or selling it with local community groups, or running farmers’ markets and community-supported agriculture projects. These transactions of food raise a host of important legal issues to be aware of before you start doing “business,” so you can save yourself a lot of headaches (and perhaps fines) down the line!

How can we access to local, healthy food impact broader social equality?
Food is the most basic of human needs, and access to it has significant human health, social, economic, environmental, political, and moral dimensions. Here in the U.S., approximately 23.5 million Americans live in low-income areas that are more than one mile from a supermarket. This physical distance has detrimental social consequences, including increased crime rates and incidents of disease. Existing food production and distribution practices – dependent on national and international food conglomerates rather than local producers – furthers this systemic inequity. However, when local communities take control of their own food systems, they can not only improve the local economy, but also positively affect social change.