History of Food Justice in the USA and the Rockpile Program as a Food Justice Initiative

The food justice movement is a social, political, and economic movement. It focuses on the disparate barriers to healthy food experiences faced by low-income, minority, and marginalized communities. Fueled in the 1960s by the awareness of hunger, primarily in the US South and large urban populations, the civil rights movement anti-hunger organizations formed to advocate for those disproportionately affected by structural inequalities created by the global agri-food system. The food justice movement has grown to include alternative food movements, environmental justice, food security, and health equity and inequality. We begin this chapter by reviewing the literature that has fundamentally guided food justice movements in the USA. We follow with a discussion of how the Rockpile program fits into the larger food justice movements working today to create a more equitable food production, distribution, and consumption system. Finally, we discuss our future goals and respond to recent critiques of prison horticultural programs.