Dr. Charles and Lesedi Kgatla attended a convening at University of Illinois Chicago on Racism in the Food System from March 19th-22th. The convening was hosted by our collaborator Angela Odoms-Young (Cornell University, Division of Nutritional Sciences) and Sheelah Muhammad (S Mpact Consulting). We gathered to leverage the academic – and lived experiences of BIPOC scholars, community researchers, and organizations representing rural and urban workers in food production; spanning expertise in nutrition, climate change, land reform, rural and urban development, and racial equity to develop a deeper understanding about the relationships between structural racism, food systems and nutritional health.

In workshops held over two days, participants were engaged in dialogue and prompted with questions that focused on eliciting commentary that would inform the structure of the food system. The questions also included inquiry on perceptions of proposed solutions. Our related work aims to integrate the experiential knowledge to develop a quantitative system dynamics concept model of how the systemic factor of race influences dynamics in the food system. We are excited to continue working with participants from the convening to develop both qualitative and quantitative system dynamics models that relate the role of race to causes and effects across the food system!