Season 5, Episode 2 - “Taking power into their own hands ”: Women Leading Food Systems Change in Canada’s North, Ecuador, and Uganda

Season 5 Episode 2 - “Taking power into their own hands ”: Women Leading Food Systems Change in Canada’s North, Ecuador, and Uganda 

Featuring: Dr. Alison Blay-Palmer, Dr. Andrea Brown, and Carla Johnston 

In this episode of Handpicked: Stories from the Field, we take listeners behind the scenes of a special International Women’s Day panel hosted by the Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems. This event brought together women scholars and practitioners working across diverse food systems in Ecuador, Canada’s Northwest Territories, and Uganda. 

Featuring insights from Dr. Alison Blay-Palmer, Carla Johnston, Dr. Andrea Brown, and your co-host, Dr. Laine Young, the episode explores how gender justice in food systems is deeply interconnected with migration, Indigenous governance, urbanization, power, and lived experience. Through case studies on urban agriculture in Quito, Indigenous food governance and agroecology in Canada’s North with the Sambaa K'e First Nation and Ka'a'gee Tu First Nation, the Committee on World Food Security for the Voluntary Guidelines on Gender Equality and Women and girls empowerment, and migrant food insecurity in Kampala, the speakers reflect on feminist and intersectional research, positionality, and the importance of community-based knowledge. 

Together, they ask timely questions about who produces knowledge, whose voices are prioritized in research and policy, and how women and gender-diverse people are shaping more just and resilient food systems locally and globally. 

Contributors 

Co-Producers & Hosts: Dr. Laine Young & Dr. Charlie Spring  

Sound Design & Editing: Laine Young 

 

Guests 

Dr. Alison Blay-Palmer 

Dr. Andrea Brown 

Carla Johnston 

 
Support & Funding 

Wilfrid Laurier University 

The Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems 

Balsillie School for International Affairs  

 
Music Credits 

Keenan Reimer-Watts 

 

Resources 
 

Price, M.J., Latta, A., Temmer, J., Johnston, C., Chiot, L., Jumbo, J., Scott, K., & Spring, A. (2022) “Agroecology in the North: centering Indigenous food sovereignty and land stewardship in agriculture ‘frontiers’“. Agriculture and Human Values. 

Johnston, C. & Spring, A. (2021) “Grassroots and Global Governance: can global-local linkages foster food systems resilience for small northern Canadian communities?” Sustainability. 13(2415).   

Brown, A.M. (2024). Refugee Protection and Food Secuirity in Kampala, Uganda. Migration & Food Security (MiFOOD) Paper No. 18.  

Brown, A.M. (2022). Co-productive urban planning: Protecting and expanding food security in Uganda’s secondary cities. In Liam Riley and Jonathan Crush (eds). Transforming Urban Food Systems in Secondary Cities in Africa. Palgrave 

Young, L. N. (2025). Operationalizing intersectionality analysis for urban agriculture in Quito, Ecuador. Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive). 2762.  

Rodríguez, A., Jácome-Polit, D., Santandreu, A., Paredes, D., & Álvaro, N. P. (2022). Agroecological urban agriculture and food resilience: The Case of Quito, Ecuador. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 6.  

Theory of Water: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 

Moving Beyond Acknowledgments- LSPIRG 

Whose Land 

 

Connect with Us: 

Email: [e-mail] 

LinkedIn: Handpicked: Stories from the Field Podcast 

Facebook: Handpicked Podcast 

  

Glossary of Terms 

Feminist Research  
Research that centers gendered power relations, values lived experience and seeks social justice and equity. 

Food Security 
Having reliable access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets dietary needs and preferences. 

https://www.wfp.org/stories/food-security-what-it-means-and-why-it-matters 

Food Sovereignty  
The right of people and communities to define their own food systems, including cultural foodways, land access, and governance. 

https://viacampesina.org/en/what-is-food-sovereignty/ 

Gender-Diverse  
Encompassing identities beyond the binary categories of woman and man. 

Global Food Governance 
International institutions, policies, and processes that shape food systems and food security worldwide. 

Indigenous Governance 
Decision-making systems rooted in Indigenous laws, knowledge, and self-determination. 

Intersectionality  
A framework that examines how overlapping identities (such as gender, race, class, Indigeneity, and migration status) interact with systems and structures of power to shape lived experiences. 

Positionality 
The recognition of how a researcher’s identity, background, and social location influence the research process. 

Reflexivity 
Ongoing critical self-reflection by researchers about their role, assumptions, and impact. 

 

Discussion Questions 

• In what ways do women act as knowledge holders, leaders, and connectors within food systems across different contexts?
• How do global governance frameworks (like the UN Committee on World Food Security) both support and limit gender justice and Indigenous rights? 
  
• What similarities emerge across the case studies in Quito, the Northwest Territories, and Kampala despite their very different contexts?
• How do positionality and reflexivity shape the ethics and outcomes of research conducted across cultures and geographies?
• What does an intersectional feminist approach reveal about food systems that gender-neutral or technical approaches often miss? 

 

Bringing Intersectionality into Research Practice: Questions to Ask Yourself as a Researcher 
 

• Where does knowledge come from and what am I counting as knowledge?  

• Who's bringing this knowledge forward?  

• How do the power relations present impact my results? How?  

• Why do I need to think about scale?  

• Am I using reflexivity in this research?  

• How has history impacted where we are?  

• Am I applying social justice principles?  

• Am I promoting and/or furthering equity in the research that I'm doing? 

• How does resilience and resistance impact the work that's being done?