By Federico A. de Jesús
The Puerto Rican Cultural Center’s (PRCC) advocacy efforts on behalf of our community in Washington, DC have focused on food sovereignty for Puerto Rico utilizing the once every five-year negotiation and debate regarding the Farm Bill as an entry point.
We have engaged stakeholders across civil society, elected officials in Illinois, Puerto Rico, and several states, as well as U.S. congressional representatives to support a call for provisions to be added to the Farm Bill creating the Puerto Rico Food Sovereignty Program. As Puerto Rico imports more than 85% of the food consumed on the island, The PRCC is advocating for the program to retool all USDA agriculture program and grant funding for Puerto Rico to be allocated directly to farmers, municipalities and the land-grant University of Puerto Rico College of Agricultural Sciences, which supports the initiative. In addition, PRCC’s efforts to push for this legislative measure has garnered the support of 13 mayors from two political parties in Puerto Rico, the Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana Party, Chicago Alderperson Jesse Fuentes, and others. Recently, Congresswoman Delia Ramírez gave a speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Represen- tatives urging colleagues to support the inclusion of the Puerto Rico Food Sovereignty Program in the Farm Bill. The Mayor of Chicago has also pub- licly joined this effort.
The PRCC’s hard work was highlighted in the following article in El Nuevo Día that showed how quickly the movement has grown, both within the U.S. Puerto Rican Diaspora and on the island. We are proud to have helped to lead a coalition that brought advocates, elected officials, and farmers from Puerto Rico and more than 10 states to take part in a week- long citizen lobbying effort that continues to yield positive results for this critical project. The advocacy week garnered coverage in several other news outlets. The Center also helped place an op-ed by one of the farmers who joined the lobby week placed in Puerto Rico’s newspaper of record, El Nue- vo Día, talking about the importance of learning from the devastation left by Hurricane Maria in 2017, when ports closed for three weeks and many went hungry given the imported food was not able to come in.
Now is the time for you to support this worthy cause and contact your Member of Congress and Senators and tell them you stand with The PRCC and the people of Puerto Rico. As the awareness for the critical need for healthy, reliable, and locally produced food for Puerto Rico grows, The PRCC will continue to engage key stakeholders to ensure that Congress includes the Puerto Rico Food Sovereignty Program in the Farm Bill.
