FOOD & WATER WATCH

Food & Water Watch is building a movement of grassroots groups and concerned people to activists to pursue three primary goals that will protect our food, water and climate for coming generations. By putting power back in the hands of local residents, we can demand elected leaders make the bold policy changes that will have a lasting impact. We will pass comprehensive federal climate change legislation by 2023, with a specific focus on banning fracking, and stopping pipelines and the expansion of fossil fuels. We will pass the Water Affordability, Transparency, Equity and Reliability Act (WATER Act) by 2026, which will establish a Clean Water Trust fund that will dedicate sufficient federal funding to ensure that all communities have access to clean, affordable water. And we will pass legislation to ban factory farms in Iowa and Oregon by 2026.

Food & Water Watch believes in the power of communities. Our strategies for achieving bold, uncompromising change rely on growing a movement of people to demand accountability from their leaders. As we activate local residents and leaders, we create the infrastructure for long-term change.

We develop our campaigns using a sophisticated blend of policy expertise, advocacy, legal tactics, strategic communications, and grassroots organizing to address threats to our most essential resources and make our democracy work for people, not powerful corporations. In short, Food & Water Watch’s work is based on our analysis that it takes a movement of educated and engaged people to overcome the overwhelming power of money in our political system. As a result, our organizing model is based on creating powerful campaigns with people and local groups that are directly impacted by a problem and then developing a strategy to influence the decision maker to support (or oppose) a given policy change. We then link these more localized campaigns to larger national issues. While all elements of an advocacy campaign are important, grassroots and community organizing is at the heart of all of our work.

In addition to our strategic organizing, we advance our work through the publication and dissemination of research about the impact of corporate profit-seeking over our food, water, and energy and the failure of piecemeal solutions and half measures to protect our planet.
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Food & Water Watch was founded in 2005. Since then, with the support of our members, individual donors, and foundations, we have grown to more than 100 staff in 10 locations in 8 U.S. States (including DC) and satellite operations in Europe. We have an online activist base of over 1,500,000 people and a volunteer network of real world activists linked to our field offices. Our full-time, professional organizers do the necessary grassroots education and mobilization so that regular people in their local communities can take action around specific national, state, and local issues in order to protect the health and safety of our food and water sources.

We support and amplify our online and real world organizing with Food & Water Watch’s research, policy advocacy, litigation, and broad-based communications capacities. While our mission is focused on long-term systemic changes that will result in healthy food, clean water for all, and a livable climate, we develop shorter-term campaigns to take on pressing national, state, and local issues.

Our Food & Water Justice program uses the courts to shine a light on corporate abuses and hold government officials accountable to protect our access to healthy food and clean water. Our affiliated organization, Food & Water Action, runs hard hitting advocacy campaigns to hold elected officials accountable in elections, as well as applying lobbying pressure for laws we need to protect our most vital resources.
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In the 15 years since our founding in 2005, Food & Water Watch has won significant victories that bolster our fight for bold, uncompromising solutions for our communities and our planet. We owe each of these successes to the tireless fight of grassroots groups and local residents across the United States.

In 2007, we stopped an attempt to deregulate inspection in meat and poultry processing facilities. In 2010 our advocates pushed the United Nations to recognize a human right to water and sanitation, which was later adopted by the state of California. In 2011, Food & Water Watch was the first national group to call for a complete ban on fracking and an end to fossil fuel infrastructure. Our grassroots campaign won statewide fracking bans in New York (2014), Maryland (2017), and Washington state (2019). Since 2005, we have helped dozens of communities across the country keep public control of their local water systems and are fighting to keep our essential water resources managed in the public interest, not for corporate profits.

In the coming years, we are turning our sights to passing significant federal legislation to protect our water, food, and climate. By 2023, we plan to pass comprehensive federal climate legislation to ban fracking, as well as stopping pipelines and the expansion of fossil fuels. By 2026, we will pass the WATER Act to stop corporate control of water and make clean water affordable and accessible for all people in the United States. And also by 2026, we look to ban factory farms in Iowa and Oregon to help create a more just and equitable food system that protects our air, water, communities, family farmers, and climate, enroute to securing federal legislation to limit factory farms.