The new food activism: opposition, cooperation, and collective action

The New Food Activism explores how food activism can be pushed toward deeper and more complex engagement with social, racial, and economic justice and toward advocating for broader and more transformational shifts in the food system. Topics examined include struggles against pesticides and GMOs, efforts to improve workers' pay and conditions throughout the food system, and ways to push food activism beyond its typical reliance on individualism, consumerism, and private property. The authors challenge and advance existing discourse on consumer trends, food movements, and the intersection of food with racial and economic inequalities

"New and exciting forms of food activism are emerging as supporters of sustainable agriculture increasingly recognize the need for a broader, more strategic and more politicized food politics that engages with questions of social, racial, and economic justice. This book highlights examples of campaigns to restrict industrial agriculture's use of pesticides and other harmful technologies, struggles to improve the pay and conditions of workers throughout the food system, and alternative projects that seek to de-emphasize notions of individualism and private ownership. Grounded in over a decade of scholarly critique of food activism, this volume seeks to answer the question of "what next," inspiring scholars, students, and activists toward collective, cooperative, and oppositional struggles for change."--Provided by publisher

The New Food Activism explores how food activism can be pushed toward deeper and more complex engagement with social, racial, and economic justice and toward advocating for broader and more transformational shifts in the food system. Topics examined include struggles against pesticides and GMOs, efforts to improve workers' pay and conditions throughout the food system, and ways to push food activism beyond its typical reliance on individualism, consumerism, and private property. The authors challenge and advance existing discourse on consumer trends, food movements, and the intersection of food with racial and economic inequalities

Introduction / Alison Hope Alkon and Julie Guthman -- Taking a different tack: pesticide regulatory reform activism in California / Jill Lindsey Harrison -- How canadian farmers fought and won the battle against GM wheat / Emily Eaton -- How midas lost its golden touch: neoliberalism and activist strategy in the demise of methyl iodide in California / Julie Guthman and Sandy Brown -- Resetting the good food table: labor and food justice alliances in Los Angeles / Joshua Sbicca -- Food workers and consumers organizing together for food justice / Joann Lo and Biko Koenig -- Farmworker-led food movements then and now: the united farmworkers, the coalition of Immokalee workers, and the potential for farm labor justice / Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern -- Collective purchase: food cooperatives and their pursuit of justice / Andrew Zitcer -- Collectivizing markets to strengthen communities: cooperative social practices, self-determination, and the struggle for food justice in Oakland and Chicago / Meliza Figuoera and Alison Hope Alkon -- Urban agriculture, food justice, and neoliberal urbanization: rebuilding the institution of property /Michelle Glowa -- Boston's emerging food solidarity economy / Penn Loh and Julian Agyeman -- Grounding the US food movement: bringing land into food justice / Tanya M. Kerssen and Zoe W. Brent -- Conclusion: a new food politics / Alison Hope Alkon and Julie Guthman