Books in the Food, Health, and the Environment series

How to focus anti-hunger efforts not on charity but on the root causes of food insecurity, improving public health, and reducing income inequality.

Documents how racial and social inequalities are built into our food system, and how communities are creating environmentally sustainable and socially just alternatives.Popularized by such best-selling authors as Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, and Eric Schlosser, a growing food movement urges us to support sustainable agriculture by eating fresh food produced on local family farms. But many low-income neighborhoods and communities of color have been systematically deprived of access to healthy and sustainable food. These communities have been actively prevented from producing their own food and often live in "food deserts” where fast food is more common than fresh food. Cultivating Food Justice describes their efforts to envision and create environmentally sustainable and socially just alternatives to the food system. Bringing together insights from studies of environmental justice, sustainable agriculture, critical race theory, and food studies, Cultivating Food Justice highlights the ways race and class inequalities permeate the food system, from production to distribution to consumption. The studies offered in the book explore a range of important issues, including agricultural and land use policies that systematically disadvantage Native American, African American, Latino/a, and Asian American farmers and farmworkers; access problems in both urban and rural areas; efforts to create sustainable local food systems in low-income communities of color; and future directions for the food justice movement. These diverse accounts of the relationships among food, environmentalism, justice, race, and identity will help guide efforts to achieve a just and sustainable agriculture.

The growth of the global meat industry and the implications for climate change, food insecurity, workers'' rights, the treatment of animals, and other issues.Global meat production and consumption have risen sharply and steadily over the past five decades, with per capita meat consumption almost doubling since 1960. The expanding global meat industry, meanwhile, driven by new trade policies and fueled by government subsidies, is dominated by just a few corporate giants. Industrial farming—the intensive production of animals and fish—has spread across the globe. Millions of acres of land are now used for pastures, feed crops, and animal waste reservoirs. Drawing on concrete examples, the contributors to Global Meat explore the implications of the rise of a global meat industry for a range of social and environmental issues, including climate change, clean water supplies, hunger, workers'' rights, and the treatment of animals.Three themes emerge from their discussions: the role of government and corporations in shaping the structure of the global meat industry; the paradox of simultaneous rising meat production and greater food insecurity; and the industry''s contribution to social and environmental injustice. Contributors address such specific topics as the dramatic increase in pork production and consumption in China; land management by small-scale cattle farmers in the Amazon; the effect on the climate of rising greenhouse gas emissions from cattle raised for meat; and the tensions between economic development and animal welfare.ContributorsConner Bailey, Robert M. Chiles, Celize Christy, Riva C. H. Denny, Carrie Freshour, Philip H. Howard, Elizabeth Ransom, Tom Rudel, Mindi Schneider, Nhuong Tran, Bill Winders

How food pantries stigmatize their clients through a discourse that emphasizes hard work, self help, and economic productivity rather than food justice and equity.

Combining interdisciplinary research with case study analysis at scales ranging from the local to the global, Confronting the Coffee Crisis reveals the promise and the perils of efforts to create a more sustainable coffee industry

An examination of political conflicts over pesticide drift and the differing conceptions of justice held by industry, regulators, and activists.

An analysis of the successes and failures of the organic movement, focusing on coalition dynamics, movement-state relations, and market-based strategies for social change.

An account of the shift in focus to access and fairness among San Francisco Bay Area alternative food activists and advocates.

Practitioners and scholars from a range of disciplines discuss how midsize farms can better connect with consumers, organize collectively to develop markets for their products, and promote public policies that address agriculture-of-the-middle issues.

The story of how the emerging food justice movement is seeking to transform the American food system from seed to table.In today's food system, farm workers face difficult and hazardous conditions, low-income neighborhoods lack supermarkets but abound in fast-food restaurants and liquor stores, food products emphasize convenience rather than wholesomeness, and the international reach of American fast-food franchises has been a major contributor to an epidemic of "globesity.” To combat these inequities and excesses, a movement for food justice has emerged in recent years seeking to transform the food system from seed to table. In Food Justice, Robert Gottlieb and Anupama Joshi tell the story of this emerging movement.A food justice framework ensures that the benefits and risks of how food is grown and processed, transported, distributed, and consumed are shared equitably. Gottlieb and Joshi recount the history of food injustices and describe current efforts to change the system, including community gardens and farmer training in Holyoke, Massachusetts, youth empowerment through the Rethinkers in New Orleans, farm-to-school programs across the country, and the Los Angeles school system's elimination of sugary soft drinks from its cafeterias. And they tell how food activism has succeeded at the highest level: advocates waged a grassroots campaign that convinced the Obama White House to plant a vegetable garden. The first comprehensive inquiry into this emerging movement, Food Justice addresses the increasing disconnect between food and culture that has resulted from our highly industrialized food system.

Practitioners and scholars from a range of disciplines discuss how midsize farms can better connect with consumers, organize collectively to develop markets for their products, and promote public policies that address agriculture-of-the-middle issues.

Aspects of the urban food truck phenomenon, including community economic development, regulatory issues, and clashes between ethnic authenticity and local sustainability.

"The stories in this collection open a window onto those new categories in the making. Taken together, they call for new approaches to the history of global food, and using this history to think about our future"--