The New Food Activism: Opposition, Cooperation, and Collective Action
344
The New Food Activism: Opposition, Cooperation, and Collective Action
344eBook
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780520965652 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Publication date: | 06/27/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 344 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Julie Guthman is Professor of Social Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California and Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism.
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The New Food Activism
Opposition, Cooperation, And Collective Action
By Alison Hope Alkon, Julie Guthman
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Copyright © 2017 The Regents of the University of CaliforniaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-29213-0
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Alison Hope Alkon and Julie Guthman
Making good food fair and affordable cannot be achieved without affecting the whole system. These are not just food questions; they are questions of justice and equality and rights, of enhancing rather than restricting democracy, of making a more rational, legitimate economy.
MARK BITTMAN
IN A 2014 NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED, noted food writer Mark Bittman described having a negative visceral reaction to the word foodie. Foodies, he argued, are too often "new-style epicures" who enjoy "watching competitive cooking shows, doing 'anything' to get a table at the trendy restaurant, scouring the web for single-estate farro, or devoting oneself to finding the best food truck." If and when these foodies go beyond the pursuit of gastronomic pleasure, they tend to put their energies into consumer support for sustainable food systems, for example by spending money on organic and local foods, community-supported agriculture, and farmers' markets.
Bittman's column drew on and amplified a critique that scholars writing under the loosely defined label "critical food studies," including the editors and authors featured in this volume, have been making for over a decade. We've argued that many foodies and food activists focus on a politics of consumption, and that this has limited even the most sustainability-minded among them to relatively apolitical strategies such as patronizing and creating alternative food businesses (Alkon 2012, Guthman 2011). Moreover, these strategies are accessible largely to those with wealth and white skin, both because a politics of consumption is a "pay to play" approach and because the imaginaries put forward by advocates of the sustainable agriculture movement tend to romanticize the histories of whites, while eliding the contributions of people of color who have labored in past and present agricultural systems (Alkon 2012, Allen et al. 2004, Guthman 2008a, 2008b, Slocum 2007).
Moreover, attempts by foodies and food activists to shift the public's eating habits toward their notion of "good food" have too often been encased in a politics of conversion that attempts to change individuals' eating habits without understanding the multiple circumstances, pressures, and desires that inform food choices (Johnston and Baumann 2010). This approach is particularly troublesome when it is engaged by white, class-privileged actors who target low-income communities and communities of color (Alkon 2012, Guthman 2008c). Even more problematically, such efforts scrutinize individuals' and communities' everyday food choices while taking for granted the harmful practices of food producers and processors, including the spreading of toxic chemicals and abysmal wages and working conditions (Guthman 2011).
This, however, is beginning to shift. Increasingly, food activists such as those described in this book are looking beyond their plates and taking aim at a variety of injustices throughout the food system. Some, like those profiled by Jill Lindsey Harrison in chapter 2, are members of front-line communities working to restrict the toxic chemicals and pesticides that poison their bodies, families, and communities. Others, like the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative described by Penn Loh and Julian Agyeman in chapter 11, are the product of alliances between activists, policymakers, and planners and work to ensure that the benefits of urban agriculture can be enjoyed by low-income communities. By describing and analyzing the work of activists like these, we hope to inspire foodies and sustainable agriculture advocates to develop more capacious notions of equity and justice, and to build collaborations that are both strategic and political in their efforts to effect changes in the food system and beyond.
When supporters of sustainable agriculture pursue this path, they encounter long-standing struggles for equity. These struggles are often led by farm and other food workers, by marginalized farmers, and by communities lacking geographic and economic access to healthy food. Though at times they make use of the foodies' politics of consumption, these struggles often seek to hold the state accountable for the regulation of industrial food in the interest of health and social justice or to push corporations and other businesses to cease harmful practices. These struggles tend to be rooted in communities that experience the toxic effects of industrial agriculture, though more privileged groups also play significant roles. What is common to all of them is that they work to change not only the way we eat, but the ways we live, work, and govern ourselves.
The goal of this book is to inspire food scholars, students, and activists to engage with projects and campaigns that move beyond the provision of market-based alternatives and toward a fight for just and sustainable food. In these pages, readers will meet farmers, food service workers, and, yes, foodies, all engaged in campaigns and projects that seek to limit the power of the industrial food system to harm bodies, senses of identity, and everyday lives. As the various chapters in this volume will demonstrate, by working with and within these struggles, activists have begun to forge alliances that have the potential to affect the whole food system, from the seed to the restaurant worker who brings food to the table.
CHALLENGING INDUSTRIAL FOOD
It is no secret that corporate involvement in food production and consumption has resulted in an array of problems. Environmentally, agribusiness companies have convinced farmers to use an increasing array of chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, which, over the long term, deplete the soil (requiring even more the next year) and pollute waterways as well as the bodies of the workers and nearby communities (Altieri 2000, Harrison 2011). Economically, corporate processors and distributors have the power to set standards and prices that farmers must accept in order to sell their products, and these prices are often so low as to leave farmers in tremendous debt and, eventually, force them out of business. In the case of fruit and vegetable farmers, those who remain often operate on narrow margins, surviving off what agricultural economists call the "immigrant subsidy"— that is, the ability to pay undocumented migrant workers far less than citizens receive (and far less than the value of their work), let alone a living wage (Taylor and Martin 1997). Large-scale commodity farmers, on the other hand, rely more on mechanization than exploited labor. To stay in business, the remaining farms must eschew biodiversity, instead growing genetically identical monocultures of single crops. This farming strategy guarantees that they remain dependent on chemical pesticides, fertilizers, and the like, as it is only with these kinds of inputs that farms can, to paraphrase former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butts, "get big" rather than "get out." From the standpoint of consumers, activists point to the lack of fresh produce in low-income areas, the high price of fresh foods compared to processed ones, and the health consequences associated with diets high in salt, sugar, and fat as reasons why this industrial, corporate food system is not just unethical but dangerous. Exposés uncovering how food is grown and processed have become commonplace in newspapers, magazines, and TV news, ranging from massive coverage of a meat product called "pink slime" to Michael Moss's (2014) whistle-blowing description of the ways that processed foods are designed to ensnare the taste buds of young users with massive amounts of salt, sugar, and fat.
Toward a Sustainable Food System
Those critical of these circumstances have done more than just document them. Together they have worked to create alternatives to the industrial agriculture system that can provide foods produced in more ecologically friendly ways and ensure more stable livelihoods for farmers. Agroecological farming, of course, predates the invention of chemical inputs and has been employed by poor and peasant farmers worldwide. Still, in the United States, the 1960s countercultural movement and the 1970s birth of the environmental movement created a renewed interest, especially among white, young urbanites, in these techniques as a means for human and environmental health (Belasco 1993). Organic production and local and regional sales became the cornerstones of the alternative foods movement, and the movement began to catch on.
Organic foods are now commonplace at health food stores, restaurants, and even supermarkets across the country, at least in affluent areas. Retail sales of organic products in the United States were only $3.6 billion in 1997 but reached $21.1 billion in 2008, and organic acreage more than doubled between 1997 and 2005 (Dimitri and Oberholtzer 2009). Earthbound Farms, a large producer of organic salad mix and other packaged produce, boasted a revenue of roughly $460 million in 2012 (Oran and Kim 2013). As of 1997, natural food stores were the primary distributor of organic foods, but by 2008 nearly half of this food was purchased in chain supermarkets (Dimitri and Oberholtzer 2009). Big-box stores like Walmart and Safeway, which the counterculture once labeled as inherently contrary to organic philosophies, are now major retailers of organic products. Local, decentralized distribution has grown as well. For example, the number of farmers' markets in the United States quadrupled from less than two thousand in 1994 to more than eight thousand in 2013 (U.S. Department of Agriculture 2013).
But All Is Not Well ...
Despite the undeniable accomplishments of many producing and advocating for local organic food, and the astounding economic success of the organic food industry, the movement for environmentally sustainable and socially just food systems has quite a ways to go. While sales of organic and local food are on the rise, organic farms were still less than 1 percent of U.S. farm acreage in 2008, and organic sales slowed markedly during the economic recession of 2008–09 (Guthman 2014). Nor has the rise in organics diminished the amount of pesticides used or the sales of highly processed foods. Indeed, the production and sale of organic and local foods does not challenge the corporate food system but merely creates an alternative to it, an alternative that industrial food increasingly incorporates into its supply chains (Guthman 2014, 2011). The farms, factories, and restaurants that produce, package, and serve these foods are often as likely as conventional food purveyors to treat workers poorly, oppose unionization, and fight against progressive legislation (Brown and Getz 2008, Gray 2014, Guthman 2014, Jayaraman 2013).
In an attempt to strengthen food activism, scholars and activists have offered two important and generative critiques of alternative food systems. The first focuses on the importance of food justice — the ways that race, class, gender, and other forms of inequality affect both conventional and alternative food systems. The authors in this volume, as well as many others, have called for a food system that is not only ecologically sustainable, but also responds to racial and economic disparities, and for a food movement that highlights the contributions that low-income communities and communities of color have made to agriculture (Alkon and Agyeman 2011). In this way, food becomes a tool toward broader social justice and antiracist organizing.
The second critique revolves around the complex concept of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is, in the first instance, a political economic philosophy that asserts that human well-being can best be achieved if the so-called "free" market is allowed to function with little or no intervention from the state (Harvey 2005, 2). In practice, much of what goes under the name of "letting markets work" entails developing new regulatory mechanisms and bending the rules so as to shore up corporate profitability (Harvey 2010, Mann 2013). In relation to food activism, prominent social scientists have argued that current modes of food activism may explicitly oppose what market orthodoxy has wrought but have nevertheless tended to embrace neoliberal forms of governance, including voluntary regulation and the reliance on markets rather than the state to pursue change (Allen 2008, Allen et al. 2003, Brown and Getz 2008, Guthman 2008c, Harrison 2008). These food justice and neoliberalism critiques are interrelated, because strategies pursued through the market, such as starting a business or buying particular kinds of goods, are by definition less accessible to low-income people, notwithstanding the often economically tenuous efforts within food activism to encourage food entrepreneurialism among low-income people (Alkon 2012, Allen 1999, Guthman 2008b).
In response to both of these lines of inquiry, scholars have called for food activists to intensify their critique of production agriculture, particularly around issues of labor, as well as their attention to inequalities throughout the food system (Alkon and Agyeman 2011, Allen 2008, Brown and Getz 2008, Guthman 2011, 2008c, Harrison 2011, 2008, Levkoe 2011). The remainder of this introduction will lay out these critiques in order to frame the struggles of the activists profiled in this volume, who are both attending to food justice and pushing back against neoliberalism. Their work exists at a cultural moment in which neoliberalism is a dominant feature of our political economy and ecology, and rather than ignore or work around market-based approaches, the activists depicted in this book often make use of them in creative and interesting ways. Thus, these strategies hold the potential to become harbingers of a new shift in food and agricultural movements, one that uses market-based strategies to build toward collective action on inequalities, labor, sustainability, and social justice. They have much to teach, not only to activists, but also to the scholars who have been critical of neoliberal food activism.
THE FOOD JUSTICE CRITIQUE
Perhaps the most thorough definition of food justice comes from Rasheed Hislop (2014, 19), who describes it as "the struggle against racism, exploitation, and oppression taking place within the food system that addresses inequality's root causes both within and beyond the food chain." The term was commonly used among activists prior to any scholarly writing on it, particularly by grassroots groups consisting of and working in communities of color to develop sustainable local food systems. This concept, however, has been broadened and refined through engagement and debate among activists and within the academic literature, which has drawn upon critical race theory to better understand how and to what effect exploitation in the food system has taken and continues to take place. Although the goals of this scholarship are transnational, to date it has focused mainly on U.S.-based projects and sectors and has examined the effects of specific local, state, and national policies while the related concept of food sovereignty is more often associated with the Global South (for an overview, see La Vía Campesina 2007, Wittman et al. 2010).
In some ways, food justice activism grows out of the environmental justice movement through which low-income communities and communities of color documented their disproportionate proximity to environmental toxins and argued that access to a safe, healthy, and clean environment was an issue of racial and economic justice (Bullard 1990, Gottlieb 2001, Schlosberg 2007, Taylor 1998). Later activists added that marginalized communities were not only more likely to be exposed to environmental bads, but also less likely to have access to environmental benefits such as neighborhood green spaces and healthy food (Agyeman 2005, Park and Pellow 2011, Pellow and Brulle 2005). As it gained momentum, those focused on creating a food system that was both environmentally sustainable and socially equitable came to call their movement food justice (Alkon 2012, Gottlieb and Joshi 2010). In the critical tensions between food justice activists and the broader food movement, this movement mirrors its environmental-justice predecessor and highlights the polyvocality of approaches to food and environmental issues.
Food justice is a necessary corrective to a food activism that largely ignored the needs and desires of low-income consumers, producers, and workers. In the 1990s, activists working under the banner of community food security began to rectify this by combining economic support for local farmers with increased access to their products among low-income residents (Allen 2004, Gottlieb and Fisher 1996, Winne 2008). In practice, however, support for farmers, often in the form of demands for premium prices, tended to trump consumer needs (Allen 2004, Guthman et al. 2006). Moreover, the Community Food Security Coalition, the primary organization advocating this goal, was predominantly composed of privileged white activists who, despite a general desire to "do good," were often unwilling to confront issues of racism both within their organization and in the food system at large (Bradley and Herrera 2016, Slocum 2007). Food justice, with its focus on food access in low-income communities of color, arose in response to both the whiteness of community food security and its privileging of producers' needs.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The New Food Activism by Alison Hope Alkon, Julie Guthman. Copyright © 2017 The Regents of the University of California. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Preface1 • Introduction 1
Alison Hope Alkon and Julie Guthman
Part One
Regulatory Campaigns
2 • Taking a Different Tack: Pesticide Regulatory-Reform Activism in California
Jill Lindsey Harrison
3 • How Canadian Farmers Fought and Won the Battle against GM Wheat
Emily Eaton
4 • How Midas Lost Its Golden Touch: Neoliberalism and Activist Strategy in the Demise of Methyl Iodide in California
Julie Guthman and Sandy Brown
Part Two
Working For Workers
5 • Resetting the “Good Food” Table: Labor and Food Justice Alliances in Los Angeles
Joshua Sbicca
6 • Food Workers and Consumers Organizing Together for Food Justice
Joann Lo and Biko Koenig
7 • Farmworker-Led Food Movements Then and Now: United Farm Workers, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, and the Potential for Farm Labor Justice
Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern
Part Three
Collective Practices
8 • Collective Purchase: Food Cooperatives and Their Pursuit of Justice
Andrew Zitcer
9 • Cooperative Social Practices, Self-Determination, and the Struggle for Food Justice in Oakland and Chicago
Meleiza Figueroa and Alison Hope Alkon
10 • Urban Agriculture, Food Justice, and Neoliberal Urbanization: Rebuilding the Institution of Property
Michelle Glowa
11 • Boston’s Emerging Food Solidarity Economy
Penn Loh and Julian Agyeman
12 • Grounding the U.S. Food Movement: Bringing Land into Food Justice
Tanya M. Kerssen and Zoe W. Brent
13 • Conclusion: A New Food Politics
Alison Hope Alkon and Julie Guthman
Contributors
Index