Cultivating Food Justice ─ Race, Class, and Sustainability

Popularized by such best-selling authors as Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, andEric Schlosser, a growing food movement urges us to support sustainable agriculture by eating freshfood produced on local family farms. But many low-income neighborhoods and communities of color havebeen systematically deprived of access to healthy and sustainable food. These communities have beenactively prevented from producing their own food and often live in "food deserts" wherefast food is more common than fresh food. Cultivating Food Justice describes their efforts toenvision and create environmentally sustainable and socially just alternatives to the food system.Bringing together insights from studies of environmental justice, sustainable agriculture, criticalrace theory, and food studies, Cultivating Food Justice highlights the ways race and classinequalities permeate the food system, from production to distribution to consumption. The studiesoffered in the book explore a range of important issues, including agricultural and land usepolicies that systematically disadvantage Native American, African American, Latino/a, and AsianAmerican farmers and farmworkers; access problems in both urban and rural areas; efforts to createsustainable local food systems in low-income communities of color; and future directions for thefood justice movement. These diverse accounts of the relationships among food, environmentalism,justice, race, and identity will help guide efforts to achieve a just and sustainableagriculture.

Alison Hope Alkon is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Pacific. Julian Agyeman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University.