Food Activism Today: Sustainability, Climate Change, and Social Justice

Illuminates how food activism has been taking shape and where it is headed

As climate change, childhood obesity, and food insecurity accelerate at an alarming pace, activists around the country are working to address the pressing need for healthy and sustainable solutions to feed the population. Food Activism Today investigates the new approaches food activists are taking as they formulate alternatives to the current unsustainable agro-industrial food system.

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted over an eleven-month period in both urban and rural North Carolina, the volume addresses questions about the moral visions of food activists, how class and racial hierarchies infuse some food activism movements, and how food activism relates to climate change and imminent ecological collapse. Exploring food activism around both local and sustainable food production and food security for lower-income people, the volume finds surprisingly little overlap, with the two movements seemingly remaining distinct approaches (at least for now) to issues around the food system, climate change, and access to healthy food choices.

As the US moves into an era in which climate change and neoliberal tensions are conjoined in a looming political crisis, Food Activism Today looks at where food activism is headed, the ethics and issues surrounding alternative approaches to food production, and how food production is related to broader issues of climate change.