The variegated landscape of food production and consumption reveals a great deal about socionatural relations and processes of urbanization and globalization under capitalism. Food production has changed dramatically over time, shifting away (but never fully divorced) from the rural agrarian landscape to spaces that are characterized as industrial and/or urban. Workers transform nature at each stage in the food production process, not only on farms but also in processing plants, grocery stores, restaurants, and other spaces. This paper draws on urban political ecology (UPE) to position labor as central to understanding the socioecological relations embodied in food systems. It puts UPE in conversation with agrarian political economy, a decidedly un‐urban body of literature that nevertheless offers critical insight into the obstacles (and opportunities) that nature and labor pose to food systems development in an urbanizing world. Employing UPE's dialectic conception of humans and nature, this paper highlights the role that non‐agricultural and urban‐based food labor plays in an increasingly complex global political economy of agrifood. Seeing both the “labor” and “nature” of food from the farm all the way to the table can reveal the myriad transformations, exchanges, and socioecological relations operating within the food system.
Interest in food movements has been growing dramatically, but until recently there has been limited engagement with the challenges facing workers across the food system. Of the studies that do exist, there is little focus on the processes and relationships that lead to solutions. This article explores ways that community-engaged teaching and research partnerships can help to build meaningful justice with food workers. involved a range of academic scholars and community-based activists. We present these insights through a discussion of key perspectives on collaborative research and teaching and learning as food-labor scholar-activists. We argue that despite significant gaps in the way that food movements are addressing labor issues, community-campus collaborations present an opportunity for building alliances to foster food justice. Building on our collective analysis and reflection, we point to five recommendations for fostering collaboration: connecting to personal experience; building trust; developing common strategies; building on previous community efforts; and, appreciating power differences and reciprocating accordingly. We conclude with some final thoughts on future research directions.
Alternative food practices, including farmers markets and CSAs, are often inaccessible to low-income families. Subsidized CSAs and fruit and vegetable prescription programs have the potential to decrease food insecurity, increase fresh fruit and vegetable consumption, and generate better health outcomes. However, several challenges can limit the success of such programs, including the logis¬tics of distribution and an inability to cook from scratch due to a lack of kitchen infrastructure, time, or skills. In this paper, we investigate two diet-related health programs conducted with commu¬nity partners in Madison, Wisconsin, and Portland, Oregon. We used photovoice to evaluate and enhance these programs, which supplied low-income participants with free or subsidized weekly shares of local food, addressed transportation bar¬riers associated with access, and offered recipes and cooking education. Drawing on social practice theory, we demonstrate how these programs altered food provisioning practices for low-income individuals and families by building their competence in the kitchen, fostering meaningful social relationships, and cultivating new meanings related to fresh, local food. The short-term gains were positive, and such community-based nutrition pro¬grams warrant continued support as part of a broader strategy to address poverty and food insecurity.
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