The labor between farm and table: Cultivating an urban political ecology of agrifood for the 21st century

Abstract

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.

Food Loss and Waste: Measurement, Drivers, and Solutions

“…FLW affects individuals and communities directly and indirectly in measures of social welfare (111), human health (50,112), and employment (113). Many of the linkages between FLW and economic, environmental, and social impacts at the global scale are considered in the aforementioned FAO 2014 report (2).…”

Who’s Milking It? Scripted Stories of Food Labour

“…At the raw production stage, farming is framed as a 'labour of love', a passion. It is devalued as the monetary precariousness is accepted and farming skills are disconnected from the necessity of food for human survival (Coplen, 2018). The 'labour of love' narrative, whereby food labour is assimilated into the intangible connections to the land, animals, people, heritage and tradition, is most clearly articulated in the first programme.…”

Moving urban political ecology beyond the ‘urbanization of nature’

“…In a series of articles Ekers and Prudham (2015 , 2017 , 2018 ) theorize the ‘socio-ecological fix’, which may help us understand landscape transformations without relying on bounded notions of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ (see also Andreucci et al., 2017 ). Coplen’s (2018) work on food systems illustrates how following complex supply chains can be a method for research across urban-rural divides (see also Agyeman and McEntee, 2014 ; Alkon, 2012 ; Hovorka, 2006 ). Saguin (2017) explores the production of non-urban ‘hazardscapes’ through urban-rural metabolisms, while Rice and Tyner (2017) offer a compelling UPE of rural mass violence in Cambodia.…”