Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability

1. Introduction

1 Picture a field of corn stretching out into the horizon. Each evenly spaced stalk is genetically identical. Each needs exactly the same amount of water, fertilizer, sunlight, and time as every other. And each is ready for harvest at exactly the same moment. For this reason, the cultivation and collection of this field can be entirely mechanized. Heavy machinery has crossed this field many times, laying seed, applying fertilizer, and eventually gathering many tons of corn. Mechanized production is necessary on a farm of this size, as hand cultivation would be prohibitively expensive . This approach toward farming, called a monoculture, ensures that the finished product will always meet the specifications required for processing, which will transform it into everything from animal feed to Coca-Cola. In the past twenty-five years, a variety of food movements have crafted strong and coherent opposition to this type of industrial monoculture. Such monoculture, they claim, requires energy-intensive chemical fertilizers , pesticides and machinery, all of which necessitate up-front investments . These circumstances favor large farms with available capital, and have led to the increased consolidation and corporate ownership of agriculture (Bell 2004; Magdoff, Foster, and Buttel 2000; Buttel, Larson, and Gillespie 1990).1 Ecologists have also found that chemical inputs deplete soils of nutrients and pollute nearby waterways (Altieri 2000), and food movement activists have drawn on such studies to argue that industrial agriculture is environmentally harmful. And increasingly, as public attention to diet-related health diseases has increased, food movement activists2 have argued that responsibility lies with industrial monocultures , whose processed results are often used as inexpensive fillers in high-calorie foods (Nestle 2002). The food movement encourages eaters to turn away from the industrially produced and processed goods created from monocultures—what Introduction The Food Movement as Polyculture Alison Hope Alkon and Julian Agyeman 2 Chapter 1 New York times bestselling author Michael Pollan (2008) refers to as “edible food-like substances”—and instead to choose fresh, local, and often organic offerings supplied by local small farms. Food movement activists routinely trumpet such foods as healthier and tastier than their industrial and processed counterparts. But for the movement, eating is not only personal but also political. The purchase of local and organic food is cast as a “vote with your fork,” to quote a common movement refrain. It is a vote for environmental sustainability, as local, organic producers cultivate biologically diverse polycultures and avoid the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. It is also a vote for small, familyowned farms, as opposed to their large, corporate counterparts, and for creating local communities filled with rich interpersonal interactions. The food movement narrative also argues that linking producers and consumers will endow both with a sense of connection to local place, which allows eaters to better understand the social and environmental processes through which their food is produced. By transforming our food practices , the movement tells us, we can live healthier, more authentic lives while supporting positive social and environmental change. In this way, the food movement is responding to popular anxieties that modern life is alienating and antisocial, and an American mythology that locates the good life in romanticized small towns.3 The food movement’s vision has become widely popular. In addition to Pollan, authors such as Barbara Kingsolver (2007), Eric Schlosser (2001), and Marion Nestle (2006) have drawn upon, rehearsed, and expanded the movement narrative. Additionally, in 2007, the Oxford English Dictionary named locavore, meaning one who eats local food, as its “word of the year” (Prentice 2007). The food movement has also played an important role in driving the economic success of farmers markets and organic food, both of which have experienced enormous growth, and have even held their market value during the economic crisis of the late 2000s (Chu 2009). The food movement, and its narrative linking the production and consumption of local organic food to positive economic, environmental, and social changes, is one force behind such a lucrative market. But such a consistent narrative, along with the movement’s predominantly white and middle-class character, suggests that it may itself be something of a monoculture. It consists of a group of “like-minded” people, with similar backgrounds, values, and proclivities, who have come to similar conclusions about how our food system should change. Moreover, those active in the food movement tend to have the wealth Introduction 3 necessary to participate in its dominant...