Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T09:11:39.551Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The case for taking account of labor in sustainable food systems in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2017

Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern*
Affiliation:
Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA
*
*Corresponding author: [email protected]

Abstract

This commentary argues for strengthening research and analysis of food workers' rights as part of a more comprehensive sustainable food systems approach. Starting with a broad definition of sustainability, one which includes social, as well as ecological, and economic elements, the author outlines current critiques of alternative food movement actors. She then looks at existing food labor activism and successes, providing them as examples for how sustainable food movement actors and researchers should move forward.

Type
Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alderman, L. and Greenhouse, S. 2014. Serving Up Fries, for a Living Wage. The New York Times. 28 October. B1.Google Scholar
Alkon, A.H. 2013. The socio-nature of local organic food. Antipode 45(3): 663680.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, P. 2004. Together at the Table: Sustainability and Sustenance in the American Agrifood System. Pennsylvania State Press, University Park, PA.Google Scholar
Allen, P. and Sachs, C. 1993. Sustainable agriculture in the United States: engagements, silences, and possibilities for transformation. In Allen, P. (ed.) Food for the Future: Conditions and Contradictions of Sustainability. Wiley, p. 139167, New York, NY.Google Scholar
Bosch, G. 2015. Shrinking collective bargaining coverage, increasing income inequality: A comparison of five EU countries. International Labour Review 154(1): 5766.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, S. and Getz, C. 2008a. Privatizing farm worker justice: Regulating labor through voluntary certification and labeling. Geoforum 39(3): 11841196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, S. and Getz, C. 2008b. Towards domestic fair trade? Farm labor, food localism, and the ‘family scale'farm. GeoJournal 73(1): 1122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DuPuis, E.M. and Goodman, D. 2005. Should we go “home” to eat?: Toward a reflexive politics of localism. Journal of Rural Studies 21(3): 359371.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Getz, C. and Shreck, A. 2006. What organic and Fair Trade labels do not tell us: Towards a place-based understanding of certification. International Journal of Consumer Studies 30(5): 490501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gray, M. 2013. Labor and the Locavore: The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guthman, J. 2003. Fast food/organic food: Reflexive tastes and the making of'yuppie chow’. Social & Cultural Geography 4(1): 4558.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guthman, J. 2014. Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.Google Scholar
Jaffee, D. 2014. Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jayaraman, S. 2013. Behind the Kitchen Door. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.Google Scholar
Kloppenburg, J. Jr, Hendrickson, J., and Stevenson, G.W. 1996. Coming in to the foodshed. Agriculture and Human Values 13(3): 3342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lo, J. and Jacobson, A. 2011. Human rights from field to fork: Improving labor conditions for food-sector workers by organizing across boundaries. Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 5(1): 6182.Google Scholar
Lyson, T.A., Torres, R., and Welsh, R. 2001. Scale of agricultural production, civic engagement and community welfare. Social Forces 80: 311327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shreck, A. 2005. Resistance, redistribution, and power in the Fair Trade banana initiative. Agriculture and Human Values 22(1): 1729.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shreck, A., Getz, C., and Feenstra, G. 2006. Social sustainability, farm labor, and organic agriculture: Findings from an exploratory analysis. Agriculture and Human Values 23(4): 439449.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
United Nations 1987. Our Common Future – Brundtland Report. World Commission on Environment and Development, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York.Google Scholar
Weber, D. 1996. Dark Sweat, White Gold: California Farm Workers, Cotton, and the New Deal. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.Google Scholar