Reform or Transformation? The Pivotal Role of Food Justice in the U.S.

Food Movement
Author(s): Eric Holt-Giménez and Yi Wang
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, Vol. 5, No. 1, Food Justice
(Autumn 2011), pp. 83-102
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/racethmulglocon.5.1.83 .
Accessed: 11/01/2012 15:21

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts.

http://www.jstor.org
Reform or Transformation?
The Pivotal Role of
Food Justice in the
U.S. Food Movement

Eric Holt-Giménez
Yi Wang
Food First/Institute for Food
and Development Policy

The global food crisis has pushed the U.S. food movement to a politi-
cal juncture. A sixth of the world’s population is now hungry—just
as a sixth of the U.S. population is “food insecure.” These severe lev-
els of hunger and insecurity share root causes, located in the political
economy of a global, corporate food regime. Because of its political loca-
tion between reformist calls for food security and radical calls for food
sovereignty, food justice is pivotally placed to influence the direction of
food-systems change. This placement subjects the concept of food justice
to multiple claims, definitions, and practices that tend either to affirm
a structural focus on resource redistribution, or to dilute its political
meaning by focusing on food access. How issues of race and class are
resolved will influence the political direction of the food justice move-
ment’s organizational alliances: toward reform or toward transforma-
tion. How the food justice movement “pivots” may determine the degree
to which it is able to bring about substantive changes to the U.S. food
system.*

* We would like to thank Annie Shattuck for her work on earlier versions of
this paper, as well as the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful com-
ments. All the usual disclaimers apply.

autumn 2011 83 © 2011 The Ohio State University/Office of

Diversity and Inclusion/The Kirwan Institute
 eric holt giménez / yi wang

Background: The Global Food Crisis,

Hunger and Food Security
The global food price crisis of 2008 ushered in record levels
of hunger for the world’s poor at a time of record global har-
vests as well as record profits for the world’s major agrifoods
corporations (Lean 2008). The combination of increasing hun-
ger in the midst of wealth and abundance unleashed a flurry
of worldwide “food riots” (including in the United States) not
seen for many decades. In June 2008, the World Bank reported
that global food prices had risen 83 percent in three years and
the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
(FAO) cited a 45 percent increase in their world food price index
in just nine months (Wiggins and Levy 2008). Despite a brief
drop in the food price index, retail food prices remained high
through 2010 and into 2011 when the index
According to the United Nations World spiked again to record levels (FAO 2011).
According to the United Nations World
Food Program, more than 90 percent of the Food Program, more than 90 percent of the
world’s hungry—most of whom are peas- world’s hungry—most of whom are peasant
ant farmers—are simply too poor to buy farmers—are simply too poor to buy enough
enough food. food (WFP 2011). Some of the planet’s hun-
gry people live in the Global North, though
hunger is measured as “food insecurity” and social safety nets
are more readily available. Levels of food insecurity in the
United States mirror global patterns; more than 50 million peo-
ple are now food insecure and one in nine Americans are on
food stamps (Nord et al. 2010).
Food insecurity in the United States is characterized by a na-
tionwide epidemic of diet-related diseases that result in an es-
timated $240 billion a year in health costs (Schlosser 2001) that
fall disproportionately on low-income communities of color
(Baker et al. 2006). In these neighborhoods, food access is often
limited to the cheap, high-fat, high-salt, high-calorie, processed
food available at gas stations, liquor stores, corner stores, and
fast food outlets (Herrera, Khanna, and Davis 2009; Mamen
2007; Morton and Blanchard 2007; Parker 2005). When avail-
able, fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products are often
of inferior quality and are more expensive at these establish-
ments than in supermarkets and grocery stores (Perry and Har-
ries 2007). Lack of access to affordable, fresh, and healthy food,
when combined with preexisting health disparities in regions
with high socioeconomic inequality, has led to a dramatic in-
crease in obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, immunity dis-
orders, and hypertension (Alkon and Norgaard 2009).
Dealing with what food-systems analyst Raj Patel (2007) de-
scribes as crises of the “stuffed and starved” has produced a
wide array of initiatives that, while linked through their focus
on food, are largely divided between those who want to pre-
serve the political economy of the existing global food system
and those who seek to change it. The former tend to be from
government and industry; the latter make up the global “food

race /ethnicity vol. 5 / no. 1 84

reform or transformation ?

movement.” The food movement itself, however, is diverse and

subject to social divides.

The Rise and Divides of Food Movements

Even before the onset of the current food price crisis, the
decades-long increase in hunger, food insecurity, diet-related
diseases—fueled by low-nutrient, highly processed food—gave
rise to social movements for community food security and food
justice (Winne 2008), food sovereignty (Wittman, Desmarais,
and Wiebe 2010), food democracy (Lang 2005), new agrarianism
(Jackson, Berry, and Coleman 1984), food safety (Nestle 2002),
anti-hunger (Berg 2008), and Slow Food that is “good, clean and
fair” (Petrini 2005). This past decade has seen a boom in docu-
mentaries that both attack the industrial agrifoods complex and
champion local, organic, sustainable food systems. These titles
include Super Size Me (Spurlock 2004), The Future of Food (Gar-
cia 2004), The World According to Monsanto (Robin 2008), Food
Inc. (Kenner 2009), and King Corn (Woolf 2007).
These efforts have loosely come to be identified as the “food
movement.” Journalism professor Michael Pollan, one of the
mainstream media’s prominent food celebrities, asserts that
“[t]he food movement coalesces around the recognition that
today’s food and farming economy is ‘unsustainable’—that it
can’t go on in its current form much longer without courting a
breakdown of some kind, whether environmental, economic, or
both. . . .” For Pollan, the food movement is “splintered” in its
origins, “[unified] as yet by little more than the recognition that
industrial food production is in need of reform because its so-
cial/environmental/public health/animal welfare/gastronomic
costs are too high” (Pollan 2010).
This recognition leads to calls for quality, environmental
sustainability, and safety of food (e.g., fresh, organic, local) as
well as for the reaffirmation of environmental values and com-
munity relationships associated with halcyon days of a recon-
structed agrarian past. These make up what Alkon and Agye-
man (2011a) refer to as the dominant food-movement narrative.
Grounded in the social base of predominantly white, middle-
class consumers, this narrative has become an important refer-
ence in the mainstream media. However, it also tends to render
the food histories and realities of low-income people and people
of color invisible.
An emblematic example of this narrative at work is the ubiq-
uitous food-movement adage to fix the food system by “voting
with your fork” (Pollan 2006). This strategy not only takes the
access and purchasing power of the pre-
dominantly white, middle-class consumer it assumes that our food system can be re-
for granted, but also it assumes that our formed through informed consumer choice,
food system can be reformed through in-
and ignores the ways working-class and
formed consumer choice, and ignores the
ways working-class and people of color have people of color have historically brought
historically brought about social change about social change

autumn 2011 85
 eric holt giménez / yi wang

(Guthman 2008). But, as one Slow Food leader counsels, “If

dinner is a democratic election . . . in many electoral districts
. . . there are no polling stations [and] there is only one candi-
date, the incumbent: fast food” (Viertel 2011). The notion that
the food system can be transformed through individual acts of
consumption—rather than through lobbying, organizing, boy-
cotts, mobilization, or direct action—fits nicely within the pre-
vailing neoliberal economic rhetoric: that unregulated capitalist
markets yield the most efficient allocation of resources (Harvey
2005). The prominence of the privileged in the food-movement
narrative, along with its “whiteness” (Slocum 2007), reflects the
uneasy dualism between the trend of “quality food” for higher-
income consumers and “other food” consumed by the masses
(Goodman and Goodman 2007, 6).
On the ground, the food movement’s dominant narrative is,
arguably, skin deep. Its widespread growth through farmers’
markets, Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs), and high-
end organic/“locavore” restaurants and retail chains has also
been paralleled by less-celebrated expansions of the community
food security movement (CFS), the food justice movement (FJ),
and the food-sovereignty movement (FS) over the last ten years.
While not rejecting the need for “good,” “real,” sustainable, or
organic food, the agendas of these movements are focused on
the lack of good food access, social and distributional inequities,
institutional racism and classism, and the need to address labor,
gender, and human rights in the food system (Holt-Giménez,
Patel, and Shattuck 2009; Gottlieb and Joshi 2011; Alkon and Ag­
ye­man 2011a,b).
These developments suggest that below the surface of its
amorphous “splintering,” the food movement is segmented in
ways that reflect social hierarchies of race and class in the food
system. As we will explore further in this article, this segmenta-
tion has important implications for movement-based strategies
for food-systems change.

Community Food Security, Food Justice, and

Food Sovereignty: Adding Voices, Being Heard,
or Forging a New Narrative?
The CFS is a broad-based movement that grew to national
prominence with the formation of the Community Food Secu-
rity Coalition (CFSC), a nonprofit group founded in 1994. With
more than 250 affiliated organizations, the CFSC is representa-
tive of the diversity within the U.S. food movement. The CFSC
refers to Hamm and Bellows’s (2003) definition of community
food security as “a condition in which all community residents
obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet
through a sustainable food system that maximizes community
self-reliance and social justice” (CFSC 2004; 2010). The Coali-
tion supports food-system alternatives by advocating for new
business models, cooperative ownership of retail outlets, direct
marketing, urban agriculture, community gardens and urban

race /ethnicity vol. 5 / no. 1 86

reform or transformation ?

greening projects, community nutrition education, and com-

munity-driven agricultural research (Pothukuchi and Kaufman
1999). By focusing on community, the CFSC takes the notion of
food security beyond long-standing governmental programs
that typically focus on individual and household food access
(Mooney and Hunt 2009).
The CFS framework also calls for increased funding to
safety-net welfare programs such as the federal Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps); school lunch and
breakfast programs; the Special Supplemental Nutrition Pro-
gram for Women, Infants, and Children; the Child and Adult
Care Food Program; and food banks (Anderson 1999; McCul-
lum et al. 2004).
CFS frames food-system inequities in terms of food produc-
tion and acquisition rather than structural inequality, resulting
in an emphasis on enhancing food skills and alternative means
of food access for low-income households, coupled with a Wash-
ington D.C.-focused lobbying effort for increased forms of food
aid and support for community food systems (Tarasuk 2001;
McCullum et al. 2004). Politically, CFS seeks strategic partner-
ships with government, industry, and major anti-hunger orga-
nizations to enhance food security programs, food access, and
to promote anti-poverty measures (NAHO 2009). By working
actively for government reforms and industry partnerships to
improve the “other food” consumed by low-income people, CFS
movement strives to mainstream food security into the existing
food system.
CFS’s efforts to incorporate food-security issues into the
dominant food-movement narrative is not without its contradic-
tions. While the movement has gained political currency with
the Obama administration’s initiative for Healthy Food Financ-
ing and First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign
against childhood obesity, many food activists feel the admin-
istration’s staunch support for agribusiness and food retail mo-
nopolies (reaching new heights with the Let’s Move/Walmart
partnership) goes against CFS’s core principles of self-reliance
and social justice:

Imagine if the national answer to the food crisis took the form
of a huge, publicly financed flood of corporations like WalMart
and Tesco opening up stores in inner city neighborhoods using
the exact same economic model they’re using now. We could
expect low wages, the destruction of small businesses and local
economies, and all of the awful labor and supply chain prac-
tices we’re familiar with. . . . [We need] good, living-wage jobs
that pay meaningful earnings and teach meaningful skill sets.
. . . [Instead] poor urban communities will see their economies
tied to the wealth and resource extraction from rural communi-
ties with the usual negative consequences for local economies
and the environment. (Ahmadi 2011)

The Food Justice movement (FJ) overlaps broadly with CFS,

but tends to be more progressive than reformist in that it ad-

autumn 2011 87
 eric holt giménez / yi wang

dresses specifically the ways in which people of color in low-

income communities are disproportionately and negatively im-
pacted by the industrial food system. In their recent book on
the movement, Gottlieb and Joshi (2010, 229) describe FJ as a so-
cial movement with “multiple layers . . . [of] producers, proces-
sors, workers, eaters, or communities,” for whom race, ethnicity,
class, and gender issues are at the forefront of an agenda that in-
cludes a mix of “producing food, local preference, environment,
economic development, healthy food for all, preparing, cooking
& eating, and public health & nutrition.”
The food-justice movement emerged from several corners,
including movements for environmental justice (Bullard 1994),
working-class communities of color dealing with diet-related
diseases (Herrera, Khanna, and Davis 2009), critiques of racism
in the food system (Self 2003; Allen 2008) as well as critiques
of racism in the food movement itself (Slocum 2007; Guthman
2008). Food justice formulates its food-security discourse in the
“context of institutional racism, racial formation, and racialized
geographies” (Alkon and Norgaard 2009). The Detroit Black
Community Food Security Network, for example, articulates an
explicit analysis of structural racism in the food system and a
policy platform that includes eliminating “barriers to African-
American participation and ownership in all aspects of the food
system,“ as well as a “re-distribution of wealth through coop-
erative community ownership” (Detroit Black Community Food
Security Network 2010). According to FJ advocate Brahm Ah-
madi of the People’s Community Market in Oakland, California:
Food justice asserts that no one should live without enough
food because of economic constraints or social inequalities. . . .
The food justice movement is a different approach to a commu-
nity’s needs that seeks to truly advance self-reliance and social
justice by placing communities in leadership of their own so-
lutions and providing them with the tools to address the dis-
parities within our food systems and within society at large.
(Ahmadi 2010)

In a debate on COMFOOD, a popular food security/food jus-

tice list-serve, Hank Herrera, another longtime FJ advocate from
Dig Deep Farms in Oakland, California, offers up the following
principles:
Food justice must address structural inequity, structural vio-
lence and structural racism. Food justice work must result in
ownership of the means of production and exchange of food
by the people who consume the food. Food justice work is the
incredibly difficult work of building new local healthy food
systems, not opposing the global food industry. Food justice
emerges from the economic justice work of Dr. King and repre-
sents the next wave of the civil rights movement. Food justice
cannot reproduce systems of power, privilege and capital that
create and maintain food apartheid. (Herrera 2011)

As Herrera’s principles suggest, many food-justice activists

engaged in the hard, grassroots work of building new food sys-

race /ethnicity vol. 5 / no. 1 88

reform or transformation ?

tems simply do not have the time, resources, or inkling to ac-

tively oppose the global food industry. Nonetheless, many see a
role for food justice in addressing systemic change by engaging
in political and policy processes as well as activism and move-
ment mobilization (Steel 2010; Wekerle 2004).
In its more radical forms, FJ asserts economic democracy for
underserved communities of color, including the transfer of
ownership, property, and leadership to those most negatively af-
fected by the industrial food System.1 FJ’s radical roots reflect the
community work of the Black Panther Party nearly half a cen-
tury ago. According to Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale:

One of the party’s important lasting legacies is grassroots pro-

grammatic organizing such as the Free Breakfast for Children
Program which evolved to a point where forty-nine Black Pan-
ther chapters and branches in association with many other
organizations across the United States were feeding 250,000
kids five days a week each morning before school. We had
no government money or War on Poverty money to start the
programs—we did it ourselves with donations. (Shames 2006,
12–13)

Accomplished long before community organizing developed

its dependence on funding from philanthropic foundations, the
Black Panther’s free breakfast program predated the nation’s
school breakfast legislation of 1973. Food was part of a much
larger program for black liberation and community autonomy
as expressed in the October 1966 Black Panther Party Platform
and Program. The first point in the program demanded free-
dom and the power for the black community to determine its
own destiny. The last point, invoking the Declaration of Inde-
pendence and calling for a black plebiscite, was introduced with
the statement
“We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and
peace. . . .”
(Shames, 13–14, emphasis added)

The platform was radical not only because it addressed the

egregious manifestations of racism, such as underemployment,
economic exploitation, police brutality, and a skewed criminal
justice system (and suggested black communities might secede
from the United States), but because the Black Panthers sought
to dismantle the capitalist structures of racism.
The call among many of today’s FJ activists for local control
over food and dismantling racism in the food system echoes
some of the liberation politics of the Black Panthers. Less com-
mon today are the structural critiques of capitalism and racism
that were integral to the Black Panther’s political work.
The food-justice movement confronts both the effects of
structural racism on the ground and the failure of the dominant
social change paradigms to take structural racism into account.
Its discourse invokes the notion of a grassroots-driven transi-
tion to a more equitable and sustainable food system. Thus, just

autumn 2011 89
 eric holt giménez / yi wang

as the Environmental Justice Paradigm established at the People

of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in 1991 sought to
emphasize the issues of race, class, and leadership in the face
of the mainstream “New Environmental Paradigm” dominated
by middle-class white activists (Taylor 2000; Bullard 2010), FJ
struggles to make its voice heard above the mainstream food-
movement narrative.
Food sovereignty is another radical trend for food-system
transformation based on the notion of entitlement and redis-
tribution of food-producing resources. The discourse is framed
by a more radical interpretation of food justice that sees access
to food, land, and water as a human right, works for the de-
mocratization of the food system in favor of the poor and un-
derserved, and specifically advocates dismantling the present
global food system (Patel 2009; Wittman, Desmarais, and Wiebe
2010).
While the food-sovereignty movement has its origins in the
peasant struggles for land and livelihoods in the Global South,
the call has been increasingly taken up by family farms and the
more radical food justice organizations in the United States and
Europe. The draft mission statement of the recently formed U.S.
Food Sovereignty Alliance states as follows:

The US Food Sovereignty Alliance works to end poverty, re-

build local food economies, and assert democratic control over
the food system. We believe all people have the right to healthy,
culturally appropriate food, produced in an ecologically sound
manner. As a US-based food justice, anti-hunger, labor, envi-
ronmental, and faith-based alliance, we uphold the right to
food as a basic human right and work to connect our local and
national struggles to the international movement for food sov-
ereignty. (U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance 2010)

The food-sovereignty movement seeks to dismantle global

markets and the monopoly power of corporations at local, na-
tional, and international scales, and advocates redistributing
and protecting productive assets such as seeds, water, land, and
processing and distribution facilities. The rights of labor and
immigrants figure prominently in this trend, as advocated by
the national Food Chain Workers Alliance and the Commu-
nity to Community Alliance of Washington state. Direct action
is practiced by organizations like the Coalition of Immokalee
Workers and Students for Fair Food. Reminiscent of the United
Farm Worker (UFW) mobilizations of the 1960s, these groups
seek to achieve labor justice and an end to modern-day slavery
in the tomato fields through student–farmworker coalitions and
national boycotts.
Poverty, hunger, and community demands for healthy food
access continually pull low-income communities of color toward
food aid and food-access solutions coming from mainstream
food security and anti-hunger groups, as well as toward the
cheap industrial food solutions offered by low-end food retail
chains such as Walmart, Food 4 Less, and Dollar Stores (Holt-

race /ethnicity vol. 5 / no. 1 90

reform or transformation ?

Giménez, Wang, and Shattuck 2011). While anti-hunger and

food-security advocates often prefer affordable access to bad
food over no food at all, this puts them at odds with food-justice
and food-sovereignty groups who distrust these large agrifood
corporations (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010, 215). Indeed, because they
produce poor health outcomes and drain precious local food
dollars from underserved communities, the pervasiveness of
programs that channel surplus industrial food to low-income
people of color could itself be considered an insidious form of
racism. They also tend to divert attention from the structural
causes of food insecurity and diet-related disease, and can bind
local food-security efforts to the very industrial food system
that is making their community members sick.
Caught between the urgency of access and the imperative of
equity, the food-justice movement shifts, overlaps, and bridges
with the efforts of the CFS and food-sovereignty movements,
attempting to address racism and classism on one hand while
trying to fix a broken food system on the other. This produces a
“both/and” food justice narrative in which “. . . the lack of fresh
food access [is seen as] both an equity disparity and a system
failure” (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010, 299).
One difficulty with this narrative—fairly generalized within
the food-justice movement—is that it separates the system from
the disparity. The food system may be dysfunctional in that it
does not serve the better interests of the environment, peas-
ants, family farmers, or low-income people
of color, but it is certainly not broken. Dur- The food system may be dysfunctional in
ing the food crisis of 2008, and again in 2010, that it does not serve the better interests of
quarterly profits for the world’s agri-food
monopolies (seed and input suppliers, grain
the environment, peasants, family farmers,
traders, retailers) grew by some 80 percent, or low-income people of color, but it is cer-
so the system clearly works well for those tainly not broken.
who run it (Holt-Giménez, Patel, and Shat-
tuck 2009). “Equity disparity” and “system failure” do not suf-
ficiently describe the profound, ongoing systemic exploitation
that girds the global food system.
But understanding that racial and class disparities are a
structurally integrated part of the present food system does
not, in and of itself, resolve the strategic problem of how to pro-
ceed—practically and politically. In the following sections, we
construct a “regime/movement” framework for understand-
ing food systems and food movements, taking into account the
historical tendencies of capitalist food systems and the strategic
importance of alliance building to overcome the system/dispar-
ity dilemma.

The Corporate Food Regime2

Our food systems are part of a corporate food regime that
is performing exactly as a late-capitalist system would be ex-
pected: it efficiently creates and concentrates wealth through
market expansion, compound economic growth, technological

autumn 2011 91
 eric holt giménez / yi wang

innovation, and, increasingly, financial speculation (Magdoff

and Tokar 2010; Harvey 2010). In addition to noting the cornu-
copian abundance frequently associated with the corporate
food regime, it is important to recall that it was built over two
centuries of violent, global-scale dispossession, and accumu-
lation, a good part of which took place in North America. The
regime continues to rely extensively on the direct and indirect
appropriation and exploitation of land, labor, and capital, both
at home and abroad.
A food regime is a “rule-governed structure of production
and consumption of food on a world scale” (McMichael 2009).
The first global food regime spanned the period from the late
1800s through the Great Depression and linked food imports
from southern and American colonies to European industrial
expansion. The second food regime began after World War II
and reversed the flow of food from the northern to the south-
ern hemisphere to fuel Cold War industrialization in the Third
World.
Today’s corporate food regime, ushered in by the neoliberal
policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s,
is characterized by the monopoly market power of agrifood cor-
porations, globalized grain-fed meat production, giant retail,
and growing links between food and fuel. This regime is con-
trolled by a far-flung agrifood industrial complex made up of
huge oligopolies including Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland,
Cargill, Conagra, and Walmart. Together, these corporations
dominate the government agencies and multilateral organiza-
tions that make and enforce the regime’s rules, regulations, and
projects for trade, labor, property, and technology, including the
World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), the UN
World Food Program, USAID, the USDA, and big philanthropy.

Liberalization and Reform

Like the capitalist economic system of which they are a part,
global food regimes historically alternate between periods of
economic liberalization characterized by unregulated markets,
privatization, and massive concentrations of wealth, followed by
devastating economic and financial busts—the costs of which
are socialized and paid for by citizens, consumers, workers, and
taxpayers. This eventually leads to social unrest, which, when
sufficiently widespread, threatens profits and governability.
Governments then usher in reformist periods in which markets,
supply, and consumption are re-regulated to stem the crisis and
restore stability to the regime. In cases where governments are
incapable of reform—as witnessed in 2011 in Egypt and other
countries in northern Africa—rebellion and revolution can be-
come likely avenues of social change.
Infinitely unregulated markets would eventually destroy
both society and the natural resources that the regime depends
on for its reproduction. Therefore, while the “mission” of reform
is to mitigate the social and environmental externalities of the

race /ethnicity vol. 5 / no. 1 92

reform or transformation ?

corporate food regime, its “job” is identi- Though liberalization and reform may ap-
cal to that of the liberal trend: preserving pear politically distinct, they are actually
the corporate food regime. Though liberal-
ization and reform may appear politically two phases of the same system.
distinct, they are actually two phases of the
same system. While both tendencies exist simultaneously, they
are rarely ever in equilibrium, with either liberalization or re-
form hegemonic at any period of time. Reformists dominated
the global food regime from the New Deal in the 1930s until
our current era of neo-liberal “globalization” in the 1980s. The
current neo-liberal phase has been characterized by deregula-
tion, privatization, and the growth and consolidation of global
corporate monopoly power in food systems around the globe.
With the recurrent global food crises, desperate calls for re-
form have sprung up worldwide. However, less than 5 percent
of the US$ 22 billion in promised aid to end the crisis has actu-
ally been committed, and most government and multilateral
solutions (e.g., Feed the Future, Global Agriculture and Food
Security Program, Global Harvest) simply call for more of the
same policies that brought about the crisis to begin with: ex-
tending liberal (free) markets, privatizing common resources
(including forests and the atmosphere), proprietary technologi-
cal “fixes” including genetically modified seeds, and protect-
ing monopoly concentration. Collateral damage to community
food systems is mitigated by weak safety nets—including food
aid from the World Food Program and U.S. food banks or food
stamps. Unless there is strong pressure from civil society, re-
formists will not likely affect (much less reverse) the present
neo-liberal direction of the corporate food regime.

From Coping to Regime Change:

The Pivotal Role of Food Justice
The current food and health crises reflect a socially inequi-
table and economically volatile corporate food regime. Unless
there are profound changes to this regime, it will repeat its cycles
of liberalization and reform, plunging neighborhood food sys-
tems, rural communities, and the environment into ever graver
crises. While moderate food system reforms—such as increasing
food stamps or relocating grocery stores—are certainly needed
to help vulnerable communities cope with crises, because they
address the proximate rather than the root causes of hunger and
food insecurity (Holt-Giménez, Patel, and Shattuck 2009), they
will not alter the fundamental balance of power within the food
system and in some cases may even reinforce existing, inequi-
table power relations. Fixing the dysfunctional food system—in
any sustainable sense—requires regime change.
If the history of U.S. capitalism and social change is a reli-
able guide, we can be assured that substantive changes to the
corporate food regime will not come simply from within the re-
gime itself, but from a combination of intense social pressure
and political will. Today’s food-system “reforms” and the rush

autumn 2011 93
 eric holt giménez / yi wang

of anti-hunger alliances between agrifood monopolies, govern-

ment, and big philanthropy (Global Harvest, AGRA, AGree, etc.)
are attempts to mitigate the negative effects of food price volatil-
ity, not end global hunger or substantively challenge neo-liberal
control over the food system. Food-system change will come
from powerful and sustained social pressure that forces reform-
ists to roll back neo-liberalism in the food system. Much of this
pressure could come from the food movement—if it overcomes
its divides.
As we indicated earlier in this article, the food-sovereignty
movement and some food-justice organizations have a radi-
cal critique of the corporate food regime. These groups call for
structural, redistributive reforms of basic entitlements, for ex-
ample, for property, labor, capital, and markets. Other food-jus-
tice groups (and some CFS organizations) advance a progressive
agenda on the basis of sustainable family farming and rights
of access to healthy food. These radical and progressive trends
overlap significantly in their approaches, demographics, and
types of organization (e.g., CFS, FJ, and FS). While the progres-
sive trend focuses on local ownership of production and on im-
proving the service and delivery aspects of the food system, the
radical trend directs more of its energy at structural changes to
capitalist food systems. When taken together, both trends seek
to change the rules and practices of food systems, locally, na-
tionally, and internationally. In this regard they are two sides
of the same food movement. Their strategic alliance could go
a long way toward overcoming the food movement’s system/
disparity dilemma.
Food-movement organizations are fluid and have different
and changing positions on food-system issues such as GMOs,
domestic hunger programs, food aid, supply management, land
reform, and trade. Depending on their ideology, political aware-
ness, support base, and funding, food-movement organizations
will adopt a range of stances and will consciously (or uncon-
sciously) form alliances with groups and institutions across
regime and movement trends. While some organizations are
solidly neo-liberal, reformist, progressive, or radical, others are
much harder to categorize because they adopt politically diver-
gent positions on different issues (for example, a reformist posi-
tion on labor, but a radical position on GMOs). Some organiza-
tions say one thing, yet do another. Rather than ascribing fixity
to organizations, an appreciation of their heterogeneous and
fluid political nature, coupled with an analysis of their positions
on specific issues, can help identify opportunities for alliance
building for food-system change.
As the world’s fuel, financial, and climate crises exacerbate
the food crisis, the systemic differences between the food re-
gime and food movements will likely deepen. However, unlike
the symbiotic relationship between neo-liberal and reformist
trends in the food regime, in which the latter helps to stabilize
the food regime following a crisis caused by the former, there is
nothing intrinsically stable about the relationship between the

race /ethnicity vol. 5 / no. 1 94

reform or transformation ?

progressive and radical trends that will keep them from split-
ting under pressure. The fragmentation and segmentation of
the U.S. food movement already cedes political ground to the
corporate food regime, whose reformist trends are busy co-opt-
ing food security and its related terms, among them “commu-
nity,” “organic,” “local,” and “fair.”
Overcoming the present (and future) divisions within the
food movement will require strong alliances and the clarity to
distinguish superficial change from structural change. This in
turn depends not only on clear vision and practice of the de-
sired changes, but also means making strategic and tactical
sense of the matrix of actors, institutions, and projects at work
within local-global food politics. The dominant food-movement
narrative is not only color-blind, but it also does not distinguish
between the neo-liberal/reformist trends in the food regime (of
which it is unconsciously a part) and the progressive and radical
trends of the food movement itself. The challenge for building a
powerful food movement is to reach beyond the dominant (and
depoliticizing) food-movement narrative to build strategic po-
litical alliances and construct a new narrative. But who should
reach; to whom; and on what basis?
Addressing this challenge, Gottlieb and Joshi (2011, 232–33)
identify FJ as a key political trend within the U.S. food move-
ment and claim it is facing a “pivotal moment” that requires
an “overarching theory of food system change.” They call on
FJ to organize existing food groups into a larger social move-
ment, to develop a theory of change, an agenda that is both in-
cremental and structural, and to link to other social movements,
worldwide.
We agree with this assessment, and suggest that in addi-
tion to its pivotal moment, because it is located between, and in
many ways also spans, radical and progressive trends within
the food movement, the food-justice movement occupies a
“pivotal position” (see Table 1: Food Regime/Food Movement
Matrix). The way FJ organizations organize, theorize, set agen-
das, and build alliances will have a direct influence on the bal-
ance of forces that will serve to stabilize, reform, or transform
the corporate food regime. Following our Food Regime/Food
Movement Matrix, if FJ organizations build reformist alliances,
the corporate food regime will be strengthened. If they build
radical alliances, the food movement will be strengthened. The
former scenario will not lead to regime change, while the latter
at least opens the possibility of a strong food movement capable
of pushing substantive reforms.
On what basis could these alliances be built? The structural
exploitation of resources, markets, and communities—at home
and abroad—is foundational to the corporate food regime. Ra­
cial disadvantages are structured into the corporate food regime,
reproducing a hierarchical social structure
into our food systems (Winant 2001). The Racial disadvantages are structured into the
flood of cheap, unhealthy, and fast food into corporate food regime, reproducing a hierar-
the void left by the exodus of food retail out- chical social structure into our food systems.

autumn 2011 95
 Corporate Food Regime U.S. Food Movements

POLITICS NEOLIBERAL REFORMIST PROGRESSIVE RADICAL

Discourse Food Enterprise
USDA (Vilsak), Farm Bureau,
Safeway, Kroger, Wal-Mart, Cargill,
Main Institutions Monsanto, ADM, Tyson, big
philanthropy capital
Household Food Security/Anti-hunger
USDA (Merrigan), Mainstream Fair
Trade, some Slow Food, some Food
Policy Councils, medium-sized
philanthropy, many food banks & food
aid organizations
Community Food Security/ Food Justice/ Food Sovereignty
Food Justice
Many CFS organizations, many The U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance, many Food
Food Policy Councils & youth Justice and rights-based movements, Some CFS
and food justice movements, organizations and Slow Food chapters
Community Supported
Agriculture, some farm worker &
labor organizations, Alternative
Fair Trade, many Slow Food
chapters.

Orientation Corporate monopoly/ technological Self-regulated corporate development/ Community empowerment/ right Liberation/Entitlement/
fixes/ global markets food aid to food/ human rights/ labor Redistribution/Antiracism
rights/

MODEL Overproduction, Corporate
consolidation,
Unregulated markets and
monopolies, Monocultures
(including organic), GMOs,
Agrofuels, mass global consumption
of industrial food
Mainstreaming large, low-end retail Agro-ecological local food Agroecological family and community-managed
expansion into underserved production, economic support for agriculture and food systems, regionally-based
neighborhoods, using public resources to smallholder farms, urban food systems, dismantling of corporate agri-
extract surplus from the local economy, agriculture, alternative business foods monopoly power, parity, redistributive
channeling of commodity surpluses into models and community benefit land reform, community rights to water & seed,
food aid programs and school lunch, packages for production, democratization of food and agricultural policy,
certification of niche markets (e.g., processing & retail, solidarity sustainable livelihoods, protection from

Table 1: Food regime/food movement matrix.

organic, fair, local, sustainable), economies overproduction and corporate extraction of food
maintaining northern agricultural dollars, radical inclusion in organizational
subsidies, “sustainable” roundtables for decision-making processes
corporate self-regulation, microcredit,
conscious consumerism, dietary health
education, reliance upon food stamp and
food bank programs to alleviate food
insecurity

race /ethnicity vol. 5 / no. 1 96

eric holt giménez / yi wang
 Corporate Food Regime U.S Food Movements

POLITICS NEOLIBERAL REFORMIST PROGRESSIVE RADICAL

Discourse Food Enterprise Household Food Security/Anti-hunger Community Food Security/ Food Justice/ Food Sovereignty
Food Justice

autumn 2011 97
Racial/ Ethnic Exclusion of people of color from People of color comprise a large portion Practitioners (predominantly Development of local non-white-owned food
Dimensions access to and ownership of land, of beneficiaries of food assistance white)work to improve access to businesses by removing barriers of structural
credit, and public entitlements; lack programs, corporate retail expansion into healthy and affordable food racism such as commercial and mortgage
of access to healthy, affordable food food deserts provides unstable low wage within underserved communities industry redlining and exclusion of non-whites
in “food deserts,” exploitation of employment for people of color while (comprised predominantly of from access to public resources; transfer of
reform or transformation ?

immigrant labor along the entire precluding the establishment of local people of color) by providing organizational leadership to members of
food chain, disparities in prevalence minority owned-businesses, failure to vegetables, garden space and underserved communities; strengthening of
of diet-related diseases, displacement address structural racism knowledge; practitioners often economic ties between local minority-owned
and dispossession of indigenous express widespread mentality of businesses and minority farmers; legal
peoples in global south, creation of “bringing good food to others” in protection of indigenous and peasant livelihoods
racial/ethnic tensions, creation of efforts to include non-whites in in global south
immigration laws in global north the alternative food movement
targeting people of color and invoke essentialist
constructions of race/ethnicity;
reproduction of racial hegemony
through domination of spaces by
privileged whites; anti-
racist/diversity training provided
within some organizations
Class Dimensions High concentration of oligopoly Public subsidies compensate for low Higher wages and more stable Progressive redistribution of wealth and control
wealth within food system; wages in the corporate agrifood sector employment for agricultural and over resources; restoration of economic viability
marginalization of small, medium, through food assistance programs like food workers; cooperative of small and medium-sized farms and food
and family farms and of locally- SNAP, EBT, & WIC; differentiated ownership structures; ability to businesses through restructuring of agricultural
owned food retailers; low-wage farm ability to consume certified organic and participate in and engage in and food policies; strong labor rights
and food sector jobs; destruction of fair trade products on the basis of leadership roles dependent on
peasant livelihoods in global south; income; failure to address class possession of cultural and social
maintenance of global surplus labor inequities and skewed distribution of capital associated with class
through concentration of wealth and wealth privilege
of control over productive resources
 eric holt giménez / yi wang

lets from low-income communities of color is part of the racial-

ized dispossession affecting immigrants and people of color in
both rural and urban areas (Minkoff-Zern et al. 2011). For exam-
ple, the recent drive by monopoly food retailers to gobble up real
estate in underserved urban communities follows on this trend
(Holt-Giménez, Wang, and Shattuck 2011). These racialized en-
closures are no less structural issues than the wholesale dispos-
session of peasants occurring as a result of the massive global
land grabs exploding across the Global South (Grain 2008). Land
itself is one basis for local–global alliance building.
Engaging with the structural aspects of food justice requires
addressing race and class in relation to dispossession and con-
trol over land, labor, and capital in the food system. For reforms
to actually reverse the trends of dispossession and concentra-
tion—and lead to transformation—they must be redistributive
(Borras 2007). This means that FJ needs to build alliances to ad-
dress ownership and redistribution over the means of produc-
tion and reproduction, including credit, land, processing, mar-
kets, and retail as well as labor and immigrant rights—all areas
of dispossession within the food-value chain of the corporate
food regime. The most likely partners for these structural al-
liances are in local and international food-sovereignty move-
ments and other organizations working within the radical trend
of the food movement.
Granted, no amount of fresh produce will solve the under-
lying socioeconomic problems of chronic unemployment, labor
exploitation, crumbling public education, land and real estate
speculation, and violence visited upon underserved communi-
ties of color. But within a historicized framework of structural
racism, the centrality of food to a community’s collective cul-
tural identities provides links between racial identity and activ-
ism (Pulido 2000). Food-justice activism is an important social
change driver that, if allied with other, radical social move-
ments, could seriously challenge the corporate food regime’s
structural inequities.
Solving the food crisis requires dismantling racism and clas-
sism in the food system and transforming the food regime. This
challenges the food-justice movement to forge alliances that ad-
vance equitable and sustainable practices on the ground while
mobilizing politically for broad, redistributive reforms. This
pivotal praxis may yet produce a new, powerful food movement
narrative: the narrative of liberation.

Endnotes
1. These demands have a solid material basis. In West Oakland,
California, one of the city’s lowest-income neighborhoods, an es-
timated $65 million per year is spent on food, $48 million of which
“floats”out of the community (People’s Community Market 2009). This
amount represents some 1,000 potential jobs paying $45,000 a year.
Figures are similarly high for other low-income urban communities
in which grocery stores have abandoned the inner city for the suburbs

race /ethnicity vol. 5 / no. 1 98

reform or transformation ?

(Mamen 2007). This is one reason many FJ activists prefer the term
“food apartheid” over “food deserts,” as the former provides a more
accurate description of the political-economic depth of structural
racism in the U.S. food system (Ahmadi 2010; Cook 2010; Workman
2010).
2. For a more extensive, global analysis of the corporate food regime and
its relation to the global food movement, see Holt-Giménez and Shattuck
(2011).

Works Cited
Ahmadi, Brahm. 2011. Racism and food justice: The case of Oakland.
In Food Movements Unite!, ed. Eric Holt-Giménez, 149–62. Oakland,
CA: Food First Books.
———. 2010. Structural Racism in the U.S. Food System. Oakland, CA:
Food First Books.
Alkon, Alison Hope, and Julian Agyeman. 2011a. Introduction: The
food movement as polyculture. In Cultivating Food Justice: Race,
Class, and Sustainability, 1–20. Food, Health and Environment; se-
ries ed. Robert Gottlieb. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———, eds. 2011b. Cultivating food justice: Race, class, and sustainability.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Alkon, Alison Hope, and Kari Marie Norgaard. 2009. Breaking the
food chains: An investigation of food justice activism. Sociological
Inquiry 79: 289–305.
Allen, Patricia. 2008. Mining for justice in the food system: Percep-
tions, practices, and possibilities. Agriculture and Human Values 25:
157–61.
Anderson, Molly, and John T. Cook. 1999. Community food security:
Practice in need of theory? Agriculture and Human Values 16: 141–
50.
Baker, Elizabeth A., Mario Schootman, Ellen Barnidge, and Cheryl
Kelly. 2006. The role of race and poverty in access to foods that en-
able individuals to adhere to dietary guidelines. Preventing Chronic
Disease 3: 1–11.
Berg, Joel. 2008. All you can eat: How hungry is America? New York:
Seven Stories Press.
Borras, Saturnino M. Jr. 2007. Pro-poor land reform: A critique. Ottawa:
University of Ottawa Press.
Bullard, Robert D. 1994. Unequal protection: Environmental justice and
communities of color. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
———. 2010. Environmental justice in the 21st Century. http://www.
ejrc.cau.edu/ejinthe21century.htm (accessed June 30, 2011).
CFSC Community Food Security Coalition. 2004. About CFSC. http://
www.foodsecurity.org/aboutcfsc.html (accessed June 30, 2011).
——. 2010. What is community food security? http://www.foodsecurity.
org/views_cfs_faq.html (accessed June 30, 2011).
Cook, Christopher. 2010. Covering food deserts. University of Southern
California Annenberg School for Communication. http://www.
reportingonhealth.org/resources/lessons/covering-food-deserts
(accessed June 30, 2011).
Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. 2010. A City of De­
troit policy on food security: “Creating a food-secure Detroit.” http:
//detroitblackfoodsecurity.org/policy.html (accessed June 30,
2011).

autumn 2011 99
 eric holt giménez / yi wang

FAO. 2011. FAO Food Price Index. Food and Agriculture Organization
of the United Nations, March 7. http://www.fao.org/worldfood
situation/wfs-home/foodpricesindex/en/ (accessed June 30, 2011).
Garcia, Deborah Koons. 2004. The future of food. Documentary. Lily
Films.
Goodman, David, and Michael K. Goodman. 2008. “Alternative food
networks,” in Rob Kitchin and Nigel Thrift, Encyclopedia of Human
Geography. Oxford: Elsevier.
Gottlieb, Robert, and Anupama Joshi. 2010. Food justice. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Grain. 2008. Seized: The 2008 landgrab for food and financial security.
Grain Briefing. http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=212 (accessed
June 30, 2011).
Guthman, Julie. 2008. “If only they knew”: Color blindness and uni-
versalism in California alternative food institutions. The Profes-
sional Geographer 60: 387–97.
Hamm, Michael W., and Anne C. Bellows. 2003. Community food se-
curity and nutrition educators. Journal of Nutrition Education and
Behavior 35: 37–43.
Harvey, David. 2005. A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
———. 2010. The enigma of capital: And the crises of capitalism. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Herrera, Henry. Unpublished correspondence. Oakland, California,
April 24, 2011.
Herrera, Henry, Navina Khanna, and Leon Davis. 2009. Food systems
and public health: The community perspective. Journal of Hunger &
Environmental Nutrition 4: 430–45.
Holt-Giménez, Eric, and Annie Shattuck. 2011. “Food Crises, Food
Regimes and Food Movements: Rumblings of Reform or Tides of
Transformation?” Journal of Peasant Studies 38(1): 109–144.
Holt-Giménez, Eric, Raj Patel, and Annie Shattuck. 2009. Food rebel-
lions! Crisis and the hunger for justice. Oakland: Food First Books.
Holt-Giménez, Eric, Yi Wang, and Annie Shattuck. 2011. “The urban
and northern face of global land grabs.” Paper presented at the
presented at the International Conference on Global Land Grab-
bing, Brighton, UK, April 6–8.
Jackson, Wes, Wendell Berry, and Bruce Coleman, eds. 1984. Meeting
the expectations of the land: Essays in sustainable agriculture and stew-
ardship. San Francisco: North Point Press.
Kenner, Robert. 2009. Food, Inc. Documentary. Magnolia Pictures, Par-
ticipant Media.
Lang, Tim. 2005. Food control or food democracy? Reengaging nu-
trition with society and the environment. Public Health Nutrition
8(6A): 730–37.
Lean, Geoffrey. 2008. Multinationals make billions in profit out of
growing global food crisis. The Independent, May 4.
Magdoff, Fred, and Brian Tokar. 2010. Agriculture and food in crisis: Con-
flict, resistance, and renewal. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Mamen, Katy. 2007. Facing Goliath: Challenging the impacts of super-
market consolidation on our local economies, communities, and
food security. Oakland, CA: The Oakland Institute.
McCullum, Christine, David Pelletier, Donald Barr, Jennifer Wilkins,
and Jean-Pierre Habicht. 2004. Mechanisms of power within a
community-based food security planning process. Health Educa-
tion & Behavior 31: 206–222.

race /ethnicity vol. 5 / no. 1 100

reform or transformation ?

McMichael, Philip. 2009. A food regime genealogy. Journal of Peasant

Studies 36: 139–69.
Minkoff-Zern, Laura-Anne, Nancy Peluso, Jennifer Sowerwine, and
Christy Getz. 2011. Race and regulation: Asian immigrants in
California agriculture. In Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and
Sustainability, ed. Alison Alkon and Julian Agyeman, 65–86. Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press.
Mooney, Patrick H., and Scott A. Hunt. 2009. Food security: The elabo-
ration of contested claims to a consensus frame. Rural Sociology 74:
469–97.
Morton, Lois Wright, and Troy C. Blanchard. 2007. Starved for access: Life
in rural America’s food deserts. Columbia, MO: University of Mis­souri
Press.
NAHO. 2009. Roadmap to end childhood hunger in America by 2015.
National Anti-Hunger Organizations. http://www.foodsecurity.
org/policy/NAHO-Roadmap_to_End_Hunger.pdf (accessed June
30, 2011).
Nestle, Marion. 2002. Food politics: How the food industry influences
nutrition and health. In California Studies in Food and Culture. Berke-
ley: University of California Press.
Nord, Mark, Alisha Coleman-Jensen, Margaret Andrews, and Ste-
ven Carlson. 2010. Household food security in the United States,
2009. Economic Research Report. U.S. Department of Agriculture,
November 10. http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err108/ (ac-
cessed June 30, 2011).
Parker, Lynn. 2005. Obesity, food insecurity and the federal child nu-
trition programs: Understanding the linkages. Food Research and
Action Center.
Patel, Raj. 2007. Stuffed and starved: Markets, power and the hidden battle
for the world food system. London: Portobello Books.
——. 2009. Food Sovereignty. Journal of Peasant Studies 36: 663–706.
People’s Community Market. 2009. Market Gap Study. Unpublished.
Perry, Duane, and Caroline Harries. 2007. The need for more super-
markets in Chicago. Philadelphia: The Food Trust.
Petrini, Carlo. 2005. Slow food nation: Why our food should be good, clean,
and fair. Bra, Italy: Slow Food Editore.
Pollan, Michael. 2006. Voting with your fork. http://pollan.blogs.ny
times.com/2006/05/07/voting-with-your-fork/ (accessed June 30,
2011).
———. 2010. The food movement, rising. New York Review of Books,
June 10. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jun/10/
food-movement-rising/ (accessed June 30, 2011).
Pothukuchi, Kameshwari, and Jerome Kaufman. 1999. Placing the
food system on the urban agenda: The role of municipal institu-
tions in food systems planning. Agriculture and Human Values 16:
213–24.
Pulido, Laura. 2000. Rethinking environmental racism: White privi-
lege and urban development in Southern California. Annals of the
Association of American Geographers 90: 12–40.
Robin, Marie-Monique. 2008. The world according to Monsanto. Doc-
umentary. National Film Board of Canada, ARTE France, Image &
Compagnie, WDR, and Les Productions Thalie.
Schlosser, Eric. 2001. Fast food nation: The dark side of the all-American
meal. New York: Harper Perennial.
Self, Robert O. 2003. American Babylon: Race and the struggle for postwar
Oakland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

autumn 2011 101
 eric holt giménez / yi wang

Shames, Stephen. 2006. The Black Panthers. New York: Aperture Foun-
dations Books.
Slocum, Rachel. 2007. Whiteness, space and alternative food practice.
Geoforum 38: 520–33.
Spurlock, Morgan. 2004. Super size me. Documentary. Samuel Goldwyn
Films; Roadside Attractions.
Steel, Anim. 2010. Youth and food justice: Lessons from the Civil Rights
movement. Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy.
Tarasuk, Valerie. 2001. A critical examination of community-based re-
sponses to household food insecurity in Canada. Health Education
& Behavior 28: 487–99.
Taylor, Dorceta E. 2000. The rise of the environmental justice para-
digm: Injustice framing and the social construction of environ-
mental discourses. American Behavioral Scientist 43: 508–580.
U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance. 2010. Food sovereignty PMA resolu-
tion. http://www.usfoodsovereigntyalliance.org/foodsovereign-
typma/food-sovereignty-pma-resolution (June 30, 2011).
Viertel, Josh. 2011. Beyond voting with your fork: Moving past enlight-
ened eating, to movement building. In Food Movements Unite!, ed.
Eric Holt-Giménez, 137–48. Oakland, CA: Food First Books.
Wekerle, Gera R. 2004. Food justice movements: Policy, planning, and
networks. Journal of Planning Education and Research 23: 378–86.
WFP. 2011. Hunger FAQs. World Food Program. http://www.wfp.org/
hunger/faqs (accessed June 30, 2011).
Wiggins, Steve, and Stephanie Levy. 2008. Rising food prices: A global
crisis. Briefing Paper #37. Overseas Development Institute. Lon-
don. http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/download/1009.pdf (ac-
cessed June 30, 2011)
Winant, Howard. 2001. The World is a ghetto: Race and democracy since
World War II. New York: Basic Books.
Winne, Mark. 2008. Closing the food gap. Boston: Beacon Press.
Wittman, Hannah, Annette Aurelie Desmarais, and Nettie Wiebe.
2010. Food sovereignty: Reconnecting food, nature and community. Oak-
land, CA: Food First Books.
Woolf, Aaron. 2007. King Corn. Mosaic Films.
Workman, Mandy Lynn. 2010. Food deserts & growing hunger in the
US: The USDA’s response, Oakland Food Policy Council, http://
www.oaklandfood.org/blog/entry/587521/-food-deserts-growing-
hunger-in-the-us-the-usda%E2%80%99s-response%C2%A0ID - 177
(accessed June 30, 2011).

race /ethnicity vol. 5 / no. 1 102