Cashman, Kristin (author / Research Associate, Center for Indigenous Knowledge for Agriculture and Rural Development (CIKARD), Iowa State University, Ames, IA)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
1991
Published:
USA: Gainesville, FL : University of Florida, Agriculture, Food, and Human Value Society
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 87 Document Number: C05936
2 pages, via Online source, Purchasing organic food in today’s world likely means taking a trip to Whole Foods, owned by one of the richest men in all of history, Jeff Bezos. Although it is hard to imagine organic foods as something other than a luxury item targeted towards affluent demographics, the origin story of the organic foods market is vastly different. Written by Winona State University associate professor of sociology Craig B. Upright, Grocery Activism: The Radical History of Food Cooperatives in Minnesota dives back into the 1970s to paint a vivid image of the subversive world of organic groceries and food co-ops before the era of Whole Foods.
18 pages, via Online Journal, Plant-based milk alternatives–or mylks–have surged in popularity over the past ten years. We consider the politics and consumer subjectivities fostered by mylks as part of the broader trend towards ‘plant-based’ food. We demonstrate how mylk companies inherit and strategically deploy positive framings of milk as wholesome and convenient, as well as negative framings of dairy as environmentally damaging and cruel, to position plant-based as the ‘better’ alternative. By navigating this affective landscape, brands attempt to (re)make mylk as simultaneously palatable and disruptive to the status quo. We examine the politics of mylks through the concept of palatable disruption, where people are encouraged to care about the environment, health, and animal welfare enough to adopt mylks but to ultimately remain consumers of a commodity food. By encouraging consumers to reach for “plant-based” as a way to cope with environmental catastrophe and a life out of balance, mylks promote a neoliberal ethic: they individualize systemic problems and further entrench market mechanisms as solutions, thereby reinforcing the political economy of industrial agriculture. In conclusion, we reflect on the limits of the current plant-based trend for transitioning to more just and sustainable food production and consumption.
12pgs, COVID 19 has exacerbated and underscored structural inequalities and endemic vulnerabilities in food, economic, and social systems, compounding concerns about environmental sustainability and racial and economic justice. Convergent crises have amplified a growing chorus of voices and movements calling for new thinking and new practices to adapt to these shifts, mitigate their impact, and address their root causes through far reaching changes in social and economic life and values, including breaking with the free market paradigm. In the face of a historic choice between transition or multiple systems collapse that deepen injustice and threaten planetary survival, I make the case for expanding on liberatory tendencies in Extension programs to build capacities for response-ability to transition toward more just and sustainable futures.