In recent decades, the various strands of the food movement have made
enormous strides in calling attention the many shortcomings and
injustices of our food and agricultural system. Farmers, activists,
scholars, and everyday citizens have also worked creatively to
rebuild local food economies, advocate for food justice, and promote
more sustainable, agroecological farming practices. However, the
movement for fairer, healthier, and more autonomous food is
continually blocked by one obstacle: land access. As long as land
remains unaffordable and inaccessible to most people, we cannot truly
transform the food system.
The term
land-grabbing is most commonly used to refer to the large-scale
acquisition of agricultural land in Asian, African, or Latin American
countries by foreign investors. However, land has and continues to be
"grabbed" in North America, as well, through
discrimination, real estate speculation, gentrification,
financialization, extractive energy production, and tourism. This
edited volume, with chapters from a wide range of activists and
scholars, explores the history of land theft, dispossession, and
consolidation in the United States. It also looks at alternative ways
forward toward democratized, land justice, based on redistributive
policies and cooperative ownership models.
With prefaces from
leaders in the food justice and family farming movements, the book
opens with a look at the legacies of white-settler colonialism in the
southwestern United States. From there, it moves into a
collectively-authored section on Black Agrarianism, which details the
long history of land dispossession among Black farmers in the
southeastern US, as well as the creative acts of resistance they have
used to acquire land and collectively farm it. The next section, on
gender, explores structural and cultural discrimination against women
landowners in the Midwest and also role of "womanism" in
land-based struggles. Next, a section on the cross-border
implications of land enclosures and consolidations includes a
consideration of what land justice could mean for farm workers in the
US, followed by an essay on the challenges facing young and aspiring
farmers. Finally, the book explores the urban dimensions of land
justice and their implications for locally-autonomous food systems,
and lessons from previous struggles for democratized land access.
Ultimately, the book
makes the case that to move forward to a more equitable, just,
sustainable, and sovereign agriculture system, the various strands of
the food movement must come together for land justice.