Abstract
The local food movement has been touted by some as a profoundly effective way to make our food system become more healthy, just, and sustainable. Others have criticized the movement as being less a challenge to the status quo and more an easily co-opted support offering just another set of choices for affluent consumers. In this paper, we analyze three distinct sub-movements within the local food movement, the individual-focused sub-movement, the systems-focused sub-movement, and the community-focused sub-movement. These movements can be combined within any particular campaign or within the goals of any particular organization or individual activist, but they are nevertheless quite different from each other, and come out of different conceptualizations of what food, people, and locality are. We argue that most of the critiques leveled against local food are actually directed against the individual-focused sub-movement, which is most compatible with the current industrial food system, and perhaps not surprisingly receives the most mainstream attention. Further, we argue that while each movement has its own strengths and weaknesses, it is the community-focused sub-movement that has the most potential to radically transform the global food system.
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Notes
For more information on the development of this trend, see DeLind's (2011) article “Are local food and the local food movement taking us where we want to go? Or are we hitching our wagons to the wrong stars?” published in Agriculture and Human Values. In addition, see works by Michael Pollan (2009), such as A Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, and other works by popular local food writers.
Neoliberalism is, roughly, a form of liberalism that promotes the distribution of goods via an unregulated market system. For more information, see Mirowski and Plehwe's (2009).
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The authors wish to thank Dr. Kyle Whyte for his invaluable help with early drafts of this paper.
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Werkheiser, I., Noll, S. From Food Justice to a Tool of the Status Quo: Three Sub-movements Within Local Food. J Agric Environ Ethics 27, 201–210 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-013-9459-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-013-9459-6