Food Studies: Adding Nuance to the Sustainable Food Systems Dialogue

Abstract

First paragraphs:

My motivation to review Conversations in Food Studies grew from a desire to understand how we can approach complex problems—changing attitudes and beliefs about diet, incor­porating social and environmental values into agricultural production, and addressing structural inequalities—to reduce poverty and food insecurity.

My work with various communities both in Canada and abroad has yielded this insight: the technical barriers to achieving a just and sustainable food system (such as growing food all year in northern climates and increasing crop yields) are more easily overcome than the socio-cultural and behavioral barriers. What is critical for food system transformation is an understanding of the human component; this is the task of food studies schol­ars. This defining volume tackles socio-cultural obstacles to a just and sustainable food system through work reported in a cross-sectional snapshot of predominantly Canadian scholarship, in the interdisciplinary field of food studies....