Seeds of Occupation, Seeds of Possibility 
Andrea Brower 

This publication examines the “the social and historical conditions by which the chemical-seed oligopoly came to occupy the most geographically isolated islands in the world and made the soils of Hawaiʻi the epicenter of agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology testing” (West Virginia University Press). The book is available as a paperback or eBook. 

Food Resistance Movements: Journeying Through Alternative Food Networks  
Ferne Edwards 

Edwards presents almost two decades of work on food waste (Australia), the food sovereignty movement (Venezuela), and autonomous food spaces (Catalonia), with reflections on urban food system transitions, in this publication. She has dedicated this book to Jane Dixon, her PhD supervisor and friend, and Paul Martin, a close friend who introduced her to dumpster diving and food activism in general. The book is available as a hardcover or eBook.

Beyond Global Food Supply Chains: Crisis, Disruption, Regeneration
Victoria Stead and Melinda Hinkson (Eds) 

 Edited by Victoria Stead and Melinda Hinkson, this publication takes the upheaval of the pandemic as a springboard from which to interrogate a larger set of structural, environmental and political fault lines running through the global food system. In a context in which disruptions to the production, distribution and consumption of food are figured as exceptions to the smooth, just-in-time efficiencies of global supply chains, the essays examine the pandemic not simply as a particular and acute moment of disruption but rather as a lens on a deeper, longer set of structural processes within which disruption is endemic. The thirteen chapters offer short, sharp interventions that track disruptive forces & political possibilities at key points along the global food supply chain – and, critically, beyond it. They traverse subjects ranging from agri-investment to corporate and alternative food production systems, labour relations, pandemic supermarkets, logistics systems, the politics of hunger, the limits of consumer ethics, and the possibilities of supply chain disruptions as moments of reprieve. They offer rich, generative reflections on the contemporary global food system, and would also be very well suited to being used as teaching resources.

Chapters

1. Introduction: Beyond global supply chains by Melinda Hinkson and Victoria Stead
2. Supply chains as disruption by Lauren Rickards and Melinda Hinkson
3. Agri-investment cashing in on COVID-19 by Sarah Sippel
4. Putting the crisis to work by Victoria Stead and Kirstie Petrou
5. Going against the grain in the West Australian wheatbelt by Kelly Donati
6. Reviving community agrarianism in post-socialist China by Daren Shi-Chi-Leung
7. Fantasies of logistics in Aotearoa New Zealand by Matthew Henry and Carolyn Morris
8. Reproducing hunger in pandemic America by Maggie Dickinson
9. The pandemic supermarket by David Boarder Giles
10. Disruption as reprieve? by Jon Altman and Francis Markham
11. The UN Food Systems Summit: Disaster capitalism and the future of food by Tomaso Ferrando
12. Against consumer ethics by Christopher Mayes and Angie Sassano
13. Afterword: Temporary measures by Alex Blanchette

The book is available free to download here.

Agri-environmental Governance as an Assemblage. Multiplicity, Power, and Transformation 
Jérémie Forney, Chris Rosin, Hugh Campbell (Eds)

Features
Develops assemblage theory as an original analytical framework for the study of agri-environmental governance.
Presents alternative perspectives on the kind of governance instruments that support the development of more sustainable agriculture and food systems.
Includes a wide range of international examples, including case studies from south-east and east Asia, Europe, Latin America, New Zealand and the USA.

 Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Agri-Environmental Governance as Assemblage
   Jérémie Forney, Chris Rosin and Hugh Campbell

Part I: Assembling Ontologies: Multiplicities and Agencies

2. Assembling Payments for Ecosystem Services in Wales
   Sophie Wynne-Jones and Thomas Vetter
3. Carolina Dreamin’: A case for understanding farmers’ decision-making and hybrid agri-environmental governance initiatives as complex assemblages
   Caela O’Connell and Deanna L. Osmond
4. Killing two (or more) birds with one stone: The case of governance through multifunctionality payments in Japan
   Haruhiko Iba and Kiyohiko Sakamoto
5. Assembling Halloumi: Contesting the EU’s Food Quality Label Policy in the Republic of Cyprus
   Gisela Welz
6. From ‘disciplinary societies’ to ‘societies of control’: an historical narrative of agri-environmental governance in Indonesia
   Angga Dwiartama

Part II: The politics of territorialisation

7. Assembling Value in Carbon Forestry: Practices of Assemblage, Overflows and Counter-Performativities in Ugandan Carbon Forestry
   Adrian Nel
8. Not Defined by the Numbers: Distinction, Dissent and Democratic Possibilities in Debating the Data
   Karly Burch, Katharine Legun, and Hugh Campbell
9. Water Quality Deterioration, Governance, and Assemblage Responses in Uruguay
   Diego Thompson
10. The “Dirty Dairying” Campaign in New Zealand: Constructing Problems and Assembling Responses
    Ismaël Tall and Hugh Campbell
11. Beyond Soyisation – Donau Soja as Assemblage
    Dana Bentia and Jérémie Forney

Part III: Assemblage for building new AEG practices

12. The Politics of Big Data: Corporate Agri-food Governance meets “Weak” Resistance
    Michael Carolan
13. Assemblage and the Epistemology of Practice: Imagining Situated Water Governance
    Ruth Beilin

Published by Routledge / Earthscan Food and Agriculture.

Anzac Biscuits -The power and spirit of an everyday national icon
Allison Reynolds

Anzac biscuits, baked in Australia and New Zealand for over a century, have a powerful connection to the national identity and culture of both countries. But what is the story of this national icon? Were they eaten by troops during the First World War? When did coconut make an appearance? And where do you stand on the crispy versus chewy debate?

Culinary detective Allison Reynolds has travelled Australia, New Zealand and England delving into war files and family cookbooks to investigate the provenance of this extraordinary everyday biscuit.

Published by Wakefield Press.

Food Utopias: Reimagining citizenship, ethics, and community
Paul Stock, Michael Carolan and Christopher Rosin

Food is a contentious and emotive issue, subject to critiques from multiple perspectives. Alternative food movements – including the different articulations of local, food miles, seasonality, food justice, food knowledge and food sovereignty – consistently invoke themes around autonomy, sufficiency, cooperation, mutual aid, freedom, and responsibility.

In this stimulating and provocative book the authors link these issues to utopias and intentional communities. Using a food utopias framework presented in the introduction, they examine food stories in three interrelated and complementary ways: utopias as critique of existing systems; utopias as engagement with experimentation of the novel, the forgotten, and the hopeful in the future of the food system; and utopias as process that recognizes the time and difficulty inherent in changing the status quo.

The chapters address theoretical aspects of food utopias and also present case studies from a range of contexts and regions, including Argentina, Italy, Switzerland and USA. These focus on key issues in contemporary food studies including equity, locality, the sacred, citizenship, community and food sovereignty. Food utopias offers ways forward to imagine a creative and convivial food system.

Ethical Trade, Gender and Sustainable Liveliboods: Women Smallholders and Ethicality in Kenya
Kiah Smith

Fair and ethical trade is often criticized for being highly gendered, and for institutionalizing the ethical values of consumers, the priorities of NGOs and governments, and most of all, food retailers. But little is known about how women smallholder farmers experience diverse ethical standards, or whether and how standards reflect their values, local cultural and environmental contexts, or priorities for achieving sustainable livelihoods.

Linking gender, smallholder livelihoods and global ethical trade regulations, this book reveals that multiple understandings of social justice, environmental sustainability and well-being – or ethicality – exist in parallel to those institutionalized in ethical trade schemes. Through an in-depth case study of smallholder subsistence and French bean farming in Kenya, the book grounds the analysis of livelihoods, gender and ethical trade in women smallholders’ perspectives, links the macro level of markets with the micro level of livelihoods, and engenders relations of power, structure and agency in food networks. It brings together disparate bodies of theory to illustrate the knowledge, strategies and values of women smallholder farmers that are often beyond the scope of ethical trade regulations. It also provides a challenging new vision for doing food systems research.

Community Gardening as Social Action
Claire Nettle
Series : Transforming Environmental Politics and Policy: 2

There has been a resurgence of community gardening over the past decade with a wide range of actors seeking to get involved, from health agencies aiming to increase fruit and vegetable consumption to radical social movements searching for symbols of non-capitalist ways of relating and occupying space. Community gardens have become a focal point for local activism in which people are working to contribute to food security, question the erosion of public space, conserve and improve urban environments, develop technologies of sustainable food production, foster community engagement and create neighbourhood solidarity.

Drawing on in-depth case studies and social movement theory, Claire Nettle provides a new empirical and theoretical understanding of community gardening as a site of collective social action. This provides not only a more nuanced and complete understanding of community gardening, but also highlights its potential challenges to notions of activism, community, democracy and culture.

Contents: Community gardening: from leisure to social action; Garden views: seeing community gardens as sites of social change; Theorising collective action; Community gardening as activism; In the garden; Growing community; Creation: the politics of direct action and prefiguration; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

About the Author: Claire Nettle PhD is a community food systems researcher and consultant.

Reviews: ‘By showing that community gardening is often a deeply political act this book offers a profound challenge to dominant accounts of social movement activism. Nettle shows that community gardening is more than a cultural challenge and does not mean a retreat from real politics, rather it is a specific form of prefigurative activism intended to build communities anew. It is essential reading for all those with an interest in a deeper understanding of the relationship between activist strategies and everyday life practices.’
Brian Doherty, Keele University, UK