Local Foods Meet Global Foodways

This book explores the intersection of food and foodways from global and local perspectives. The collection contributes to interdisciplinary debates about the role and movement of commodities in the historical and contemporary world. The expert contributions collectively address a fundamental tension in the emerging scholarly terrain of food studies, namely theorizing the relationship between foodstuff production and cuisine patterns. They explore a wide variety of topics, including curry, bread, sugar, coffee, milk, pulque, Virginia ham, fast-food, obesity, and US ethnic restaurants. Local Foods Meet Global Foodways considers movements in context, and, in doing so, complicates the notions that food 'shapes' culture as it crosses borders or that culture 'adapts' foods to its neo-local or global contexts. By analysing the dynamics of contact between mobile foods and/or people and the specific cultures of consumption they provoke, these case studies reveal the process whereby local foods become global or global foods become local, to be a dynamic, co-creative development jointly facilitated by humans and nature. This volume explores a vast expanse of global regions, such as North and Central America, Europe, China, East Asia and the Pacific, India, sub-Saharan Africa, the Atlantic Ocean, and the USSR/Russia. It includes a foreword by the eminent food scholar Carole Counihan, and an afterword by noted theorist of cuisine Rachel Laudan, and will be of great interest to students and researchers of history, anthropology, geography, cultural studies and American studies. This book is based on a special issue of Food and Foodways.

Inequity of control over food systems is a particularly insidious form of injustice. Collectively, the contributors to this volume posit that this inequity is rooted in power asymmetries in the U.S. food system and codified through U.S. food policies. This process puts the public at risk in the U.S. and, via trade and foreign aid policies, in the Global South. Inequities are manifest in the allocation of food and food-producing resources in favor of the wealthy, exploitation of the natural environment for short-term gain of private interests over long-term public ones, the framing of public discussion on food and food deprivation, and finally, the deflection of moral challenges posed by human rights to food.The contributors draw on long-term anthropological field research to examine these tensions and their on-the-ground outcomes in diverse cultural and national contexts. The authors’ insightful analyses span a wide variety of topics including dietary change, food insecurity, livestock production, and organic farming in the light of U.S. trade, food, labor, and agricultural policies and food assistance programs. The collection highlights the obstacles to, and the dilemmas and inconsistencies in, shaping policy in the public interest. This book was originally published as a special issue of Food & Foodways.

Bridges the gap between global farmers and fishermen and American consumers America now imports twice as much food as it did a decade ago. What does this increased reliance on imported food mean for the people around the globe who produce our food? Kelsey Timmerman set out on a global quest to meet the farmers and fisherman who grow and catch our food, and also worked alongside them: loading lobster boats in Nicaragua, splitting cocoa beans with a machete in Ivory Coast, and hauling tomatoes in Ohio. Where Am I Eating? tells fascinating stories of the farmers and fishermen around the world who produce the food we eat, explaining what their lives are like and how our habits affect them. This book shows how what we eat affects the lives of the people who produce our food. Through compelling stories, explores the global food economy including workers rights, the global food crisis, fair trade, and immigration. Author Kelsey Timmerman has spoken at close to 100 schools around the globe about his first book, Where Am I Wearing: A Global Tour of the Countries, Factories, and People That Make Our Clothes He has been featured in the Financial Times and has discussed social issues on NPR's Talk of the Nation and Fox News Radio Where Am I Eating? does not argue for or against the globalization of food, but personalizes it by observing the hope and opportunity, and sometimes the lack thereof, which the global food economy gives to the world's poorest producers.

Eat Local, Taste Global: How Ethnocultural Food Reaches Our Tables shows how the demand for ethnocultural vegetables on the part of Toronto’s South Asian, Chinese, and Afro-Caribbean Canadians is at odds with the corporate food regime. How does that regime affect the local food movement and ethnic groups’ access to their preferred foods? This book addresses that question and suggests that the protection of ethnic and national food security and sovereignty strengthens immigrant integration while producing healthy crossover effects for other Canadians. The authors show how culture, food, and migration are intertwined and how access to ethnocultural vegetables is affected by ethnicity, social class, shopping venues, and food prices. Most ethnic vegetables are imported by corporations and ethnic intermediaries and pass through Toronto’s Food Terminal; however, local farmers are now producing some of these vegetables, and alternative forms of agriculture and markets play a significant role in bringing ethnocultural vegetables to our tables. Social justice requires that people have both food security and food sovereignty. Eat Local, Taste Global offers solutions to identified contradictions that include making farmers’ markets more inclusive, improving conditions for migrant farm workers, and making alternative forms of agriculture more feasible. This book will be of interest to rural sociologists and political scientists as well as policy-makers, food activists, farmers, and food security organizations.

This comprehensive overview of local food systems explores alternative definitions of local food, estimates market size and reach, describes the characteristics of local consumers and producers, and examines early indications of the economic and health impacts of local food systems. Defining ¿local¿ based on marketing arrangements, such as farmers selling directly to consumers at regional farmers¿ markets or to schools, is well recognized. Statistics suggest that local food markets account for a small, but growing, share of U.S. agricultural production. For smaller farms, direct marketing to consumers accounts for a higher percentage of their sales than for larger farms. Charts and tables.

Food Television and Otherness in the Age of Globalization examines the growing popularity of food and travel television and its implications for how we understand the relationship between food, place, and identity. Attending to programs such as Bizarre Foods, Bizarre Foods America, The Pioneer Woman, Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, Man vs. Food, and No Reservations, Casey Ryan Kelly critically examines the emerging rhetoric of culinary television, attending to how American audiences are invited to understand the cultural and economic significance of global foodways. This book shows how food television exoticizes foreign cultures, erases global poverty, and contributes to myths of American exceptionalism. It takes television seriously as a site for the reproduction of cultural and economic mythology where representations of food and consumption become the commonsense of cultural difference and economic success.

Entering the foodshed -- The transcontinental lettuce -- The Wal-Mart effect -- Making food deserts bloom -- Farmers as entrepreneurs -- Taking back the market -- Rebuilding the local foodshed -- The personal case for eating local.

Food tourism is a topic of increasing importance for many destinations. Seen as a means to potentially attract tourists and differentiate destinations and attractions by means of the association with particular products and cuisines, food is also regarded as an opportunity to generate added value from tourism through local agricultural systems and supply chains and the local food system. From a regional development perspective this book goes beyond culinary tourism to also look at some of the ways in which the interrelationships between food and tourism contribute to the economic, environmental and social wellbeing of destinations, communities and producers. It examines the way in which tourism and food can mutually add value for each other from the fork to the plate and beyond. Looking at products, e.g. cheese, craft beer, noodles, wine; attractions, restaurants and events; and diverse regional examples, e.g. Champagne, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Margaret River, southern Sweden, and Tuscany; the title highlights how clustering, networking and the cultural economy of food and tourism and foodscapes adds value for regions. Despite the attention given to food, wine and culinary tourism no book has previously directly focused on the contribution of food and tourism in regional development. This international collection has contributors and examples from almost every continent and provides a comprehensive account of the various intersections between food tourism and regional development. This timely and significant volume will inform future food and tourism development as well as regional development more widely and will be valuable reading for a range of disciplines including tourism, development studies, food and culinary studies, regional studies, geography and environmental studies.