Food Politics

  • The Political Economy of Agribusiness

    A Critical Development Perspective

    By Maria Luisa Mendonça     April 2023

    This book analyzes global economic policies that impact rural communities, land use, food sovereignty and environmental justice.

  • Tiny Engines of Abundance

    A History of Peasant Productivity and Repression

    By Jim Handy     April 2022

    Food production by small peasant farmers is both more productive and sustainable than food produced by corporate agriculture.

  • Growing and Eating Sustainably

    Agroecology in Action

    By Dana James and Evan Bowness  Foreword by Hannah Wittman     October 2021

    Through photostories, explore how agroecology is practiced by Brazilian farmers and community organizers who are leading the way in creating sustainable and just food systems.

  • The Fair Trade Handbook

    Building a Better World, Together

    Edited by Gavin Fridell, Zack Gross and Sean McHugh     October 2021

    Can global trade be made fair? This handbook brings together leading fair traders, activists, advocates and commentators in Canada and internationally, reflecting on the shortfalls of conventional business, production and global trade and how we can change our policies, practices and behaviours.

  • Frontline Farmers

    How the National Farmers Union Resists Agribusiness and Creates Our New Food Future

    Edited by Annette Aurélie Desmarais     November 2019

    Who grows the food we eat? How important is it that family farms are viable in Canada today and in the future? How do viable family farms help determine the safety, diversity and sustainability of Canada’s food systems? Why is this important to those of us who do not farm?

  • Agroecology

    Science and Politics

    By Peter M. Rosset and Miguel A. Altieri     October 2017

    Our global food system is largely based on unsustainable industrial agricultural practices, is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, is controlled by a handful of large corporations and produces unhealthy food. Agroecology is a solution to these increasingly urgent problems.

  • Belongings

    The Fight for Land and Food

    By Sally Miller     September 2016

    In Belongings, Sally Miller illustrates how food and farm crises result from adherence to the rules of private property.

  • Political Dynamics of Transnational Agrarian Movements

    By Saturnino M. Borras, Jr. and Marc Edelman     April 2016

    “The prayers of those of us who have long hungered for a comprehensive, historically deep, learned and accessible account of international agrarian movements have finally been answered in full. We will long be in debt to Edelman and Borras for this exceptional and lasting contribution to agrarian scholarship.” - James C. Scott, founding Director, Yale University Agrarian Studies Program, author of The Art of Not Being Governed

  • In Pursuit of Justice

    Just Us! Coffee Roasters Co-op and the Fair Trade Movement

    By Stacey Byrne and Errol Sharpe     September 2014

    This is the story of Just Us! Coffee Roasters Co-op, Canada’s first fair trade coffee roaster. This book describes its successes and its failures and details how a small group of people — “just us” — worked against adversity and defied many of the norms associated with building a business.

  • In Defense of Small Producers

    The Story of CLAC

    By Marco Coscione     February 2014

    In an international geopolitical panorama where Northern countries are increasingly in crisis and where the most interesting alternatives to sustainable development are coming from the South, the Latin American small producers, represented by the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Small Fair Trade Producers (CLAC), are assuming a more protagonistic role in the defense of the founding principles of the fair trade movement.