Food Margins: Lessons from an Unlikely Grocer

by Cathy Stanton

In a food industry shaped by the abundance, cheapness, and convenience that giant corporations can offer, small-scale ventures struggle to survive, as anthropologist Cathy Stanton discovered when she joined the effort to save a small food co-op in a former mill town in western Massachusetts. On the margins of the dominant system, Stanton found herself reckoning with its deep racial and class inequities, and learning that making real change requires a fierce commitment to community and a willingness to change herself as well. Part memoir and part history lesson, Food Margins traces the tangled economic and political histories of the plantation, the factory, and the supermarket through the life of one New England town. Stanton tells a complex and compelling story of a rural community imagining and creating a viable alternative to the mainstream in a time of increasingly urgent need to build a more socially and ecologically just food system.

Genres: Nonfiction, Food

240 pages, Paperback

Published May 23, 2024

About the author

Romance novelist Cathy Stanton, also wrote under the pseudonym Cathryn Clare.

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommended if you: care about food systems and/or co-ops, live in Massachusetts, love a good underdog story, are interested in economics.

I was biased to love this book from the start; it covers the history of Quabbin Harvest food co-op, a place I regularly patronized when I lived in the area for a year working for land trust that is Quabbin Harvest’s landlord. But even if I wasn’t biased, this is a great book that looks at the question, how much (and why) do our scrappy buy-local efforts matter when it’s clear they aren’t going to be able to change the overall food system?

Stanton is both an anthropologist and the board chair for a struggling food co-op in a post-industrial, also-struggling town in central Massachusetts, and she weaves these roles together as you watch the co-op nearly go under again and again and again, only to be saved by the love of a community (and a LOT of hard work and stress from a few dedicated volunteers). It’s tempting to be inspired by Quabbin Harvest, the little engine that could of food co-ops, and say, “Oh, we just need more farmer’s markets, we just need more community-owned businesses.” It’s also tempting to give in to despair when you see how no matter how often people ‘shop with their dollars’ or make efforts to ‘buy local,’ the store survives thanks to donations and grants and isn’t really profitable independently.

At times I think Stanton gets a little preachy about how “everything is terrible” – we feed a lot more people with a lot higher quality of life today with no fear of starvation than we did even a hundred years ago – but I also appreciated how she goes beyond Quabbin Harvest to illustrate the larger food and economic system the co-op operates in. She doesn’t shy away from calling out that just buying local can’t overturn the root causes of inequality, even as she simultaneously recognizes how important those efforts are. It’s a nuanced line to walk as an author.

I also appreciated how Stanton communicated the temptation as outsiders to look at the co-op and assume, “they must be doing it wrong.” I caught myself as a reader doing it over and over again: surely they must not understand basic business efficiency, and if they would only…Stanton made the same error herself, before she got more involved with the business. But this is where understanding the larger systematic factors come into play: there’s only so much efficiency to be gained when the very system of capitalism is incentivized to make sure you don’t survive.

"One of the many things I've learned as an avocational grocer is that even when we don't know enough about what we're doing or have everything we need, we can still act in ways that are purposeful and generous and real. And if we've started in the right direction - if we can tell a true alternative from a merely cosmetic one, and develop a tolerance for what it means to take some responsibility for keeping it going - then that *is* enough. In some ways, it is everything." (Stanton, 2024)

One of the better reads about the food system I’ve picked up recently, especially given the surge of fluffy farm and food memoirs; I especially recommend if you live in New England (it’s a delight to hear the stories of our region). And if you’re ever around the Quabbin Reservoir, go shop at Quabbin Harvest.

[Charlotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

holy shit. This book was exactly what I needed to hear.

[Readersaurus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read an earlier version in manuscript form and am happy to finally get around to reading the published version for the MA Center for the Book’s October challenge (a title published by a MA press). Some things have changed since the book came out, some have not. Some chapters leave me feeling hopeful, others, melancholy. We are still in the thick of trying to make this little co-op work. It's an astounding thing to see one's own projects and efforts so brilliantly placed within a larger historic, cultural, and economic context. There's so much to learn and think about here.

[Tanya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Food Margins Lessons from an Unlikely Grocer is a review of the food industry from the single farmer to the big store chains that deliver the food we eat. The story revolves around a small-town Co-Op struggling to survive against the large giants of industry. The author, Cathy Stanton, is an anthropologist and professor of food courses. She has also been personally involved with the small grocery store in the story from the beginning. She has experienced the ups and downs the business has experienced. The knowledge gained has given her a unique advantage in explaining the steps food takes from farmer to table.
The book is well written and has given me a better understanding of both the reasoning behind pricing and the often inability to get the healthy foods that I am looking for. This book would be beneficial to anyone that is in a small-scale grocery situation. It would also be helpful for those that do want access to healthier foods and seek the understanding what it takes to make those options available. After reading the book I have rearranged my shopping day so that I can visit the local establishments first and support them before going to the bulk stores.

[Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are very interested in equitable, sustainable, and healthy food production, the book is likely a 4+. If you also live in Massachusetts, then the local history makes it likely a 5 star read.

Stanton is an anthropologist by profession, and apparently a fiction writer on the side. So we get an interesting perspective from her 'academic' study of how the food market place developed and locked us into a cheap, highly industrialized, system for a basic need.

A must read for anyone involved with a food-coop. Lot's of difficult topics examined including:
- can only wealthy (a relative term) families afford to buy certified organic foods from local growers who can't compete price-wise with volume growers and sellers
- is the eternal growth and profit driven (usually short-term) system we have, ie capitalism, inappropriate for providing a basic need for people
- how much does the 'healthy foods' coop compromise its values in order to stay afloat

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is probably not a book I would have picked up without the MA Center for the Book challenge, and I'm glad I did! It's relatively local (as in it's a place I've actually been myself) - which makes sense given that is a MA publisher - and a really wonderful blend of history and anthropology and case study. It's a thoughtful read, but not challenging, and has a really nice expository balance that keeps the narrative going while packing in a whole bunch of context. At times, some of the detours seemed a bit more scenic than they needed to be, but that's also what allowed so much content to be packed into a relatively short book. Ostensibly this is the story of how a co-operative grocery store took shape and came into being, but it's really a look at historical food systems and issues of equity and how challenging it is to align actions with beliefs. Worth the read!

Massachusetts Center for the Book 2025 Reading Challenge:
October - A book published by a Massachusetts press

[Evanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Humans are always connected to the world around us when we eat. But one of the things that anthropology teaches you is the importance of being very specific when you talk about people, cultures, societies, economies, times, places. So I emphasize to my students that this world, the one that can be so hard to digest and comprehend, is the industrialized world, pieced together out of fossil fuels and commodity markets and Western scientific knowledge and plantations and assembly lines and the modern hubris of thinking that we'll always be able to invent ourselves out of any problems we might invent ourselves into.” (203)