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Will Work for Food: Labor across the Food Chain
Examining the essential role—and exploitation—of frontline workers across the food chain.
Food consumers are demanding a healthier and more sustainable food system. Yet labor is rarely part of the discussion. In Will Work for Food, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa Mares chronicle labor across the food chain, connecting the entire food system—from fields to stores, restaurants, home kitchens, and even garbage dumps.
Using a political economy framework, the authors argue that improving labor standards and building solidarity among frontline workers across sectors is necessary for creating a more just food system. What would it take, they ask, to move toward a food system that is devoid of human exploitation? Combining insights from food systems and labor justice scholarship with actionable recommendations for policy makers, the book is a call to action for labor activists, food studies students and scholars, and anyone interested in food justice.
Food consumers are demanding a healthier and more sustainable food system. Yet labor is rarely part of the discussion. In Will Work for Food, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa Mares chronicle labor across the food chain, connecting the entire food system—from fields to stores, restaurants, home kitchens, and even garbage dumps.
Using a political economy framework, the authors argue that improving labor standards and building solidarity among frontline workers across sectors is necessary for creating a more just food system. What would it take, they ask, to move toward a food system that is devoid of human exploitation? Combining insights from food systems and labor justice scholarship with actionable recommendations for policy makers, the book is a call to action for labor activists, food studies students and scholars, and anyone interested in food justice.
317 pages, Paperback
Published September 23, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 27, 2026
Such a great book. Rarely are holistic analyses of food system workers so optimistic and full of light while still providing a direct understanding of each sector of labor. Highly recommend!
March 8, 2026
“Despite a growing awareness of essential workers, we are far from a comprehensive retooling of the inherently unequal capitalist system of food production.” (205)
“To build a truly sustainable and just food system, we must recognize, compensate, and celebrate the work that happens at all stages of the food chain and those who are doing this work.” (207)
——
These quotes are selected from the conclusion of “Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain.” I have been looking forward to sitting down and chewing on this book since taking Minkoff-Zern’s course with the same name in the Fall of 2023 at Syracuse University. This class—using then-unpublished copy from the book— will stay at the front of my mind forever.
As a Food Studies student, I’ve asked and studied answers to questions about how food is produced and distributed, how people are fed, how is the planet impacted, how can consumers influence the system, etc. This book uses labor as a lens for interrogating these questions on the systemic inequalities in the globalized food system in a clearly organized way walking step by step in how food gets from the farm to the table to the waste bin.
Labor is the thread that connects issues of poverty, hunger, heath, sustainability, and social justice in the food system. This book pushes us to recognize who all is providing the effort to keep us fed and how consolidated corporations leverage their power to exploit this labor at the lowest dime. The authors also do a fantastic of job of highlighting victories emerging from worker led organizing and encouraging readers to share their support and never lose hope.
There are two areas of this research i would like to particularly highlight:
Fissured work: Chapter 3 describes how thousands of workers creating value for places like Amazon, Walmart, Nestls, and JBS are purposely contracted out to third parties to save costs. This is called fissuring— workers on the assembly line, at the distribution site, driving truck drivers, and cleaning the facilities are loaned to major corporations by much smaller grossing firms that compete in a race to the bottom to maximize profit for these giants that then have no incentive to share that wealth because they don’t directly employ those people. This situation means fewer benefits, less bargaining power, more dangerous work place, and lower quality of life. Before Laura-Anne taught me about this growing pattern, i had absolutely no idea about it because it’s not something i ever thought to think about. Now, i can see it everywhere. If you think about your uber, lyft, or doordash that use contracted labor without taking on any liability—that’s labor fissuring.
Charity work:
I have worked in the emergency food space for a few years, making me a member of this sector of the food system. I really appreciated the discussion of how food distribution of surplus food is done using free labor of majority women. Despite this work being critical to patching the safety net that is constantly getting holes shot through it, those who do it are compensated very little if at all. By devaluing this work, our society says that caring for our neighbors isn’t important. There is a fallacy that the compensation in this work is a moral one, but if these services are going to be reliable or make any sort of difference—workers must be paid a living wage. And don’t read too much into this, but maybe there would be less need for emergency food if all people were paid a living wage IN THE FIRST PLACE.
All this to say: Please read this book. It is truly so carefully crafted and thoughtfully articulated, and you will never see anything the same way again. Food labor is purposefully hidden from consumers, so these conversations need to be had. When we allow labor abuse to go unspoken —the situation continues to deteriorate. Under this administration, labor is already in a real tough spot. After you finish this book, get ready to join the picket line with our local unions and workers centers. I’ll see you there!
“To build a truly sustainable and just food system, we must recognize, compensate, and celebrate the work that happens at all stages of the food chain and those who are doing this work.” (207)
——
These quotes are selected from the conclusion of “Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain.” I have been looking forward to sitting down and chewing on this book since taking Minkoff-Zern’s course with the same name in the Fall of 2023 at Syracuse University. This class—using then-unpublished copy from the book— will stay at the front of my mind forever.
As a Food Studies student, I’ve asked and studied answers to questions about how food is produced and distributed, how people are fed, how is the planet impacted, how can consumers influence the system, etc. This book uses labor as a lens for interrogating these questions on the systemic inequalities in the globalized food system in a clearly organized way walking step by step in how food gets from the farm to the table to the waste bin.
Labor is the thread that connects issues of poverty, hunger, heath, sustainability, and social justice in the food system. This book pushes us to recognize who all is providing the effort to keep us fed and how consolidated corporations leverage their power to exploit this labor at the lowest dime. The authors also do a fantastic of job of highlighting victories emerging from worker led organizing and encouraging readers to share their support and never lose hope.
There are two areas of this research i would like to particularly highlight:
Fissured work: Chapter 3 describes how thousands of workers creating value for places like Amazon, Walmart, Nestls, and JBS are purposely contracted out to third parties to save costs. This is called fissuring— workers on the assembly line, at the distribution site, driving truck drivers, and cleaning the facilities are loaned to major corporations by much smaller grossing firms that compete in a race to the bottom to maximize profit for these giants that then have no incentive to share that wealth because they don’t directly employ those people. This situation means fewer benefits, less bargaining power, more dangerous work place, and lower quality of life. Before Laura-Anne taught me about this growing pattern, i had absolutely no idea about it because it’s not something i ever thought to think about. Now, i can see it everywhere. If you think about your uber, lyft, or doordash that use contracted labor without taking on any liability—that’s labor fissuring.
Charity work:
I have worked in the emergency food space for a few years, making me a member of this sector of the food system. I really appreciated the discussion of how food distribution of surplus food is done using free labor of majority women. Despite this work being critical to patching the safety net that is constantly getting holes shot through it, those who do it are compensated very little if at all. By devaluing this work, our society says that caring for our neighbors isn’t important. There is a fallacy that the compensation in this work is a moral one, but if these services are going to be reliable or make any sort of difference—workers must be paid a living wage. And don’t read too much into this, but maybe there would be less need for emergency food if all people were paid a living wage IN THE FIRST PLACE.
All this to say: Please read this book. It is truly so carefully crafted and thoughtfully articulated, and you will never see anything the same way again. Food labor is purposefully hidden from consumers, so these conversations need to be had. When we allow labor abuse to go unspoken —the situation continues to deteriorate. Under this administration, labor is already in a real tough spot. After you finish this book, get ready to join the picket line with our local unions and workers centers. I’ll see you there!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews