Land Justice: Re-imagining Land, Food, and the Commons

by Justine M. Williams (Editor), Eric Holt-Giménez (Editor)

In recent decades, the various strands of the food movement have made enormous strides in calling attention the many shortcomings and injustices of our food and agricultural system. Farmers, activists, scholars, and everyday citizens have also worked creatively to rebuild local food economies, advocate for food justice, and promote more sustainable, agroecological farming practices. However, the movement for fairer, healthier, and more autonomous food is continually blocked by one obstacle: land access. As long as land remains unaffordable and inaccessible to most people, we cannot truly transform the food system.

The term land-grabbing is most commonly used to refer to the large-scale acquisition of agricultural land in Asian, African, or Latin American countries by foreign investors. However, land has and continues to be “grabbed” in North America, as well, through discrimination, real estate speculation, gentrification, financialization, extractive energy production, and tourism. This edited volume, with chapters from a wide range of activists and scholars, explores the history of land theft, dispossession, and consolidation in the United States. It also looks at alternative ways forward toward democratized, land justice, based on redistributive policies and cooperative ownership models.

With prefaces from leaders in the food justice and family farming movements, the book opens with a look at the legacies of white-settler colonialism in the southwestern United States. From there, it moves into a collectively-authored section on Black Agrarianism, which details the long history of land dispossession among Black farmers in the southeastern US, as well as the creative acts of resistance they have used to acquire land and collectively farm it. The next section, on gender, explores structural and cultural discrimination against women landowners in the Midwest and also role of “womanism” in land-based struggles. Next, a section on the cross-border implications of land enclosures and consolidations includes a consideration of what land justice could mean for farm workers in the US, followed by an essay on the challenges facing young and aspiring farmers. Finally, the book explores the urban dimensions of land justice and their implications for locally-autonomous food systems, and lessons from previous struggles for democratized land access.

Ultimately, the book makes the case that to move forward to a more equitable, just, sustainable, and sovereign agriculture system, the various strands of the food movement must come together for land justice.

Genres: Food, Nonfiction, Nature, Agriculture, Indigenous, Philosophy, Environment

345 pages, Paperback

Published June 22, 2017

Reviews

[Cindy Geary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have thought a lot about food justice in the past, but this book puts food justice under the much larger umbrella of land justice. Land INjustice in this country began when Europeans started settling North America and is connected to white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism without a conscience. This book covers diverse issues, written in diverse voices. It does not skirt the complexity of the issues or the challenges in working towards just solutions. I learned a lot from these essays and began thinking about the influence of land policies on my own life, and what I can do to promote fairer access to land and food.

I bought this book at the Baltimore Book Festival and listened to a panel of authors speak. I am glad I bought the book.

[Mills College Library]

333.30973 L2533 2017