Food for the Future : Stories from the Alternative Agro-food Movement

Through interviews with farmers, chefs, non-profit managers, teachers, consumers, and healthcare providers, the author uncovers the strengths of the alternative agro-food movement and argues that this movement is facilitating more sustainable agriculture, healthier consumption patterns, and greater access to nutritious food.

Food for the Future: Stories from the Alternative Agro-food Movement is about different foods, the stories they contain, and most of all the people in the stories. John Brueggemann interviewed dozens of farmers, chefs, non-profit managers, consumers, teachers, and healthcare providers. He argues that their individual stories point towards larger patterns that have shaped the alternative agro-food movement, and that other factors, including the environmental movement, farms, lifestyle movements, and consumers have all played a crucial role in its rise. The author concludes that the alternative agro-food movement is providing a countervailing force relative to mainstream market culture, and that instead of efficiency, profit, consumption, individualism and short-term thinking, the alternative agro-food movement emphasizes meaning, need, creation, community, and long-term thinking.