“Will Work for Food is at once an affirmation of the workers who make up the food system and an indictment of the forces that undermine the essential value of those who keep society fed. . . . Will Work for Food is a labor of love. It's clear from the outset that Minkoff-Zern and Mares deeply value the hands that feed us, indeed they have also labored in the food system, in their kitchens, and in their classrooms.”
“Will Work for Food . . . masterfully pulls together many threads of the existing scholarship on food workers with an accessible political-economy analysis. Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa Mares help readers understand how inequality is reproduced for workers all along the food chain and how they have organized to challenge that inequality.”
“Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa M. Mares' latest book Will Work for Food is a clearly written, and clear-eyed analysis of labor in the food system. . . . This book is an indispensable resource for food systems scholars, advocates, and policy makers seeking to improve conditions for workers across the food chain.”
"Eating organic, avoiding food additives, championing family farms, supporting animal rights—none of these worthy practices will make the American food system healthy. As the authors of this book make clear, our food system has been built on and continues to profit from the exploitation of poor immigrant workers. Food warehouses, slaughterhouses, grocery stores, and fast food restaurants depend on a transient, low-paid, low-skilled, and powerless workforce. Fresh fruits and vegetables—the foundation of a good diet—are still harvested largely by hand, under working conditions so terrible they evoke the harsh fictions of John Steinbeck and Émile Zola. Will Work for Food follows this trail of injustice from farm to plate. Without providing fair wages, a safe workplace, and a sense of dignity to the people who work hard to feed us, our food system will never be ethical or sustainable."—Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
"So many of our contemporary crises—from climate disasters to public health emergencies to punitive immigration policies—underscore our dependence on and exploitation of frontline food workers. This insightful and clearly written book offers a prescient analysis of the production of worker precarity across the food system while attending to complex intersections with race, gender, and citizenship. Most importantly, Will Work for Food highlights the potential for systems-level, cross-sector organizing and coalition building that can broaden the political imaginaries of food and labor movements."—Alison Hope Alkon, author of Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability
"This book is a remarkable synthesis of historical and current data, interwoven with brilliant and empathetic analysis of labor across the food chain. Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa Mares ground the book in the firsthand experiences of people harvesting vegetables, slaughtering animals, cooking meals, 'rescuing' wasted food, and everything in between. They encourage readers to widen their perspective of who 'counts' as a food worker by using a food systems lens that encompasses both paid food work outside the home and unpaid food work inside the home. The result is an invaluable and highly teachable resource, deeply engaging for students, scholars, consumers, workers, and activists eager to understand the conditions and organizing strategies of frontline food system workers."—Jennifer Gaddis, author of The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools
