Examining the essential role—and exploitation—of frontline workers across the food chain.
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 M. 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.
Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern is Associate Professor of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University. She is the author of The New American Farmer: Immigration, Race, and the Struggle for Sustainability.
Teresa M. Mares is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Affiliated Faculty of Food Systems at the University of Vermont. She is the author of Life on the Other Border: Farmworkers and Food Justice in Vermont.
"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
320 pp.6 x 9Illus: 23 b/w illustrations, 10 tables
9780520391611$29.95|£25.00Paper
Sep 2025