ABSTRACT
Food is a most basic human need. Yet many of those who grow, harvest, process, or serve food to others struggle to feed their own families. Changes in farming and food production have left the working class particularly vulnerable and often invisible. In this chapter, we consider the ways the working class, broadly defined, engage with our food system as laborers and consumers. Farmworkers and restaurant workers, for example, contend with precarious working conditions and some of the lowest pay in the U.S. labor market. As consumers with limited resources, the working class face higher rates of diabetes, obesity, and a myriad of health problems that are products of a food system that subsidizes sugary snacks over fruits and vegetables. Nonetheless, working-class individuals are also using food as sites of resistance and action. Local food movements such as farmers’ markets and community-supported agriculture and food sovereignty efforts move toward food justice in an often unjust food system. Yet some of these approaches face criticism for primarily serving those who are white and middle class. The last section of the chapter provides an overview of current projects and movements, such as the Coalition of Immokalee Worker’s Fair Food Program, Wholesome Wave, and the North Bolivar Good Food Revolution in the Mississippi Delta, which demonstrate community responses to food injustice through the current food system.
