ABSTRACT

Sustainable agriculture is touted as an opportunity to improve the economic, environmental and social sustainability of agriculture. This chapter explores how consumers and farmers involved in sustainable agriculture put the goals of social sustainability into practice. Farmers' markets may serve as important sites for repairing the environmental damage done by conventional agriculture by contributing to an alternative and more sustainable food system. A number of scholars have pointed out that farmers' markets are spaces that tend to privilege middle-class whiteness. What is more, in addition to the potential positive effects for climate change, farmers' markets are often vibrant parts of their communities. This chapter examines how privilege operates in the space and practice of sustainable agriculture. This interrogation of privilege within sustainable agriculture is based on an intersectional understanding of social justice. The promise of the Green Revolution, high food yields, has meant a fundamental shift in how food is produced.