ABSTRACT
As we near the end of the rst decade of the twenty-rst century, we are confronted with an increasing number of signs that our global food system is rapidly approaching, if not already in, a condition of crisis. Issues and problems that go beyond the litany of environmental degradation, pest and disease resistance, loss of genetic diversity, increasing dependence on fossil fuels, and others (Gliessman, 2007) now confront us, creating what is increasingly being called the food crisis. We now face a dramatic rise in food prices, increases in hunger and malnutrition, and even food riots in places in the world where people no longer have access to sufcient food. Making things worse, too many small traditional and family farmers have been forced off their land and out of agriculture due to a wide variety of reasons, including the neoliberalization of trade policy, the loss of support for local food production systems, the entrance of speculative nancial capital into food markets, changes in diets and food preferences that accompany greater access to global markets, the agrofuel boom and resulting diversion of food energy to feed the global demand for energy, and the enormous spike in the cost of petroleum in 2008 that caused a rise in the cost for all fossil-fuel-based inputs to agriculture (Rosset, 2006, 2008).
