Global Movements for Food Justice - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 716

Forexample,theSlowFoodmovementemphasizestheimportanceoftheaesthetic
and cultural quality of food, affirming the right of all people to have nutritional, enjoy-
able, and sustainable food. Slow Food also emphasizes artisanal food production,
althoughmovementmembersandleadershiphaveincreasinglyrecognizedthelimitsof
thisemphasiswithregardstoissuesofequityandjustice(Viertel2011).heInternational
FederationofOrganicAgricultureMovements(IFOAM)isanotherprominentactor,
largely concerned with supporting the evolution of national and international organic
foodmarkets(Geier2007;Larsson,thisvolume).hefairtrademovementseekstopro-
vide producers with a greater portion of the “consumer dollar” spent on end products.3
This represents an attempt to build alternatives to current trade regimes by explicitly
integratingvaluesofequityandfairnessintothemarket—valuesthatfreemarketsare
admittedlyillequippedtoprovide(Daly2007;Gold,thisvolume).
Incontrasttotheabovemoments,whichhingeonthedirectinvolvementoflocalor
global economic elites as supposedly ethical consumers, the Farmer to Farmer move-
ment(MovimientoCampesinoaCampesino,orMCAC)isorganizedbyandfocused
onsmall,mostlypoorfarmersinLatinAmerica.MCAChasexistedforoverthirtyyears
and claims to have several hundred thousand farmer-promoters: small farmers trained
in an empowerment-based pedagogy who travel to other villages and other countries to
directly train other small farmers. Using this peer-to-peer knowledge network, MCAC
seeks to empower promoters and farmers, and to build autonomy and sustainable
livelihoods based on agroecological methods and a culture of experimentation (Holt-
Giménez2006).
Beyond these prominent, organized transnational actors, recent years have seen
numerous other examples of food movements, including national and subna-
tional movements for agrarian reform (Herring 2003; Ondetti 2008), and govern-
ment agri-environment schemes seeking to integrate the cultural, environmental,
andeconomicfunctionsofagriculture(i.e.,multifunctionalagriculture: Buttel2007;
Otte et al. 2007). here has also been growing public and government interest in
community-supported agriculture (CSA), farmers' markets, and urban agriculture
(USDA2006,BrownandMiller2008,Mogket al.2012).hisperiodhasalsoseenthe
spreadandinnovationoffoodpolicycouncils(Harperet al.2009;Maluf2010),aswell
asacclaimeddocumentariesandbookschallengingthevaluesexisting(orlacking)in
the current food system (e.g., The Omnivore's Dilemma , by Michael Pollan; Fast Food
Nation , by Eric Schlosser; Stuffed and Starved , by Raj Patel; Food, Inc. , by Karl Weber; Le
Monde selon Monsanto , by Marie-Monique Robin; and King Corn ,byLeeRoyStewart).
Analyzingthesephenomenabringsintoquestionthedegreetowhichanyofthem
maybeconsidered“transnationalmovements.”Tarrow(1998),forexample,developeda
typology of four types of transnational collective action: cross-border diffusion, politi-
cal exchange, transnational issue networks, and true transnational social movements
(p. 237).4 Under his typology, most of the above examples would fail to meet the crite-
ria for transnational social movements per se . True transnational social movements are
defined as exhibiting transnational interactions sustained over time, and a continuous,
high degree of integration between transnational actors and indigenous social networks.