Food regime theory focuses upon the dynamics, and agents, of change in capitalist food and farming systems. Its exponents have been able to identify relatively stable periods of capital accumulation in the agri-food industries, along with the periods of transition. Recently, scholars have argued...

With “consumer demand” credited with driving major changes in the food industry related to food quality, safety, environmental, and social concerns, the contemporary politics of food has become characterized by a variety of attempts to redefine food consumption as an expression of...

Over the past two decades, Cuba has become a recognized global leader in sustainable agriculture. This paper explores how this process of agricultural transition has taken place, and argues that it has largely been led by research institutes, non-state organizations and the Cuban government,...

Large tracts of European rural land, mostly in the less favored areas (LFA), are devoted to low-inputs and large scale grazing systems (LSGS) with potential environmental and social functions. Although these LSGS may provide harbor for a good part of European nature values, their continuity is...

All authors in this symposium use a food regime perspective to ask questions about the present which—as these articles demonstrate—have several possible answers. History suggests a time perspective of 25–40 year cycles so far—a food regime 1870–1914, an experimental and chaotic era...

In March, 2004, the rural northern California county of Mendocino voted to ban the propagation of all genetically modified organisms (GMOs). This county was the first, and only, U.S. region to adopt such a ban despite widespread activism against biotechnology. Using a civic agriculture...

Stakeholders in traditional dairy-producing states in the upper Midwest and Northeast hope that the boom in the organic milk market will offer family-scale dairy farms a means to escape the cost-price squeeze of the conventional food system. However, recent trends in organic dairy raise...

This paper contrasts the perceptions of Canadians who are food-secure with the perceptions of Canadians who are food-insecure through the different meanings that they ascribe to a popular food product known as Kraft Dinner<Superscript>®</Superscript>. Data sources included individual interviews, focus group interviews,...</superscript>

Third-party certification is an increasingly prevalent tactic which agrifood activists use to “help” consumers shop ethically, and also to reorganize commodity markets. While consumers embrace the chance to “vote with their dollar,” academics question the potential for labels to foster...

This paper re-introduces the georgic ethic and the role it has historically played in debates about new agricultural practices. Public engagement, participatory research, and greater local involvement in crafting new means to work the land flood the literature of agrarian studies. Putting the...