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NYU Press
New York, 🇺🇸 United States

A FOODIE’S GUIDE TO CAPITALISM

Eric Holt-Gimenez

Understanding the Political Economy of What We Eat

Holt-Giménez offers emblematic accounts—and critiques—of past and present-day struggles to change the food system, from “voting with your fork,” to land occupations. We learn about the potential and the pitfalls of organic and community-supported agriculture, certi ed fair trade, micro nance, land trusts, agrarian reform, cooperatives, and food aid. We also learn about the convergence of growing social movements using the food system to challenge capitalism. How did racism, classism, and patriarchy become structural components of our food system? Why is a rational agriculture incompatible with the global food regime? Can transforming our food system transform capitalism? These are questions that can only be addressed by rst understanding how capitalism works.

Capitalism drives our global food system. Everyone who wants to end hunger, who wants to eat good, clean, healthy food, needs to understand capitalism. This book will help do that.

In his latest book, Eric Holt-Giménez draws from classical and modern analyses, to introduce the reader to the history of our food system and

to the basics of capitalism. In straightforward prose,

A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism explains the political economics of why—even as local, organic, and gourmet food have spread around the world—billions go hungry in the midst of abundance; why obesity is a global epidemic; and why land-grabbing, global warming, and environmental pollution are increasing. 

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Published 2023-05-30 by NYU Press , ISBN: 9781583676608

Main content page count: 256 Pages

ISBN: 9781583676608

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“Food is life. Growing food is the livelihood of most

of humanity. And we all eat. Eric Holt-Giménez, in

A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism, shows how food has been transformed into commodity, destroying farmers’ livelihoods, destroying the health of the planet and the health of people. He calls on each of us to become the change we want to see in the food system, so it nourishes the Earth and all beings.”