McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Environmental Science Book

In Together at the Table , Patricia Allen examines the U.S. alternative agrifood movement, which she sees as arising from the community food security movement and the sustainable agriculture movement. She is focused on analyzing the movement's discourse as a way to get at its self-understanding (or "cognitive content") and aims at producing theory not only about the movement but for the movement. By understanding the ideological underpinnings of the movements' weaknesses, she is able to offer possibilities for future collaborations and positive directions for the movement. As Allen explains, "Discovering how people working in the alternative agrifoodmovement and agrifood institutions view the world and how they see their place in challenging and reshaping the agrifood system represents an essential step for better understanding the sites of and possibilities for change in the agrifood system" (9). I highly recommend this read to anyone interested in the sustainable food movement.

Allen highlights the way that the alternative agrifood movement draws on residual ideas of Jeffersonian agrarianism, continuing to privilege the farmer and property owner. This prioritization of the farmer not only marginalizes farm workers but other forms of food systems labor as well. She suggests the ways ideas of economic competition and individualism structure the alternative markets that the movement produces, constraining some of the movement's more progressive impulses. She also questions the focus on the local within the sustainability movement, suggesting that local is not necessarily more democratic but may magnify the inequalities of race, gender, and wealth that already exist on a local level.