Food System Intermediaries

What does expanding agribusiness—and community resistance to it—reveal about the influence of global trends on local livelihoods, and conversely, the influence of food traditions on international networks?  In Food System Intermediaries, anthropologist Adrian Hearn examines how small farmers and their allies are defending their lands and livelihoods from expanding commodity plantations. At the heart of these encounters are food system intermediaries: people who carefully articulate food traditions to forge consensus among otherwise disconnected community producers, local governments, and urban customers. Their efforts to bring these groups together must contend with alternative portrayals of food circulated by more powerful corporate and government actors.

The book offers case studies of urban farms in Melbourne, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Beijing, and Havana to demonstrate how intermediaries are building alliances to cultivate more sustainable food systems, particularly as China’s impact on global agriculture deepens.