Place-Based Food Systems: Making the Case, Making it Happen

n less than a century, our food system has been transformed into a complex network of global-industrial supply chains, increasingly disconnecting us from the people and processes that provide our food. Such a ‘market-driven’ system externalizes many of its social, environmental, and economic costs. At the same time, it concentrates power and profits among a few stakeholders who maintain hegemonic control of the food systems, yet are often far removed from its negative impacts. The list of transgressions is long and familiar to us: extensive environmental degradation, unjust labor conditions for food workers, the collapse I