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Food Reform Movements: Conclusion: The Food Movement between Populism and Elitism

Appears in
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America

By Andrew F. Smith

Published 2004

  • About

The contemporary food reform movement has emerged from an uneasy alliance between a plurality of professions, all engaged in a competition for material and symbolic rewards to be obtained from the government, nonprofit organizations, or philanthropic organizations through the mobilization of practical and scientific knowledge. This plurality is evident in the many concurring terms commonly used to make sense of these efforts: “alternative food,” “community food security,” “food justice,” “food sovereignty,” “good food,” “local food,” “real food,” “sustainable food,” “true food,” or simply the “food movement.” Nevertheless, unifying themes pervade much of this social movement, forming a set of shared beliefs, assumptions, and values that can be traced back to earlier periods: the romanticized ideal of a preindustrial past when humans lived closer to nature, a sense of moral responsibility and civic virtues tied to agrarian living, antimonopoly sentiments in the form of support to small farms, a yearning for self-sufficiency coupled with a denunciation of entrepreneurial and political elites—as it appears in the diatribe against agribusiness interests (“Big Agriculture”) and federal farm policies. All these familiar themes would identify the food reform movement with a particular brand of American populism, which stands on the side of the powerless against strong political and economic forces.

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