Books About Food Systems

The Shared Kitchen Toolkit: A Practical Guide for Planning, Launching and Managing a Shared Use Commercial Kitchen is a comprehensive guide to starting a new shared-use or incubator kitchen. It provides an overview of emerging kitchen models and highlights opportunities to enhance the community impact and financial sustainability of shared kitchens.

Opening Community Facilities to Food Entrepreneurs: Guidance for Communities and Facility Operators is a guide that focuses on the opportunity for existing kitchens in community-serving facilities (such as community centers) to provide kitchen access to food entrepreneurs. It provides practical steps for establishing a rental program, profiles Kitchen Connect programs, and highlights ways stakeholders can support kitchen access.

Food, Farms, and Community: Exploring Food Systems by Lisa Chase and Vern Grubinger

Do you understand what food systems are?  Many people don’t and it's not easy to explain. This book is a great introduction – learn how our food gets from production to consumption and how we can create food and farming systems that promote the health of people and planet.

The End of Plenty: The Race to Feed a Crowded World by Joel K. Bourne, Jr.

A look at industrial farming and how food production must change to meet demands. The food situation is actually better than it was 20 years ago. There's more organic, local, and seasonal growing. It’s inspiring that students are interested in these issues now and we can make progress without overturning the whole system.

From Field to Fork: Food Ethics for Everyone by Paul Thompson

Should we buy organic or local? Should we care how farm animals are raised? Ethical dilemmas impact the way we shop for food. For people who aren't trained in ethics, it's sometimes hard to think about these things, and this book can help you start to sort it out.

Organic Struggle: The Movement for Sustainable Agriculture in the United States by Brian K. Obach

This book has a good discussion of the development of the organic standards. It explains the importance of maintaining strict organic standards, and why there's such intense conflict about them. One of the biggest issues facing the organic industry is confidence in the standards.

Afro-Vegan: Farm-Fresh African, Caribbean & Southern Flavors Remixed by Bryant Terry

Bryant Terry is truly concerned about the health of African Americans who tend to have much higher levels of chronic disease so he sets out to demonstrate that it's possible to cook a healthier, vegan diet using the ingredients of traditional African cuisine like collards, grits, and okra. A unique book.

Lentil Underground: Renegade Farmers and the Future of Food in Americaby Liz Carlisle

This book is interviews of farmers in Montana and their success stories. She’s passionate. The farmers are passionate. It's an inspiring story.

Breadlines Knee-Deep in Wheat: Food Assistance in the Great Depressionby Janet Poppendieck

If you want to understand the Farm Bill and the fight about food stamps - read this book. There was a lot of congressional fighting over SNAP from the beginning and it continues even now.

Lethal but Legal: Corporations, Consumption, and Protecting Public Healthby Nick Freudenberg

This book shows the parallels between food issues and things like cigarettes, guns, and alcohol. Food producers use the same corporate strategies as these other industries to enrich themselves at the expense of public health. Freudenberg writes about ways for organizing against corporate power to create a healthier more sustainable environment.