Foodtopia: Radicals, Progressives, and Farmers in Pursuit of the Good Life

In Foodtopia, Margot Anne Kelley explores the history of food-centric utopian movements in America, from 1840 to the present day, highlighting the efforts of young farmers to establish small-scale farming as an alternative to mainstream agriculture. These movements were fueled by a desire for a simpler life, unpolluted water and air, racial and gender equality, peace, a less consumerist lifestyle, authenticity, simplicity, a healthy diet, and a sustaining connection to the natural world. Millennials who have jettisoned cities for rural life form the core of the current back-to-the-land movement, and food has become an important element of the social justice movement.

Format: Hardback
Length: 384 pages
Publication date: 22 September 2022
Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher Inc

“Insightful, empathetic, and a thoughtful consideration of a topic that will have a substantial impact on our future.”— Booklist

Readable Feast, Book Award Winner for Socially Conscious Writing

Civil Eats Food and Farming Book Pick

Ever wonder if there's a better way to live, work, and eat? You're not alone. Here is the story of five back-to-the-land movements, from 1840 to present day, when large numbers of utopian-minded people in the United States took action to establish small-scale farming as an alternative to mainstream agriculture. Then and now, it's the story of people striving to live freely and fight injustice, to make the food on their table a little healthier, and to leave the planet less scarred than they found it.

Throughout America's history as an industrial nation, sizable countercultural movements have chosen to forgo modern comforts in pursuit of a simpler life. In this illuminating alternative American history, Margot Anne Kelley details the evolution of food-centric utopian movements that were fueled by deep yearnings for unpolluted water and air, racial and gender equality, for peace, for a less consumerist lifestyle, for a sense of authenticity, for simplicity, for a healthy diet, and for a sustaining connection to the natural world.

Millennials who jettisoned cities for rural life form the core of America's current back-to-the-land movement. These young farmers helped meet surges in supplies for food when COVID-19 ravaged lives and economies, and laid bare limitations in America's industrial food supply chain. Their forebears were the utopians of the 1840s, including Thoreau and his fellow Transcendental friends who created Brook Farm and Fruitlands; the single taxers and "little landers" who created self-sufficient communities at the turn of the th.

Dimension: 228 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781567927306