Cooking Up Change?: Alternative Agrifood Practices and the Labor of Food Provisioning

Changes in the agrifood system, including increased industrialization, concentration and globalization, viewed by many as negatively impacting environmental, community and social well being, have prompted the rise of alternative agrifood initiatives.Alternative agrifood advocates often promote the use of whole foods, rather than processed foods, and aim to extend the local food season through activities such as canning, drying, and other forms of food storage.This is important to note given that food provisioning, which includes the of planning meals, acquiring food, preparing meals, and cleaning up, remains a largely gendered act.Thus, these expanded alternative agrifood practices could importantly be influencing the food provisioning labor of women.Food provisioning has been found to involve a physical, mental and emotional dimension.This study hypothesizes that the physical and emotional dimensions of food provisioning could be heightened for women who participate in alternative agrifood practices.Research suggests that socio-demographic factors also importantly influence the labor of food provisioning.Thus, this study applies a theory of intersectionality to further consider how socio-economic status and race/ethnicity, in addition to age, presence of children, partnership status, and employment status are associated with the physical and emotional dimensions of food provisioning, particularly for women engaged in alternative agrifood practices.While work and family scholars and feminist food about how women engaging in alternative agrifood practices experience the physical and emotional dimensions of food provisioning, and how socio-demographic factors moderate this relationship.In all, the data supported the hypotheses.Women engaged in alternative agrifood practices, compared to women who are not engaged in the alternative agrifood practices, appear to spend more time in food provisioning, cook more from scratch, and engage in a wider variety of food provisioning activities, suggesting that women who are highly engaged in alternative agrifood practices could be engaging in a third shift.Engaging in alternative agrifood practices also appears to heighten women's negative feelings with food provisioning, such as a sense of demand in food provisioning, and further heightens women's positive feelings with food provisioning, such as sense of reward.In addition, having lower incomes, being non-white, being employed, having a partner, having children and being younger all appear to add to the physical and emotional burden of food provisioning.Engaging in alternative agrifood practices, as well as having children, and having a partner, on the other hand, appear to enhance women's positive feelings with food provisioning.This study contributes to our understanding of the social limitations to scaling up alternative agrifood practices, and informs our understanding of how engaging in alternative agrifood practices can be a third shift, but also can be a form of rewarding care work.These findings also have significant implications for food system activism and agrifood system policy making.v This dissertation is dedicated in loving memory to my grandmother, Carolyn Decker, and to my mother, Connie Som, who taught me how to care for the earth, and for each other, with food.

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