Book Event 📚: Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa Mares Discuss "Will Work for Food", a Fresh Look at the Hidden Labor Behind How We Eat
Want ethical food? Start with the workers. "Will Work for Food" exposes worker exploitation across the food system in and makes the case that labor justice is essential to a sustainable future.
You are invited to join me on Tuesday, October 21, 2025, from 12:30-1:30 PM for a virtual conversation with Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa Mares, authors of a new book called Will Work for Food: Labor across the Food Chain. If you are interesting in understanding the latest research on what’s wrong with our food system, including the treatment of immigrant workers, and learning what we can do to make things right, then this is the book for you.
As usual, there will be plenty of time for Q&A and I will post a recording of our conversation the following day in case you missed it. Free registration is required at the link below the overview of the book below. If you’re planning to join the conversation, I’d love to hear what questions you’d like me to ask the authors. Drop your suggestions in the comments below.
The Web of Injustices Exposed in “Will Work for Food”
We often hear about the need for a more sustainable and ethical food system, but the conversation rarely centers on the people whose labor makes that system possible. Laura-Anne and Teresa’s new book shifts our attention to exactly that question: what would it take to create a food system devoid of human exploitation?
Drawing on food systems scholarship and labor justice research, the authors trace labor conditions from fields to stores, restaurants, home kitchens, and even garbage dumps, arguing that improving labor standards and building solidarity among frontline workers is essential to any vision of food justice.
The book arrives at a particularly urgent moment. As Minkoff-Zern and Mares note in a recent blog post, “How Immigrant Workers Hold Up the Food System”, they began writing during the COVID-19 pandemic when there was a growing public recognition of essential workers—especially those bringing food to our plates. There was hero pay for grocery workers, grassroots efforts to provide PPE to farmworkers, and successful union campaigns at Starbucks and Amazon warehouses.
But under the current administration, food worker organizing groups like the Food Chain Workers Alliance have been forced to redirect their energy from proactive advocacy to defensive measures, supporting detained workers and mobilizing allies to protect against ICE raids on worksites. Policy experts estimate that at least two million immigrant workers labor in the food system, and many have experienced unrelenting attacks on their safety and livelihoods over the past several months as their communities and workplaces have become targets of immigration enforcement.
The authors make a compelling case that labor exploitation is not a side issue in our food system but rather its foundation. Food warehouses, slaughterhouses, grocery stores, and fast food restaurants depend on a transient, low-paid, low-skilled, and powerless workforce, while fresh fruits and vegetables are still harvested largely by hand under conditions so terrible they evoke the harsh fictions of John Steinbeck and Émile Zola. Minkoff-Zern and Mares trace this trail of injustice from farm to plate, insisting that without fair wages, safe workplaces, and dignity for the people who work hard to feed us, our food system will never be ethical or sustainable.
Their book offers both a clear-eyed analysis of worker precarity across sectors and a call to action for building systems-level, cross-sector organizing that can broaden the political imaginaries of both food and labor movements.
About the Authors
Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern is a fellow human geographer and food systems scholar, also at Syracuse University. Her research and teaching broadly explores the interactions between food and racial justice, labor movements, and transnational environmental and agricultural policy. Laura-Anne’s previous book, The New American Farmer: Immigration, Race, And The Struggle For Sustainability, was featured on my list of 5 Books about Immigration and Labor to Read on Labor Day.
Teresa Mares is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Vermont and is the Director for the Graduate Program in Food Systems. Her research focuses on the labor in the food system, food security and food sovereignty, and migration from Latin America.
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