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The Food Sharing Revolution

How Start-Ups, Pop-Ups, and Co-Ops are Changing the Way We Eat

  • Book
  • © 2018

Overview

Authors:
  1. Michael S. Carolan

    1. Colorado State University, Fort Collins, USA

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  • Tells the inspiring stories of farmers, chefs, and entrepreneurs who have realized their dreams through the sharing

  • Presents a hopeful alternative to our corporate food system

  • Offers smart, clear-eyed warnings about the pitfalls of sharing and how to avoid them

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-x
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: Ownership through Sharing

    • Michael S. Carolan
    Pages 1-17

  3. A Nightmare Realized

    • Michael S. Carolan
    Pages 19-38

  4. When Sharing Is Illegal

    • Michael S. Carolan
    Pages 39-53

  5. The Promise of Access

    • Michael S. Carolan
    Pages 55-69

  6. Social Trade-offs

    • Michael S. Carolan
    Pages 71-84

  7. Putting Shared Technologies to Work

    • Michael S. Carolan
    Pages 85-102

  8. Overcoming Barriers

    • Michael S. Carolan
    Pages 103-116

  9. Walls Make Terrible Neighbors

    • Michael S. Carolan
    Pages 117-132

  10. From Pricks to Partners

    • Michael S. Carolan
    Pages 133-146

  11. Food Sovereignty

    • Michael S. Carolan
    Pages 147-159

  12. Back Matter

    Pages 161-183
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Keywords

About this book

Marvin is a contract hog farmer in Iowa. He owns his land, his barn, his tractor, and his animal crates. He has seen profits drop steadily for the last twenty years and feels trapped. Josh is a dairy farmer on a cooperative in Massachusetts. He doesn’t own his cows, his land, his seed, or even all of his equipment. Josh has a healthy income and feels like he’s made it.

In The Food Sharing Revolution, Michael Carolan tells the stories of traditional producers like Marvin, who are being squeezed by big agribusiness, and entrepreneurs like Josh, who are bucking the corporate food system. The difference is Josh has eschewed the burdens of individual ownership and is tapping into the sharing economy.

Josh and many others are sharing tractors, seeds, kitchen space, their homes, and their cultures. They are business owners like Dorothy, who opened her bakery with the help of a no-interest, crowd-sourced loan. They are chefs like Camilla, who introduces diners to her native Colombian cuisine through peer-to-peer meal sharing. Their success is not only good for aspiring producers, but for everyone who wants an alternative to monocrops and processed foods.
The key to successful sharing, Carolan shows, is actually sharing. He warns that food, just like taxis or hotels, can be co-opted by moneyed interests. But when collaboration is genuine, the sharing economy can offer both producers and eaters freedom, even sovereignty. The result is a healthier, more sustainable, and more ethical way to eat.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Colorado State University, Fort Collins, USA

    Michael S. Carolan

About the author

Dr. Carolan is Associate Dean for Research for the College of Liberal Arts at Colorado State University. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles and chapters. His areas of expertise include environmental and agricultural law and policy, environmental sociology, the sociology of food systems and agriculture, and the sociology of technology and scientific knowledge. He also dabbles in social theory. He has published the following books: No One Eats Alone: Food as a Social Enterprise (2017); Biological Economies: Experimentation and the Politics of Agrifood Frontiers (2016; with Richard LeHeron, Hugh Campbell, and Nick Lewis); Food Utopias: Reimagining Citizenship, Ethics and Community (2015 with Paul Stock and Chris Rosin); Cheaponomics: The High Cost of Low Prices (2014); Society and the Environment: Pragmatic Solutions to Ecological Issues (2013); Reclaiming Food Security (2013); The Sociology of Food and Agriculture (2012); The Real Cost of Cheap Food (2011); Embodied Food Politics (2011); A Sociological Look at Biofuels: Understanding the Past/Prospects for the Future(2010); and Decentering Biotechnology: Assemblages Built and Assemblages Masked (2010). Dr. Carolan is also Co-Editor for the Journal of Rural Studies.

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