The New American Farmer: Immigration, Race, and the Struggle for Sustainability

Thursday, November 21, 1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.

Join author Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern in a talk about her new book about the new influx of immigrant farmers in the United States.

Although the majority of farms in the United States have US-born owners who identify as white, a growing number of new farmers are immigrants, many of them from Mexico, who originally came to the United States looking for work in agriculture. Drawing on her forthcoming book from MIT Press The New American Farmer, Dr. Minkoff-Zern will explore the experiences of Latinx immigrant farmers as they transition from farmworkers to farm owners, offering a new perspective on racial inequity and sustainable farming. Minkoff-Zern argues that immigrant farmers, with their knowledge and experience of alternative farming practices, are—despite a range of challenges—actively and substantially contributing to the movement for an ecological and sustainable food system.

When and Where?

• Thursday, November 21, 2019 | 1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
• Woodward IRC Room 5 | 2198 Health Sciences Mall, Vancouver BC

About the Presenters

Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern is an Assistant Professor of Food Studies and Affiliate of the Departments of Geography and Women’s and Gender Studies at Syracuse University. Dr. Minkoff-Zern’s research and teaching broadly explores the interactions between food and racial justice, labor movements, and transnational environmental and agricultural policy. This focus builds on her extensive experience with sustainable development and agricultural biodiversity projects abroad, combined with work on migrant health issues domestically. She has spent many years working on farms and with agriculture and food organizations in Guatemala, New York, and California. Her current project builds on previous research, where she found that a significant population of farmworkers and other first-generation Latino immigrants to the United States aspire to be small-scale farmers. In this work, she explores immigrant farmers’ roles in agrarian change in the United States today. She earned a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley and a B.A. from Cornell University, where she graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of arts in sustainable agriculture and development and a concentration in Latin American studies.