Labor: The Hidden Workforce Behind Our Food

Consumers today are increasingly demanding organic produce, ethical sourcing, and sustainable food. But one critical ingredient is almost always missing from the conversation: labor.

Who harvests the food we eat? Who processes it, cooks it, packages it, and delivers it? And who is left invisible along the way?

In Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain, scholar Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern examines the human labor behind every step of the food system—from agricultural fields to restaurant kitchens to grocery stores and even waste streams. Drawing on research and lived experience, the book reveals how the modern food system depends on a vast workforce whose contributions are often hidden, undervalued, and exploited.

In this timely conversation, Minkoff-Zern joins Vera Chang, investigative photojournalist and environmental justice scholar, to discuss the people who make our food system possible and the movements working to transform it.

Behind every meal is labor. The question is whether we choose to see it.

Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern is a human geographer and food systems scholar. She is an Associate Professor of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University. Dr. Minkoff-Zern’s newest book, Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain (UC Press, 2025), explores the intersections between social movements in United States food systems and labor organizing. She earned a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. in Sustainable Agriculture and Development from Cornell University. She has experience laboring on farms, in restaurants, and feeding her own family at home.

Vera Chang is an investigative photojournalist and community-engaged environmental justice scholar whose work examines labor, power, and accountability in global food systems. She holds a PhD from UC Berkeley and is an assistant professor of environmental justice and sustainability at Saint Mary’s College of California, where she also teaches documentary photography. Before entering academia, she worked inside the food system at a national sustainability-oriented foodservice company and at a 1,400-acre educational farm and forest. Vera’s writing has appeared in The Guardian, Food & Wine, and Bitch, and her photographs have been published in Mother Jones, TIME, and Civil Eats' James Beard award-winning investigative series. She recently contributed chapters on food sovereignty to Nurturing Food Justice (MIT Press, 2025) and Ground Truths (UC Press, 2024).

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