How to successfully challenge and transform public school-food programs to emphasize care, justice, and sustainability, with insights from eight countries across the Global North and South.
School food programs are about more than just feeding kids. They are a form of community care and a policy tool for advancing education, health, justice, food sovereignty, and sustainability. Transforming School Food Politics around the World illustrates how everyday people from a diverse range of global contexts have successfully challenged and changed programs that fall short of these ideals. Editors Jennifer Gaddis and Sarah A. Robert highlight the importance of global and local struggles to argue that the transformative potential of school food hinges on valuing the gendered labor that goes into caring for, feeding, and educating children.
Through accessible and inspiring essays, Transforming School Food Politics around the World shows politics in action. Chapter contributors include youths, mothers, teachers, farmers, school nutrition workers, academics, lobbyists, policymakers, state employees, nonprofit staff, and social movement activists. Drawing from historical and contemporary research, personal experiences, and collaborations with community partners, they provide readers with innovative strategies that can be used in their own efforts to change school food policy and systems. Ultimately, this volume sets the stage to reimagine school food as part of the infrastructure of daily life, arguing that it can and should be at the vanguard of building a new economy rooted in care for people and the environment.
Contributors:
Alexis Agliano Sanborn, Lisa Altmann, José Arimatea Barros Bezerra, Islandia Bezerra, Jennifer Black, Brooks Bowden, Christine C. Caruso, Cristiane Coradin, Rebecca Davis, Sinikka Elliott, Rachel Engler-Stringer, Debbie Field, Lucy Flores, Andrée Gacoin, Jennifer Gaddis, Michelle Gautreaux, Anne Hales, Karin Hjälmeskog, Anore Horton, Kristiina Janhonen, Jennifer LeBarre, Raven Lewis, Faye Mack, Marjaana Manninen, Brent Mansfield, Anne Moertel, Katsura Omori, Prerna Rana, Margaret Read, Emmanuelle Ricaud Oneto, Sarah A. Robert, Betsy Rosenbluth, Amy Rosenthal, Ludmir dos Santos Gomes, Sônia Fátima Schwendler, Amy Shollenberger, Courtney Smith, Seulgi Son, Jarrett Stein

Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Section 1: The Power and Potential of National School Meal Programs
1 A Whole Systems Approach to School Food Policy in Japan
2 Centering Children, Health and Justice in Canadian School Food Programs
3 School Food Politics, Identity, and Indigeneity in the Peruvian Amazon
Section 2: Claiming Space for Youth and Worker Voices
4 Sustainable Food Education in Finnish Schools Through Collaborative Pedagogy
5 Rebel Ventures and Youth-Led Food Initiatives in the United States
6 Creating a Mobile Method to Nourish Children in the United States through the “Yum-Yum Bus”
7 Local and National Responses to the Covid-19 Pandemic in the United States
Section 3: Struggling for Just School Food Economies
8 Civil Society Activism and Government Partnerships in India
9 Cooperative and Small-Scale Farming through Brazil’s National Procurement Standards
10 Agroecology and Feminist Praxis in Brazilian School Food Politics
11 Direct Urban-Rural Supply Chains for South Korean Communities
Section 4: Tools and Campaigns for Systems Change
12 Using Storytelling in the United States to Build Empathy for Change
13 Facilitating Think Tanks to Guide Action and Advocacy in Canadian Teachers Unions
14 The Center for Ecoliteracy’s Approach to School Food Systems Change in the United States
15 Developing Solidarity Coalitions for Universal School Meals and Local Food in the United States
Conclusion
Ancillary Materials
Contributor Bios

Jennifer E. Gaddis is Associate Professor of Civil Society and Community Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of The Labor of Lunch. She is an advisory board member of the National Farm to School Network.
Sarah A. Robert is Associate Professor at the University at Buffalo’s Graduate School of Education. She is the author of Neoliberal Education Reform; Neoliberalism, Gender, and Education Work; and School Food Politics. She is an Associate Editor for Gender, Work, and Organizations.