The Industrial Food System and the Vicious Cycle of Hunger and Inequality in the US.

This paper focuses on the role that the industrial food system as part of the "plutocratic insurgency" (Gilman, 2014) of the past 10 years is playing in the vicious and worsening cycle of hunger and inequality in the US. It begins by discussing the neoliberal environment that has replaced the welfare state of the 1970s. It then examines industrial agriculture and the corporate food regime, a highly concentrated group of agribusinesses that control the food system in the US. The paper then looks at how the industrial food system contributes to inequality on the production side of the food chain (farmers, farm workers, and rural communities) and on the consumption side (consumers, food workers, and poor urban/rural communities). The vicious cycle of hunger and inequality in the US food system is then discussed and opportunities for transformation of the system through movements rooted in labor and food justice are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]