Ben (B.R.) Cohen

B.R. Cohen is a professor at Lafayette College in Easton, PA, where he teaches courses about science, technology and nature, studies the historical origins of industrial agriculture, and works on the future of sustainable food. He is the author of Notes from the Ground: Science, Soil and Society in the American Countryside (2009) and co-editor of Technoscience and Environmental Justice: Expert Cultures in a Grassroots Movement (2011). More details are at his homepage, brcohen.net.

All Praise the Civics of Food Hubs

By on September 7, 2012

Just a few years ago there were but a smattering of “networks that allow regional growers to collaborate on marketing and distribution,” as Grist writer Claire Thompson observed, “networks that include a broad range of operations, from multi-farm CSAs to Craigslist-like virtual markets where buyers and producers can connect.”

Today, news stories about such food hubs are as frequent as a retweeted Mark Bittman article. With a big-tent definition, the USDA lists over 160 in operation from non-profits to private for-profit models. The East Coast is in the vanguard; New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and Vermont host the most. More remarkable than their media-worthy increase in numbers, is that food hubs are a wonderful example of the best face of the food movement’s transition beyond an earlier focus on labeling, markets, and matters of quantity, toward broader cultural issues of justice, sovereignty, and community. Read more