With the advent of industrialism and its widespread application to our food supply – factory farms, genetic engineering, and agricultural chemicals – the struggle between human freedom and authority has reached a critical juncture. In spite of the rapid growth of an alternative food system – local and sustainable food production, farmers’ markets, the public’s rising food consciousness – we become more dependent everyday on industrial agriculture whose representatives insist that it is the only way to feed a hungry world. In the face of such assertions, we must ask if our dependence on such a system threatens to supplant individual self-reliance. Will personal freedom succumb finally and forever to the dominant voice of authority? Are we at risk of sacrificing our democratic voice to self-appointed governing elites? These are no longer speculative questions suitable only for philosophers, but real-life concerns set squarely on the plate of every eater.

Mark Winne’s second book, Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart Cookin’ Mamas: Fighting Back in an Age of Industrial Agriculture takes on the universal struggle between human freedom and authority in its relationship to food. While drawing from great thinkers like Emerson and Dostoevsky to frame his arguments, Winne moves quickly from philosophy to action with numerous stories about “local doers.” From urban gardening heroes in Cleveland, to feisty farmers in New England, to lower income mothers in Texas, Winne shows how people are reclaiming their connection to their food, health, land, and governments. Along the way he finds people of every stripe whose refusal to accept their fate harkens back to a classic form of American individualism, one that has proven itself able to fight back against systems that not only want to conquer our wallets, but also hope to control our minds.

Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart-Cookin’ Mamas challenges us to go beyond eating local food to become part of a larger solution that demands a system that sustains not just our bodies, but also our souls.

Mark Winne has worked for 40 years as a community food activist, writer, and trainer. From organizing breakfast programs for low-income children in Maine to developing innovative national food policies in Washington, DC, Winne has dedicated his professional life and writing to enabling people to find solutions to their own food problems as well as those that face their communities and the world. Of his first book, Closing the Food Gap, Dr. Jane Goodall said, “It is heartening to find a book that successfully blends a passion for sustainable living with compassion for the poor.”