Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern, associate professor of geography and the environment, has co-written a new book, Will Work For Food: Labor Across the Food Chain (University of California Press, 2025).

Through seven chapters, Minkoff-Zern and co-author Teresa Mares explore the often-overlooked role of labor in the food system, highlighting the exploitation faced by frontline workers from farms to restaurants. The authors use a political economy lens to argue that true food justice requires better labor conditions and solidarity across the food sector and question what it would take to build a food system free from human exploitation, combining academic research with policy recommendations. Mares is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Vermont.

Minkoff-Zern’s research focuses on the interactions between food and racial justice, labor movements and transnational environmental and agricultural policy. She is a senior research associate for the Center for Policy Research, and a faculty affiliate in the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration and the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health.

Minkoff-Zern’s work has been published in journals such as Geoforum, Human Geography, Agriculture and Human Values and more. In 2024, she received the Early/Mid-Career Award from the American Association of Geographers (AAG). She earned a  Ph.D. in geography from the University of California, Berkeley.  

From the publisher:

Food consumers are demanding a healthier and more sustainable food system. Yet labor is rarely part of the discussion. In Will Work for Food, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa Mares chronicle labor across the food chain, connecting the entire food system—from fields to stores, restaurants, home kitchens, and even garbage dumps.

Using a political economy framework, the authors argue that improving labor standards and building solidarity among frontline workers across sectors is necessary for creating a more just food system. What would it take, they ask, to move toward a food system that is devoid of human exploitation? Combining insights from food systems and labor justice scholarship with actionable recommendations for policy makers, the book is a call to action for labor activists, food studies students and scholars, and anyone interested in food justice.