Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern: The new American farmer: immigration, race, and the struggle for sustainability
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BOOK REVIEW
Laura‑Anne Minkoff‑Zern: The new American farmer: immigration, race, and the struggle for sustainability Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2019, 195 pp, ISBN 978-0-262-53783-4 Eden Kinkaid1 Accepted: 5 May 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
In her recently published book, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern examines an understudied phenomenon in U.S. agriculture: the rise of Latinx immigrant farm owner-operators. Despite the obstacles of a deeply racialized agricultural system, these farmers have climbed the “agricultural ladder” to own and operate their own farms. Yet the farmers Minkoff-Zern studies are not merely reproducing the models of agriculture they labored under as farmworkers; rather many of them are pursuing more diverse and “alternative” production methods, drawing on their memories and experiences farming in Mexico and Central America. While these immigrant farmers may represent the “new American farmer,” they are often rendered institutionally invisible, leaving them largely unsupported by agricultural extension and support services. Even though their practices reflect a commitment to “alternative” agriculture, they are equally excluded and invisible in alternative food movements and spaces. Minkoff-Zern’s study is a much-needed antidote to this invisibility. The book thus makes a unique contribution to agri-food studies while supporting practical efforts to address forms of discrimination and exclusion in agricultural institutions and food cultures. The new American farmer is based on qualitative fieldwork conducted in five distinct regions of the United States. At each of these sites, Minkoff-Zern interviewed immigrant farmers (70 total), extension agents, USDA staff, and other groups that work with immigrant farmers. She also
* Eden Kinkaid [email protected] 1
Department of Geography, School of Geography and Development, University of Arizona, 1064 E. Lowell Street, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
conducted participant observation at farmers markets and a training course targeting immigrant farmers. Drawing on insights gleaned from each of these case studies, Minkoff-Zern examines how racial formations have long shaped agrarian class structures, labor regimes, and land access in the U.S. and how these legacies impact immigrant farmers today. While scholars in various fields have considered these themes in depth, Minkoff-Zern’s study contributes unique insights in that it shows how some immigrant farmers are able to successfully navigate these structures, suggesting the possibility that these racial and class systems are not entirely fixed. Further, she presents a multi-sited approach that is sensitive to the geographic and historical specificity of these racial formations and agrarian regimes. In Chapter 2, Minkoff-Zern places the contemporary situation of immigrant farmers within a longer history of the racialized exclusions of US agriculture. She connects the history of Latino labor migration and land access with the history of slavery and Black land ow
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