Margot Anne Kelley - Foodtopia: Communities in Pursuit of Peace, Love, & Homegrown Food

Foodtopia glides gracefully through the increasingly complex world of food, pandemic and all. An important contemporary book.

Mark Kurlansky
author of Salt: A World History

Foodtopia gives us a generous overview of Americans historic and contemporary involvement in utopian communities through the lens of their dietary beliefs and practices. From Thoreaus Walden to Pennimans Soul Fire Farm, the search for agrarian values and food justice should inspire us to supportand jointhese movements.

Marion Nestle
author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health

A fascinating account, moving easily across eras, never starry-eyed but always open to the idea that we can do better than were doing!

Bill McKibben
author of Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future

In tracing the lineage of todays small-scale sustainable farms back to the American visionaries and utopian communities of the past, Margot Anne Kelley has revealed a story essential for our times, one that illustrates the way the committed make their stand for the endurance of ideals. For Kelley, this is as much a personal story as it is a deeply researched one, and she proves herself equally at home with ideas and practice. With Foodtopia she has given us a spirited and beautifully written account of what dreams the soil can hold.

Jane Brox
author of Clearing Land: Legacies of the American Farm

From graham crackers to heirloom carrots, Kelley offers an engaging and thorough dive into the long, strange history of American dreaming and eating. Essential reading for anyone wondering not just where their food comes from, but why.

Kate Daloz
author of We Are As Gods: Back to the Land in the 1970 s on the Quest for a New America

This book tastes so goodI ate the whole thing raw.

Mark Sundeen
author of The Unsettlers: In Search of the Good Life in Todays America

Foodtopia is an engaging, informative, and inspiring journey, exploring the deep political and ecological values that motivate alternative agriculture. Margot Anne Kelley reveals the historical continuity that weaves together healthy food, community agriculture, and racial justice. In so doing, she offers an exciting and hopeful vision of a great American tradition.

Mitchell Thomashow
author of To Know the World: A New Vision for Environmental Learning

Margot Anne Kelleys Foodtopia is a marvelous book tracking the history of five waves of utopian back-to-the-landers in America. From Brook Farm to the Diggers, from Henry David Thoreau to Farm Aid to Alice Waters, and on to the millennial farmers bringing queer and BIPOC perspectives to food production, this book is a gorgeous cornucopia. And it makes clear that these movements are not an escape from the struggles of race, class, and privilege. Rather they are ground on which to think anew about cultivating both healthy food and a just food system. A stellar and timely book!

Alison Hawthorne Deming
author of A Woven World: On Fashion, Fishermen, and the Sardine Dress

The impulse to escape the city and reconnect with a more authentic world through food and farming has been a perennial part of the American experiment, but as Foodtopia shows in clear and compelling prose, its much more than that: By challenging the centralized dogmas of mainstream culture through a kind of agrarian performance art, these troops of back-to-the-landers have not just held a mirror up to American society, but given us a lodestar so that we might re-find our way, again and again.

Rowan Jacobsen
author of American Terroir: Savoring the Flavors of Our Woods, Waters, and Fields

To tackle the dire ecological and social challenges before us, we need a profound shift of direction, away from the runaway corporate-dominated economy based on high-tech and urbanization. We need to rebuild local agrarian economies, to encourage a small farm renaissance that creates a healthier balance between rural and urban. Foodtopia expertly documents the past movements that already clearly saw the need for this shift and whose experiences will help light the way for todays new agrarians.

Helena Norberg-Hodge
author of Local Is Our Future: Steps to an Economics of Happiness

Having been a back-to-the lander in Maine in the 1970s, I was so pleased to read Margot Anne Kelleys history of those days and her interesting insights into those Americans charting a sustainable rural life today. She does much of this through the lens of our changing relationship to food and farming. Kelley makes the strong case that changing our food system is central to everything from the quality and availability of the food we eat to the fundamentals of our very democracy. I agree.

Congresswoman Chellie Pingree

Margot Anne Kelley elegantly unearths the deep roots of todays back-to-the-land movement, linking Henry David Thoreaus nineteenth-century essays to the twenty-first-century struggle for food justice. Foodtopia shows that the desire to leave the city, grow ones own food, and live more simply is almost as American an impulse as building highways and skyscrapers.

Jonathan Kauffman
author of Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat

It has been said that no reality was ever created by realists, and the utopian movements that Margot Anne Kelley explores in her joyful book all took that to heart. She observes that they share two great things: a love of good food and a commitment to a new social order. And, indeed, today the food movement in its many aspects is at the forefront of driving positive social change. Her book is full of good stories, well told, and highly motivational. Highly recommended.

Gus Speth
author of America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy

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(Editor)

Published in 2022 by GODINE

Boston, Massachusetts

Copyright 2022 by Margot Anne Kelley

all rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For more information, please visit godine.com

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

Names: Kelley, Margot Anne, author.

Title: Foodtopia : communities in pursuit of peace, love & homegrown food / Margot Anne Kelley.

Description: [Boston, Massachusetts] : Godine, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2021058315 (print) | LCCN 2021058316 (ebook) | ISBN 9781567927306 (hardback) | ISBN 9781567927313 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Agriculture, Cooperative--United States--History. | Agriculture--Social aspects--United States--History. | Utopias--United States--History. | Food habits--Social aspects--United States--History. | Food supply--Social aspects--United States--History. | Sustainable agriculture--United States--History. | Urban-rural migration--United States--History.