Food Margins: Lessons from an Unlikely Grocer by Cathy Stanton

© Food Margins: Lessons from an Unlikely Grocer by Cathy Stanton, University of Massachusetts Press, 2024

Who among us hasn’t shopped at, or been a member of, a food co-op—maybe several of them? And hasn’t thought “yes, this is the way we ought to be selling food in this country,” but also been aware of how difficult it is for these co-ops to keep going in the world of large-scale grocery chains? The imperiled place of food co-ops is exactly analogous to small-scale, diversified local farms, and for the same reasons. And people keep trying, also for the same reasons. In Food Margins: Lessons from an Unlikely Grocer, Cathy Stanton delves into the struggles of the (still alive!) Quabbin Harvest Co-op in Orange, Massachusetts, from her experience serving on the board. An anthropologist, public historian, and lively writer, Stanton ties the story of the co-op to the history of deindustrialization in small mill towns and to plantation agriculture around the world, through a series of brilliant excursions into topics you might not expect to encounter in the New England hinterlands—most notably, tapioca. This simultaneously cheerful and sobering book will remind you once again why we are where we are, and what we can do about it: which is, to keep doing what we’re doing, in spite of all the indications that it isn’t working yet.

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