Book Title: Rethinking Food Security in the 21st Century

Book Description

Rethinking Food Security in the 21st Century: Contemporary Trends, Policy and Agency celebrates the 30-year legacy of the Centre for Studies in Food Security (CSFS) at Toronto Metropolitan University and the diverse community that has shaped its work. Bringing together scholars, practitioners, community leaders, students, and collaborators associated with the Centre, the volume reflects the interdisciplinary and sometimes contested ways food security has been understood, studied, and addressed over the past three decades. Rather than advancing a single perspective, its chapters bring different experiences and areas of expertise into conversation, reflecting the CSFS’s longstanding commitment to collaboration, debate, critical scholarship, and community engagement.

Organized around four themes—debates in food security, food policy and practice, community action and representation, and the CSFS’s contributions to teaching, research, policy, and public engagement—the collection examines both persistent and emerging food-system challenges. Chapters explore changing food-security discourses; culturally appropriate food; policy and structural responses to food insecurity; food sovereignty; decolonial and intersectional perspectives; Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and other community experiences; and innovations in food-system education and practice.

Written for students as well as researchers, educators, practitioners, policymakers, and community actors, the book looks both backward and forward. It recognizes three decades of collective work while acknowledging that many longstanding inequities remain and new challenges continue to reshape food systems. Above all, the volume invites readers to critically rethink food security and consider the roles of policy, community knowledge, collective action, and human agency in building more just, sustainable, and food-secure futures.