Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern
Graduate Student
BA 2004 (Sustainable Agriculture and Development with Concentration in Latin American Studies) Cornell University
Regional focus: The Americas
My research investigates female Mexican farmers’ production and consumption practices in California, including growing food for market and home use, saving seeds, cultivating new varieties of food crops, and preparing, serving, and selling food. I draw on feminist and agrarian theories of survival and resistance to look at how immigrant women are remaking the industrial agriculture system through their everyday practices. My work emphasizes approaches from Agrarian Political Ecology, Feminist Geography, and California Food and Agriculture Studies. Past research includes looking at the implementation of the Green Revolution and future for organic agriculture in Guatemala.
Selected publications
Publications
Minkoff-Zern, Laura-Anne. “Agribusiness.” Expected date of publication: 2010. In The Green Series: Towards a Sustainable Environment. Ed. by Paul Robbins. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Reference.
Minkoff, Laura-Anne, Nancy Peluso, Jennifer Sowerwine and Christy Getz. Accepted. Expected Date of Publication: 2010. “Race and Regulation: Asian Immigrants in California Agriculture.” In The Food Justice Reader: Cultivating a Just Sustainability. Ed. Alison Alkon and Julian Agyeman. MIT Press.
Professional Papers
Gillon, Sean, Minkoff, Laura-Anne, and Thistlethwaite, Rebecca. 2007. Grounding Ourselves: Innovative Land Tenure Models in California and Beyond. California Food and Justice Network Working Paper. Community Food Security Coalition. Reprinted 2008. In Farmer’s Guide to Securing Land. Sebastopol, CA: California Farmlink.
Minkoff, Laura-Anne. Local and Alternative Practices for Soil Fertility in San Lucas Tolimán, Guatemala. 2004. Resource document for nonprofit organization The Mesoamerican Institute for Permaculture (IMAP), San Lucas Tolimán, Guatemala.
Minkoff, Laura-Anne. Land Ownership in Guatemala. 2004. Resource document for nonprofit organization, Network in Solidarity With the People of Guatemala (NISGUA), Washington DC.