Raj Patel, a "writer, activist, and academic," is currently getting press for his new book, The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy. Patel's previous book was Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System.
You can read an interview with him on Civil Eats. Paula Crossfield writes that
One of the most exciting social movements for Patel is the food movement, where thousands of people are raising the bar for social justice by improving the health and environmental impacts of the food we produce, and the labor practices employed in how we bring food to the table, with the goal of providing a stable food supply for all people.
At the conclusion of the interview, Patel says,
Food brings together everything that everyone should care about. It is about giving life, it is about what we need to survive on this planet, it is about our interaction with the planet, and about the way that we replenish or don’t replenish the earth that we live on. There is something both primal and industrial and very high-capitalist about food. And it is the area where, if we are interested in life, if we’re interested in the ways that we can live on this planet sustainably, then we really do need to start with questions about food. [The food movement] is to me the most vibrant area of social change certainly in the United States but also elsewhere.... I think that what food sovereignty offers is both a democratic way for us to take very seriously issues around rights, particularly around gender, but also ways in which we can think about the environment, about distribution, and poverty in ways that are sustainable. It brings it all together in ways that, if we’re concerned with social justice, whether its education, the way our institutions behave, ecology, poverty, environment, whatever it is, you’ll find it in food, and you’ll find something very exciting in the organizing around food that gives me hope in ways that very few things do these days.
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