Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern, associate professor of geography and the environment, has received the annual book award from the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS).

The honor recognizes Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain (University of California Press, 2025), co-authored with Teresa Mares, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Vermont. Minkoff-Zern and Mares accepted the award at an annual conference for ASFS and the Agriculture, Food & Human Values Society held June 7–11 in Burlington, Vermont. This year’s conference theme was “Just Transformations: Reimagining Sustainable Food Systems and Cultures.”

The ASFS Book Award recognizes outstanding books about food published within the two previous calendar years, with prizes given in three categories: monograph, edited volume and first book.

The book examines labor across the entire food system, from fields and processing plants to warehouses, restaurants, home kitchens and food waste recovery, arguing that improving labor standards and building solidarity among frontline workers across sectors is necessary for creating a more just food system.

“Congrats to Professor Minkoff-Zern on this well-deserved award,” says Shana Kushner Gadarian, professor of political science and associate dean for research. “Will Work for Food looks at the entire food system, from farms to kitchen tables, and the workers who play a role in feeding Americans. It makes relevant policy recommendations for rethinking and reforming how the food system can work better for all of those who produce food.”

Minkoff-Zern is a senior research associate at Maxwell’s Center for Policy Research and a research affiliate at the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health. Will Work for Food is her second book; her first, The New American Farmer: Immigration, Race, and the Struggle for Sustainability (MIT Press, 2019), won the annual book award from the Geographies of Food and Agriculture Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers.