The Politics of Food's Environmental Footprint

Contemporary Science Issues and Innovations April 17, 2012 Belmont Media Center, Belmont MA

Susanne Freidberg, Ph.D., Professor of Geography, Dartmouth College; Burkhardt Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Research (2011-2012). Professor Freidberg’s webpage Food is an international industry, and producing and transporting it has a major impact on the environment. The carbon footprint label on foods that we purchase is almost always incomplete or misleading. The calculation of the carbon footprint of food has become so complicated –and political– that it has spawned a whole new industry of specialists. Consumers need to know how this works. Professor Freidberg is an expert on the subject.

Professor Freidberg is author of Fresh: A Perishable History (Belknap/Harvard Univ Press, 2009) and French Beans and Food Scares: Culture and Commerce in an Anxious Age (Oxford Univ Press, 2004)

See also Vote First, Eat Later (Professor Freidberg’s guest Huffington Post blog)

Selected works

• Ambiguous Appetites: A Modern History, Food, Society and Culture, 13:4 (2010) 471-491.
• Triumph of the Egg. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 40:2 (2008) 400-423.
• Supermarkets and Imperial Knowledge, Cultural Geographies, 14:3 (2007) 321-342.
• The Ethical Complex of Corporate Food Power. Society and Space, 22:4 (2004) 513-531.
• Cleaning Up Down South: Supermarkets, Ethical Trade, and African Horticulture. Social and Cultural Geography, 4:1 (2003) 27-43.

Awards

• Mellon New Directions Fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
• Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies
• 2010 Sally Hacker Prize, Society for the History of Technology