Marginalizing Access to the Sustainable Food System - by Camille Tuason Mata (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book is a comprehensive analysis of the barriers and opportunities confronting minority communities' ability to access healthy, fresh foods. Mata uses three minority districts in Oakland-Chinatown, Fruitvale, and West Oakland-to examine the patterns of marginalization in ...

Book Synopsis

This book is a comprehensive analysis of the barriers and opportunities confronting minority communities' ability to access healthy, fresh foods. Mata uses three minority districts in Oakland--Chinatown, Fruitvale, and West Oakland--to examine the patterns of marginalization in relation to the sustainable food system of the California Bay Area.

Review Quotes

Camille Tuason Mata has provided a very comprehensive and extensive study of the ways minorities have been marginalized from the sustainable food system in California. . . . Her thesis is applicable to many places, including India, where farmers are pushing to be more central to the food system. The [thesis], I should say, is very good.


Her research renders both a comprehensive and in-depth picture of the current state of minority food access in Oakland. . . . Tuason Mata lays out the evolution of organic agriculture and explains why our growing understanding of community organic agriculture is integral to community food security in the twenty-first century.


This is a substantial contribution to food security literature. Her interdisciplinary approach does a fine job of placing her original research within a larger context.

About the Author

Camille Tuason Mata is a Philippine-born American who has been studying food systems and sustainability since 2000, when she began her graduate studies in urban and regional planning at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She subsequently went on to complete a MA in social change and development at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia, in 2002 and a MA in liberal arts with a concentration in environmental studies at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, in 2009.