Research
I am currently involved in multiple research projects. My most recent book, Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain (UC Press 2025), which I co-authored with Dr. Teresa Mares, looks at labor across food sectors, exploring at the intersections between social movements in United States food systems within the historic context of broader labor organizing. In this book, we explore labor across the food chain, from farms to food processing and into the home. In the first book to chronicle labor all the way through the food chain, we include two aspects of food labor often excluded from scholarship: food work in the home and management of food waste, making a case to take seriously both productive and reproductive labor as central to food justice movements.
I am also working on a project looking at US Food Policy Councils and their engagement and challenges with frontline food labor advocacy, funded by the Lender Center for Social Justice. In this project, along with my colleague Dr. Jonnell Robinson and PhD student Frank Sarfo, we have partnered with the Johns Hopkins Center for Livable Future and the Food Policy Council Network to better understand why Food Policy Councils have largely struggled to incorporate food labor advocacy into their policy agendas. In our open access articles and policy briefs we make practical recommendations for policy makers and food systems leaders, with a focus on regional procurement policies.
Finally, I am conducting new research on the impact of recent immigration enforcement and tactics on the agricultural and food processing workforce and food system in the Northeast United States with postdoctoral scholar India Luxton. In this project, we have been interviewing workers, farmers, advocates, and policymakers in the region, looking at how policies like H-2A visa program are intersecting with new enforcement agendas and impacting social relations, worker mobility, and general precarity throughout the food system.
Previous Research
In my first book, The New American Farmer: Immigration, Race, and the Struggle for Sustainability (MIT Press 2019), I explore the experiences of Latino/immigrant farmers as they transition from farmworkers to farm owners, offering a new perspective on racial inequity and sustainable farming. She argues that immigrant farmers, with their knowledge and experience of alternative farming practices, are—despite a range of challenges—actively and substantially contributing to the movement for an ecological and sustainable food system. This book is the culmination of over eight years of research across five regions of the United States.
Other previous research looks at the labor and health conditions of government-contracted (H-2A) guestworkers workers in U.S. agriculture. This project is a mixed-method collaboration with scholars from Syracuse and Cornell Universities from Public Health Economics and Rural Sociology. Combining in-depth interviews with quantitative analysis of government data, this project investigates the conditions and experiences of agricultural guestworkers, as well as farmers, who use the program throughout the Northeast region. In a second project, I collaborated with colleagues in the departments of Public Health and Marriage and Family Therapy, looking at refugee gardening, mental health, and food sovereignty. This study advanced understandings of gardening as a moderator for reducing racial and ethnic health disparities, particularly among those who have been subjected to systemic violence or trauma.
Recent Publications
Books
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2025. Minkoff-Zern, Laura-Anne and Mares, Teresa. Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain. University of California Press.
Peer Reviewed Articles in Professional Journals
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Edited Book Chapters
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2024. Mares, Teresa and Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern. “Worker Driven Social Responsibility in the Food System.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Food Studies. Oxford University Press.
Book Reviews
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2025. Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern. “Book review of Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War II to Covid-19” LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History. Vol 22(3): 136-139.
Policy Briefs/ Other Publications
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2025. Minkoff-Zern, Laura-Anne and Mares, Teresa. “How Immigrant Workers Hold up the Food System.” University of California Press Blog Guest Post.
2007. Gillon, Sean, Minkoff, Laura-Anne, and Thistlethwaite, Rebecca. “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, California: California Farmlink.
2004. Minkoff, Laura-Anne. Local and Alternative Practices for Soil Fertility in San Lucas Tolimán, Guatemala. Resource document for The Mesoamerican Institute for Permaculture (I.M.A.P.), San Lucas Tolimán, Guatemala.
2004. Minkoff, Laura-Anne. Land Ownership in Guatemala. Resource document for The Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (N.I.S.G.U.A.), Washington D.C.