We envision radical food geographies (RFG) as more than a theoretical contribution. RFG is characterized by three interconnected elements: (1) theoretical engagement with power and structures of oppression both inside and outside the academy; (2) action through academic, social movement, and civil society collaborations; and (3) analysis through a broadly defined geographic lens. We see a political imperative to create more just and sustainable food systems, and we propose that by bringing together radical geographies, critical food systems scholarship, and action beyond and within academic settings, we may contribute to meaningful social change. RFG is a praxis, and we therefore embarked on this book as a process and a project.

The quote from Graciela Uribe Ortega that begins this concluding chapter reminds us that geographic thinking is not only about grand theories and codified description, but also about creativity and the situatedness of sociospatial relationships in political contexts. In this vein, RFG can help us collectively think about and act against the grain of inequitable power and knowledge dynamics in food systems that are pervasive at historical, contemporary, and global scales.

As we described in Reynolds et al (Introduction, this volume), and the RFG concept, have evolved out of several intersecting moments (including meetings, workshops, conferences, publication projects), ongoing conversations, and actions among the co- editors, contributors, colleagues, and community partners. Preparing this book, in particular, included opportunities for engagement between the authors and encouraged co- development of this evolving RFG praxis. Through the project- based approach, we sought to practise RFG in an engaged co- creation process and by navigating through (and unlearning) dominant perceptions of scholars/ scholarship (including in writing styles and differential access to academic resources) as not only a writing exercise, but also a practice in finding our voices and confronting hegemonic ways of working, knowing, and communicating.

As a concept and practice, radical food geographies (RFG) praxis brings together attention to power, knowledge, and resistance to the inequities that shape food systems around the world in diverse ways. RFG draws key elements from radical geographies and critical food systems scholarship towards making food systems more just and sustainable. Critical to the RFG approach is a praxis that pushes food systems scholars and activists to pursue work that is simultaneously grounded in theorizing, action, and reflection related to the intersections of place and spatiality. Praxis refers to the dynamic interconnections between theory and practice, critical reflection, and the resulting actions (for example, see Freire, 1970; Gramsci, 1971; hooks, 1994). We conceive of RFG praxis as having three interconnected elements: (1) theoretical engagement with power and structures of oppression both inside and outside the academy; (2) action through academic, social movement, and civil society collaborations; and (3) analysis through a broadly defined geographic lens (see Figure 1.1). In this chapter, we provide an overview of the scholarly foundations of RFG praxis.

Radical geographies foundations

Radical geographies have integrated and built upon different geographical contexts, theories, and activities worldwide. They identify, explain, and impact relations of power, oppression, and capitalist exploitation in particular places and across space. In North America, what has been formally referred to as radical geography (a subdiscipline in the academic field of geography) traces its roots to a rejection of the US status quo in the 1960s (contemporaneous with the US Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement, the Chicano Movement, the American Indian Movement, second- wave feminism, and opposition to the Vietnam War). The group of self- described ‘radical geographers’, grounded in Marxist and anarchist thinking, sought a restructuring of society. They were also challenging their discipline, one that was rooted in positivist and quantitative approaches that they insisted were unresponsive to societal crises and reproduced oppressive structures (Fuller and Kitchin, 2004).

The overarching position of these primarily anglophone and minority world- based individuals was that the field of geography needed to account for its complicity and contributions to the accumulation of power and capital.

Josué de Castro was a Brazilian geographer, physician, diplomat, and activist, whose writing on hunger, geography, and politics were forerunners to the concept of geopolitics and critical development studies. His book Geografía da Fome (1946) identified hunger as a consequence of social, rather than natural, structures. His most influential book Geopolitica da Fome (1951) set forth an understanding of hunger as a global political- economic phenomenon. Key themes in these works were a strident and explicit anti- Malthusianism. de Castro pinned the origins of hunger, neither to the deficits of ‘poor’ people worldwide nor to the quantitative limits of global food production, but to the expansion of the global capitalist economy. Prior to the establishment of critical development studies (for example, see Escobar, 2011), de Castro argued that ‘underdevelopment’ and hunger as a corporeal reality – rather than a disembodied one – was a result of colonialism, racism, and Western-dominated geopolitics (de Castro, 1952).

While these perspectives are fairly common today in most critical scholarship and activism, de Castro's righteous naming of geopolitical, colonial, and racist structures in the 1940s and 1950s as the underlying causes of hunger was a rare and courageous analytical pursuit, particularly writing from the context of the majority world. Importantly, de Castro was not only a theoretician, despite the scholarly nature of his research and writing. Ferretti (2021) notes that de Castro's analysis was rooted in knowledge born of both scholarly pursuits and his upbringing in Recife, the focus area of his Geografía da Fome (1946) and 1970 novel Of Men and Crabs. Recife is a region in north- eastern Brazil where predominantly Indigenous and African- Brazilian people lived at that time, and often in economic poverty. de Castro was of mixed Indigenous and European descent and was clear in his analyses that racism was among the driving factors of social inequity (Monbeig, 1948; Chappell, 2018; Ferretti, 2021). de Castro influenced and was influenced by French scholars, and was involved in international policy, eventually serving as the head of the United Nations’ (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization from 1952 to 1956 and as Brazil's Ambassador to the UN from 1963 to 1964 (New York Times, 1973; Ferretti, 2022).