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Agrifood system globalization is increasing rapidly, driven by industrial world governments and multinational corporations. Globalization increases the distance between inputs and production and between production and consumption, creating food insecurity, malnutrition, and environmental degradation, including global warming. One popular response is the localization movement, often measured as food miles—the distance food travels from “field to fork.” Indicators like food miles are often conflated with goals like reducing greenhouse gas emissions or improving nutrition, although they are not necessarily linked, making localization vulnerable to self-deception and local washing. Effective localization would require changes in eaters’ and farmers’ values and behaviors, and community and government regulations. A case study in the United States demonstrates the importance of checking the validity of indicators like food miles.

To address the agrifood system problem of pesticide drift and environmental degradation, countless individuals and organizations have consistently tried to draw attention toward the failures of both industry and the state in this regard. This chapter charts these efforts and analyzes how these activists have tried so far to curb the pesticide drift problem. The author uses the term “alternative agrifood movement” to show the collective efforts made by the pesticide drift activists toward reforming the existing agrifood networks along with building alternative ones. This alternative agrifood movement covers four realms of activism: the farmworker justice movement, antitoxics critics of conventional agriculture, alternative farming organizations, and food reformers.

This chapter discusses the rural transformation, a process of comprehensive societal change whereby rural societies diversify their economies and reduce their reliance on agriculture; become dependent on distant places to trade and to acquire goods, services, and ideas; move from dispersed villages to towns and small and medium cities; and become culturally more similar to large urban agglomerations. The rural transformation is the result, first of all, of the action of global drivers, such as the diversification of rural economies away from agriculture, the globalization of agrifood systems, and the urbanization of rural regions. While global forces drive this transformation, they are mediated by localized social structures, institutional frameworks, and local societies with different levels of human agency. The interplay of global and local factors explains why the rural transformation between and within different countries has different outcomes in terms of economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability.

This paper analyses the conventions of production within the agrifood sector in Italy, with a case study on Buffalo Mozzarella in southern Italy, to argue that legality and illegality are not universal values, but social constructs which are the product of institutional selection. By analysing three driving forces – territory, entrepreneurship and institutions – the authors argue that the practices of production may be positioned along a legal-illegal continuum, in that producers perceive acts not as opposite to each other, but as possible behaviours along the spectrum of legal or illegal defined practices. This chapter proposes the Evil Trinity, comprised of the three elements of territories, entrepreneurship and institutions, as a model for understanding the process of institutionalisation of (il)legal behaviors, within areas characterised by the endemic presence of organised crime, such as southern Italy.