In the Struggle: Scholars and the Fight against Industrial Agribusiness in California

Agriculture is big business in California, and from the late 1800s until now, activists, lawyers, and scholars have been going after the abuses big agriculture has leveled on the people, environment, and food supply in the state. This book chronicles the lives and works of eight of those activists, and while it focuses on a couple, there are still a ton of stories to investigate and move beyond, for example, the role Cesar Chavez played in the United Farmworkers’ Movement.

This book chronicles how people standing up to big business, especially when it comes to food, has been an ongoing concern in California for generations. In the beginning, it was mainly farmers going after the railroad monopolies, but as soon as the farms become more consolidated and corporate, the task shifted from middle men to those working the ground itself.

People interested in how big business was fought, and how the lives of workers in the fields changed, will find this book interesting and intriguing. Overall, there is still much to be done and one of the lessons learned is that activists’ work is never finished, it just gets passed to the next generation.