“M. Jahi Chappell’s exceptional scholarship in the food system finally gets the audience it deserves in this deeply researched and engaging work. Moving from the seats of Belo Horizonte’s state-run restaurants to the annals of world history, Chappell demonstrates a keen eye for local detail and global relevance. This book is a provocation to new thought and better action to end hunger permanently.”

—Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System

“…truly one of the most important books for the food sovereignty movement yet written. Jahi’s analysis of the success of fighting hunger in Belo Horizonte points us in such an important direction of how to fight for food sovereignty everywhere, using a methodology to understand problems, policies and politics and how to work in more coordinated ways to effect radical change. Sometimes it’s hard… but if we always remind ourselves that we have one common enemy – the industrial food system that is built on greed and feeds on ignorance and apathy – then surely we can constantly overcome our feeble human traits and strengthen our warrior hearts to fight the good fight arm in arm.

Kumbaya, motherf*ckers, let’s kick some more capitalist, industrial arse. 👊”

—Tammi Jonas, President of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

“Chappell illuminates how a city in Brazil, Belo Horizonte, has achieved the unthinkable—dramatic decreases in hunger and malnutrition—and skewers popular myths with logical, systematic analysis and brilliant analogies. Should be read by every person committed to ending hunger!”

—Molly Anderson, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Food Studies, Middlebury College

“[Beginning to End Hunger] is a definitional read. I would call it an instant classic save it’s based on work Chappell has been conducting for nearly 15 years. Ostensibly Chappell writes about Belo Horizonte’s renowned municipal food program down in Brazil, in and of itself a critical topic. But the book also takes on the global food security industry and its Malthusian premises. It connects the impacts of Brazil’s history and the politics of regional interventions on food access to the economics of local farming and the agroecology of the forest. It will both deprogram even the most avid of critical food theorists of any residual productivist assumptions and inspire new thinking around the practical mechanics of a just food landscape anywhere. The book is also funny, generous, and incredibly well-read but not obnoxiously so. Like a good drinking buddy.”

—Rob Wallace, Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Global Studies at the University of Minnesota and author of Big Farms Make Big Flu

“In this remarkable book, Chappell uses the case of Belo Horizonte to challenge us to be ‘active optimists.’ Pairing hope with evidence, and recognizing that the course to universal food security will never run smooth, Chappell proposes we take responsibility for a vision of a world without hunger. Beginning to End Hunger is a passionate plea against a fatalistic acceptance of poverty and in favor of promoting meaningful democracy. This is a very fine, honorable book.”

—Cecilia Rocha, Professor and Associate Researcher, Centre for Studies in Food Security, Ryerson University

“I just read Jahi’s book “Beginning To End Hunger: Food And The Environment In Belo Horizonte, Brazil, And Beyond” and it’s a great, detailed deep dive on the subject. Jahi has energy and optimism for tackling this really large issue, and the book is a refreshing take on progressive political attitudes as a whole. Dig it.”

—Andy Larsen, Co-host of Ann and Andy Dig

“This is a very important book to understand how to begin to end hunger and the proof that there are alternatives to the status quo.”

—Dean Bavington, Associate Professor of Geography at Memorial University, and author of Managed Annihilation: An Unnatural History of the Newfoundland Cod Collapse

“To combine an ethnographic/interview approach, a policy decision-making approach, a nearly unsurpassed expertise in agroecology as a natural scientist, and a value-centered call to action is seldom attempted and much less accomplished in one narrative. Chappell does all these in this important book, which engages his experience in Belo Horizonte, Brazil as an example demonstrating that ending hunger is not out of the realm of possibility. Furthermore, it will almost certainly not be done through centralized private control by corporate agribusiness and more specifically the enchanted capital-intensive and chemically saturated technologies of Monsanto-led genetically modified “expert” agriculture. Much work still needs to be done in this area, but Chappell’s book is an invaluable contribution.”

—Nick Jackson, Ph.D. in International Development, and ronin-like scholar

“It is tempting for socialists to argue simply that the problem is capitalism and that only a socialist, post-capitalist world can feed the world’s population healthily and sustainably. M. Jahi Chappell’s important study shows that this is wrong. It is possible to build a more equitable and sustainable food system today at the same time as strengthening the struggle against capitalism. Chappell illustrates this with a detailed study of the experience of Belo Horizonte (BH), the sixth largest city in Brazil, home to about two and a half million people.”

—Martin Empson, author of Land and Labour: Marxism, ecology and human history and Kill All the Gentlemen: Class struggle and change in the English countryside (see his full review at Climate and Capitalism here)

“In Beginning to end hunger, M. Jahi Chappell provides a compelling analysis
of food security policies in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, to suggest that the state must play a central role in ensuring that poor people have access to food… Chappell makes the persuasive case that we need to have ‘active optimism’ to guarantee that every person receives adequate, accessible, culturally appropriate and nutritious food. This is not a power-of-positive-thinking self-help philosophy. Rather, it is an assertion of the belief that it is actually possible to end hunger. To do so will require challenging cynical beliefs that hunger is inevitable, a convenient story that inculcates powerful interests in the food system that would rather things stay the same. The main lesson that Chappell imparts is that solutions will require leveraging institutions, creating regulations and passing policies… M. Jahi Chappell provides a necessary antidote to those who claim hunger cannot be alleviated.”

—Josh Sbicca, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Colorado State University (see his full review in the Journal of Peasant Studies here)