Adopting a class-based approach to the agricultural world, this article proposes a holistic analysis of agri-food justice, one that takes into account production as well as consumption. Empirical material is drawn from field work for a PhD thesis on the vegetable and market gardening supply chains in Normandy, France, including surveys and semi-directive interviews. The goal is to move beyond a binary, dominating-dominated perspective and to focus instead on how social inequalities create situations of food injustice. To this end, the first section describes the organisation of the vegetable and market gardening worlds into five social class fractions. Next, an analysis is provided of one fraction of vegetable growers, those experiencing ‘incomplete bourgeoisification’ (embourgeoisement), and how they are dominated by the agri-food senior executive. Agricultural alternatives have been developed to counter these forms of injustice but have at the same time structured new food inequalities in their turn. Finally, through the observation of fractions at the bottom of the agricultural social hierarchy, the paper considers how these same alternatives can also constitute resources against the employment insecurity suffered by the working classes.

Adopting a class-based approach to the agricultural world, this article proposes a holistic analysis of agri-food justice, one that takes into account production as well as consumption. Empirical material is drawn from field work for a PhD thesis on the vegetable and market gardening supply chains in Normandy, France, including surveys and semi-directive interviews. The goal is to move beyond a binary, dominating-dominated perspective and to focus instead on how social inequalities create situations of food injustice. To this end, the first section describes the organisation of the vegetable and market gardening worlds into five social class fractions. Next, an analysis is provided of one fraction of vegetable growers, those experiencing ‘incomplete bourgeoisification’ (embourgeoisement), and how they are dominated by the agri-food senior executive. Agricultural alternatives have been developed to counter these forms of injustice but have at the same time structured new food inequalities in their turn. Finally, through the observation of fractions at the bottom of the agricultural social hierarchy, the paper considers how these same alternatives can also constitute resources against the employment insecurity suffered by the working classes.