This article addresses the potential for food movements to bring about
substantive changes to the current global food system. After describing the
current corporate food regime, we apply Karl Polanyi's ‘double-movement' thesis
on capitalism to explain the regime's trends of neoliberalism and reform. Using
the global food crisis as a point of departure, we introduce a comparative
analytical framework for different political and social trends within the corporate
food regime and global food movements, characterizing them as ‘Neoliberal',
‘Reformist', ‘Progressive', and ‘Radical', respectively, and describe each trend
based on its discourse, model, and key actors, approach to the food crisis, and key
documents. After a discussion of class, political permeability, and tensions within
the food movements, we suggest that the current food crisis offers opportunities
for strategic alliances between Progressive and Radical trends within the food
movement. We conclude that while the food crisis has brought a retrenchment of
neoliberalization and weak calls for reform, the worldwide growth of food
movements directly and indirectly challenge the legitimacy and hegemony of the
corporate food regime. Regime change will require sustained pressure from a
strong global food movement, built on durable alliances between Progressive and
Radical trends.