Amanda Claire Starbuck

Amanda Claire Starbuck is an environmental researcher and writer exploring how corporate consolidation and regulatory gaps shape what ends up in the American food supply. As Research Director at the national nonprofit Food & Water Watch, she leads reporting on the food system through a “who holds power” lens. Her Economic Cost of Food Monopolies series documents how industry consolidation raises prices, squeezes farm income, exploits workers, and accelerates the climate crisis. Amanda also oversees research supporting Food & Water Watch’s advocacy campaigns on climate, energy, and water issues.

Amanda appears frequently in print, television, and radio media, including video interviews with Vice News and PBS News Hour and a radio interview with BBC World Service. Outside of Food & Water Watch, she has written essays for the Disparity to Parity project—a coalition of farmers, scholars, and activists looking to transform U.S. commodity farming—and for the journal Voices of the Valley, where she shared her experience with the North Dakota fracking boom. 

Born and raised in North Dakota, Amanda graduated from the University of North Dakota with a double major in English and Philosophy & Religion. She spent four years as a youth worker before moving to Washington, D.C. to pursue a Master’s in Global Environmental Policy at American University’s School of International Service. Amanda spent thirteen years in Washington, DC, has lived abroad in the UK, Spain, and Mexico, and eventually settled in the foothills of Colorado, but will forever call North Dakota home. She and her husband stay busy raising their two insatiably curious kids.