Rights Not Charity

In today's episode, we'll talk about why our food justice movement including food banks should work in solidarity with the movement for migrant justice. I recently saw a meme that showed a picture of a man holding a sign that read, "Do you know what an accent is? It's a sign of bravery." Truly, the migrant story is one of bravery. You must be brave to leave family and the only homeland you've known, embrace potentially treacherous travel and come to a new country where you know that not all will welcome you. But you do it for the potential to work, you do it for the potential for safety, you do it for a better future. Migrants make up the backbone of our American food system. They work our fields and in our restaurant kitchens yet they are among our most vulnerable for food security. They pay taxes, but immigration status is a bar to important federal food assistance programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The charitable food bank system is one resource, but it's not a sustainable one and also can be fraught with access issues. We're talking with Claudio Rodriguez and Robert Ojeda of the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona. Claudio is the environmental and social justice manager and Robert is the chief program officer.

Interview Summary

Christina - Claudio, before we look at migration in particular, you as the environmental and social justice manager, you have the privilege of facilitating change in communities at the intersections of food justice and community organizing. Could you tell us a little bit more please about what community organizing has to do with food and food banking?

Claudio - Yes, yes. I love this. Thank you for the question. I feel like community organizing is one of the key foundations that drives changes in our community because we've seen it throughout time through movements that change the condition of farm workers. That change policies and practices for the protection of workers, no matter where they find themselves. And when we bring community organizing into the space of food banking, what we are bringing is the building of relationships, using those relationships to accomplish together what we cannot accomplish on our own. In the case of food banking, it is to address the root causes of food insecurity.

Christina - Claudio, could you please share an example for our listeners?

Claudio - Our organizing work has actually helped change school menus to include local fresh produce. It has also created access to vacant land across our community to turn them into green spaces. Communities that often find themselves ignored, marginalized, or even just disinvested. And the purpose and mission of community organizing within food banking is to build power. To build power with our participants because without power we aren't able to change the conditions of our communities. And to break it down a little bit more for our listeners, is that when we talk about power, we're not talking about empowerment. Power is the ability to impact and affect the conditions of our own lives and the lives of others. And empowerment is more of a feel good about yourself and self-esteem. So our goal is to build power within the food banking movement so people can really change what the community looks like, feels like and their experiences.

Christina - That is a really important distinction and I appreciate that so much. Because when you talk about building power, I also think about what that means for building leadership. And Robert, as the chief program officer, you develop programs that are building leadership opportunities for people from Latin America. In your anti-hunger work, what relationship have you identified between food insecurity and migration?

Robert - Thank you, Christina, for the question. I think there are a few things that to me are really important. One is like a deep reflection and exploration around why we have folks coming to the US. One of the reasons from my perspective has to do with economic justice, lack of opportunities for folks. And it's very much connected to issues that we see within the food system. For example, food banks depend on donations from corporations, from companies, from growers that do have an impact on the workers that work within these companies. And so a question that I would ask and that we do ask is: what are the unintended consequences of our business model as food banks? So what is happening with the rights of those workers who are growing the food that we are able to distribute then to community members? And so in the case of us as an organization that's based at the border, having Mexico as a neighboring country, it's a really important question. Why are folks or brothers and sisters from Latin America coming to Southern Arizona? And can we do something also if we are actually getting resources, for example produce from Northern Mexico to be able to also do something so that it's not an extractive practice but rather a partnership? Questions around that from my perspective are really important.

And the other thing that I think is really important to elevate is this principle that I think is really important, as an immigrant myself, I do feel like we have an incredible set of experiences, expertise that we can contribute to this community. And so as an organization with resources, I think it's our responsibility to make sure that community members, immigrant community, migrant workers and others also have access to those resources. So as an organization for example, this past year we enhance our grants program to have $3 million in grants go to organizations, many of them led by people of color who are doing really amazing work in this community. So it's this belief and commitment that for, particularly our immigrant community are able to come up with really amazing and innovative ways to address issues of food insecurity and hunger. And one last thing that to me is really kind of the beginning of part of our journey. We've been operating for 43-44 years. About 20 years ago we started doing programming that Claudio leads for example around gardening and food production education. And a lot of it had to do with our immigrant community saying, "Look, this food is not culturally relevant "or appropriate for us that you're giving us. "However, we don't know "how to do other things like grow food." And I think that was the beginning of us really rethinking our role as an organization. So it's been an incredible partnership I think over the years.

Christina - Those are just some incredibly powerful examples of what you are doing to transform food systems locally for the benefit of migrant communities. What do we need to be doing more widely? What kind of role can food banks be playing at a policy level in order to address food insecurity for our migrant communities? Claudio, what do you think?

Claudio - Thank you. I think that's a really important question that really ties into the intersection of community organizing and food insecurity. And at a policy level, I think we need to be advocates as food banks and folks in the food justice movement to push policies that address the root causes of hunger. But I think we should also be investing as Robert mentioned the development of community leaders. And it doesn't get more local that looking at our own organizations, what are our customs? What are our practices? And are we centering the most impacted? And to truly center them, we need to create spaces, brave spaces that challenge the status quo within our own organizations, within our own programs. And I think those are the first steps and sometimes those steps tend to be the hardest. Robert, what do you think? Based on the 20 years that we've done this work, what have been your steps that you've seen?

Robert - Thank you, Claudio. I think there are, from my perspective a few things based on what we've learned that we could invest in policy-wise. One, food banks can be a vehicle, a mechanism for shifting our food sourcing business model and a food distribution business model. So we have an opportunity to come together really impact, where our food comes from. Are there any issues that we want to elevate to make sure that our donors are also paying attention to the rights of workers, as an example? Another thing I think is we have an opportunity to work with our local government, our state governments, and regionally and nationally around this idea that food is a human right. And that as we've seen now with the pandemic, some things that I think are promising is really how much more school districts are doing to make sure that school lunches are universal rather than sort of what we had before the pandemic. So there's a role around bringing healthy food to communities, a great opportunity for that. And the one that I think is very important has to do with economic justice. We were just involved in a campaign. Claudio actually was one of our leaders around fight for 15, a fight for a minimum wage in our local community, working with other nonprofits and other community members. And there was our local election and it passed. So now the City of Tucson and businesses that do business in our city are having to pay $15 an hour to our workers. And that has I think a really large impact to really benefit our immigrant community and other communities as well.

Christina - I really appreciate what you said, that the fight for food justice is intrinsically linked with a fight for economic justice. That we can combat food insecurity at its start by making sure that those who are taking care of us by helping us put food in the table are able to take care of their families too, and able to afford their basic needs for food and other essentials. Thank you so much, both of you.

Our guest today is Joshua Lohnes, food policy research director at the West Virginia University Center for Resilient Communities. He's a scholar activist who writes and organizes alongside members of the West Virginia Food For All coalition. Josh will help us shed light on whether and how food charity can be seen as political, why that is a problem for us all, and what those working on the ground can do about it.

Interview Summary

I'm Charlie Spring, your host for today, I'm a researcher at the Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems. I've been researching the growth of charitable food networks, particularly in the UK, where one thing I've noticed is food banking organizations lobbying national government for funding or for favorable regulatory environments for the redistribution of surplus food as charity. Meanwhile, some UK food charities have become vocal critics of government policy that they see as driving food insecurity. It's clear that the link between charity and state is a complicated and shifting one.

My first question is, most people working and volunteering in food charities wouldn't think of their work as political. What's hunger and food charity got to do with politics?

Food charity work is absolutely political. Anytime we intervene to assist someone on the brink of food access failure, we're shaping and even reinforcing the everyday realities of the politics that structure our entire food system. While charities may not want to contend with this reality, they are, by default, acting within a set of policies that govern society's response to household food insecurity. Those working in food charity, they know that they're working within an extremely complex food system. They witness this complexity every day, more than most. Charitable food workers are also often aware that this system is driven by profit logics shaped by powerful actors in the food system, including the state and large corporations.

Even if individual charities tend to operate on a logic of care over a logic of profit, the fact that they exist as a critical part of our contemporary food supply chains is a testament to the way in which specific interests in society have shaped the laws that govern food charity and the expansion of these food assistance networks over time. Free, volunteer or even low cost labor that charitable food work provides to this system is very much a part of a broader calculation. From that optic, anybody engaged in food charity is really, intimately engaged in a political project around what the future of our food system will be.

Thanks for bringing in some of those questions around logics of care over logics of profits and the question of labor in food charity work. Can you tell us a little bit more about how this expansion of food charity happened? How did politics fit into that?

I study emergency food networks in a US context from here in West Virginia, one of the places with the highest food and security rates in the country. I've observed this expansion unfold here over the past eight years. I've taken more and more of an interest in the global expansion of food charity. If we look at the US case, specifically, food charity and politics really began to intersect in the 1980s, shortly after the Reagan administration came into power. There was this concerted effort to trim down social services provided by the state like housing, cash and food assistance programs. They were all cut pretty drastically. As a result, people began lining up at churches and other organizations that had previously provided ad hoc intermittent food aid. Those cuts, they were part of a political project, one that's typically branded as trickledown economics. It left many people vulnerable to hunger.

As feeding lines expanded and became a regular part of everyday food sourcing strategies for some people, a word got out that there was all of this excess cheese and other surplus food commodities in government storehouses all across the country. Political pressure was put on the Reagan administration to release this public food to local feeding programs. That initiated a process of integrating food charities directly into federal food policy. 40 years on this response has evolved into a multi-billion dollar program we now know as the Emergency Food Assistance program or TEFAP. On the private side, the good Samaritan food donation laws were also written and shaped by corporate donors over the same period to benefit their bottom-line interests.

Then we've seen this massive expansion over the past 18 months, as feeding lines expanded once again in the wake of the COVID 19 pandemic. Here, states, private corporations, philanthropies have all invested heavily in charitable food networks. This doesn't just happen. Decisions are made in corporate boardrooms and in government committees to leverage charitable food labor and the infrastructure there, to resolve a major crisis in our food system. One, that simultaneously produces absurd amount of waste and endemic levels of hunger. Unless charities mobilize together to come to this realization and push back against these perverse dynamics, unless there's some concerted political effort to counter these trends, we'll see food charity continue to normalize as a growing part of everyday life in our communities. I think we really need to be asking whom does food charity ultimately serve? Whom are we working for when we distribute food to those in need? We serve our neighbors of course, but we also serve a powerful food cartel that has significant interest in maintaining this status quo.

I think we've seen similar trajectories of food charity expansion following welfare cuts in other parts of the world, certainly in the UK, across Europe, in Australia and increasingly in other countries as well. If charity is political then, what can people who are working assistance programs on the ground do to genuinely address food and security issues in their communities through the policy process?

That's a great question. I think the answer is organize. Organize and keep organizing. Local food charities are already organized into some kind of structure. Here in the US if you distribute TEFAP food, you are working on behalf of the federal government, which is highly organized. If you redistribute food waste from Walmart or the Kellogg corporation, you're being organized by Feeding America and a board of directors, largely beholden to the interests of these corporations. Food charities need to organize independent movements that have a powerful enough political voice to counter the dynamics currently leading to the expansion of food charity.

I think that once food charities realize that their labor, their fundraising, their infrastructure investments bring a significant amount of collective value to this profit driven system, they can begin to leverage and take back that social value to reshape the entire food system from below, for and with the very people to whom they're providing food aid.

Now, I don't know how many people remember, but just last year, Donald Trump placed letters in every box of food distributed by the federal government during the pandemic right during election season. He understood food charity as a political space. How are we leveraging the spaces we've created to shape the food system that we want to see in the next 10, 20 or 30 years? These are questions I have because an organized political movement of local food charities that elevates the voices of those they serve, could be a powerful force, reshaping the moral economy of our entire food system. Of course, it involves rethinking what food charity is at its core as well. This will take time, but emergent initiatives like Closing the Hunger Gap here in the US, this Global Solidarity Alliance were part of is beginning to do work.

Now, you can also do that work at the local level with your city or your county government. You can do that work by building alliances with other political groups that are already organizing around these issues. We're doing it here through the West Virginia Food for All Coalition, a broad coalition of food banks and farmers and anti-poverty advocates. We need to build alliances that connect across place, connect across space, advocating for social issues that go far beyond food; low wages, poor healthcare, high housing costs, expensive transportation. Now, we can collectively get involved in shaping the laws linked to the production of hunger in our communities. If we don't, you can be sure others will shape them on our behalf. We've seen where that's led these past 40 years, the continued expansion of food charity.

I just learned last week that the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona seeded a political campaign to increase minimum wage in the city of Tucson. That just passed last week. Now, that's wonderful. Charities getting involved in the political process to actually reduce the need for charity. Here in West Virginia charities are beginning to get involved in the movement for constitutional amendment around the right to food. That's also really cool. It's wonderful. The first step, I think, is for charities to learn about the policies that undergird their systems. Food charity, why does it exist? Why is it there in the first place? Only then can we organize with purpose. From my vantage point, the right to food movement and the food sovereignty movement already give us all of the language and concepts that we need to begin doing that, no matter what political scale you're organizing at or that you feel your organization can act within.

I know from firsthand experience, it's not easy doing politics, but again, anyone involved in distributing charitable food is already involved in a political project. Unfortunately, when you follow the money, it's probably not a project that you actually want to be a part of. I think that the first step in getting involved in this work, politically, is digging into the politics that create the need for food charity in the first place.

Listening to this podcast seems like a great way to begin to do that. Thanks for inviting me on to contribute some of these thoughts. I look forward to learning with you as this project moves forward.

Multiculturalism is central to Canada's national identity. It is how Canadians like to distinguish themselves on the international stage. But this mythology obscures the realities of Black, Indigenous and people of color otherwise known as BIPOC who experienced ongoing colonialism and racism. These forces have led to fast social inequities, including the prevalence of food insecurity in one in every two first nations households, and nearly one in every three black households compared to one in 10 white Canadian households. In addition, migrant workers who produce food for Canadians, but who are not recognized as citizens or rights holders are among the groups that are most vulnerable to food insecurity and other social consequences of the pandemic. In today's episode, we examine patterns of dietary inequity and struggles for food justice that challenge Canada's multicultural facade.

Welcome to Rights not Charity. This podcast series is about a big idea, ensuring everyone has enough food not as a charitable gift, but as a fundamental human right. My name is Audrey Tung, and I'm a PhD student at the University of Victoria. Our guest today's Jade Guthrie. She's an expert on issues of food justice and food sovereignty in both theory and practice. She's a community food programs lead at FoodShare Toronto and a community organizer with Justice for Migrant Workers. Drawing from her background in social work, Jade applies an intersectional and anti-oppressive approach to advocacy for the right to food.

Interview Summary

So Jade in your most recent article in the Right to Food and Nutrition Watch report, you highlighted the distinction between structural and superficial responses to hunger. And you also demonstrated that the pandemic has exacerbated longstanding and long overlooked social inequities in Canada. Can you tell us a bit about why black and indigenous communities are disproportionately vulnerable to food insecurity?

So I think first off, it's really important to recognize that Canada's food system as a whole is very much built on foundation of systems and structures of oppression. So things like settler colonialism and capitalism, systemic racism and structural poverty. So, it's no mistake then that certain communities, mainly BIPOC communities are bearing the brunt of the violence of our food system. I think we often hear kind of mainstream narratives that reinforce this idea that our system is failing or it's broken. But the fact of the matter is that it's not failing or broken, it's working exactly how it was built to. It was built on the backs of these folks. Canada's economic and social structures are low road, capitalists, colonial ones. So, our entire system as a country began on the backs of enslaved people, enslaved BIPOC folks. And today those systems continue to disproportionally impact these communities really violently. And then we see this play out in people's lives in terms of levels to access to food. Like you mentioned, black families are more than three and a half times more likely to experience food insecurity than white families here in Canada. So we see it playing out in the number of systemic barriers people face in trying to access the food they need to thrive. We might ask questions like why is it so hard to find affordable fresh produce in mainly black and indigenous and lower income neighborhoods? And it's not a coincidence, but it's a result of planning and policy processes that systematically under-resource certain communities. We also see this disproportionate impact playing out in terms of policing and food. So, why do certain grocery stores have police officers or security guards or metal detectors while others don't? Or why is baby food locked up in certain neighborhoods? So the question comes up of how many young, black and indigenous folks first encounter with the carceral system comes out of inequitable access to food. There's a lot of connections to be made here between policing and food insecurity that I think are really important to think about. And then, also it is super important to recognize and think about the ways in which our state's policies have historically and continue to attempt to destroy indigenous food ways and practices and traditions. So, if you could look back in time to something like the banning of potlatch ceremony and the Indian Act, or today you could look to the struggle for traditional fishing rights on the East Coast for the Mi'kmaq fisher folk. So when we look at the ways that our state's policies have enacted and continue to enact so much violence on these communities, it's no surprise that the relationships that indigenous and black folks have with food are often fraught and quite violent. I think lastly, it's also really important to recognize how these broader systems of oppression intersect to, for example, folks who work in frontline positions, which are often underpaid and quite exploded of in nature are disproportionally BIPOC folks. So we can also see the ways that structural poverty intersects with something like systemic racism to further oppressed and marginalized communities, which in turn does make them more vulnerable to food insecurity. So, I think thinking about this notion of intersectionality is really important when we're talking about folks experiences with the food system as well.

That's such a good point you made about how our food systems are not necessarily broken, they're inequitable and even destructive by design. So related to that, as an advocate for migrant food workers, could you tell about how Canada's food system relies on the exploitation of migrant labor?

Canada's agricultural industry relies on something called the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program or the SAWP. And this is basically a program where the Canadian government brings in temporary farm workers from other countries to work across Canada during the farming season. Workers who come through this program often come from developing countries, which in turn means they are disproportionately black, brown and indigenous folk. When you take a closer look at the SAWP, it becomes very clear that it's rooted in systemic racism and colonialism. We see this evidenced in the structures of the program itself, it classifies these black and brown folks as good enough to exploit for labor, good enough to come here, so that we can build wealth off of their labor, but not necessarily deserving a permanent status. They're often classified as temporary through this program. I think it's also really clear in the ways that plantation dynamics are often reproduced on farms across the country that employ these workers. We often see white settler employers or farm owners bringing in these BIPOC workers, exploiting their labor for very little compensation and then housing them in segregated conditions. So, very much like a replication of plantation dynamics that have existed since the founding of Canada. I think it's also important to consider the role of capitalism within this system as well. So the SAWP is very much an employer centric program that really favors the financial interests of these big multinational corporate farms over the human rights of the workers themselves. Going back to what you mentioned in introduction to this episode, the SAWP is just another example of Canada's myth making process about itself. This program is often touted as an inclusive immigration program for the country. On the world stage, it's really lauded as something that's super progressive and inclusive and inviting for folks. But the fact of the matter is that it's not true. It is a scheme that brings in billions of dollars for Canada's agricultural industries. So, I think what becomes clear there is the way that the structures of the SAWP are linked to the ways that our government has framed food as a commodity, as something to profit off of, rather than us at basic human right. One really important thing to highlight about the SAWP is that workers who come into the country through this program are bound to their employers. So, they totally lack labor mobility and often are forced to live at the mercy of their employers. Players have the power to repatriate workers basically, to deport them, to send them back to their home countries. And so they often live in fear of this happening, which prevents them from speaking up about unsafe working conditions or about racist employers. This program structure for the SAWP affords all of the power to employers. And although some employers might provide decent working or decent living conditions, the structures are in place don't compel them to do that. And so what we see play out time and time again, especially over the course of the pandemic is cramped bunk houses, lack of PPE, unsafe working conditions, workers being forced to work during the pandemic, during COVID. And we've seen many workers lose their lives on farms or get severely injured and be sent home. There's the clear, oppressive power dynamic that's happening here that's only being reinforced by the structures of the program itself.

I find it so outrageous how the government is trying to pass off exploitation as inclusion through this SAWP program. And I also really liked that historical line you drew between historical plantation dynamics and the inequitable and unjust food systems we have today. So, given your work in partnering with racialized communities, I was wondering if you'd be able to speak to the difference between multiculturalism and anti-racism to give listeners an example in major Canadian cities, such as Toronto and Vancouver, a variety of international food is often seen as evidence of multiculturalism. Here in Vancouver, the city's often portrayed as a multicultural capital of international food, but during the pandemic, the city was also called North America's capital of anti-Asian hate crimes. Now, I suspect both representations are true, because the notion of multiculturalism actually conceals and perpetuates deeper destructors of racism. Could you share your thoughts and perspectives on this?

I think this is a really interesting question, a really important one. I think that this paradox that you're talking about speaks to the ways that Canada as a state is so deeply invested in a national myth-making process about who we are and not so many of us have thought so deeply into the idea that we are better than our neighbors south of the border or that police brutality against black and indigenous folks is something that happens in other places and not here. I think we're so bought into this national myth about ourselves that it often covers up all of the violence that is like ongoing and perpetuated every day. Looking back in time is really important to understand where we currently are.

Wo if you were to do a critical historical analysis of our nation's policies and laws, going back to the so-called founding of the country, it is really easy to clearly trace how deeply embedded racism and settler colonialism are in our structures and systems that shape every day of our lives here in Canada. You will find things like the Chinese head tax, the Indian Act, legislation around black loyalists property ownership, Japanese internment camps. There's countless examples. And so I think that really illustrates the ways in which our state has been writing and enacting these incredibly violent and racist policies since the establishment of the country, which is really, really important to highlight. And yet at the same time, our country's lawmakers and politicians have also enacted policies and legislation that serves to obscure or erase, or like cover up these clear examples of racist and colonial violence.

So things like the SAWP, like I mentioned, the Multiculturalism Act from 1988, creating policies like this don't necessarily create meaningful action around building and more inclusive or tolerant society, but serve to perpetuate a narrative of Canada the good, the multicultural mosaic and place where refugees are welcomed to build new lives. And I think we've been engaged in these processes of like telling certain stories about who Canada is as a nation for so long that it's often difficult to disengage from those stories. And so I think it's really important to actually think critically and question these narratives, turning them on their head and reflecting on what they're serving to cover up or what they're serving to erase, like multiculturalism as this blanket identity for Canada, it's there to hide all of the violence, and all of the atrocities they're ongoing and historical. It sounds really critical. And I think it's important to highlight that multiple things can be true at once.

My dad's side of my family came to Canada from Jamaica as immigrants, and they came to build a new life with certain opportunities and possibilities. And so there are certain things to be thankful for, but it's really crucial, particularly as a settler living here on stolen land to really question these national myths. How are we furthering and deepening projects of colonial violence or systemic racism by buying into these narratives? And so then in terms of when we're looking at what is multiculturalism versus what is anti-racism, but I think multiculturalism serves to actually hide all of the racist policies and racial violence that occurs every day. And anti-racism means critically looking at those things, identifying where these sites of oppression are, and then working to dismantle those things, actually take these systems down and transform them.

Thank you Jade for subverting and challenging this myth of multiculturalism that's sort of ingrained into Canada's national identity. I can relate to your experience of being the children of immigrants and being conditioned to feel grateful for what I have. And I understand that I hold privileges, especially as a Chinese Canadian, and often being portrayed in a model minority in that sense. But again, this model minority myth also obscures the privileges that I hold and what it means to be a settler in this land, even if I'm a settler of color. So as a final question, how do you apply an anti-racist lens to your work with food share and also justice for migrant workers?

Anti-racism is like a big umbrella for a lot of different types of work. I think at its core, though, for me, what applying an anti-racist lens to the work that I do every day means is that we need to recognize that we can't talk about food insecurity. We can't talk about the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program without talking about systemic racism, without talking about settler colonialism. At its core, it's really recognizing where those connections exist. Recognizing how these systems are embedded within these broader structures of oppression. And then what doing anti-racism work means to me is working towards dismantling those systems, and working towards identifying the sites of oppression, and being like, how do we transform this? How do we work from a space of understanding that food insecurity is directly tied into anti-black racism. I think it's the way that I frame the work that I'm involved in and that I'm a part of, it's just knowing that we can never have a deep politicized conversation about food insecurity or about our food system, which is what I think happens a lot of the time in the mainstream food movement, which has often been the largely white conversation. So, the framing I think is where it starts as well as then obviously the action that comes out of that in terms of actively dismantling systems and pushing against them if that makes sense.

Given the urgency of responding to climate change, food movements have featured prominently in urban planning, food policy, and sustainability initiatives, over the past decade. However, mainstream frameworks, such as the Local Food Movement, have typically catered to privilege, namely, a white middle class. They tend to overlook food networks that racialized communities have relied upon to survive social marginalization. Many of these communities have come together to support one another during COVID-19, a time when they've experienced profound social and dietary inequities. While the pandemic has presented a parallel crisis to climate change, it has also presented an opportunity to build food movements that are more sustainable, equitable, and inclusive to diverse communities. In this episode, we will understand how we can do so using the framework of food justice.

Interview Summary

Welcome to Rights Not Charity. This podcast series is about a big idea, ensuring that everyone has enough food, not as a charitable gift, but as a fundamental human right. My name is Audrey Tung, and I'm a PhD student at the University of Victoria. Jade Guthrie, our guest today, is an expert on issues of food justice and food sovereignty, in both theory and practice. She is a Community Food Programs Lead at FoodShare Toronto, and a Community Organizer with Justice for Migrant Workers. Drawing from her background in social work, she applies an intersectional and anti-oppressive approach to your advocacy for the right to food.

So what is food justice and how does it come up in your work?

So for me, I think that food justice is a way of looking at the food systems that we have, and exploring and dissecting them through a really critical lens. It's really about identifying where and how broader systems of oppression are shaping our experiences and our relationships with food. And then food justice is working to dismantle those systems, to transform our food system into a more just and equitable one.

You know, when we talk about food justice, I think it's really about recognizing that things like settler colonialism, and capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, these are some of the organizing principles that are very much embedded within our current food system. And, we see, and we feel, this play out every day in people's lives. So we see it in the ways that black and indigenous folks, disabled folks, poor folks, other groups of marginalized people, these are the folks who are disproportionally facing more barriers to accessing food. These are the same people who are policed within the food system, and the same folks who are exploited as workers along the food chain. So when we talk about food justice, it's really kind of acknowledging that we can't talk about these food issues, things like food insecurity, without talking about all of these broader systems that it's rooted in. You know, going back to this notion of Rights Not Charity, I think when we talk about food justice, what becomes clear is that any meaningful so-called solution to the problem of food insecurity, has to take into account these sites of oppression that breed the conditions for food insecurity, right? So we can't just continue looking to temporary Band-Aid solutions, but we need to be thinking about sustainability and long-term transformation. So it's not just about putting food on the table, but it's about things like anti-oppression, anti-racism, asking questions like, "How can we decolonize the entire food system?" I think it is Karen Washington who I heard say this, but that "food justice is an action word." So you've got to talk the talk and walk the walk when it comes to food justice. So it means that we need to be working to transform these systems, to create a food system that's really built for the people, right? Not one that's built on the backs of marginalized folks, which is what we currently have.

Thanks for teasing out the complexities of food justice so succinctly and eloquently. I particularly like how you mention that food insecurity can't be disentangled from wider systems of oppression, such as racism. So in your workshops, how do you harness the connective power of food towards social change?

I think that food is really special, because our unique relationships with food are incredibly intimate and personal, but at the same time, this notion of having a relationship with food is very universal in the same way. Or like everyone has some sort of relationship with food, even if that relationship might be fraught. And I think also it's important to note that our relationships with food are very much inherently political too. Our experiences with food and the connections that we have with food, are rooted in notions of things like identity, and community, and culture, and race. The stories that we tell about the foods that we eat, or the foods that we love, or the foods that we want to cook, are very much stories about ourselves. So they tell us a lot about how we move through and experience the world. Outside of that, if we're looking at food as this social object, it's a really good meeting point. Food is often this kind of central thing that we all gather around. It really just has this nature of bringing people together and almost acts as like a mediator between folks, right? I think of some of the conversations, the most difficult or the most uncomfortable conversations I've had in my life have often been around a kitchen table, and having food there to mediate that conversation makes things a bit easier, eases the tension a little, right? This notion of sharing a meal while we unpack these difficult things. And so, in all of these ways, food is this special entry point into the conversations we have about our lives and about the world that we live in.

So then, in terms of the workshops that we run at FoodShare, when we look at food from this perspective, the idea of facilitating workshops that center around food, whether it's cooking together or sharing a meal, or even just having a workshop where we're talking about our own food stories and our own experiences within the food system, using food as this mediator makes a lot of sense. I personally think that one of the best ways we can get to know other people is over food. When you're making a new friend, often the first plan you make together is going to a new restaurant or cooking together. And so, if we're talking about trying to build connections and build relationships, and that's what we need in order to organize and actually push for social change. It's like, at the core of all of that is this sense of community and connectedness, and building these relationships with folks. And so, I don't think there's any better way to do it than in the kitchen or by sharing a meal together. In some of the workshops I do, one example of this would be, I love to bring up different dishes that have a history in a variety of cultures around the world. So an example would be a curry. So many people have so many different versions of curry, and so when you bring it up there's this great way to build bridges across perceived differences. I might talk about my grandma's Jamaican curried chicken, while someone else might talk about a curry from India or a curry from Thailand. There's so many connections we can make to folks who might look different from us, or might have different experiences from us. And then at the same time, having a conversation about something like curry can also open up a lot of space for scaling conversations up to take a more critical look at systems. So you might not think about systemic racism the minute we start talking about curry, but it's a really good way to open up a conversation about migration or a newcomer experience. The ingredients we use to make curry might lead to a conversation about cooking on a budget, which would lead to a conversation about food insecurity and experiences of poverty.

I think food is this rich vein that we can dive into, in terms of, not only building a sense of connection, but also then taking our conversations up to the next level and applying this critical lens to it, if that makes sense.

That was beautiful Jade. I understand that many of these important conversations can be uncomfortable for many people, so I appreciate how you emphasize the solidarity and celebration in all of this as well. So at FoodShare, how do you connect grassroots organizing with advocacy for structural social supports as well?

I think a lot of it is just understanding your positionality as a nonprofit, and figuring out how you are in the best position to support folks who are already doing this work on the ground. I think it's really important as a nonprofit to recognize that the nonprofit industrial complex can be, and is often, extremely harmful and perpetuates a lot of violence against marginalized communities and people. So nonprofits that could help through a lens of charity and goodwill, that often perpetuate systems of oppression that are already in place. So, by perpetuating these systems that often allows states and governments to shirk their responsibilities, and at the same time, replicates a lot of depressive power dynamics that are keeping people down to begin with. As a nonprofit, it's really, really important to really recognize the power and the privilege and the high level of access to resources that we have. And then within that recognition, then to be really intentional about resource sharing, and wealth redistribution, and accountability to the communities that we're working with.

At FoodShare, we have a clear understanding of how we see food justice working, what our principles are around food justice, what our principles are around supporting liberation. And so in terms of then connecting with grassroots organizing or advocacy that's happening on the ground, there's a very intentional process about who we partner with and who we don't partner with. As a nonprofit, if you're going to have these radical values or progressive principles, ensuring that the folks we're partnering with on the ground, also those same principles and have those shared values and that shared mission.

One example of how we do this is we have a supportive partnerships platform at FoodShare where we'll partner with grassroots organizations and different community initiatives to provide things like mentorship, as well as access to resources like admin support, or even access to a FoodShare company vehicle. Our staff will help them with fundraising, with capacity development and training and that kind of stuff. And I think there's some really clear guidelines around who we partner with, and a lot of that has to do with having a kind of shared vision of what transforming our food system should look like. And so, moving away from notions of charity and moving away from notions of goodwill around food, and finding the folks on the ground who are already doing such incredible work around food justice. The folks who already know what a transformed food system that is equitable and just should look like, and have been doing that work for years and years and years. And finding those folks who have those shared values and figuring out, okay, how do we, as a nonprofit, rework what we've been given to work with to support the work that these folks are already doing? So an example of that would be over the course of the pandemic. Obviously there's been an increased need for emergency food aid, and FoodShare started this emergency Good Food fund to get Good Food Boxes, which are produce boxes, out to communities who disproportionately were feeling the weight of the pandemic, and the weight of poverty and food insecurity. And so when we opened that fund up and that project, it was really important to ensure that we were partnering with BIPOC-led groups who were working on the ground. People who understand, have lived experiences of these systems, and are working from this space of grassroots organizing rather than top-down approach.

The food system does not serve everyone equally. Hunger is rooted in systems of inequity, including systemic and structural racism. Structural racism is at the root of hunger and the health disparities we see in the US today. In this episode, we'll talk to Suzanne Babb about the impacts of historical policies on the food security of communities of color. Suzanne is co-director of US programs at WhyHunger.org, New York. She is also an urban farmer and founding member of Black Urban Growers.

Interview Summary

So Suzanne, could you start out by explaining to us the meaning of the term structural racism and how it impacts black indigenous in communities of color today?

- Sure. So I'm going to use a definition from Dr. Camara Jones, a public health researcher who talks about the impacts of racism on health. So she starts out by defining institutional racism, which is the systems of policies, practices, norms, and values that result in differential access to goods, services, and opportunities in society by race. So how that shows up is inherited disadvantage, in this case, Black, Indigenous, and people of color, and inherited advantage, and in this case, in the US it is white people who have that advantage. And the way that this gets manifested is in terms of material conditions and access to power. So we're looking at access to housing, education, employment opportunities, income inequality, different access to medical facilities, access to a clean environment, access to power through information, resources, and voice like in the media. So laying that out when we're talking about structural racism, structural racism is about how these policies and institutions act together to lead and produce barriers to opportunity and lead to racial disparity. So for example, we could take the mass incarceration of Black men and women. That is a relationship between the education system, the whole quote to prison pipeline between the criminal justice system and between the media that often perpetuates the myths about black people and criminality.

Thank you so much for laying that out for us so clearly. It's important to remember for us that the structures we have today are the result of our multitude of historical insults. What are some key historical flash points to keep in mind when we think about the relationship between hunger and the right to food?

I think there are two big ones that I can give in as an example as historical insults. The first one would be the dispossession and murder of Indigenous people in populations of their natural resources beginning in the 15th century. And then also the transatlantic slave trade where millions of West Africans were kidnapped, enslaved and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean, sold as chattel to do backbreaking labor from the middle of the 15th century to the end of the 19th century. And this is important because this is the beginning of where oppression and structural racism began for these groups of people, and that policies and practices have just been created and evolved to continue that oppression.

So over the last century there've been a number of policies or specific political acts that have shaped the US food system and negatively impacted the right to food for communities of color. I wonder if you can identify for us some of those key political actions.

Yes, so I'll identify three areas: the Social Security Act of 1935, several USDA farm policies with impact particularly on BIPOC farmers, and urban planning and neighborhoods; and the National Housing Act of 1934.

Let's now take each one of those policies one at a time, beginning with maybe the Social Security Act. Tell us a little bit about how that Social Security Act affected the food security of communities of color?

So the Social Security Act was created to protect Americans by providing folks in their old age, survivors and folks who have been disabled insurance; so payment in those times when they're no longer able to work. But what happened was during that time, it excluded domestic and agricultural workers. And 60% of the Black labor force were domestic and agricultural workers. That was completely intentional. Then domestic workers were included in 1950 and agricultural workers were included in 1954. But that left out a generation of people who couldn't accumulate family wealth or couldn't get their basic needs met during that time when they could no longer work because of age or disability. And so if they had hunger or food insecurity already because they probably weren't earning enough money, that was further perpetuated by not being able to access social security.

So the Social Security Act created into generational sort of oppression, increasing the combined food insecurity for communities of color. Now, I wonder how the USDA farm policies also operated as structures of racism?

If we look at the way in which the USDA gives out subsidies, for many decades, they have given out billions of federal subsidies to companies and large scale farms that produce corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, corn starch, and soy. And we may know now that a lot of those products end up in food, and they help to perpetuate chronic health diseases. And so these processed foods end up in neighborhoods of color and poor neighborhoods at a higher proportion than white wealthy neighborhoods. So not only are we impacting farmers, we're impacting the health of the communities in which receive the end product of this. Now most farmers of color usually farm what's called specialty crops, which is fruits and vegetables and livestock. These types of crops are not eligible for the commodity programs and receive way less government support. And even when you look at the support that they do get, there is some racial discrimination there. So for example, the Haas Institute said that white farmers that grow specialty crops receive a payment of about $10,000 per farm, while Black farmers receive an average of about $5,000 per farm.

So not only are communities of color restricted in buying food, but also heavily restricted in growing their own food through these political actions. Now, when it comes to urban planning, can you talk to us a little bit about the impact that urban planning policies have on neighborhoods and communities?

So I'll talk about the National Housing Act 1934, which was implemented by the Federal Housing Administration. And the purpose of this was to promote home ownership and launch many Americans into the middle class. The FHA provided loans to people so that they could purchase houses, but many people of color were largely left out. In fact, about 2% of these FHA loans were made to nonwhite buyers. What the FHA did was they gave certain neighborhoods different credit ratings. And often what they would do is if you were a suburban or a white neighborhood, you got a higher credit rating than a more ethnically diverse or economically unstable neighborhood, which tended to get lower credit ratings; which made them seem more risky and they had less chance of getting loans. Now we know home ownership is how people get launched into middle class and are able to accumulate generational wealth. So the inability to do this left people of color without that ability to accumulate generational wealth. And this policy also has four major ways in that it impacted people's lives. So because a lot of the folks who received the loans were then moving into the suburbs and out of the cities, many policies favored building roads and highways into these new suburbs and then drove divestment away from public transportation in cities, which people in the cities, mostly people of color needed to get to jobs and to grocery stores. The relocation of homeowners also meant that they drove out grocers and other retail operations into the suburbs, and that people lost access to employment and also lost access to good places to get food. Local farmland was also lost because of the creation of these new suburbs. So you had to go even further out for folks to be able to get access to good fresh food in the city. And then also they lost a strong property tax base, which led to a decline in public school investment, which included quality school food programs.

Thank you for laying that out so clearly for us. I think it really gives us a sense of how these structures of racism operate almost in invisible ways to reduce the power and food security of communities of color. To end with, I'd like to ask you a question about power in communities of color. What are some ways in which black indigenous and people of color are pushing back against these structures of racism?

There's so many different ways! As we said at the beginning, institutional racism and structural racism are about policies and practices. And so BIPOC communities are taking action in those same ways. So if we're looking right now at critical policies, folks are really lifting up the emergency relief for BIPOC farmers, act that came out of the American Rescue Plan, and the legislation that has been presented around justice for Black farmers. There's also been a really big movement towards connecting to land. There's the Land Back movement, which is a movement organizing to get indigenous land back in the hands of indigenous people and communities. And a lot of folks are bringing up again reparations, which is recognizing the centuries of the government and corporations profiting off of the harm that they've inflicted on black people. But if we're looking particularly at food sovereignty, some of the ways that BIPOC folks are building power is through healing that connection to the land. And a lot of that looks through buying the land and stewarding that land communally and cooperatively. It's looking at more people going back to farming, to foraging, to hunting in the ways of their ancestors and honoring those practices and knowledge. It looks like seed saving. It looks like many people growing herbal medicine and using those practices because of the differential access to health care that folks have. It looks like defending the rights of mother earth, defending the land and water and see if you've seen many defenses against pipelines by indigenous communities. And it also, I think more importantly, all of these are part of looking at different economic structures that are not exploitative or extractive. You know, really looking at solidarity economies and things like just transition.

Bio:

Suzanne Babb is Director of US Programs, Nourish Network for the Right to Food. Suzanne works in collaboration with partners to transform the emergency food system from one rooted in charity to one rooted in justice and to build solidarity between emergency food providers and food justice organizations. Through participation in local and national level strategic partnerships, Suzanne helps to create space and facilitate dialogue around the systemic inequities that cause hunger and poverty. Originally from Montreal, Quebec, Canada Suzanne has many years of experience working on community development projects within the English-speaking Black community of Montreal on issues of education, employment and health. Prior to joining WhyHunger, Suzanne was the Community Outreach Coordinator for the Get Healthy Harlem website at the Harlem Health Promotion Center. Suzanne is a member of Black Urban Growers, an organization of volunteers committed to building community support for urban and rural growers and nurturing collective Black leadership, and an urban farmer at La Finca del Sur Urban Farm, a Black and Latina women led farm, in the South Bronx. She holds a BS from Concordia University and an MPH from Columbia University.

Lack of food or too much of the wrong kind of food can create a wealth of physical and mental health problems. Making matters even worse, society often blames individuals for making the wrong choices. But data shows us that diet related ill health goes hand in hand with inequality and poverty and occurs at disproportionately higher rates for communities of color. In this episode, we talk with Dr. Ben Danielson, a pediatrician with the University of Washington, about the parallels between food banking and healthcare. And, how both systems manage social problems and could benefit from addressing food insecurity systemically at the root causes level.

Host: Christina Wong, Northwest Harvest

Guest: Ben Danielson, University of Washington

Producer: Deborah Hill, Duke World Food Policy Center

Interview Summary

We know the benefits of healthy food and we see ongoing impacts on child health outcomes as a result of food insecurity and family reliance on food charity. In your opinion, what are the key issues that health and food providers need to address?

Well, I think this is an opportunity for us to be a little bit reflective and to step back. I want to ask us all: what is the narrative that we've created around food and food charity? What is the story that we're telling ourselves? Is it a narrative or a story about heroes who are philanthropically giving of themselves to put food in front of folks and the poor destitute who are somehow just waiting for this kind of charity to show up? Are we disempowering some populations and creating super powers in others? What is the story that we're telling ourselves about food charity? And if we think about that, what is the environment of food and the food and health system that we're talking about in that narrative?

So I wonder about charity because sometimes in our society, we allow folks with great resource to make their choices about charity in order to help support other parts of our society. When in fact, sometimes those great resources are attained because of avoiding a need to pay taxes, avoiding other parts of supporting our society's infrastructure. And we sort of pulled away one set of resources and then allowed a certain number of people to provide a small amount of resource in a separate way. And I feel like maybe that is a narrative, a story of heroes doing something heroic instead of a story of a society that everybody cares about each other, everybody has strengths, everybody is making sure that everyone else around them is strong and healthy because that's the way we all get so much better. So I wonder about this idea about charitable deferral, the avoidance of supporting infrastructure by providing a trickle of resources to other spaces. I wonder about that infrastructure and the wealthiest of wealthy nations shouldn't we have some basic idea of the components that we should all be should all have a right to, should all be entitled to make sure that we don't have to worry about? Because I will tell you beyond the caloric issues of food, the worry about food, the preoccupation with wondering about food is just as detrimental to the mind and the body and the soul of folks who deal with food insecurity every day. I wonder about this as a symbolic representation of poverty by creating this space where food is delivered in sometimes undignifying ways to folks whose food security is weak. How we create a strong picture of folks perhaps BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color), in different communities being subjugated, being marginalized. And that marginalization kind of being represented by this delivery of food in this way that we do it. I wonder about what we are accountable to, each of us.

I see in my role as a pediatrician, I watch these amazing kids every day. These incredible kids with just a look in their eye that tells you they can change the world for the better, they have all the skills and tools and hopes and dreams and potential to do something incredible. And all they need from us is the right space, the right environment, the right cultivation to allow incredible things to happen. I wonder how our narrative could be about celebration and optimism and strength and brilliance. And how we are all so much better when every one of us including the people that we never meet have everything they need to do their best.

There has to be a better way. From what you're seeing from your experiences and what I'm seeing working at a food bank, that there's a real power imbalance that is being perpetuated by the system. A system that's designed to help people, but we're maybe not helping people live to their fullest potential. And I feel like this pandemic has really shed a lot of light on those inequities. During the COVID crisis, food bank providers focused on simply getting food to people. But it has also got us thinking about upstream solutions, such as enacting the right to food in Washington and in other states. What has the COVID crisis revealed for you?

The COVID crisis for me has revealed the need for us to be willing to think with a slightly deeper sense of complexity than the simplicity that we've sought in the past around some of our deepest social problems. It's so important for us to think both in the moment and to think upstream. To think about the intervention and the prevention. About the spaces where people need us in these moments, and the spaces in which our investment in ourselves and in others creates a world where that need does not perpetuate.

I hope that isn't too vague and sort of up in the sky, but I do think this pandemic has brought out the many ways in which our social and cultural infrastructure has been designed to subjugate people. To hold people down even as we're doing symbolic acts to sometimes be helpful to people. That the greater system is designed to make sure that a poor person in this country knows that they are poor. For the person who has been poor and their parent has been poor, and the grandparent has been poor, that poverty is more likely to persist because of the way we have designed society. This pandemic has reminded us that we have systems in place, and I must say with shame, especially our healthcare system and our public health system, that are not designed to serve those who are the most harmed by illness, the most harmed by chronic disease, the most harmed by economic deprivation. We have systems that are perpetuating exactly what we've seen during this pandemic and have accentuated the differences in this society between those who access to much material resource and those who have been deprived over generations that kind of access.

This is the revealing. The COVID pandemic is not a new set of elements, although it is newly deadly to black and brown communities in ways that it is not as deadly to others. But it is more importantly the great revealer of the many ways in which our society has been infiltratively practicing a disregard and an indignity toward many other people in our society.

So then let's talk about solutions. What possibilities do you see for improving some of the conditions that you've been describing?

I think that we need to reframe our work around making sure that when we are doing things to support those around us, that promoting dignity is one of the most important components of that. I guess you can tell from my conversation, I think we all have a bit of reckoning to do. Each of us has our own personal reckoning to do that has to come with a deep reflection about our role and our place in society. What is the story we're telling ourselves about those that we see as other from us, not like us, not sharing our particular set of values, life experiences, or even melanin, how do we change that story? Because when you really look around you, what you see is an incredible potential. What is getting in the way? I think part of it is the way that we frame the things that we call problems in our society. Because out of those problems, there is so much more opportunity, there is so much more possibility. Just from a basic resource perspective, we are in countries that have amazing wealth and the potential to make sure that not a single person in those countries needs to be suffering. Not just the suffering of calorie deprivation, but the suffering of indignity. What would happen if when we designed programs to support each other? Based on the brilliance that we know that these communities around us possess, based on the desire that we all feel to make sure that we are treated with dignity and respect, how should we design these programs? We know that everybody should have a right to really making sure that they have the kinds of nutrients that allow their brains and their bodies to function at their best potential level. What should we be making sure every one of us has? It's ironic to me that as we make decisions that harm other people around us, they ultimately harm all of us. And until we make that fabric, that interwoven connection between us and the person nearest and far from us, we're not going to make better decisions, until we decide that there's greater joy and potential and possibility out there than there is deficit or lack or loss, then we're not going to make strong choices based on that optimism.

In this episode, we’ll explore the connection between hunger and health. Welcome to Rights Not Charity. This podcast series is about a big idea, ensuring everyone has enough food, not as a charitable gift, but as a fundamental human right. My name is Christina Wong and I'm the director of Public Policy and Advocacy at Northwest Harvest, a food justice organization and statewide food bank based in Seattle, Washington. Our guest today is Dr. Ben Danielson, a pediatrician with the University of Washington.

Host: Christina Wong, Northwest Harvest

Guest: Ben Danielson, University of Washington

Producer: Deborah Hill, Duke World Food Policy Center

Interview Summary

So my first question for you is we all know that access to good food is a vital component of physical and mental health. Can you help us understand the links between diet and food access and how it affects health?

Well, I guess we have to just start with the basics. Not having enough food, or the right kind of nutrition, at least, leads to serious and often deadly health consequences for so many people across this country and other countries as well. When you don't have enough calories that just means you don't have the kind of energy you need for work. It means that if you're trying to learn, you don't have the potential to be able to learn effectively. If you don't have enough calories, you can't play, and you don't have life fulfilling activities that are important to you. But it's not just about not having quite enough calories, it's also about issues of making sure you have access to the healthiest foods and the right micronutrients.

There are ways in which hunger can be all around you, and you might not realize it, because people might not look like they are underweight or starving. In fact, a lot of people who have nutritional deficits can be overweight and malnourished at the same time. This is the paradox and the painful reality of not having enough food for too many people in North America and Europe. These problems are really linked to the way we think of economic inequality. When a parent is low income, they might struggle to afford fruits and vegetables, and they might go for the higher calorie foods per dollar. But that higher calorie content per dollar may be lower on the nutritional scale. It may not be the right kind of micronutrients. It could lead to someone actually feeling full, but not having a fulfilling diet. This means that again, young people, old people, children are filling their bodies with calories, but not with healthy foods.

If we are part of a nation, part of a continent, part of a globe that cares about making sure that each person can fulfill their potential in the way that they're supposed to, it really needs to be time for us to rethink the way we talk about food, about the right to food, about access to food. Because it's more than just nutrients. It's not enough for a food company, say, to add a few fortifications to their cereal. It's not enough for a particular product to be enhanced with certain micronutrients. What we need to be doing is really talking about food differently, and talking about body size, and body shape, and body weight differently. We need to have new conversations about access to healthy food, the rights of all of us to get food, the chance for young people to grow and fulfill their biggest dreams because they have healthy diets. And, the obligation that we all have to each other to making sure that we can live our fullest lives.

I just love everything about your answer. I feel like I can really hear the care that you have for your patients in that answer. And speaking of which that paradox about caloric intake, when you're hungry, that leads me to my next question, which is when it comes to food insecurity and particularly the obesity pandemic, people tend to focus on individual responsibility. We often hear this framed as an issue about people making the wrong choices when it comes to their dietary health. So what is the role of personal choice in the food and health relationship?

I think that's a really good question. It taps into some of the deeper emotions we might have as a society around issues of food, and weight, and body shape. And it's important, I think, for us to break down some of those concepts and get into this conversation more honestly and more authentically with each other. One thought that comes to mind for me around this topic is we don't often talk about access to choices. So we find sometimes that we're judging people for the way they make choices about food, about other purchases, about other options they make in their lives, when we don't fully understand what choices they actually have and what choices they don't have. Sometimes it's more about the access to choice that drives choices, even unhealthy ones, than it is about how we make personal decisions. And I think we need to step back from that moment of choice and look around about the environment of choice. About the environment of opportunity, and of self agency and of decision making. And really understand how we as a society create options for folks that allow them to really make their fullest lives realized and make their best choices in those moments.

Do you have any examples from your medical experience to clarify that for our audience?

As a pediatrician, I work in a mostly low-income, really culturally rich and diverse community. The relationship of food to reaffirming the connectedness between people in a world and in a society that is often trying to rip people's connections apart makes for the need, the necessity of actually bringing food into spaces in a way that is reaffirming, reaffirming and demonstrative in powerful ways. That is an important cultural choice as well. And having the opportunity to gather around food, to celebrate with food, to say there is love in this space and we are naming it and claiming it partly by celebrating with food. That makes the idea of food, the choices around food, a little bit different than what calories are going into your body, what is the healthiest versus the unhealthy choice, what is going to be the right micronutrient in this moment. And it brings us into a conversation about food as a celebration, as healing in its emotional form, as part of our memory that is passed on through generations. That is actually important. When that is part of broader society, a broader place of opportunity, then it becomes less important about what happens in those moments of choosing, and becomes much more important about how else we allow people to remember their culture, to know their history, to share their stories, and to be part of generations upon generations, building resources and strength together. That sounds, I know, challenging for some people. Because we want to just focus on this moment of whether or not you picked the vegetable or not, when you had a few different foods to select. But we have to step back from that. We have to think about what is going on that allows this particular food to be meaningful to you, to be a strong memory to you, to make you fight back against maybe the way society is trying to erase your identity.

Interview Summary

So let's get started. As a seasoned food waste campaigner, what led you to this innovative, illustrated explainer video approach? What's important about this kind of visual messaging? What are you hoping to achieve by it?

Well, we wanted to start telling a different story about how we can solve these problems, and the root causes of food waste and poverty. We show how inequalities of wealth and power in the industrial food system generate waste and hunger, more often than not. Waste and hunger will ultimately continue unless we fix these inequalities. Charities are only ‘sticking plaster’ or ‘band aid’ resolution to food insecurity. What we're really saying with this campaign is that the UK’s distribution of surplus food is also only a second class solution for food waste issues too.

So to see what the more systemic solutions for food waste are, we need to look at the root causes. And to do this, we need to rewrite the dominant story of how our food system generates food waste. So, let's look back at the history of this. Food waste as an issue has taken off really over the last decade, in the UK and globally. A fairly standard story has begun to emerge: Food waste primarily happens at the retail and consumer level in rich, industrialized countries, and it's down to individual failings of consumers to be solved with educational campaigns to change that behavior.

Now, on the other hand, we have food loss, which makes it sound unintentional. Like it's been sort of lost down the back of the sofa. But it's actually food wasted in supply chain problems, where lower income countries which lack infrastructure, like storage and refrigeration, and apparently, have inefficient supply chain. The problem with this narrative is, by accident or design, it falsely implies that industrialized food supply chains in rich countries are effectively efficient and low waste. And to solve food waste in these countries, it's enough to leave it to voluntary commitments by companies. In other words, market innovation will solve food waste, with some role for social enterprises and charities to hoover up the leftovers. So, in this system, we need to modernize the supply chain of countries in the Global South to make them more efficient and emulate these systems. This apparently de-political approach to food waste has become ascendant, and gone largely unchallenged. But it is, in fact, deeply neoliberal: the assumption that businesses in the free market are fundamentally efficient, and any problems are usually down to the personality failings of individual consumers or perhaps state intervention.

With these films and other resources, we basically aim to rewrite this narrative by explaining how actually the inequalities of wealth and power that occur in the industrial food system generate waste. They generate overproduction, price crashes, inflexibility over seasonal variations, and rejecting food for being the wrong size and shape. But not only that, they also distribute wealth and foods extremely unequally. So generating mass hunger, despite there being no shortage of food or wealth to go round, and it creates underdevelopment. The lack of storage infrastructure in the Global South, is not a coincidence. It's the result of generations of colonial exploitation, which continues in a slightly different form today, with multinational corporations often extracting huge amounts of money and resources from the world's poorest countries.

Understanding all this means, that we need more systemic solutions than just taking food waste and giving it to people in poverty or embracing voluntary commitments by businesses. We need to design food waste and poverty out of the system in the first place. Our videos sketch out some of these solutions. Now, all of this is a more complex story to tell then just spontaneously rescuing lots of food waste for people in need. What we've tried to do with these animations is make this new narrative more accessible and really create these videos out of wanting to help reframe this conversation and communicate about the root causes and the deeper solutions for food waste and poverty.

Thank you so much, Martin, for showing so clearly that food waste is a product of a dysfunctional industrial food system and no guarantor of food security for the poor. In that context, what policy and practice successes has the UK Plenty to Share Campaign had to date in reducing food waste and food poverty? And what kind of challenges are you facing? What do you think are the lessons to be learned?

We're a tiny organization, so we pretty quickly realized that, if we want to win the kind of change we want to see it's not going to be an overnight thing. So, we decided we need to take the time to build a strong movement behind the systemic solutions and involve whoever we can. Our focus has really been on getting people used to our new way of framing the problems of food waste and poverty, and building a movement to advocate our systemic solutions. We put together a document called the Food Abundance and Equality Declaration, which now has over 40 organizational signatories, mainly based in the UK. But also including, Rights Not Charity, including environmental campaign groups, like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, also anti-hunger advocacy groups, like Feeding Britain. And I think, really importantly, some of the UK's largest networks of food aid and redistribution, including IFAN, the Independent Food Aid Network, which is the UK's second largest network of food aid providers, and groups like FoodCycle, and the Real Jungle Food Project.

The Declaration states that food redistribution is only a second class solution to food waste and poverty, and we need these more systemic solutions by regulating food businesses to reduce waste, fairer pay, tax justice, and providing a strong social safety net. We've got the launch of the Declaration into "The Big Issue" magazine, which is fantastic. It's one of the world's most widely circulated street newspapers. So, we see signing the declaration as a first step to recognizing this new way of framing the issue, and we've started encouraging signatories to get more involved in specific campaigns for systemic solutions and feeling more confident to speak out about solutions beyond their bread and butter of food redistribution.

We've seen some great collaborations emerging out of this already. A great example is the CEO of surplus food sharing app, OLIO, recently joined Tax Justice UK's campaigning the UK to back Biden's proposals to clamp down on global tax evasion. And as we're also conscious, we don't have all the answers, we've tried to give a platform to amplify the campaign, for the Declaration signatories. For instance, we've joined up with social justice Amp Best to amplify their call for a real living wage and stronger social safety net. In the UK, the biggest opportunity at the moment is opposing the cuts to Universal Credit, which is the UK's current main system of welfare payments.

For the longer term, we'd like to advocate for things like, a minimum income guarantee, a form of Universal Basic Income, so that the UK social safety net is very strong, and people don't have to rely on charity to survive. We're also campaigning for systemic solutions to food waste. We would like to see food waste regulation and to make it compulsory for food businesses to report on and halve their food waste by 2030. We'd like to see unfair trading practices’ legislation to protect suppliers, from food waste being transferred onto them by their suppliers, and finally, creating a fairer food system rooted in greater food sovereignty. So we're hoping to hold an event in Parliament to give these voices a platform in front of policy makers.

As for challenges, we've been surprised by how difficult it's been to get media cut-through with the project. The UK media reaction to food insecurity is dominated by food banks. So far, unfortunately, supermarket press releases promoting charitable food distribution are more publishable than the emergence of a big alternative civil society collaboration. But the rewards of the project have really been seeing this grass roots movement beginning to build. Ultimately taking the time to build that and set down roots is the most important thing.

Thank you, Martin, you’ve given us a great deal to think about. One thing that strikes me very much is the way you're re-politicizing the issues of food waste and food poverty. It's not just a matter for charity. The Declaration you've launched is certainly proving to be a significant tool, fostering joined-up food, environmental, and income-based social justice campaigning though active civil society collaborations. It's looking at creatively developing systemic solutions to food poverty and waste. This is very significant. Your comments about the media likewise ring a bell here in Canada. Since the mid 1980s, the CBC, our publicly tax paid broadcaster, has been actively promoting food bank drives and donations making it somewhat difficult for them to report objectively on these matters. In that light, I'm particularly interested in This is Rubbish's campaign to disentangle solutions to food waste from quick fixes or remedies to food poverty, using food banks as transnational and national corporate go-betweens So, what practical role do you see food banks playing in advocating for the Right to Food?

It's a great question, and this has really been at the center of this campaign. So, we see it as absolutely essential that we get food banks and food redistribution charities to be at the forefront of the struggle for things like a right to food, the greater wealth equality, and food waste regulation. The media reaction to food insecurity is dominated by food banks. They're the most visually obvious and filmable manifestation of food insecurity, so they often appear in coverage and become influential spokespeople on food insecurity, for the media and policy makers. They get a lot of attention. So if they call out government policies, it gets reported, as governments are often keen to use food charities as a so called moral release valve. In the UK, when former Prime Minister David Cameron's conservative government gave up a substantial part of its responsibility to end poverty, through brutal cuts to welfare spending, asked his invented Big Society, aka volunteers and charities, to pick up the pieces, this is exactly what was going on. A photo opportunity with some food bank volunteers, puff pieces about food bank volunteers are more popular with the media as well. It's a simple story for them to tell, and often newspapers in the UK get involved in campaigning for food redistribution. For instance, I remember receiving a Big Society Award for my own food redistribution work. It just arrived in the post one day, and I remember feeling so angry and ashamed at this kind of lazy co-option, as it was clear that they hadn't researched what the group I was part of was doing or about its back history. So, it's a lot more difficult though, for government to do this co-option, if food redistribution organizations are actively saying, "No, food charity cannot be the long-term solution "to the problem, we want you to do this instead."

We've collaborated a lot with the independent food aid network, IFAN, the UK's second largest network of food banks. They are fantastic at putting this message front and center - that we want a future without the need for food banks, essentially, we want to do ourselves out of a job. And they're consistently raising press.re on the government to provide adequate financial assistance to people in poverty, long before our campaign started. The Trussell Trust too, the UK's largest network of food banks, has also been increasingly vocal about this.

In contrast, there are some food redistribution organizations that have focused entirely on pushing an expansion of food redistribution and strengthening government funding and corporate ties to achieve this. We hope to change that, and change the culture of these organizations, so that they'll join in with the movement, and that's the kind of movement that Plenty to Share hopes to create. Ultimately, people in food charities should be our ally. We shouldn't be seeing them as the enemy. Ultimately, the people working in them want an end to food waste and poverty. And indeed, some of the earliest examples of food redistribution in the US grew out of public outrage of the existence of huge crop surpluses occurring alongside mass hunger in the Great Depression. And the foundation of the earliest food banks in the 1960s grew partly out of concern over food waste. Following the 2008 crash, it seemed an understandable reaction, to the raising awareness of food waste. Coupled with seeing the devastating impact of austerity policies, many people have decided to take matters into their own hands and set up charities to redistribute food, to compensate for these failures of government. I must say I was involved in these kind of movements for a decade. For instance, I helped set up the Gleaning Network in the UK, which is a group who would harvest leftover crops from farms for charity. And I helped organize a chapter of Food Net Problems in London to build the consciousness of why we need rights not charity, and to help build the confidence of these groups to speak out in paid systemic solution.

So to do this, Plenty to Share tries to focus on the things that unite through food aid groups in acknowledgement that they don't want to be the long-term solution to food waste and poverty. Our focus has really been getting them involved in campaigns for those longer-term solutions. We use that as a bridge to help encourage them to do more policy advocacy, simultaneously, alongside that, we have tried to educate people about the limitations of food banks. The most important thing is uniting people around these long-term policies, which ultimately stop food waste arising in the first place and remove the needs for food charities.

Have you ever wondered why there are so many hungry people in wealthy nations like the US, Canada and the UK long before and especially during COVID -19? This is happening even though the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights and the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognized food as a fundamental human right These agreements hold nation states publicly accountable for the right to food. Human rights grew out of a recognition for basic human needs in the aftermath of World War II, just as the current “fight against COVID-19” has renewed their urgency. So what does the “right to food” mean and why does it matter? In this podcast, two guests define the right to food, and also how it differs from food charity such as food banks and food pantries. University of British Columbia Professor Graham Riches is the leading voice on the right to food in Canada. He’s joined by attorney and PhD candidate Laura Castrejon-Violante, who researches the constitutionalization of the right to food.

So, let’s begin, Graham, you were the first to make the connection between food banks and welfare cutbacks in Canada. You’ve also written extensively about the Right to Food, including in your most recent book, ‘Food Bank Nations, Poverty, Corporate Charity and the Right to Food (Routledge, 2018)

Well, first of all, thank you very much for inviting me, it’s a pleasure to be here. I think I’d first say that it’s crucial to understand that food is a basic human need which is essential to life itself, to nutrition and to health. Food, of course, is a marketplace commodity but at root it is a public good. It’s critical to social and economic well-being and in all cultures and all religions, it’s at the heart of family and community life. And yes, food is a fundamental human right, intrinsic to all human beings and to their human dignity.

We also know, as you’ve said Audrey, the Right to Food is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. It has been ratified by close to 90% of UN member states, but sadly not by the USA. The Right to Food is universally recognized under International Law as foundational to the Right to ‘an adequate standard of living, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions’.

Significantly, in 1999, the UN clarified its meaning, declaring “the Right to Food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community, have physical and economic access at all times to adequate food, or the means for its procurement.” In other words, the Right to Food is about the right to feed oneself or one’s family with dignity, either through growing, gathering, or hunting for food, or in our market economy, having sufficient money in your pocket to purchase the food of your choice in normal and customary ways.

Thank you, Graham for pointing out that choice and autonomy are key components of the right to a dignified life. Now, can you also describe the difference between food as a charitable gift and food as a human right?

This is a key question. The Right to Food is not about charity, it’s not about feeding the need, nor about reliance on the happenstance of corporate food banking, redistributing leftover food, that is surplus or wasted food, to ‘left behind’ people. Of course, there’s a moral imperative to feed hungry people, but charity is not a right, it cannot be claimed, it’s highly stigmatizing requiring people to beg for food.

The problem is, food banking has socially constructed hunger as a matter for charity. It thereby allows governments to neglect their public accountability, their obligations under international law, to realize food security for all. Consequently, food insecurity has grown and further been entrenched by COVID-19. Access to food is not only a food problem, but a matter for income security, addressing precarious work and interrupted earnings, inadequate incomes and social security benefits. And it’s also profoundly a land rights issue.

Now, just as hunger is socially constructed, so are human rights, they’re meaningless unless we normalize and institutionalize them, which leads to my next question. Laura, as an accomplished lawyer and academic with a background in human rights compliance, why does the Right to Food matter?

Thank you, Audrey. Well, the right to food matters because human rights matter. They make a difference. The Right to Food is ultimately a tool to tackle food insecurity, with a rights based approach. We need every single thing humanity has in its ingenuity arsenal to resolve massive challenges, food insecurity included. We need the certainty of science, the resolution of grass root movements, the inspiration of the arts, and we also need human rights because they function as guiding principles for more just societies. They serve, really, as a limit to the abuse of power.

There is a debate about the effectiveness of human rights, but when assessing human rights, it is important to have in mind that they tend to be compared with an ideal scenario, when in fact they should be more fairly compared with an existing scenario, from before human rights were upheld. So, even though human rights are not 100% effective, human rights are a strong, world-recognized institution including the woman’s right to vote, demolition of the slavery, the declines of death in war and conflict, and the advancement of rights recognition for indigenous people, people with disabilities, and the LGBT community.

A further argument supporting the rights-based approach to solve food insecurity is the interdependent nature of human rights. Different human rights offer a much needed approach to resolve food insecurity. The human right to just and favorable conditions to work, and the human right to social security, to health, to water and sanitation, to a healthy environment, just to mention some. Given the interdependent nature of human rights, if one becomes stronger, all human rights will benefit. If one is less so, others will deteriorate. By supporting the Right to Food, we are strengthening these rights creating a ripple effect that will impact poverty, the health crisis, the environmental crisis and everything in between.

I would only add that in the meantime that we come up with something better than the rule of law to organize us as societies, it would be irresponsible not to call on human rights to solve our most pressing challenges.

Thanks for highlighting the intersectionality and indivisibility of human rights. And also explaining how to harness their power to advance social justice issues. Now considering vast social inequalities that have only widened during the pandemic, it’s clear that there’s still a lot of progress to be made. So how can the Right to Food be realized?

Well Audrey, realization really implies awareness. So, the first step is for every person to recognize that each of us possesses the Right to Food. Which is the main reason of this podcast, right? To spread the word. So, the second step is to exercise our Right to Food and here, I want to come back to the notion of the Right to Food as a tool. As any tool, the Right to Food needs to be used profusely, exercised, monitored and evaluated in order to assess if it’s properly performing or if it has to be readjusted or even strengthened.

In order to use the Right to Food, all of our efforts aiming to eradicate hunger and advance food security would need to recognize and embrace two fundamental aspects. Number one: Right to Food principles and priorities. These are equitable and non-discriminatory principles. Gender sensitive with the focus on the most vulnerable, our marginalized groups from Indigenous, Black, Latin, Asian communities to migrant farm workers to low-income folks, and others. Right to Food principles ensure people and planet come first, not profit or political gain.

Secondly, food is an entitlement, and under international law the state is the ‘primary duty bearer’. Food is not a favor, nor a gesture of assistance that depends on goodwill or corporate food agendas. Rather it’s the certainty rooted in the law and backed by the State apparatus. With entitlement comes the beauty of accountability and access to remedy. The Right to Food gives us grounds to ensure public accountability when any branch of government is not protecting, respecting and fulfilling the right to food. And to demand justice when the government or any entity – I am looking at your transnational corporations – are violating our Right to Food.

Thanks Laura for laying out what it means for food to be an entitlement. I appreciate that we must hold governments accountable when they violate the right to food. And that we must not blame people for their circumstances of poverty. I’m curious now, what can civil society do to uphold the right to food?

Civil society can and must support the right to food. This human right offers procedural rights that precisely allow this. These are access to justice but also participatory rights in the decision making process which lead to virtuous cycle of empowerment, food literacy, etc. UNCLEAR WHAT THIS LAST CLAUSE MEANS.  Acknowledging that we are not passive consumers of whatever the global food system imposes but active participants, agents of change, really. And then finally, transparency and access to information. This is why food insecurity data should be accessible, public and desegregated by gender, age, income, ethnicity, providing the palette needed to better understand the complexities of food insecurity and to monitor and evaluate food insecurity policies and programs.

I particularly like your point about participatory rights. So in this sense, human rights are not only legal mechanisms but also a tool for collective action. Civil society arguably plays a crucial role in holding governments responsible for their human rights violations. For example, migrant workers, women and black, indigenous people of color experience disproportionately higher rates of food insecurity. And this leads to my next question: how can we move towards making the Right to Food enforceable?

Audrey, let me first offer a definition of enforceability. So, enforceability can be understood as the capability to resolve a legal complaint within the legal system. Even though the Right to Food does not owe its existence to legal recognition, the expression and protection of this right in national law is crucial to its realization because the enforcement of the Right to Food in international law is complex and rather problematic, entrenching the right to food in national constitutions and laws increases its enforceability chances. Evidence shows us that the inclusion of social rights in constitutions translates into strengthening these rights because it allows them to be further developed through laws, policies and court decisions. We also know that the entrenchment of social rights in constitutions, laws and policies achieve social rights outcomes.

So far, 29 countries in the world have already included the Right to Food into their constitutions. An increasing numbers of sub-national entities have adhered to this trend. In the US, for example, Maine, Virginia and Washington have proposed amendments to their state constitutions to include the Right to Food. All over the world, legislators are enacting Right to Food laws and administrations are implementing Right to Food policies and courts are upholding the Right to Food. How can we move them towards making the Right to Food enforceable? Well, by demanding authorities to fulfill their responsibilities by taking all the steps necessary to guarantee a dignified access to healthy, fair and sustainable food for all.

Thanks for raising the issue of constitutional recognition for social and economic rights, such as the Right to Food, that’s so important. Now Graham, what specifically can civil society do to advance the Right to Food?

Civil Society can actually assist in mobilizing human rights approaches to access to food by participating n the national UN Periodic Reviews of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This process takes place every five to six years, by which governments have to give an account to the UN of their compliance with these rights. One of the very interesting points to be made is that civil society is invited to participate in this process. Governments draw up a list of issues (LOIs) which are circulates them to participating civil society organizations (CSOs).  They could include food banks, NGOs and non-profit food, health social justice organizations which also contribute and comment upon the LOIs thereby engaging debate with their respective governments and the UN about the pressing matters.

There are three specific ways by which one can assess whether the Right to Food is being achieved. Firstly, whether it is being respected by governments or if they are taking away peoples’ Right to Food by making food access difficult by, for example, permitting sub-poverty minimum wages or welfare benefits, by denying benefits, or through social spending cut backs. These would be noted as violations. Secondly, it concerns protecting the right to food, ensuring governments pass or enforce laws, regulating non-state actors, for example, regarding food safety and actions which protect the food sovereignty of Indigenous populations which actually is a land rights matter. In other words protecting against violations. Thirdly it is about governments fulfilling the Right to Food, acting in full compliance. In other words, the State as the primary duty bearer taking positive actions regarding, for example, employment, workers’ rights, living wages, adequate benefits, universal health care, social housing amongst a range of ESC rights. Also including the question of progressive taxation. These are all factors that are about complying with the Right to Food. Civil society has an active participant and critical role to play in this UN process by holding governments to account

Thank you Graham. I really appreciate how you remind us that the Right to Food is something that needs to be insisted upon by civil society.

Just to add on what Graham just mentioned, I have four words in my mind: Join, talk, right and vote. Join one of the increasing numbers of civil societies that are advocating for the Right to Food. Talk and engage in Right to Food conversations. Approach your community, your local food bank, for example, and ask them about their position on the Right to Food and the burden that has been unjustly placed upon them. Write your representatives and urge them to prioritize the Right to Food, for example, to place poverty reduction at the core of food insecurity strategies. And vote accordingly, search which political party is endorsing a rights-based on food insecurity and hunger, and in a few words, vehemently exercise your Right to Food.

Canada is among the world’s 10 wealthiest countries. Yet food insecurity has been rising. Around one in eight Canadian households experienced food insecurity in 2018. A figure that has likely grown, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Canada reported 4.4 million Canadians living in food insecure households in 2017 to 2018. The biggest number ever recorded. Like the U.S. and U.K., Canada has seen significant growth in food banks over the past 40 years, and many Canadians see food charity as a key solution to hunger.

In this episode, we talked to Canadian food policy and food insecurity expert Valerie Tarasuk, of the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto. She leads the PROOF Research program to identify effective policy approaches, to reduce household food insecurity in Canada. We asked Tarasuk how hunger and food insecurity are defined in Canada; who it affects, and solutions to address the problem.

You have researched different aspects of food insecurity for many years, but let’s start with some basic definitions. Can you please explain for us the difference between the terms hunger and food insecurity? What do they mean in Canada, and why is this a problem we should care about?

Well, I mean the meaning of those terms in Canada is probably very similar to the meaning anywhere else. That hunger is a physiologic sensation that signals the need for food. And food insecurity at least as we use that term in Canada, refers to inadequate or insecure access to food due to financial constraints. Where it plays out though in Canada, that I think is important is that the term hunger is often used in conjunction with food charity in Canada. So we see food banks for example, appealing to people to make donations to stop hunger in their community, or to make sure nobody goes hungry in their community. And so now we’re talking about a very short term sensation. Everybody can relate to being hungry, a simple idea. But that somehow has taken on a life of its own as a way to understand the problem with people not having enough money for food. And where it’s concerning for people like me. Is that going along with that understanding of hunger, is this idea that the way to fix it is to give food, make a donation. As opposed to food insecurity, where we’ve got a very tightly scripted definition and measurement of that problem in Canada and it’s routinely monitored.

That’s really interesting. So if I’m understanding you correctly, if hunger inspires an emotional response and therefore feels the need for immediate action. While food insecurity is something that is measured. And you mentioned a little bit about how it’s measured. Could you go a little bit more into that for me? And talk about the extent of household food insecurity and who’s most impacted by it in Canada?

We’ve been monitoring food insecurity systematically since 2005. And when I say we, it’s Statistics Canada that measures food insecurity. Where we’re using the 18 item module that was developed by USDA and is used in the United States to monitor food insecurity as well. It’s not perfect. There are only nationally representative samples with food insecurity measurements for some years since 2005. But we’ve collected a huge amount of data from these surveys. And so we know a lot about who’s got the problem and what’s driving it.

The rate of food insecurity varies dramatically depending on where you live. In our most recent measurement which was over the period of 2017/18. The rate ranged from 11% in the province of Quebec to 57% in Nunavut. Nunavut is a very small population, but it’s our most Northern territory in Canada. And since monitoring began, Nunavut’s rate of food insecurity has steadily risen. So there’s dramatic differences across the country, but nowhere in Canada, do we even find a rate as low as one in 10 households being food insecure.

In addition to geographic differences, we’ve got profound differences with respect to vulnerability around household characteristics. The mere fact that there’s a child in the household is enough to increase the probability of food insecurity. The problem is very much racialized, even though the vast majority of people who are food insecure are white, because that’s the population in Canada. We see stark differences in the probability of food insecurity amongst black and indigenous households, with rates that are two or three times, those of white households. Also, we can see very clear patterns in terms of the relationship between food insecurity and people’s income and assets and income sources, about two thirds of food insecure in Canada are in the workforce. So working but unable to garner enough income to make ends meet. On top of that we’ve got high rates of food insecurity among people on some income support programs in Canada, specifically Welfare, Social Assistance, and also employment insurance. So there’s a patterning of it that relates to both geography, but also social and economic variables that associate with social and economic disadvantage in the country.

It seems like there’s definitely patterns in what you’re seeing in the data. What do you think this tells us about the causes of food insecurity in Canada?

I think at the end of the day, food insecurity is about people not having enough money for food. And so it tracks very, very tightly with other indicators of adequate stable incomes and assets. And so what are the causes we’ve got society right now in which we have a substantial slice of our population who are unable to garner enough income, either through employment or through social benefits to manage. I would say that that is the cause. Layered onto that we’ve got the racialized aspect of food insecurity that can only be interpreted as a story of systemic discrimination and the legacy of colonization in our country. Sadly, even after we take into account income and assets and other sorts of variables that in the general population associate with food insecurity or increased risk of food insecurity to be Black or Indigenous you still have an elevated risk. And so it can only be interpreted as an issue of systemic racism and the flip side of it being white supremacy that in ways permeates our workforce our housing market, the administration of some social benefits, it’s insidious that problem. But it’s one that food insecurity among other things is forcing us to reckon with.

My final question brings us to solutions. I know that I, myself as an American, we really think of Canada as having a strong social safety net. And it seems like that’s something that Canada prides itself for doing as well. Many Canadians though have come to see food charity as a prominent public solution to household food insecurity. So from your years of research and advocacy, how has food insecurity generally been managed or governed in Canada?

It’s very interesting. I mean, we do pride ourselves in having a strong social safety net. And in fact although we use the same questionnaire as used in the United States, we code it differently. We treat it differently. So the truth is our prevalence of food insecurity is way lower than the U.S. And I think that is about the social safety net that we’ve got. But, that social safety net has never been designed explicitly to prevent people from being food insecure. And what we’ve seen over time is that it’s not doing that. So we’ve got these lightning rods, like the fact that the mere presence of a child under the age of 18 in a household is enough to trigger an increased risk of food insecurity. Or the receipt of social assistance, or employment insurance, benefits, is enough to increase risk. Those tell us that the safety net isn’t as good as it needs to be.

But I think part of the problem is that the provision of income and cash transfers, which is the primary mechanism in our social safety net. That system is not explicitly designed to prevent people from being food insecure. So there are situations where people are receiving income supports, but they’re insufficient. Then we’ve got this other side of the equation, which is food charity. So the public face of the problem still remains food banks and the appeals continue that if you want to end hunger in your community or deal with this problem, give to your local food bank. We see charitable food assistance programs sometimes calling themselves food security programs. As if the fact that they provide people with food is providing them with food security, which we know isn’t true.

So we’ve got a very strong social safety net that just needs to be made a bit better to insulate Canadians from food insecurity or income related problems of food insecurity. And then we’ve got this other side of the equation, which is this craziness of the continued promotion of food charity as if it’s somehow managing this problem. And many of us have argued over the years that that craziness, that illusion, that food charity is somehow managing the problem is part of why our social safety net or income support programs have not become accountable for this problem of food insecurity, in the way that they need to be.