How to Convince Yourself There’s Enough Food For Everyone

“Do we have enough food?” is the question currently echoing throughout the emergency food assistance network. The demand for food assistance is growing rapidly, and food pantries across the nation are straining to accommodate the number of people reaching out for help every day.

One year ago, my own food pantry was learning how to serve 100 households in four hours. Just two weeks ago, we set a new record for the number of households served- 181 in that same amount of time. With SNAP cuts in March and rising inflation, hunger needs are growing like we haven’t seen since the beginning of the pandemic and show no signs of slowing.

With the dramatically increasing need and demand for our resources, it is incredibly easy to become fixated on scarcity. How do we feed all these people with our limited food supply?

I consider myself a student of anti-hunger advocacy, but lately I realize more and more how much this work depends on psychology.

Although my focus is on the logistics of supplying hungry people with the food they need, I learn every day that doing this job well depends just as much on how I think about food access and hunger.

How people living with food insecurity feel about the resources available to them impacts how they use them.

How anti-hunger advocates think about hunger and the services they provide equally influences the systems they implement and how resources are distributed.

I spend a great deal of time advocating for presenting a sense of abundance and food security for our food pantry visitors. (Read more here). But with the growing need and strained capacity of the anti-hunger system, I have also been reflecting on the importance of advocates prioritizing our own abundance mindset.

Why should we as anti-hunger advocates develop our own attitude of abundance? How does that help us serve our community better?

Most anti-hunger organizations ensure they always have a stash of food available to support the next client, or the next distribution. But an emphasis on holding food back for later also focuses efforts on maintaining the food supply instead of the needs of our shoppers.

 When our brains focus on this scarcity, we shrink our capacity to think about other things, which reduces our effectiveness at the work we do. (Right now I’m reading Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How it Defines Our Lives by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir.)

An abundance mindset helps us broaden our vision and find opportunities for doing better.

When we assume that we’re maxed out, we shut down any possibility of innovation. By adopting the paradigm that we have the tools we need to succeed, it enables us to strategize for success. An abundance mindset allows us to experiment with new ways to do better once we’ve internalized the idea that we have the capacity.

How can hunger fighters prioritize an abundance mindset?

1. Prioritize growth and experimentation.

In many ways, food pantries have evolved little since their modern inception of the 1970s. Most food pantries offer similar systems of food distribution that change little once they are established. But these systems may not be able to support an increase of clients or fluid food supplies, so it can be easy for a food pantry to decide they simply don’t have the capacity to grow.

Instead, food pantry staff should constantly experiment with ways to change and update their systems. By ensuring that no operation is set in stone, it empowers opportunities for innovation that very well might be able to support changing community needs.

Even small changes can be incredibly worthwhile. For the past year, our food pantry has taped client tickets to the handle of our clients’ shopping cart. This past month, we experimented with taping them to the front of the cart instead, which has expedited check-out and helped eliminate traffic jams for faster client service. This tiny adjustment has had significant ramifications on our operations.

A willingness to experiment under stress is hard; it requires a certain level of comfort with risk (and requires trust and enthusiasm from volunteers). But a refusal to take those risks ensures that your organization will not evolve to meet your community’s needs.

2. Emphasize the resources you have.

My pantry often runs low on popular food items. We rarely see canned fruit anymore and are experiencing a major shortage of pasta and sauce. These empty sections on our pantry shelves stand out like a beacon, but rather than staring at those gaps, we constantly rearrange.

Canned pumpkin is not a popular food item (especially in the summertime!) but our local food bank has an abundance, and it allows us to fill up our shelves. Even though we know most of our clients aren’t interested, filling the space on the shelves draws attention away from our lack of essentials and helps everyone feel a greater abundance.

I appreciate having some food items that are not popular. Because they move slowly, our volunteers don’t need to dedicate time and effort restocking, but they do help everyone feel like our pantry has the resources to support anyone experiencing hunger.

3. Don’t hoard your food.

My perspective comes partially from the privilege of having a significant warehouse and storage capacity, but our food has little impact when it is sitting on our shelves. There is a pervasive attitude in food banking that we must always save some for the shoppers coming tomorrow (which is true), but we give out sequentially less and less food if the goal is to always have leftovers. If you give away the food you have with faith that more will arrive tomorrow, everyone will be better served.

Projecting an attitude of abundance for food pantry clients is essential for helping them feel like their needs are being met, they are respected, and they can have confidence in their food security.

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Adopting an attitude of abundance for anti-hunger advocates is harder- we are constantly faced with the challenging reality of a limited food supply while being overworked and underpaid. But by focusing on the opportunities that are open to us to do better, experiment, and practice innovation, we will access new avenues for success that otherwise would remain unexplored.

Previous Post: Why You Should Run Your Food Pantry Like a Restaurant

The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

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