Do You Believe Everyone Deserves To Eat?

This week, I overheard a comment as a client entered our food pantry, an iced drink in hand. One of my volunteers muttered, “if they can afford Starbucks, then they probably don’t really need to be here.”

I was disappointed by the judgement and the lack of empathy and understanding that I heard in their voice. Unfortunately, this is an attitude I encounter regularly as a food justice advocate.

Many people, whether consciously or unconsciously, believe that hunger is primarily the fault of an individual making bad choices.

When someone believes that anyone can simply work themselves out of poverty, spending five dollars on a delicious frosty drink on a 90-degree Friday is merely confirmation that their poor choices led them to needing to use a food pantry. This assumption is the primary motivation for anti-hunger institutions to control what types and how much food a client may receive- because of the belief that they can’t be trusted to do it themselves.

These attitudes are heavily engrained in our society, particularly among demographics who still advocate that hard work is the primary component of financial success.

 Too many anti-hunger organizations and supporters espouse providing minimal resources to avoid anyone in need from becoming “too dependent.” (We’ll dig into the absurdity of fearing people will become too dependent on food another time.)

This assumption persists even though there’s abundant data refuting it and proving that nearly all factors of poverty are beyond an individual’s control (cost of living, available jobs, or adequate hours, not to mention the many forms of discrimination. And of course, your zip code).

What is Food Justice?

Food justice is a framework that holds food as a human right and seeks to address the structural barriers that perpetuate hunger and poverty. It is closely aligned with the environmental justice movement and advocates for building access to healthy, culturally appropriate food for everyone in a way that also supports the environmental health of our world.

Alongside recognizing that poverty is a systemic rather than individual condition, a food justice perspective analyzes the impacts of the entire food system- including land ownership, labor conditions, environmental impacts, nutritional quality, and economic and physical access, and the factors that perpetuate injustice like exploitation, racism, colonialism, and discrimination.

Historically, food banking does not easily fit into a food justice framework.

Until very recently, traditional food pantries rarely examined their role in perpetuating injustice or their neglect of the root causes of hunger by treating it as purely an individual problem.

As an individual rather than systemic solution, food pantries regularly dictate what and how much food is available to people and communities who need it, and actively perpetuate harmful assumptions about hunger and poverty (like the volunteer I mentioned in my opening paragraph).

How Can Food Pantries Take an Active Role in Implementing Food Justice?

1. Offer client autonomy. Trust that your clients know their own needs best and give them the freedom to choose what and how much their families need.
2. Actively engage your volunteers, staff, and leadership by learning about food justice to help them move beyond any assumptions they may carry about people living in poverty. It’s important to remember this will never be a one-time lesson, but rather the long-term establishment of a community culture that recognizes the historic injustices that perpetuate hunger, the evolving economic realities of our world, and embracing the idea that everyone deserves to eat, unconditionally.
3. Partner with food justice programs who actively work to undermine our current food system in favor of more equitable and alternative options. The fact that food justice is a recently adopted idea for the food banking industry means there are ample opportunities for food pantries to offer leadership and innovation in this field. (Here are some programs doing great work in the Pacific Northwest).

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

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