Fighting Hunger Vs. Food Justice

For most of America’s history, anti-hunger efforts have focused on getting food into the hands of people who need it. An essential component of survival, we prioritize efforts to sustain people needing nourishment today. This is why this work predominantly manifests through services like food pantries and meal sites. As important as it is, this strategy does nothing to help people access food tomorrow.

The emergency food access industry often argues that by freeing people from spending money on food, we’re helping them save up to escape poverty. Realistically, this is unlikely.

If food was the only thing that was unaffordable, maybe it would make a difference. Unfortunately, poverty also makes appropriate housing, healthcare, transportation, and childcare inaccessible. While providing food aid might allow individuals to reallocate the dollars they would have spent on food, it’s unlikely that families have enough to save rather than spend it on other essentials.

While I enthusiastically believe in the need for the services provided by food pantries and meal sites, it’s important to recognize their inadequacy. Without deliberate efforts to address the root causes of hunger, they simply maintain a system that leaves too many people without the food they need to thrive.

This is why we need food justice.

While I find myself occasionally using anti-hunger and food justice terms interchangeably, it’s important to recognize that they have distinct meanings.

Fighting hunger means getting food into the hands of people who need it. Food justice seeks to change the systems preventing people from accessing food in the first place.

Anti-hunger organizations focus on food access for individuals. By their very nature, these efforts treat hunger as a personal, rather than systemic, failure.

In contrast, food justice explicitly calls out the systemic barriers that perpetuate hunger like racism, sexism, unaffordable housing, and inaccessible healthcare. For organizations such as food banks who have long staunchly maintained their “apolitical” status, going anywhere near these controversial issues can be terrifying.

This is an area that increasingly causes discomfort in anti-hunger organizations unwilling to step away from the narrative of hunger as an individual problem precisely because it means examining systems of oppression.

We can’t effectively fight hunger without pairing the fight against hunger with food justice. Without examining root causes, food banks will never meaningfully influence the problems that bring food insecure individuals through their doors. But without providing immediate food assistance, food justice efforts may induce change too slowly to help people facing hunger today.

How can food access organizations introduce food justice to their communities?

• Educate your team on how hunger is a systemic rather than individual problem. If your organization is gun-shy about discussing controversial issues, you can start by focusing on how some people can’t afford food because of a lack of jobs, affordable housing, or accessible healthcare, which allows you to stay clear of more controversial topics. (You should be prepared to dig into these challenges, but I understand that for many organizations this transition will be slow. I encourage you to take a slow approach rather than avoiding it completely).

• Start an advocacy program, whatever that looks like for you. Provide resources to help people register to vote, or advocate for SNAP, WIC, and Summer EBT. Start a conversation about what systemic problems perpetuate food insecurity in your community.

• Examine the language you use when you talk about clients to donors, volunteers, and other community members. If it’s not the same language you would use in front of your shoppers, then you need to revisit your standards of dignity and respect. I emphatically believe that how we talk about hunger is the most influence thing shaping how we treat it. Take an active role by choosing your words.

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

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