Tag: food-justice

Why Food Banks Can’t End Hunger

When people don’t have enough to eat, giving them food can seem like a good solution. However, hunger isn’t that simple. Food isn’t enough.

Providing people with emergency food is an essential responsibility. People need food to live and to thrive, so the importance of services provided by food banks cannot be overstated.

However, giving away free food does little to end hunger in the long-term.

While we can hope that providing food at a food pantry frees up a couple dollars for buying other necessities, it is unlikely. People only visit a food pantry when they are short of money for food in the first place, so while the food may keep families fed in the moment, it rarely empowers them to change their spending. Shopping at a food pantry is more likely to free up funds to pay rent or a utilities bill, or buy medication, or new shoes for their kids, than to build savings. It can allow people to better meet their immediate needs, but is unlikely to change outcomes. The idea that a couple dollars savings can change our financial outcomes just won’t die, which is why people continue to argue that minimal aid is enough to pull someone out of poverty (and why poverty is an indicator of a lack of effort).

But giving away free food is easier than digging into the root causes of hunger. When we recognize that food isn’t the answer, we must examine the conditions that make people food insecure in the first place.

While hunger is largely typified as an individual problem and a personal failing, data shows that systemic barriers are the root causes of poverty and hunger.

Giving food away to single mothers does little to empower them if they make less money than their male peers. Offering food assistance to LGBTQ+ individuals is only a small help when they face increased risks of employment and housing discrimination due to their identity. Free food for BIPOC individuals is inadequate insulation against daily racial discrimination, harassment, and violence.

Discrimination ensures that vulnerable populations make less money and have less stability, which increases their capacity to access food and risk of food insecurity.

In America, we love to believe that working hard begets success, and that a lack of success is a symptom of laziness, poor judgement, or a personal failure. This attitude excuses us from addressing the inequalities that perpetuate hunger.

While it’s certainly discouraging to recognize that we can’t end hunger through our local food pantry or food rescue program, when we don’t call this out we perpetuate the blame and shaming of hunger on the individual. Systemic problems require systemic solutions, and that starts with evolving our understanding of the root causes of hunger and poverty.

Food banking is an essential tool for keeping our neighbors fed, but it is not the vehicle through which we can end hunger.

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

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You Can’t Build Food Justice Through Efficiency

I recently had a conversation with a volunteer at a food pantry who voiced frustration that the organization didn’t seem to be thinking about the client experience. They observed that volunteers were being discouraged from restocking empty shelves even when there was ample food, and that clients were told they should “come earlier” to get high-demand items rather than asking volunteers to help meet their needs.

Due to a shortage of help, leadership was seeking to increase efficiency and reduce the demands on volunteers. As a result, clients were exasperated and volunteers fearful that the shopping experience was increasingly humiliating and disrespectful.

I understand these decisions and why they happen. Managing a pantry’s food supply in all its complexity is exhausting and takes careful juggling, rapid assessment, and confidence in your instincts. (Overseeing food flow is one of my favorite parts of pantry operations- it’s an art form!)

The nonprofit sector is intimately aware that volunteer rates are decreasing. While many organizations experienced a surge in volunteering during the pandemic when unemployment was high, most have now returned to work and cut back on their service.

As a result, food pantries are rethinking their operations to run with less help, and the primary way to do that is by increasing efficiency. While it is an essential component of any institution, this volunteer’s concerns demonstrate how it can also subtract focus from the true mission of fighting hunger.

Why not efficiency?

Efficiency is all about achieving a goal with as little energy, waste, or effort as possible. In many businesses, this is important and logical. But when it comes to anti-hunger efforts, it’s vital to remember what your organization is really hoping to achieve. If our mission is to end hunger, then efficiency may not be the best path forward.

There is an intensely emotional component of using food assistance. It can feel incredibly vulnerable to ask for help.

I’ve heard hundreds of stories from people who had a negative experience at a food pantry and chose to go without food rather than risk such treatment again.  Even worse, individuals may internalize the idea that they must undergo disrespect to deserve this help (“I need to be grateful for whatever I can get”).

Both experiences are unacceptable.

How can food pantries ensure that they are not sacrificing the client experience in favor of efficiency?

The most important component is to develop an organizational culture that prioritizes dignity and intentionality. Food pantries with cultures that concentrate on the client experience empower their volunteers to go the extra mile for individuals walking through their doors.

Whatever your goal is, here’s how to examine the balance of efficiency and dignity within your organization:

Unlike a for-profit business, the end goal does not justify the means. We’re not building food justice if clients leave feeling disrespected, neglected, or without the food their family needs to feel nourished and safe. We’re failing in our services if the volunteer experience sacrifices that of individuals seeking food assistance.

Negative volunteering experiences reduce the number of volunteers, which further pushes organizations to lean on efficiency over dignity. Without intervention, this produces an endless cycle that leaves neither clients nor volunteers feeling fulfilled or satisfied.

While we should always be brainstorming ways to improve food assistance, it’s important that we do so in ways that lift up food justice first, even at the expense of efficiency.

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

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You Can’t Solve Hunger with an “Us” vs. “Them” Attitude

At one of my previous food pantries, we had a volunteer who was perpetually cheerful, eternally welcoming to clients, and one of the most compassionate individuals I could have chosen for our team. This individual was also a client who regularly used our services.

They always made a special effort to greet the clients waiting in line two full hours before we opened. When I expressed my appreciation, this volunteer explained that as a shopper they loved our team’s welcoming habit of checking on those waiting in line.  They wanted all our visitors to feel the same way: like an equal, appreciated, and respected.  This client-volunteer’s efforts transformed our shoppers’ food pantry visits from a degrading and shameful experience into a moment of feeling dignified and respected.

Unfortunately, even in 2024, judgement, bias and “otherization” still permeate the policies and practices of many anti-hunger and community support organizations in the United States. 


 As an example, some anti-hunger leaders and organizations still discourage volunteering by their own clients.  Allowing clients to be insiders, they argue, increases the risk of conflict of interest, abuse of power, and manipulation of the food supply. 

In my years managing food pantries, I’ve seen all these unfortunate behaviors.  However, I’ve never once witnessed this type of behavior from client volunteers. I have regularly witnessed it from advantaged and entitled volunteers or non-profit supporters with no lived experience.  And too often, I’ve been instructed by leadership to ignore these negative behaviors, especially if confronting them risked alienating donors or friends of the “inner circle,” while also being responsible for ensuring my clients don’t violate the same rules. Despite all evidence to the contrary, these policies reinforce the attitude that people facing food insecurity can’t be trusted, and should depend on the wisdom and leadership of others.

This baseless concern about client volunteers is just one way that we project our biases and assumptions about hunger onto clients without any real basis in reality.  We are long overdue to abandon these assumptions about food insecurity.

As Americans, we’ve been conditioned to assume that people who use welfare or need food assistance are untrustworthy, unreliable, and make poor choices.

As a result, most elements of food pantry and emergency food assistance policy are based on this assumption- that we must protect these programs from abuse and corruption, instead of ensuring families have the food they need to thrive.  Turning away volunteers with lived experience deprives organizations of essential insights and perpetuates the stigma and discrimination that accompany hunger.


Having clients serve as volunteers can be uncomfortable because their presence and input requires us to check our biases and pay closer attention to the experience of being a food pantry client. Clients serving as volunteers gives food pantries an opportunity to learn their weaknesses and strive to do better, if we can foster the humility for this lesson.

But it’s also essential to make sure that we are not using these clients as our primary sounding board for educating on dignity. In the same misguided way that too many people called on their friends of color to educate them in racial justice issues in 2020, it’s important we do the work to research and learn the reality of hunger without exploiting our community.

As someone without lived experience of hunger, I try to provide services that I have never myself depended on.

As a result, it’s easy for me and my colleagues to fall victim to the assumptions and biases that abound surrounding food insecurity and food assistance.

This is why building spaces for those with lived experience to safely speak up is essential, and why it’s important to evaluate whether your organization is a safe space for that vulnerability.

If we can transform our anti-hunger institutions into centers of humility and compassion for continual growth, we can amplify our impact by moving beyond assumption to ensure we’re addressing the problems our neighbors face, and not the ones we think they do.

Major appreciation to Kern Herron for his input on the writing of this post.

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

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We Can’t End Hunger By Improving Production

Hunger has always been a part of the human experience, and we are largely conditioned to assume it is unavoidable. But as technology improves, networks grow, and our understanding of the world evolves, it becomes increasingly apparent that it is not a foregone inevitability.

Trending solutions for fighting hunger often focus on improving agricultural production and reducing food waste. Considering the growing impacts of climate change, the issues of production and conservation certainly deserve attention, but these solutions fail to address the real barriers to ending hunger.

Hunger is a distribution problem, which means we need to address food access rather than food supply.

We are failing in the distribution of resources. Baring a major disaster, people with wealth always have the means to purchase the food they need. The cost of food may rise astronomically, or it may drop to more accessible levels, but wealth insulates against scarcity.

Individuals and communities living in poverty don’t have the resources to overcome these barriers. If they had the resources to access food, then they would no longer be food insecure.

Hunger isn’t a food problem.

Some people face greater barriers than others in accessing food, such as higher transportation costs, greater storage challenges, or culturally specific needs, but all these barriers can be overcome with money. None of these obstacles result directly from a food shortage or high rates of food waste. We lack systems that facilitate food access for everyone, both nationally and globally.

Food distribution is complicated, because food is perishable and there is a limited amount of time that it can be stored, shipped, and distributed before it spoils.  Some parts of the country (and world) are in close proximity to agricultural production which fosters affordable prices and culturally appropriate foods. This makes it simple to get the food people need. Other regions experience greater scarcity, which means residents depend on food traveling greater distances. This increases the cost and makes it more vulnerable to disturbances.

This is why the food justice movement places so much importance on food sovereignty- on empowering people to have ownership over their food system to ensure it meets their needs best and minimizes the risk of external disruption.

Food sovereignty does not demand increasing agricultural production. Instead, it recognizes that empowering people with ownership over their food choices is the best way to build individual and communal health.

Food is an intensely personal choice, and expression of individuality. Every individual, family, community, and culture have their own preferences when it comes to culinary traditions, nutritional needs, and celebration. We are our healthiest and most empowered when we have access to the foods that are a part of our identity.

This is another reason why increasing agricultural production does not solve hunger; mass-produced crops are not often the ones that a community craves. Bringing more corn or wheat to a community may briefly alleviate starvation, but does little to empower health, celebrate cultural traditions, or build food autonomy. When a community has influence and power over its food choices, it can ensure its options are right for everyone.

Increasing the food supply is an easy go-to answer to ending hunger, but the reality is that it completely ignores the root causes of food insecurity.  Without addressing the inaccessibility of our food supply, increasing it only ensures that those who have food will have more, and those who don’t have access will continue to go hungry.

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

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Can You Find Fun in the Kitchen When You’re Food Insecure?

One of my regular food pantry clients once came up to me the moment she walked in the door and shouted, “I LOVE BRUSSELS SPROUTS!”

She told me that she had never had them before but we had an abundance the last time she came to the pantry, so she decided to give them a try. It turned out she was a big fan; she had just never had the opportunity to taste them. Every time since, she would load up on these oft-maligned veggies.  

Our society is eager to condemn people experiencing hunger for eating unhealthy foods. With the prevalent assumption that people experience hunger because of poor judgement, it’s easy to assume that this applies to their food choices as well. This motivates many anti-hunger programs to focus on making decisions for people experiencing food insecurity, like what foods they should and shouldn’t have access to.

We see this attitude perpetuated in regular proposals to increase restrictions on foods purchased with SNAP dollars, in a misguided attempt to force people to eat healthier. SNAP is already inadequate, so this restriction reduces available options without addressing any of the limitations that already exist, like high costs of healthy foods.

The reality is, the only way we can empower people to eat better quality food and to try new things is to give them the capacity to experiment and take risks. (On another day we will also examine the need for time to cook, which means not having to work three jobs; and having a functional kitchen, which means safe and affordable housing.)

We can fight hunger by giving everyone room in their food budget for failure.

Even the most accomplished cooks occasionally make meals that aren’t winners, and every parent knows that their kids will sometimes refuse even the most perfectly prepared meal.

There is security in buying the foods that you know your family enjoys. With a too-tight food budget, it is an unnecessary risk to buy something that your family might not eat. When money is short, it can’t be wasted.

The client who loved Brussels sprouts had four hungry teenagers at home, so she had to maximize her food budget to ensure everyone had enough to eat. Why would she risk spending money on Brussels sprouts that those kids might refuse, or that she might not like, when she already was struggling to keep everyone fed?

But offering Brussels sprouts at the food pantry gave her room to take risks. There were no trade-offs if her family didn’t want to eat them- only a lesson learned.

If we really want to empower people experiencing food insecurity to eat healthier and try new foods, then we need to facilitate the conditions that allow risk-taking.

Children, and people of all ages, often need several exposures to a new food before they start to like it. That requires the capacity to serve it, and have it rejected multiple times before it is accepted. For someone who struggles to afford every bite, this is a nearly impossible risk.

Although food pantries are an inadequate response to hunger, this is one area where they offer opportunity. When clients are empowered to shop for themselves with as few restrictions as possible, there’s room to try something new. There’s no risk if their child refuses to eat the new vegetable, or it turns out the whole family hates that flavor of sauce. They can experiment with tofu just to say they tried it and see for themselves whether Brussels sprouts really deserve their reputation.

While health should absolutely be a priority in anti-hunger work, it’s important that we not lose sight of all the nuances that go into creating an environment where people can eat what’s right for their bodies, and not just what fits within their budget.

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

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Why Shouldn’t All Students Eat Lunch?

I am a 2023-24 FoodCorps Alumni Advocacy Lead, and am working to increase engagement on school food policies at the local and national level.

As the Oregon representative, I am writing a short blog series on local opportunities for supporting stronger, healthier food policies in schools. Oregon’s short legislative session this February revolves around the budget, and legislators have an opportunity to positively impact students’ food access by moving us closer to implementing full Universal School Meals. This second post of the series explains the value and importance of this program. Read the first post on Summer EBT here.

Look up any photo or illustration intended to convey hunger in the U.S., and the chances are high that it includes a child or a senior. This is due to our societal conviction that people need to earn the right to food.  Because they are considered helpless to change their situation, children who are at their parents’ mercy and seniors who live on a fixed income are consistently determined deserving of food assistance.

Despite the pervasiveness of this idea, it should be surprising and disturbing that childhood anti-hunger efforts are often met with nearly as much scorn as any other demographic. In 2024, many states hope to move forward on policies implementing universal school meals, and already politicians and opponents are gearing up for battle.    

When the pandemic hit in 2020 and hunger needs skyrocketed, lawmakers made the dramatic move to implement universal school meals, empowering all public-school children to eat lunch, whether they had the capacity to pay for it or not.

This move was hugely effective in ensuring that millions of children ate even when their families’ lost jobs, saw reduced wages, faced illness, and experienced the grief and chaos that accompanied the first years of the pandemic. This was a policy decision that significantly influenced hunger rates across the US, made even more visible now with their expiration.

For those of us working in the arena of childhood hunger, this is baffling.

Abundant evidence demonstrates that school meals are a powerful tool for childhood health, and education. The conditions to qualify for free or reduced-price meals, including the simple administrative requirements, along with the stigma of food assistance, are often powerful deterrents from participation. Universal school meals solve both problems.

If the American attitude around hunger is that only those who deserve it should receive help, and that children are deserving of that support, then why is there an active push against this policy?

Certainly, budgets and cost of the program are major sticking points, but one of the biggest concerns regularly cited is that universal school meals are universal, which risks some children receiving a free meal even if they don’t need it. And that is enough for opponents to decide the whole policy should be scuttled.

There are few instances that provide such a clear illustration of the attitude that someone needs to earn or deserve food. Objections are couched in the idea that assistance needs to be “fair,” because otherwise it will be exploited. Opponents prefer that hungry children have reduced access to a free lunch rather than risk children who don’t need it benefiting from this program.

Progress will come from changing the ways we think and speak about hunger.

Advocates have made headway by simply changing the language we use. “Free” meals have transitioned to “universal.” Opponents were slightly more strongly opposed to the idea that the undeserving might receive something for free than everyone getting to participate.

The logistics of implementing Universal School Meals are complex and vary state by state. Currently, nine states have a policy in place with several more seeking to implement or improve access, including Oregon.

If you are an Oregon resident and haven’t already, please send a note to your representative letting them know it’s important to you that Oregon children have the food they need to succeed in school!

Send a message to your representative

If you live elsewhere, it’s worthwhile researching where your state is in the process and looking for opportunities to change how we think, and how we publicly talk about hunger and who deserves to eat.

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

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Are You Gatekeeping While You Fight for Food Justice?

As a resident of Portland, Oregon, my city is famously mocked for once buying up all the kale in the face of an approaching snowstorm.

Kale is a popular superfood. It’s a power-packed leafy green that is versatile in salads, smoothies, soups, and more. I confess I’m a fan and regular consumer.

But at a food pantry just outside of Portland, we used to receive regular donations of kale while almost always struggling to give it away. Our clients just didn’t seem interested.

This week I finished reading How the Other Half Eats by Dr. Priya Fielding-Singh, who at one point examines kale’s cultural context. She observes that “…kale is generally marketed toward and endorsed by upper middle class, primarily white people. Because of that, while kale may be healthy, it is seen as a wealthy white person’s food, making its appeal culturally limited and its glorification culturally alienating” (123).

America aggressively condemns SNAP recipients for buying expensive food like organic produce. Theoretical examples of welfare fraud almost always reference lobster. Promotions for building food security depend heavily on learning to cook dry beans. It’s been made very clear that people living in poverty aren’t supposed to eat the same foods as rich people.

In a food pantry, where every food choice is often judged and scrutinized, it makes complete sense that clients shy away from a food we have all been taught to see as part of a rich person’s diet.

Because every food has a cultural context, it’s essential that we explore intangible barriers like this to see how our attitudes influence the landscape around us.

Kale Versus Collard Greens

Kale and collard greens are closely related, with almost identical nutritional profiles. Yet their place in foodie culture heavily impacts which one people eat, depending on their background.

Despite their similarities, kale is lauded as a powerhouse superfood while collard greens are judged for their place in soul food, southern-influenced cooking identified with Black America which is stereotyped as much less healthy.

The stereotypes and assumptions we carry about foods like kale and collards build barriers just as significant as any challenge of cost or access.

There is no “right” way to eat. Every culture has a culinary tradition on which people have thrived for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Our cultural obsession with identifying “right” and “wrong” foods fails us and the communities we come from.

Building food justice means ensuring that everyone has access to the foods that they want to eat and are not constrained by the ideas of what society has established their identity should eat.

How Do We Practice Embracing All Food Choices?

  • Find out what food pantry clients want to eat. What are the dominant cultures shopping at your pantry, and what are their essential foods? It’s also important to examine why your organization does not offer them already (if that’s the case). Were they evaluated in comparison to other foods in making this decision? While these foods may be more expensive or harder to find, their absence likely reinforces existing biases about what foods are good or appropriate for shoppers.
  • Recognize and call out bias. I often witness volunteers celebrating certain kinds of donations, like cheese or expensive options which are familiar to them, while donations of lemongrass and lamb are ignored. Evaluating foods as we see them makes it very clear which foods are valued and celebrated, and what are not. Finding ways to celebrate all foods can help stop reinforcing attitudes within the organization, and grow your teams’ understanding of food justice.

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

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Are You Really Fighting Hunger if Your Staff Can’t Afford Food?

At the very first food pantry I ever worked at, our parent organization (one of the biggest nonprofits in the region) was enthusiastic and vocal about prioritizing the client experience. I was excited to partner on this mission, until I learned that this focus on client services was achieved at the expense of staff. Our leaders were adamant that the organization could only afford the most minimal wages and benefits to ensure maximum support for our clients. Because I could not afford groceries on this wage, I became a client at my own food pantry.

Although this happened over a decade ago, it is a pattern I have seen repeated at every food pantry I’ve worked with since. Full-time staff members unable to support themselves or their family on their wages become clients of their own services, which the organization provides without a second thought.

Can you really be an anti-hunger advocate if you’re not willing to make sacrifices for the mission? This attitude is pervasive, and perpetuates a culture that actively inhibits people from thriving while doing this work.

Why is food insecurity accepted within anti-hunger organizations?

American society has narrow attitudes about nonprofits. The belief persists that nonprofit employees should do the work out of the goodness of their hearts rather than for the money.

I once had a Board member brag that our organization paid staff in “heart” to make up for low wages, as if that was an achievement to be celebrated that employees would appreciate.

Paying individuals less than a living wage is a primary cause of food insecurity.

Whether or not money is a motivating factor for nonprofit professionals, it does not mean that we are somehow exempt from paying rent, buying gasoline, or the rising cost of groceries.

When organizations advocating for food justice perpetuate food insecurity, it should throw serious doubt on their commitment. Denying employees the resources to buy their own food while employed at an anti-hunger institution demonstrates a perversely performative interest in fighting hunger.

While every organization benefits from leadership who knows what it’s like to be food insecure, we should not tolerate those that force lived experience upon their employees.

Food banks and pantries who recognize hunger as a systemic problem rather than an individual responsibility are slowly beginning to demonstrate it by working towards institutionalizing living wages.

This is not a simple or easy change. Nonprofit culture uplifts and celebrates low overhead costs and strong client services, an attitude deeply internalized by funders. My previous food pantry regularly received donations specifically allocated for food to ensure that it was spent on clients rather than staff. But this is short-sighted. Who do donors anticipate will do the work if no one should be paid?

Most nonprofits already lean heavily on volunteers, and have paid staff for the jobs that require additional expertise, reliability, or confidentiality. The nonprofit field is one place where these professional individuals are regularly degraded for seeking a comfortable wage that appreciates their skills.

Developing effective solutions to social ills requires that we have the most creative, passionate, and enthusiastic people working on the problem. But the nonprofit field as it currently exists offers weak incentives for attracting or retaining these individuals.

Ending hunger is a complicated and multi-faceted challenge. Amidst the complexity, it’s easy to ignore how we treat the people doing the work. Paying anti-hunger advocates a living wage requires changing priorities, educating funders, and adjusting budgets. But the long-term implications are higher retention rates, improved productivity, stronger competition, and one less client waiting in line at the food pantry.

Next steps:

Check out some resources for starting these conversations from the Next Shift, a campaign encouraging anti-hunger organizations to examine internal processes and attitudes about social justice parallel to their external goals.

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

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Why We Need Summer EBT

I am a 2023-24 FoodCorps Alumni Advocacy Lead, and am working to increase engagement on school food policies at the local and national level.

As the Oregon representative, I am writing a short blog series on local opportunities for supporting stronger, healthier food policies in schools. Oregon’s short legislative session this February revolves around the budget, and legislators face a powerful opportunity to positively impact students food access with Summer EBT. This first post of the series explains the value and importance of this program.

When the Covid-era SNAP Emergency Allotment benefits expired in March 2023, anti-hunger advocates saw an immediate increase in the need for food assistance. Even before the expiration of the additional $90 per person that the program contributed, inflation left people struggling to afford food. When these benefits disappeared, households abruptly faced the choice of paying their rent, receiving healthcare, feeding their family, or meeting other necessary needs. Overwhelming demands on an already overburdened food banking system has led to a noticeable increase in American hunger rates.

Summer EBT (Electronic Balance Transfer)

Starting this summer, many states will have a new and valuable tool for supporting food insecure residents with the rollout of the Summer EBT program.

This program provides $40 in SNAP benefits to each child every summer month (for up to four months) for households receiving free or reduce price school lunches.

Why is this important?

Many sites that offer summer meals as an extension of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), but they often require traveling to a specific site to pick it up. For many working families this is an insurmountable hardship, even with waivers allowing children to eat offsite.

Summer EBT provides dignity and autonomy to these families. It allows them to make their own food purchases and find the options that are tasty and appropriate for their families. Guardians can access the food their kids need to eat on their schedule. While it’s important to recognize that $40/month doesn’t go far enough, it is an encouraging start.

It’s also important to recognize that the EBT format facilitates food access for all family members. Far too often, parents eat less or skip meals to keep their children fed. Giving a family more money to buy food helps everyone eat better.

The summer EBT program is federally funded but requires states to pay half of the administrative costs. Some states have declined to participate, while others scramble to find essential funding.

In my home state of Oregon, the legislative session begins February 5th, and this short session will focus on the budget, including considering sourcing the $35 million necessary to implement Summer EBT.

Fellow Oregonians, please consider sending a message to your Congressperson letting them know why this program is important.

Send a message to your representative

For non-Oregonians, investigate whether your state, Territory or Tribe is participating. 15 states have opted out.

Consider looking into any upcoming policy and funding bills for your state that may include antipoverty or antihunger resources, and let your representative know that policy change is far, far more effective at fighting hunger than any action we take individually or through charity.

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

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Food Justice IS Social Justice

I spent the last three years working at a food pantry committed to fighting hunger. My efforts centered on ensuring as many people as possible left our facility with as much food as they wanted while prioritizing access to culturally specific and healthy options. I firmly believe this pantry could have served as a national model of excellence, but I also recognize that even the best food pantry in the country can’t solve hunger through food distribution.

The public generally assumes that we need more food to fight hunger. People experiencing hunger don’t have enough, so we must develop solutions that offer more. Too often, anti-hunger advocates focus on how to access and distribute more food through uplifting programs that reduce food waste and increase agricultural production.

Although this is logical (and an effective piece of a much larger strategy), it oversimplifies the problem and neglects to consider the conditions that produce hunger in the first place.

Food insecurity is a result of systems of oppression.

Racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, and other forms of discrimination stop people from accessing the resources they need to thrive and the food they need to live.

Racial discrimination keeps people of color from amassing wealth at the rates available to white Americans. The gender pay gap ensures that women have less buying power than men. LGBTQ+ individuals face employment and housing discrimination that makes them more vulnerable to job loss and houselessness.

While all these individuals absolutely need food to survive today, they will also need food tomorrow. Rather than maintaining a system that perpetually provides emergency food assistance, why aren’t we addressing the problems that leave them food insecure in the first place?

Undeniably, this is the more complex solution.

It is much easier to contact grocery stores for donations than to overcome systems of oppression. And it demands a focus on equity that we’ve repeatedly seen many of our neighbors are not comfortable with.

Food banks and pantries provide a convenient and accessible way for people to give back to their community and support their neighbors. These programs impose limits on services to ensure users don’t have access to everything they need under the mistaken assumption that offering stable food access will foster “welfare queens” and abuse of benefits.

This is why so many food access organizations prefer to offer food as the only solution to hunger. It doesn’t challenge the biases of volunteers, won’t upset the politics of donors, and still allows them to “do good” for their community. It also doesn’t end hunger.

Food justice, on the other hand, recognizes that we don’t have the capacity to perpetually fight hunger this way, and that a much smarter, more equitable, more just, and more effective solution is to eliminate it altogether.

Food justice forces us to recognize and address injustice around us.

This requires fostering an organizational environment that encourages learning, growth, and humility; the confidence to turn away from donors who don’t share these values; and a profound respect for the dignity of the people utilizing these services.

This is no small task, and I don’t mean to minimize the difficulty of transforming from an anti-hunger to a food justice mindset. But the one thing that anti-hunger organizations can do every day to facilitate this transition is to recognize the human right to healthy, delicious food without judgement or conditions.

Today is MLK Day, which means every organization with a social media presence is sharing a feel-good message about nonviolence, social justice, and hope. The challenge for food justice advocates is to find the organizations that actively practice those values every other day of the year.

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

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Do You Advocate Like Everyone Deserves to Eat?

When I say that “everyone deserves to eat,” no one argues with me. This statement is lauded as commendable, generous, and noncontroversial.

But when I start to discuss individual populations and how to make sure they have the food they need to thrive, I regularly encounter resistance. Even with mission statements about universally ending hunger, many individuals and organizations have confidential qualifiers about who is really included in their anti-hunger efforts.  

Who is regularly excluded from the idea that everyone deserves to eat?

The idea that children are helpless to fight hunger makes them a high priority for food assistance programs. Adults without children, less so. In 2019 the anti-hunger community had to aggressively rally to prevent SNAP rule changes increasing the burden on individuals without children to continue receiving food assistance. The assumption is that people able to work can make enough money to be self-sufficient if they just try hard enough, regardless of the mountains of data demonstrating otherwise.

For the same reason, seniors are a primary focus of anti-hunger efforts. Living on fixed retirement incomes, they are vulnerable to economic fluctuations and sudden changes in circumstance.

As a result, many anti-hunger organizations seeking noncontroversial community backing will emphasize through their mission statements, goals, and donor outreach that they support and nourish families, children, and seniors. But this comes at the expense of people who don’t fall within those demographics.

To maintain the impression that anti-hunger efforts only support individuals truly deserving of help, few food justice organizations are brave enough to advocate for people living in poverty just because they live in poverty. Even fewer are comfortable identifying the racial and systemic injustices that produce this condition.

Beyond the anti-hunger community’s preference for serving families, there are several other demographics who are consistently judged as undeserving of healthy food and food access.

The quality and health of food in prisons is a growing topic lately, with many people promoting the assumption that breaking the law exempts an individual from the right to healthy food and a healthy body.  

Further, people with criminal convictions may be restricted or banned from receiving food assistance long after they complete their sentence, again justified by the idea that breaking the rules exempts them from privileges.

Regardless of your opinion on whether these demographics really deserve to eat as much as anyone else, it demonstrates that the concept that ‘everyone deserves to eat’ is far more loaded than it appears.

If we’re committed to being true anti-hunger advocates, then we need to make sure there is alignment between our words and our actions. Here’s how to check:

  • Who does your organization serve? Are there specific groups or demographics targeted more than others? Is that specifically identified in your outreach efforts? Does your mission statement and/or vision reflect this?
  • How narrow or broad are your advocacy efforts? Do you only act on childhood hunger, but offer food access services to adults?
  • Do you use data to inform your policy actions? For example, does your organization prioritize demographics like families or children even when your region has uncomfortably high hunger rates among other, deemed “less deserving” demographics?
  • What relationships will you gain or lose if you’re honest about who your organization does or does not prioritize/serve?

Ensuring anti-hunger advocates and organizations have a clear alignment between their mission and actions ensures we’re building trustworthy leaders. It is hard to let go of preconceived ideas about what our community wants to support, what our leaders are comfortable fighting for, and the easiest ways to achieve our goals. Transparency in how we think about and act on our anti-hunger aspirations is the only way we will build a truly effective and motivated coalition that can actually end hunger.

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

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2023 Recap

In the spirit of the New Year, this week I’m reflecting on my accomplishments of 2023. Having spent years looking for and thinking about the resources that I wanted to see as an anti-hunger advocate, I’m proud to have started filling the gaps with my own ideas.

There is enormous opportunity for the anti-hunger community to advance how we talk about and share our services.

I’ve been excited to learn that there is interest in my content, and I’m motivated to continue sharing my strategies on advancing anti-hunger action in the coming year.

In 2024, I am enthusiastic about dedicating more time to food justice philosophies and exploring how they can change our implementation. You can still expect weekly posts about this work, but I am also looking for insights from readers. I’d love to hear if you have an anti-hunger question that you’re like to start a discussion on. Please reach out and share your ideas!

To recap 2023, here are the three posts that resonated with my readership the most. Be sure to check them out if you missed them the first time!

Learning to Cook Won’t Solve Hunger

November 27, 2023.

The Problem is Never Just Hunger

December 4, 2023. 187 views

How to Make Your Food Donations Count This Winter

October 16, 2023.

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

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How to Build a Friendly Environment in Any Food Pantry

Last week I was privileged to take a tour of a local food pantry that is part of a relatively new and rapidly growing program. As a result, the food pantry has bounced around in several different physical spaces as office needs have evolved and rooms became available. The current space was the smallest grocery-style food pantry I’ve ever seen.

Approximately 12 x 12 feet, this pantry had room for three standing fridge/freezers, a wall of shelves for canned goods, and counter space for displaying fresh produce. Pantry policy is to check in clients at the door and allow up to three shoppers to browse the space at once. To facilitate this, the organization has prioritized establishing a play area with volunteer supervision for the children of clients. Parents are thus able to shop at their leisure, and the pantry doesn’t have to navigate extra bodies in the room. It is an efficient and elegant system, despite all the disadvantages that come with a room barely bigger than a closet.

There are very few food pantries who occupy their ideal facility. Instead, they live in basement rooms, neglected offices, and vacant closets. Having to depend on unwanted and undesirable spaces can be challenging and discouraging, but there are still ample opportunities for organizations to make their services as respectful, desirable, and functional as in a purpose-built facility.

Here are three essential qualities for turning any food pantry space into one that is dignified and functional for everyone:

  • Abundance. Whether the pantry is a tiny closet or a cavernous warehouse, keeping the shelves piled high with food fosters an abundance mindset that provides a sense of security and comfort to people seeking assistance.

When people are confident that they have access to essential resources, they are more likely to just take what they need. When they are fearful that there isn’t enough (and especially if there’s any sense of competition among shoppers), they are more likely to fall into a scarcity mindset which often motivates them to take more food.  A smaller room facilitates the presentation of abundance, but attention to how food is displayed can simulate a sense of plenty in any space.

No one wants to be at a food pantry in the first place, so developing systems that empower shoppers to make their own choices can help address the inherent power imbalance in using emergency food resources.

Grocery-style pantries that allow their visitors to browse as one would do at any store are an effective way to add dignity to the experience. Many food pantries continue to depend on systems where clients must proceed in a line past their food options. While this system is primarily successful at increasing the speed at which people shop, it also can evoke a sense of powerlessness. Letting shoppers get out of line or step ahead of a slow shopper may be a simple option for restoring a little bit of autonomy.

While every food pantry deserves a big, beautiful room with airy windows, a play area, and ease of access for everyone, we must work with the options available. By considering these factors, we can still transform any space into an experience that helps our community feel welcome, nourished, and dignified.

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

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