Right to food activists explain why we can’t bank on food banks
The ongoing Covid-19 crisis has worsened hunger especially among the impoverished. This hiked the demand from food banks across the globe to fill empty stomachs and in turn, prompted big food firms to do their share by donating to these charities tons of consumables, including surplus food products and ingredients stockpiled in their factories and stores.
But while food banks and food companies are earning praises for their supposed benevolence, not all are convinced that their method is the way to end hunger.
In fact, right to food activists are one in saying that these charitable acts, which have become the permanent responses to poverty and food insecurity, are part of the problem.
“These solutions have never addressed the root causes of food insecurity, and oftentimes exacerbate poverty,” the Global Solidarity Alliance for Food, Health, and Social Justice, which includes organizations that are also part of the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition (GNRTFN), said in a statement.
“They have allowed governments to look the other way, ignoring income policies and human rights, all the while creating greater openings for the corporate capture of public policy and funding, as well as contributing to the downfall of the welfare state,” the Alliance added.
Gov’t obliged to ensure people’s right to food
Paul M. Taylor, executive director of FoodShare Toronto, a member-organization of the GNRTFN, said such is the case in Canada.
“Despite the fact that Canada is a signatory to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, in which the right of all people to food and to feed themselves in dignity is entrenched, we have for years relied on the charitable sector, food banks in particular, to fulfill the state’s obligation to meet this right,” said Taylor, in an opinion piece he wrote for The Star.
“While food banks can be a viable stopgap in the short term, this is not how we will end hunger nor will this ever be a viable means to improving access to good food,” he said, adding that “food banks give out, at most, a three-day supply of food, thus ensuring the necessity of repeat visits.”
Taylor explained that while Canada is legally obliged to respect, protect, and fulfill the right to food of its people, following the country’s signing of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1976, “(i)t does not mean that the government is required to give out free food.”
“Rather, the government is obliged to create the conditions for people to be able to access good, nutritious, affordable food with dignity, now and in the future,” he said.
Unable to fight back against ‘neoliberal response’ to hunger
However, Taylor pointed out that “successive governments have failed to meet these obligations” and “Covid-19 has the potential of further enshrining food charity as our default response to the almost 4.5 million Canadians that are food insecure.”
“Politicians encourage donations to food banks and themselves wrestle over the opportunity to be photographed sorting what amounts to corporate waste and other people’s leftovers, while ignoring the structural barriers preventing people from accessing their right to food,” said Taylor.
“Food banks have only been a part of the Canadian landscape since 1981, but yet they are so deeply entrenched that not one organization or institution is able to fight back against this neo-liberal response to hunger,” he added.
Also, Sabine Goodwin, coordinator of the UK-based Independent Food Aid Network, another member-organization of the GNRTFN, thinks hunger will persist if the government won’t go beyond band-aid solutions.
“(W)hile we press on to fill an ever-widening gap with food parcels, we must keep reminding our Government that, of course, sticking plasters are no solution to poverty,” said Goodwin in her article, titled, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.
“The COVID-19 crisis shines a spotlight on the immense inequalities in our society, but funding the distribution of more emergency food parcels will never prove a real solution for those people deserving the dignity to be able to afford to buy food for themselves,” she said.
“And worse, this default reaction could very well embed food banking into our society for good,” concluded Goodwin.
Food banks benefitting big food firms
Meanwhile, Dr. Kayleigh Garthwaite, a fellow at the University of Birmingham’s Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology and a member of the Global Solidarity Alliance for Food, Health, and Social Justice, said big businesses, and not the hungry, are the ones benefitting from food banks.
“It’s a win-win for Big Food when it donates its leftover food to society’s left-behind people,” said Garthwaite in an article she co-wrote with Dr. Charlie Spring, research associate at the University of Sheffield, and Andy Fisher, co-founder and former executive director of the Community Food Security Coalition, which was published in The Guardian last year.
“By giving them unhealthy and often unsuitable leftovers, we ignore the fact that the poor are more vulnerable to chronic diseases such as diabetes because of the high cost of a healthy diet,” said Garthwaite.
“And we disguise the causes of industrial-scale food waste: excessive production and profit-motivated overstocking,” she added.