Food banks are a short term solution to a problem—hunger—that is solvable, if only we decided that we wanted to solve it.
Have you been on food stamps (SNAP) before? I have.
There’s no shame in it, and I hope you don’t feel any shame if you’ve partaken. This is a government program designed to help those in a financial jam.
And let’s face it, no matter how good you are at money, if you don’t have enough coming in, at a certain point, you’re going to need help.
And that was the situation where I found myself.
Getting on the program was actually quite simple. I was given a debit card, which reloaded each month with a little bit of money to spend on (cold, not prepared) food. It was enough for me, though I know it’s not sufficient for everyone.
For those who need extra supplemental food sources, there are food banks, like my state’s great and mighty Oregon Food Bank, and a related organization: Feeding America.
Around the holiday season, Feeding America does a big promotional campaign, so you’ve probably seen either commercials or their mailers.
I never used Oregon Food Bank, though I definitely looked into it. I had a friend who worked at OFB for years as an administrator, and through her eyes I saw an incredible organization working against incredible odds.
And what are those odds anyway? Well, put simply, many people—millions of people in fact—lack access and ability to afford enough (healthy) food.
Which is why it might be surprising to hear that, in my opinion, Feeding America, and every single other major food bank organization, should not exist. At least not in the way that they do today.
Read on so you don’t think I’m a heartless cretin.
Table of Contents
Enough food
The U.S. is the world’s leading exporter of agricultural commodities like corn, soybeans, and wheat. I’m unable to get a figure of how much food the U.S. produces in total, but I did find that in 2021, the U.S. generated 91 million tons of “surplus food”, that is to say, food that is “unsold or uneaten”. This was, apparently, 38% of the entire country’s food supply.
But I also know that raw tonnage of food is not really a good indicator of food quality. A ton of taquitos from 7-Eleven is going to be a quite different from a ton of broccoli or spinach or even Cheerios.
The point is, it’s clear that the U.S.—through domestic production or import—produces more than enough food for every single person who’s here.
People are hungry
And yet, people are hungry.
According to Feeding America, more than 47 million people in the U.S. face hunger, including 1 in 5 children.
For reference, the U.S. population in 2023 is estimated to be around 335 million, so that represents about 14% of the total population that is facing hunger.
Feeding America continues on to say that people in rural communities, people in the South, and people of color are more likely to experience food insecurity. And that euphemism, “food insecurity”, is really just a fancy way of saying, “not enough food”, or just “hungry”.
Why?
So why, when the U.S. makes so much food that they can afford to export so much of it, is a large portion of the population going hungry?
A pithy answer is that these people don’t have enough money.
When healthcare costs are skyrocketing, rent keeps going up, and people are earning minimum wage or less, it’s not hard to see how the money just isn’t there for food.
And if there is money for food, that’s not to say that it’s good food.
There’s the concept of a “Food Desert”, which is an area where there isn’t a grocery store within a reasonable radius.
Why does that matter? Because not everyone has access to a car. And if you live 20 miles from a grocery store and you don’t have a car, good luck with that.
Here’s a good map of food deserts.
Late-stage capitalism doesn’t help either. Dollar stores like Dollar General have moved in and driven out small town grocery stores, leaving them as the only option in town. And dollar stores are patently not grocery stores.
(In case the above doesn’t embed properly, here’s a link to the video.)
The non-profit WhyHunger puts it succinctly like this:
The root causes of hunger are due to the systems, policies and institutions that benefit multinational corporations and wealthy nations, while leaving millions of people without access to food, land, water and sustainable livelihoods.
Food Justice
So why am I bashing Feeding America and its ilk, saying they shouldn’t exist?
Simple: All of these private and publicly funded food banks’ existence are designed to fill the holes that we have in our social safety net. Solve the problem of our lack of a safety net, and you no longer need food banks.
When you donate to Feeding America, sure, you’re doing a good deed, but have you ever wondered why you need to donate to a group like Feeding America? Why does our system of feeding the needy rely on the voluntary donation of others? Why aren’t we building a system where the need fulfillment is already baked into the system?
Why can we not have our tax dollars instead of going to billionaires or corporations, just go to feeding some hungry people? If, as these food banks say, it doesn’t take much to feed a needy family, surely we have the money in the system somewhere, without having to rely on us to “decide” to donate.
What does Food Justice mean?
This infographic from WhyHunger gets to the heart of why hunger isn’t just a “give those poor people a sandwich” problem.
Look at all those non-food related causes. For example:
- A living wage
- Strengthened government nutrition programs
- Increased access to jobs and affordable housing.
- Support for social movements
You may not see the connection between hunger and the above, but it’s there.
WhyHunger continues:
When people try to solve the problem of hunger by giving out food, they don’t address the larger underlying injustices that create barriers to food and health…Federal food assistance programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) deliver roughly nine times more food to people than the entire Feeding America network, which includes hundreds of food banks…Ninety percent of all Americans believe hunger is a solvable problem, and 59% agree it’s impossible to solve without addressing the root causes of economic injustice, racism, and lack of access.
I encourage you to read the rest of that page.
No quick solutions
I don’t have any quick solutions here. I wish we could overhaul our system to benefit those who need it the most.
But it’s important for all of us to recognize that all of these issues are interrelated. Economic inequality isn’t just about who has enough money to buy a home. It’s about communities and their access to food too, and this most definitely is a social justice issue.
But I believe that the more we build in systems that help more people prosper, the more we’re all able to prosper. (And perhaps, the less easy it will be to persuade people to blame their problems on immigrants. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that those issues aren’t related too.)
In many ways, we are complicit in our own impoverishment. And that sucks. I want everyone to be able to have access to whatever nutritious food they need to survive and thrive. There’s certainly enough of it around.
I just look forward to the day when organizations like Feeding America won’t exist anymore, because, given their mandate, we already have.
