Food charities should not have to carry the burdens of reconciling glaring contradictions between food waste and hunger

“Food charities should not have to carry the burdens of reconciling glaring contradictions between food waste and hunger. Over the past 40 years, states, private businesses and philanthropists have invested billions of dollars into a food banking infrastructure to resolve the inefficiencies of an economic model that produces want amidst plenty. Food banks have grown into critical nodes of our global food supply chains as farmers, food manufacturers and retailers are increasingly relying on poverty and hunger to mitigate their own risks of financial loss. The moral impulse to address hunger should not neutralize our moral outrage over a food system that fixes unsustainable levels of overproduction by growing its feeding lines. The global solidarity alliance works to rewrite the call to charity toward food justice and push back against monopolistic dynamics that currently limit our collective power to enact food sovereignty”.

Joshua Lohnes, Food Policy Research Director, West Virginia University — Center for Resilient Communities