We need a network of resilient, sustainably produced, local and regional food supplies

“Long lines at food banks have become an icon of the Covid-19 pandemic, side by side with pictures of milk dumped on the fields and vegetables plowed under. People are rightly outraged by the massive waste amid distressing need, but the answer is not for our societies to become even more dependent upon food banks. The pandemic has revealed both the utter inadequacy of our social safety net and the fragility of our highly concentrated food system. When four companies control 80 % of the meat processing in the US, is it any wonder that there are “disruptions” in our supplies? When legislatures make even the most minimal social support contingent on the fulfillment of work requirements, is it any wonder that people are destitute in the richest nations in the history of the world? In order to secure the human right to food, we need to develop a reliable income security policy on the one hand, and a network of resilient, sustainably produced, local and regional food supplies on the other. I welcome the Global Solidarity Alliance for Food, Health, and Social Justice as a forum in which we can collaborate to address both sides of the food security challenge. We need rights, not charity”.

Jan Poppendieck, Professor Emerita of Sociology, Hunter College, City University of New York and author, Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement (Penguin, 1999) and Breadlines Knee-Deep in Wheat: Food Assistance in the Great Depression (University of California Press, 2014)