#RightsNotCharity

Tag: Food Banks

U.S. Food Banks Supporting Migrant Justice

In today’s episode, we’ll talk about why our food justice movement including food banks should work in solidarity with the movement for migrant justice. I recently saw a meme that showed a picture of a man holding a sign that read, “Do you know what an accent is? It’s a sign of bravery.” Truly, the migrant story is one of bravery. You must be brave to leave family and the only homeland you’ve known, embrace potentially treacherous travel and come to a new country where you know that not all will welcome you. But you do it for the potential to work, you do it for the potential for safety, you do it for a better future. Migrants make up the backbone of our American food system. They work our fields and in our restaurant kitchens yet they are among our most vulnerable for food security. They pay taxes, but immigration status is a bar to important federal food assistance programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The charitable food bank system is one resource, but it’s not a sustainable one and also can be fraught with access issues. We’re talking with Claudio Rodriguez and Robert Ojeda of the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona. Claudio is the environmental and social justice manager and Robert is the chief program officer.

Is Food Charity Political? If so, how do we organize?

Charitable food networks have been growing in many countries, which has seen foodbanking organisations lobbying national governments for funding and favourable regulatory environments for the redistribution of surplus food as charity. Meanwhile, some food charities have become vocal critics of government policy that they see as driving food insecurity. It’s clear that the link between…
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‘Big Food’ at the UN table: A recipe for big waste?

waste nor hunger has been significantly decreased as a result of these efforts. Is the answer, then, just to urge companies to redistribute more surplus, and perhaps tweak their supply chain processes a little harder?

Food Banks and Charity as a False Response to Hunger in the Wealthy but Unequal Countries

Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2021 – The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the food injustices and inequalities felt by too many in the so-called ‚Global North‘, particularly those in marginalized communities – Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC).

UK’s This is Rubbish! and the Plenty to Share Campaign

This podcast focuses on food waste as part of our Corporatization of Hunger series. Guest is UK National Food Waste Expert and Campaigner, Martin Bowman, from the British food waste advocacy organization, This is Rubbish. This is Rubbish’s Plenty to Share Campaign has just released three short animated videos, focused on inequality and the causes of food waste, food poverty and inequality and solutions to them.

Food Poverty Has No Place in Our Society

Dave Beck is a lecturer in social policy at the University of Salford and expert on food poverty. We chat to him about his work, the role of food banks in the UK and how he believes we could eliminate food poverty.

What is Hunger in the United Kingdom?

The United Kingdom, where I’m from has seen rising levels of hunger over the past 10 years. And despite being in the top five wealthiest countries in the world, demand for food aid was rising even before 2020, but it’s estimated that 15% of families with children have struggled to afford a decent diet since the pandemic began. Food charities have struggled to cope and have increasingly called for government intervention. But the problem is still poorly understood. To help us understand food insecurity and hunger in the UK. Who it affects, what’s causing it and what’s being done about it – we’ve invited policy and international relations researcher Hannah Lambie-Mumford from the University of Sheffield and the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute. Over the last decade, she has studied the rise of food charity and the right to food in the UK and other European countries.

What is Hunger in the United States?

Did you know that 40 million people in the United States experience hunger. This is startling given the fact that the us is one of the richest countries in the world. Perhaps you’ve participated in a hunger drive at your school, have volunteered at a food pantry, or even experienced hunger yourself. So what is hunger and how do we manage this problem in the United States? In this episode, we talk to professor Janet Poppendieck of the Urban Food Policy Institute at the City University of New York, to explore some basic definitions of hunger and food insecurity, who it affects, and solutions to address the problem. Host: Rebecca De Souza, professor of communication at the University of Minnesota Duluth and author the book, “Feeding the Other: Whiteness, Privilege, and Neoliberal Stigma in Food Pantries.”

What is the Right to Food?

Have you ever wondered why there are so many hungry people in wealthy nations like the US, Canada and the UK long before and especially during COVID-19? So what does the “right to food” mean and why does it matter? In this podcast, two guests define the right to food, and also how it differs from food charity such as food banks and food pantries. University of British Columbia Professor Graham Riches is the leading voice on the right to food in Canada. He’s joined by attorney and PhD candidate Laura Castrejon-Violante, who researches the constitutionalization of the right to food. 

More than food banks are needed to feed the hungry during the coronavirus pandemic

COVID-19 is revealing critical weaknesses in how we care for each other. While many Canadians are being thrown out of work and need emergency food assistance, food banks have had to shut down operations to deal with physical distancing requirements, reduce staffing as elderly volunteers stay home to self-isolate and ration food as donations decline.

Big Hunger: Challenges and Current Opportunities to the Emergency Food System

Watch Closing the Hunger Gap’s inaugural webinar on the challenges of our current emergency food system and how one food bank is shifting towards their work to support community-based solutions. Author Andy Fisher recounts the history of our current charitable emergency food system and the tangled relationship between corporations and emergency food providers. Hear Andy’s thoughts about creating a long-term vision to truly ending hunger. Learn from the experiences of Robert Ojeda and Marco Liu of the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona about how their food bank is mobilizing resources and supporting community-based solutions.

E79: Andy Fisher on Exploring the Connection Between Industry and Food Banks

This podcast is part of The Leading Voices in Food series focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic is exposing a deep flaw in the country’s food system, namely stunning levels of food insecurity, but also the transformation of emergency food assistance into what some have characterized as an industry as food charity become big business. Andy Fisher, our guest today is a leader in the Food Security and Food Justice Movement. He founded and led The National Community Food Security Coalition and led Federal Legislation campaigns to gain more than $200 million for community-based food security and farm to school projects.

E80: Janet Poppendieck – COVID Highlights the Problems with Charity Food

This podcast is part of The Leading Voices in Food series focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re exploring today, the role of charitable efforts to address food access. Places such as food banks, soup kitchens and food pantries. Janet Poppendieck has studied the emergency food system in the U.S. for decades. She is professor emerita of sociology at Hunter College, City University of New York and the author of the book, “Sweet Charity, Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement.”

How Food Banks are Advancing the Right to Food Movement

Learn about grassroots initiatives that advance the right to food by drawing political attention to the root causes of hunger. This story features the work of our members Alison Cohen, Senior Director of Programs at WhyHunger, Christina Wong, Director of Public Policy and Advocacy at Northwest Harvest, and Joshua Lohnes, Food Policy Research Director at West Virginia University’s Center for Resilient Communities, and an advocate in the Food For All coalition.

Providing public funding for food banks ‘makes a mockery of the data that shows food insecurity is an income problem that must be dealt with through poverty reduction and social inclusion.’ Photo by Jonathan Hayward, the Canadian Press.

Hey, Minister. It’s Time to End Our Disgraceful Food Bank Dependency

Graham Riches, professor emeritus of social work at the University of British Columbia, pens open letter to Nicholas Simons, B.C.’s minister of social development

How foodbanks went global

Charlie Spring, who critically examined charitable food networks in her doctoral and postdoctoral research, investigates the spread of food banks across affluent nations and beyond. She explains how the relationship between food waste and food charity is more complex and problematic than the “win-win” it is often portrayed to be.

image by congerdesign

How One Organization Can Shorten Food Bank Lines Across the United States

Author and activist Andy Fisher describes how America’s largest food charity, Feeding America, has failed to embrace the progressive values needed to respond to multi-faceted social inequities. Here is a 10-point plan to change that.

Philanthropy must go beyond charity to fund transformational food system change

On October 22, 2020, the Global Solidarity Alliance for Food, Health and Social Justice urged members of the Sustainable Agriculture and Food System Funders (SAFSF) to go beyond charity and work toward transformational food system change through the first of a two-part webinar series titled: “We Can’t ‘Foodbank’ Our way Out of Hunger.”

Soup kitchen

Canada must eliminate food banks and provide a basic income after COVID-19

Graham Riches, professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, explains how food insecurity is a problem of inadequate income rather than food supply.

It’s not the hungry who gain most from food banks – it’s big business

THE GUARDIAN – Who benefits from food banks? The donors? The volunteers? The recipients? You might be surprised – and dismayed – to learn that big food corporations from around the world revel in the wonderful world of food banks.