Hunger is a Policy Choice
By Maryann Broxton
Maryann Broxton, ATD Fourth World Activist and coordinator for ATD’s Multidimensional Aspects of Poverty (MAP) research, attended the Biden-Harris Administration’s White House on Hunger, Nutrition and Health Conference on September 28th, 2022 in Washington D.C. Here are some of her reflections.
The Biden Administration’s National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition and Health aims to end hunger by 2030. The strategy states “Disparities in food insecurity and diet-related diseases exist in part because of persistent structural inequities.” Inequities aren’t inevitabilities. These inequities are the direct result of policy, institutional practices, and power imbalances, resulting in hard choices and dire consequences for purposefully marginalized populations. In a country that throws away 160 billion pounds of food a year while 33.8 million people go hungry, hunger is a policy choice.
We don’t have a “Hunger Bill” in this country. Instead, we have the Farm Bill, created over 100 years ago as part of the New Deal to support farmers and stabilize prices of the “cash crops” - corn, soy, and wheat. These now “staple crops” have become the most consumed crops in the form of inexpensive highly processed foods – the products that over time lead to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as “Food Stamps”) is a component of the Farm Bill meant to alleviate hunger. SNAP provides $5.20 a day, per person, providing they qualify for the full benefit amount by meeting stringent income or work requirements, aren’t disqualified due to immigration status (p13) or past convictions, and are able to navigate the mountains of bureaucratic paperwork. People shouldn’t have to jump through unnecessary hoops to prove their level of destitution under the guise of “ensuring only the neediest receive the benefit.”
SNAP shoppers are not allowed to purchase “hot or prepared” foods, but “prepared” is a misnomer. A SNAP shopper can buy a prepared frozen pizza, but they are not allowed to buy a fruit cup or salad from the salad bar. The only way a SNAP shopper can purchase hot foods, like a roasted chicken or bowl of soup at a grocery store, is if a disaster is declared as was done with hurricane Ian in Florida. This is a form of “food policing.” Food policing is lazy policy work, because it gives the appearance of effort without actually addressing people’s basic needs. Saying what a person can’t purchase to eat is paternalistic; it tells marginalized people, “This is what you’re allowed. This is what we say you can have.” As Senator Debbie Stabenow stated, “I don’t think low-income people should be told they can’t do something that everybody else can do.”
President Biden at White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, & Health
Native Americans are the only demographic not allowed to access SNAP due to the FDPIR (Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations). To compensate for the Federal policies that forced settler-colonialism, stripping Native Americans of their land, Tribal Nations were distributed commodity rations. The average amount spent on FDPIR is $1.90 a day, per person, or $57 a month. What was supposed to make up for the loss of traditional harvesting, fishing, and hunting means instead has increased widespread hunger and food insecurity and led to high rates of diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure, all of which didn’t exist prior in Native populations. This is why in areas of the Navajo Nation, people are given prescriptions to purchase fruits and vegetables to prevent malnutrition and hunger through the GusNIP program. Prescriptions aren’t sustainable, and are a band aid meant to cover systemic institutional malpractice.
When people talk about lack of access to food, they sometimes focus on “food deserts,” meaning lack of a grocery store or distance needed to travel to a grocery store . But that implies that location is the only issue, and removes the responsibility from other actors that set the conditions for a food desert to exist in the first place. Instead, we should be talking about “food apartheid,” because it recognizes the discriminatory political and social structures that diminish and limit access to food: purposely disinvested communities, lack of well-paying jobs, high unemployment and underemployment, lack of reliable public transit and affordable housing. All of this has a cumulative effect on people's ability to access not only fresh, nutritious food, but food in general.
If we want to end hunger in this country, we need to take a Food Justice approach. People should have a sufficient amount of affordable, nutritious food to feed themselves and their families, regardless of economic or societal inequalities. Food justice recognizes personal choice and agency; meaning the foods you want to eat, not just what you have access to, or that others deem you worthy of. We in the Food Justice Movement see food as cultural, having social, communal, and religious ties, and as remembrance and tradition, not just sustenance. We reject Eurocentric foods as the standard for determining a balanced diet, and recognize the true cost of food for people with special dietary restrictions. Food justice aims to rectify food apartheid by asserting food is more than a basic necessity: Food is a Human Right. And Human Rights are non-negotiable.