Food Security is Food Justice (and a Climate Solution)
Person in a grocery store aisle making choices
“People on food stamps are lazy!” A phrase I and many others have heard too often. In the summer of 2019, I was in my 2nd year at the Seattle Aquarium, managing a little over 400 community partnerships, serving on several boards and committees, and I had just become the newest member of the Washington State Environmental Justice Task Force.
I was also on SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits. Food stamps.
Despite working hard and coming home every day to volunteer my time to my causes and being exhausted after a daily 4-hour commute, I still wasn’t making enough to cover my bills and basic necessities. I did everything you’re supposed to do when you grow up: get a degree and get a job. Work hard and it’ll pay off eventually. The American Dream.
But in 2019, I became unhoused and had to utilize public benefits to survive. Benefits that we all pay taxes to provide, for when life takes an unexpected turn. Because even when we run into unexpected obstacles—which has happened to all of us—we still deserve food, health, and dignity.
My story isn’t a new one, nor am I the only one. Roughly 42 million people nationwide currently rely on SNAP benefits just to make it through the month. Luckily, I was the only one in my household, other than my dog, when I was on SNAP. However, many recipients of SNAP benefits have entire families to support, often as the only member of the household who can work - a new requirement for SNAP benefits, thanks to the vast budget reconciliation law (the “big brutal bill”) Congress passed earlier this year. The same law further increased food insecurity by ending benefits for many vulnerable people, including refugee communities and asylum seekers.
Like me, millions of SNAP recipients have jobs or have been employed this year. Yet, they still heavily rely on SNAP benefits to make it through the month due to low wages, layoffs, scarce employment, and unexpected life events.
When we reach November 1, our communities will suffer. Americans are already struggling with the rising cost of groceries, and they cannot afford a sudden lapse in grocery assistance.
At the moment, food banks are facing food shortages and staffing pressures, overwhelmed by high food prices.
We are entering a period of food apartheid. Despite a global surplus of food, millions of people worldwide are facing chronic hunger and/or limited access to only inadequate foods. In the United States, systemic injustices embedded in the food system complicate equitable access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally relevant food for some communities. Lack of access to these foods drives food insecurity and increases the prevalence of diet-related diseases in low-income and underserved populations. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ office of minority health, African American adults are 80 percent more likely than non-Hispanic white adults to have been diagnosed with diabetes by a physician.
These communities already experience living in food deserts (neighborhoods with not enough food availability) and food swamps (communities that only have access to unhealthy junk foods), and suffer from a grocery gap (limited access to grocery stores or healthy food retailers that provide low-cost fresh and nutritious foods) imposed by the limited grocery stores in their neighborhoods. This is an example of environmental injustice.
In the words of Thea Gay, “Food justice must be seen as an extension of the environmental justice movement in which marginalized communities have been systematically and actively denied the ability to fully participate and thrive within the environment. From farm labor work to land disputes, to public policy, it must be reiterated how important it is to view food justice as a necessary approach to BIPOC liberation and freedom.” Food justice is climate justice.
Food insecurity ought to be a wholly preventable crisis in the United States; the fact that it is happening here reminds us that hunger and food insecurity are on the rise globally, due in part to climate change. Drought, extreme heat, and climate-fueled storms like Hurricane Melissa can be devastating to agriculture across entire regions, causing crop loss, livestock death, and infrastructure damage that can take years to repair. Ironically, these environmental shocks that compromise food security are worsened and extended by our inequitable food systems and their enormous environmental impact. Many farm workers and food laborers come from the same communities experiencing food insecurity and are on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Their homes and lives are being destroyed as a byproduct of the same food they don’t even have access to.
Even as food production increases to feed our growing population, the way we produce our food and the quality of that food has diminished the health of people and the planet.
Half of the world’s vegetative land is dedicated to agricultural production and food production; this accounts for 90% of deforestation and about a third of all carbon emissions. Our global food system is a primary driver of climate change and biodiversity loss. Simply intensifying agricultural production is not the solution to increase food security.
As the weather gets cooler and shared holidays get closer, the last thing families need to worry about is being able to put food on the table. Yet the government shutdown—coupled with the impacts of the big brutal bill and the Trump administration’s refusal to extend SNAP benefits—are imposing that frightening insecurity on hundreds of thousands of households.
Without last-minute interventions (Washington and New York are among states that have committed to support food banks during the shutdown), people will go hungry when the federally-funded SNAP food stamps program comes to a halt on Nov. 1.
Produce shelves at a store
So how do we solve food insecurity?
In the long term, we will need to reimagine our global food systems, following the lead of BIPOC communities, Indigenous-led models and those who have long been building food sovereignty in reciprocity with land and their people. The food justice movement is inextricably linked to Tribal nations’ and BIPOC communities’ autonomy over their land and food. Understanding the connections between these communities and their lifelong fight for liberation, in food and other spaces of injustice, is necessary to create an equitable, just, and intersectional future. Learning equitable and sustainable food harvesting skills, sharing knowledge about growing food, and sharing our food with our neighbors are practices we should all strive to follow. Mutual aid models are common within BIPOC communities, demonstrating resilience and collaboration. In life’s hardest moments, you share food. These grassroots efforts have an immediate and tangible impact. Having laws in place to promote food justice and prevent exploitation of the land and people is the long term vision to fight food insecurity. It’ll take changing our policies and practices within our food systems to save people and the planet.
What can we do right now to protect our communities from food insecurity?
Even in these very volatile times, we can channel the principles of the food justice movement and be there for our neighbors. I encourage us all to donate food to food pantries and food banks. Donate fresh, locally-grown food if you can afford it. Donate money to food security organizations so they can pay their employees fair wages and hire more employees; the need for food will continue to increase until SNAP benefits are restored, and beyond. Volunteer your time to soup kitchens and local community farms. Do you grow and harvest your own food? Great! Share your harvest with your neighbors. Teach your neighbors how to harvest their own food. And finally, cook with your neighbors. With our collective time, treasure, and talent, poured into our community, we have the power to make sure no one in our community goes hungry.
Follow these links to learn more and to help folks in your community who may need assistance:
WASHINGTON
Food bank map (Food Lifeline)
List of places providing free meals in Seattle (Statewide Poverty Action Network)
Byrd Barr Place (Seattle)
Black Star Farmers (Seattle)
Black Farmers Collective (Seattle)
YWCA Central Area Food Bank (Seattle)
Full Circle CSA Donate-a-box program (Seattle)
OREGON
Where to find food resources in Oregon (Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon)
Oregon Food Bank
Equitable Giving Circle (BIPOC-led, Portland-based food organization)
GENERAL RESOURCES
Originally published by Emily Pinckney on climatesolutions.org.
