Big Hunger: The Unholy Alliance between Corporate America and Anti-Hunger Groups

by Andrew Fisher, Saru Jayaraman (Foreword by)

Overview

How to focus anti-hunger efforts not on charity but on the root causes of food insecurity, improving public health, and reducing income inequality.

Food banks and food pantries have proliferated in response to an economic emergency. The loss of manufacturing jobs combined with the recession of the early 1980s and Reagan administration cutbacks in federal programs led to an explosion in the growth of food charity. This was meant to be a stopgap measure, but the jobs never came back, and the “emergency food system” became an industry. In Big Hunger, Andrew Fisher takes a critical look at the business of hunger and offers a new vision for the anti-hunger movement.

From one perspective, anti-hunger leaders have been extraordinarily effective. Food charity is embedded in American civil society, and federal food programs have remained intact while other anti-poverty programs have been eliminated or slashed. But anti-hunger advocates are missing an essential element of the problem: economic inequality driven by low wages. Reliant on corporate donations of food and money, anti-hunger organizations have failed to hold business accountable for offshoring jobs, cutting benefits, exploiting workers and rural communities, and resisting wage increases. They have become part of a “hunger industrial complex” that seems as self-perpetuating as the more famous military-industrial complex.

Fisher lays out a vision that encompasses a broader definition of hunger characterized by a focus on public health, economic justice, and economic democracy. He points to the work of numerous grassroots organizations that are leading the way in these fields as models for the rest of the anti-hunger sector. It is only through approaches like these that we can hope to end hunger, not just manage it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262339520
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	04/14/2017
Series:	Food, Health, and the Environment
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	360
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Andrew Fisher has worked in the anti-hunger field for twenty-five years, as the executive director of national and local food groups, and as a researcher, organizer, policy advocate, and coalition builder. He has led successful efforts to gain passage of multiple pieces of federal food and nutrition legislation.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword ix

Foreword Saru Jayaraman xi

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction: Lost Opportunities and Collateral Damage 1

1 Occupy Hunger 11

2 The Charity Trap 41

3 The Politics of Corporate Giving 77

4 SNAP'S Identity Crisis 105

5 Economic Democracy through Federal Food Programs 143

6 Who's at the Table Shapes What's on the Agenda 185

7 Innovation within the Anti-Hunger Movement 215

8 Innovative Models from Outside the Anti-Hunger Field 243

Conclusion: Toward a New Vision for the Anti-Hunger Movement 261

Appendix 1 Primary National Anti-Hunger Groups in the United States 273

Appendix 2 Trends in Prevalence Rates of Food Insecurity and Very Low Food Security in U.S. Households, 1995-2015 275

Appendix 3 Index of Acronyms 277

Notes 279

Index 327

What People are Saying About This

Marion Nestle

If you don't understand why anti-hunger groups hardly ever advocate for higher wages or public health nutrition measures for low-income Americans, see Andy Fisher's analysis: they owe too much to their food-company donors. Big Hunger is a call to action, one well worth heeding.

Jan Poppendieck

If you are an anti-hunger activist, you should read Big Hunger. It may make you mad, and it will definitely make you think.Hopefully, it will catalyze some long overdue and much needed conversations among various wings of the food movement.

Endorsement

If you are an anti-hunger activist, you should read Big Hunger. It may make you mad, and it will definitely make you think.Hopefully, it will catalyze some long overdue and much needed conversations among various wings of the food movement.

—Jan Poppendieck, Senior Fellow, CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute; Professor Emerita of Sociology, Hunter College

From the Publisher

If you don't understand why anti-hunger groups hardly ever advocate for higher wages or public health nutrition measures for low-income Americans, see Andy Fisher's analysis: they owe too much to their food-company donors. Big Hunger is a call to action, one well worth heeding.

—Marion Nestle, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, New York University; author of Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning)

In this groundbreaking work, Andy Fisher details America's approach to rising hunger, and lays bare a modern Orwellian irony: The big food companies whose labor practices have spurred hunger now receive credit—tax, media, and otherwise—for supporting charities to address it. It's an invaluable read.

—Tracie McMillan, author of the New York Times Best Seller The American Way of Eating

Big Hunger is arguably the most important book on the American food scene in a decade. A decade ago, the food scene was rocked by The Omnivore's Dilemma. Now we must face a Charitable Dilemma.

—Wayne Roberts, author of The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food

Andy Fisher charts how the good intention to end poverty has metastasized into an industry that keeps 50 million Americans hungry. No one is spared in this searing analysis, from corporations to foundations to food banks. If hunger is to be ended in America, the unholy coalitions that currently frustrate, ignore, and try to contain attempts for radical change will need to be blown apart. Big Hunger is a book to burst that bubble.

—Raj Patel, Research Professor, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin; author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System

If you are an anti-hunger activist, you should read Big Hunger. It may make you mad, and it will definitely make you think. Hopefully, it will catalyze some long overdue and much needed conversations among various wings of the food movement.

—Jan Poppendieck, Senior Fellow, CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute; Professor Emerita of Sociology, Hunter College

Wayne Roberts

Big Hunger is arguably the most important book on the American food scene in a decade. A decade ago, the food scene was rocked by The Omnivore's Dilemma. Now we must face a Charitable Dilemma.

Tracie McMillan

In this groundbreaking work, Andy Fisher details America's approach to rising hunger, and lays bare a modern Orwellian irony: The big food companies whose labor practices have spurred hunger now receive credit—tax, media, and otherwise—for supporting charities to address it. It's an invaluable read.

Raj Patel

Andy Fisher charts how the good intention to end poverty has metastasized into an industry that keeps 50 million Americans hungry. No one is spared in this searing analysis, from corporations to foundations to food banks. If hunger is to be ended in America, the unholy coalitions that currently frustrate, ignore, and try to contain attempts for radical change will need to be blown apart. Big Hunger is a book to burst that bubble.

Editorial Reviews

Essential reading for academics and students of food policy, environmental studies, public health, social policy, social work, community planning, law and human rights.—Review of Agricultural Food Environment Studies—

Andrew Fisher has provided food for thought in his new book.

—Agriculture and Human Values—

From the Publisher