Hunger in the Rich World: Food Aid and Right to Food Perspectives

Abstract

The relationship between food poverty and food charity in developed countries was initially explored in the book First World Hunger: Food Security and Welfare Politics (1997), the first cross-national study of the development of food aid and the charitable food bank movement from the early 1980s to the mid 1990s. It examined the rise of food banks as community and philanthropic responses to the growing issue of food insecurity in five residual welfare states: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the USA. It revealed a growing reliance on the collection and redistribution of surplus and wasted food to feed hungry people. During this period of neo-liberal welfare reform publicly funded social safety nets were being dismantled and government obligations to ensure the adequacy of social benefits sufficient to both pay the rent and feed oneself and one’s family, even during times of strong economic growth, were increasingly neglected. These residual approaches to hunger and poverty turned out to be highly problematic particularly in the short term and pointed to food banks as symptoms and symbols of welfare states in decline if not in crisis. The book anticipated the international growth of charitable food banking in the North as a system comparable to emergency food aid in the South. It argued for right to food approaches and strategies for public action including the importance of inter-sectoral collaboration and a stronger advocacy role for civil society.