'Charity is not a solution to food insecurity': How to feed the future

Ideas53:59Food Security: Root Causes and Pathways to Change

*Originally published on Nov. 29, 2023.

Inflation hiking up prices at the grocery store is a reality that everyone is living right now.

Nearly two million Canadians had to make use of a food bank in March 2023 just one month. Food banks in Ontario saw a nearly 40 percent jump in use from April 2022 to April 2023, doubling the record for a single year increase.

And globally, a U.N. report found that more than 258 million people faced food insecurity last year.

It's not news to Evan Fraser, who has delivered many talks on global food insecurity, often pointing to what he calls a "shopping list of things that are going wrong."

Fraser, who is the director of the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph, was recently appointed to the United Nations' High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition.

"We have enough food, but it's poorly distributed," he said. "As a result, we live in that world of stuffed and starved, where both the number of hungry people and the number of people struggling with chronic illnesses linked to diet are both rising."

In November 2023 the Arrell Food Institute, based at the University of Guelph, brought together four leading minds in the food security field to talk through what they see as root causes and possible solutions to a more food secure future.The event, moderated by IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed was recorded at the Toronto Region Board of Trade.

Here are some moments from the conversation on stage.

The politics of food insecurity

"Anyone who tells you that food is not political, they're wrong."

Paul Taylor is an independent consultant who used to be the executive director of FoodShare Toronto. His personal experience as a child raised by a single mom forced to take on low-wage jobs to make ends meet informs his work.

"As a child I remember leaving the school grounds as soon as I was old enough on my own so that I could go on solo walks at lunch. And I did that to hide the fact that I was without food. Like many kids, I was embarrassed. It was painful and an isolating experience. I will never forget."

Taylor says the lack of understanding food insecurity is one of the greatest barriers to effectively address it.

"We're taught that the best way to respond to food insecurity in our communities is to collect our leftover and unwanted food and donate it to a food bank. Schools across the country hold food drives so that kids can be taught an important lesson. But I think the lesson that we're really taught is that food insecurity is a community issue. It's an issue of charity, and it can be solved by the kindness of others," said Taylor.

But even with good intentions, he argues that "charity is not a solution to food insecurity, and we need to stop."

"There isn't one single data point that suggests that any of those activities while they might make us feel good none of them have proven to have an impact on rates of food insecurity. But yet we continue along the same path year after year."

He adds that it's imperative that root causes to food insecurity are explored and that politicians are "brave and ambitious enough to put food insecurity where it belongs once and for all in our country's history books."

Transforming food systems

Patrick Webb directs USAID's Feed the Future Nutrition Innovation Lab and teaches in the school of nutrition science and policy at Tufts University. He's spent much of his career examining food systems globally, and worked at the United Nations World Food Program as chief of nutrition.

Webb sees the collapse of our food systems as a structural problem.

"We need to be thinking, we policymakers what we want our food system to look like in 20, 60, 70, even 80 years, and then work backwards to figure out what on earth is it going to need to get us there?"

He argues significant changes are necessary to protect the future against hunger and food insecurity.

"A year ago, the prime minister of Nepal was quoted as saying, 'Transforming our food systems is akin to building a new fortress against hunger and food insecurity.'"

There's something else that Webb feels must be taken into account when working on solutions to this crisis and that is how people are made to feel for not being able to put enough food on the table.

"In all my years of working on food insecurity with Indigenous or peoples around the world, the things that I come away with are uncertainty, pain, shame, fear. It's not just the hunger dimension. It's the things that wrap around hunger that make the experience of food insecurity so damaging at the individual household community level."

'Almost there'

Jennifer Grenz leads the Indigenous Ecology Lab at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on the reclamation and revitalization of Indigenous food systems.

She looks to land stewardship and community knowledge to inform solutions of our food systems and suggests looking for opportunities for innovation at the local community level focusing on collective well-being.

"It's not about letting government off the hook when we characterize it as slow. Our communities have suffered for many, many years waiting for the government to do something. And so I think it's about empowering ourselves to do something in the meantime," Grenz said.

"When governments are motivated, they can answer quickly, but then we're relying on them to prioritize what's affecting us in our day-to-day lives. And so I think there's not one silver bullet here, but it's like, what are we doing while we're waiting for them? I sit with elders all the time, they're done waiting. They're like, 'You just got to go. You just got to do this.'"

With more interest in how Indigenous knowledge can guide a new way forward, Grenz says she's more hopeful but addswork still needs to be done.

"We should be further ahead than we are. And maybe just having more contributions by different world views and perspectives are going to help complete the picture. So I think we're almost there."

Power in data sharing

Policy makers are also turning to high tech data collecting solutions to address food security.

The NASA Harvest program was established in 2017 to make satellite imaging of cropland around the world available to both public and private organizations. The idea is that the more information governments and farmers can access, the better they can plan and adapt to the ebb and flow of food production.

"Unfortunately we're only getting further and further away from the sustainable development goal of zero hunger," said Inbal Becker-Reshef, director of NASA Harvest Program. "And I think to address these challenges, we need to have data and we need to have data that's transparent, that's actionable, that's timely, that's in the hands of the right people."

To listen to the full episode download the CBC IDEAS podcast from your favourite app.

*This episode was produced by Nicola Luksic.