Considering unemployment and homelessness are structural components of our market economy (okay this sentence could be another post), I think it’s safe to say that Emergency Food Assistance programs are necessary in the US. In her book Sweet Charity, Janet Poppendieck writes about the seven deadly “INs” of emergency food assistance – Insufficiency, Inappropriateness, nutritional Inadequacy, Instability, Inaccesability, Inefficiency, Indignity. I’m interested in to what extent these “INs” can be addressed and changed within the EFA system, and to what extent these problems are structural.
Poppendieck describes the “Ins” pretty well in the only chapter of her book I read, Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement, and I won’t go into all the details here. The IN that struck me as the most structural issue with emergency food is Indignity. Poppendieck explains the shortcomings of emercengy food as “the limitations of charity”, particularly when there is no responsibility to give equitably. She goes on to say that “standards of equity apply in situations in which people have rights.” People (should) have the right to food security, which in many ways depends on control of food sources, and also the right to be integrated in society and not excluded.
DeWayne Wells, the president of Gleaners Community Food Bank spoke to us in Kami’s class about the organization’s mission and some steps they are taking toward changing the INs of the system. I appreciated a lot of what Wells said, and the outreach of Gleaners is inspiring. Gleaners introduced a new model called Client Choice Pantry with its Shared Harvest Pantry in Howell. These pantries are set up to reflect a store environment, involving the empowering and dignified notion of choice. Stocked with locally and culturally sensitive donations, the pantry ultimately reduces the waste of inappropriate food. A few other Gleaners practices Wells talked about include increased nutrition adequacy, opportunities for education, job training, and community involvement in growing and processing.
But is it enough? A question I always will come back to is what would a sustainable solution to structural issues of EFA and our country’s food system as a whole look like? I wish I had a complete answer, but I have a few thoughts. The food market is a failure in a lot of ways for all but a small percent (maybe another post…) and the role of cities is often thought off as completely cut off from food systems. People forget that there is dirt underneath the concrete, and even the food source of grocery stores are moving farther to the city perimeter. Water and shelter are basic human needs that urban development policy addresses, why then are food systems left out? Participatory city-level planning can do a lot with local food system issues to leverage community and economic development, increase urban food security, and support local resources and the region’s farmers. The other sustainable alternatives I see as needed changes in cities are community empowered initiatives that involve urban agriculture.
Emergency Food Assistance and volunteer work are needed in cities like Detroit, but we also need to start imaging alternatives on a level of both local community initiatives and greater societal change. These alternatives should be guided by the opposites of the “INs”… citizen participation, empowerment, dignity… I’d love to keep exploring the alternatives and how to turn them into comprehensive solutions.
