First World Hunger Revisited: Food Charity or the Right to Food?

273 Pages·2014·2.848 MB·English

by  Graham Riches, Tiina Silvasti (eds.)

First World Hunger Revisited
Also by Graham Riches
FOOD BANKS AND THE WELFARE CRISIS
UNEMPLOYMENT AND WELFARE: Social Policy and the Work of Social Work
( co-edited with Gordon Ternowetsky )
FIRST WORLD HUNGER : Food Security and Welfare Politics, ed.
Also by Tiina Silvasti
TALONPOJAN ELÄMÄ. TUTKIMUS ELÄMÄNTAPAA JÄSENTÄVISTÄ
KULTTUURISISTA MALLEISTA
Peasant life. A Study of Cultural Scripts Organizing The Farmers’ Way of Life
TOISTEN PANKKI: RUOKA-APU HYVINVOINTIVALTIOSSA (co-edited with
S. Hänninen, J. Karjalainen and K. Lehtelä )
Another Bank: Food Aid in the Welfare State
MAATILAN VARJOSSA. RAKENNEMUUTOKSEN ANATOMIAA
In the Shadow of the Farm. Anatomy of Structural Change
First World Hunger
Revisited
Food Charity or the Right to Food?
Second Edition
Edited by
Graham Riches
Professor Emeritus of Social Work
University of British Columbia, Canada
and
Tiina Silvasti
Professor of Public and Social Policy
Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy
University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Editorial matter, selection, introduction and conclusion © Graham Riches and
Tiina Silvasti 1997, 2014
Individual chapters © Respective authors 1997, 2014
Foreword © Olivier de Schutter 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-29871-3
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First edition published 1997
This edition published 2014 by
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Contents
Foreword i x
Olivier De Schutter
Preface and Acknowledgements xii
Notes on Contributors xvii
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations xxii
1 Hunger in the Rich World:
Food Aid and Right to Food Perspectives 1
Graham Riches and Tiina Silvasti
2 Food Banks in Australia:
Discouraging the Right to Food 15
Sue Booth
3 A Right to Food Approach:
Public Food Banks in Brazil 29
Cecilia Rocha
4 Canada: Thirty Years of Food Charity and
Public Policy Neglect 42
Graham Riches and Valerie Tarasuk
5 Hunger and Food Aid in Estonia:
A Local Authority and Family Obligation 57
Jüri Kõre
6 Hunger in a Nordic Welfare State: Finland 72
Tiina Silvasti and Jouko Karjalainen
7 Poverty Amid Growth: Post-1997 Hong Kong Food Banks 87
Kwong-leung Tang, Yu-hong Zhu and Yan-yan Chen
8 Privatizing the Right to Food: Aotearoa/New Zealand 102
Michael O’Brien
vii
viii Contents
9 B etween Markets and Masses:
Food Assistance and Food Banks in South Africa 1 17
S heryl L Hendriks and Angela McIntyre
10 E rosion of Rights, Uncritical Solidarity and
Food Banks in Spain 131
K arlos Pérez de Armiño
11 F ood Banking in Turkey:
Conservative Politics in a Neo-Liberal State 1 46
M ustafa Koc
12 F ood Banks and Food Justice in ‘Austerity Britain’ 160
E lizabeth Dowler
13 F ood Assistance, Hunger and the End of Welfare
in the USA 1 76
J anet Poppendieck
14 H unger and Food Charity in Rich Societies:
What Hope for the Right to Food? 1 91
T iina Silvasti and Graham Riches
References 2 09
Index 237
Foreword
When I visited Canada in May 2012, it was the first time I had
conducted an official mission to a developed country as UN Special
Rapporteur on the Right to Food. The previous missions I had under-
taken were to a range of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle
East, Latin America and Asia. On each of these occasions, it had come
as no surprise, to myself or to those following the missions, that
hunger and malnutrition were pressing issues on the political agenda.
As such, there was little controversy in a UN official coming to analyse
the situation.
The mission to Canada was different. Immediately a range of actors,
from the news media to Canadian political figures, questioned the
very premise of the visit. What was a UN human rights expert doing
examining food systems in the developed world while millions were
starving in poor countries? This question underlined not only the chal-
lenges of conducting such a mission, but more broadly, the difficulties
of conveying a highly counter-intuitive truth: namely, that hunger can
and does exist amid plenty.
Public discourse slips too easily into Manichean visions of well-fed
and underfed countries, in the same way as it slips into a simple vision
of food security in terms of net calorie availability. It is only when we
shift from talking about food security in blunt terms to talking about the
right to food, in its many interconnected dimensions, that we will be
able to grasp the fact that pockets of hunger and undernutrition remain
rife in the wealthiest countries in the world, and it is only then that we
will grasp the reasons why.
The assumption that severe poverty has, and must have been, eradi-
cated in rich countries is, in fact, the measure of how well our societies
have managed to keep the uncomfortable reality of food poverty firmly
out of public view and public discourse. The two-track economic proc-
esses that have mired some communities in disadvantage have in fact
marginalized them far enough as to make them invisible to the rest of
society.
Indeed, it has taken a steep and highly visible reemergence of food
banks in Europe and North America, in the throes of the current finan-
cial and economic crisis, to remind the rich world that these are real and
pressing issues, and to give credence to the warnings sounded for years
ix
x Foreword
by social workers and civil society groups working in these countries,
who were all too aware of the fine line between many people and severe
food poverty.
Access to food is in fact a key indicator of broader socio-economic
inequalities. Food insecurity hotspots generally correlate not only with
poverty, but also with a series of factors that marginalize people and
particular population groups. Poor communities may lack local fresh
grocery stores providing alternatives to the foods high in saturated
fats, sugars and salt sold by local retailers. They may cut down on food
expenses first, because the costs of rents are incompressible. This can
take the form of profound decreases in food expenditure, and switching
to cheaper and less nutritious calories.
Now that the debate has reemerged onto the political agenda, it must
not stop at food banks. While food banks can provide some relief to
those in poverty, they can only offer basic subsistence from day to day –
and not a route out of poverty. They cannot therefore be used as a substi-
tute for real measures to address underlying poverty and inequality, and
the food insecurity they generate.
Our attention must shift onto the layers of the social safety net lying
above food banks, and through the cracks of which many are now
falling. Current social safety nets are either not extensive enough or
not generous enough, in the context of rising inequality across OECD
countries. Indeed, this inequality has now become so extreme that even
where social safety nets are extensive, they cannot catch people who
are so far below being able to meet the costs of an adequate diet and
a decent life. Social protection systems, not least unemployment and
child benefits, must be recalibrated to take into account the real cost of
living and ensure adequate food for all, without compromising on other
essentials.
Nowhere should governments be allowed to escape their obligations
because private charities make up for their failures. When people come
to depend on charity for basic foodstuffs, it is a signal that their right
to food has not been sufficiently respected, protected and fulfilled.
Developed and developing countries alike have a responsibility not
merely to plug these gaps, but to dedicate the ‘maximum available
resources’ to fighting poverty to fulfil the human rights they have prom-
ised their citizens by signing up to treaties. For developed countries
these resources are evidently more plentiful – and the failure to eradicate
extreme poverty is that much less excusable.
The contributions in this volume will add to this essential debate.
They will help to illuminate the current deficits in the way we discuss