In this episode, we’re talking about food banks.
Whether you’ve donated to a food bank directly, or made a donation at the grocery store check out when the cashier asks you “would you like to donate to the local food bank?”, or whether you’ve actually received food from a food bank directly during a difficult time, most Americans know what a food bank is, and they probably know the closest one in their community.
But I want to say, right off the bat, that this episode is NOT meant to undermine food banks.
Nor is it a dig at the charitable work so many people do to help others. We all need help sometimes. We all need to eat and feed our families, and there are so many good people who are helping and giving how and when they can, whether it’s their money or their time and energy. I see the stories of people of all ages out there doing the work, packing boxes and distributing food to the seemingly endless lines of cars driving through food bank parking lots.
So many people need help right now – the elderly, children, the disabled, and regular folks like you and me. Thankfully, there are so many people who have the time and/or money to do so. And that is really valuable to the endless communities that are in need. So, kudos to everyone out there who is lending a helping hand!
Either way, 2020 saw one of the biggest surges in food bank recipients, ever.
As the coronavirus continues to ravage the economy, especially in the food sector with folks who earn hourly wages in the food industry, procuring affordable food (let alone paying bills or rent) has been particularly difficult on families this year. Food insecurity has also been on the rise since this Spring. When you’re food insecure, it means that there’s a disruption of food intake or eating patterns due to lack of resources or money. Regardless of what the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports about the unemployment rate, more and more people are facing food insecurity.
So, it is food banks to the rescue, right? That’s the solution. Or is it?
The question we’re raising in today’s episode is, are food banks helping or hurting the people they serve? It’s an honest question, especially given the number of donation scams that we’ve all seen over the years – think the major earthquake in Haiti or Hurricane Katrina donation scandals where the money that individuals like you and I give, goes into some big organization’s coffers, only to be skimmed off the top by “fees” and other mysterious expenses and government contracts, leaving only a small fraction of the money going to the people and communities who need it most.
I know we’d all like to think that food banks in our society are a net positive, right? I’d like to think that as well, but recently, I saw an article that I posted on Twitter about Michael Jordan making a $2 million dollar donation to the nation’s largest food bank, Feeding America.
According to the article, the money was half of the profits that he earned from the Netflix special spotlighting his career called, The Last Dance. The article reported that the money was designated for communities in the Chicago area to help provide access to food. Great! What really raised an eyebrow for me was not that he made the donation, but that the donation was going to the organization, Feeding America’s – who has deep rooted connections to one of the world’s largest privately held companies that produces and distributes agricultural and food products. We’ll get to that in a moment…
But first…thank you! I’ve been receiving some love from all of you listening and I want you to know that I greatly appreciate your listening support. Over here, I do my best to find interesting topics to talk about and I devote time and energy into creating something of value for you all. I believe that no matter what I’m talking about, information is the most important factor in decision making. If you don’t have good, complete information, it becomes difficult to make an informed decision that is in your best self interest.
Hearing, knowing and speaking the truth can be painful – as we all learn in life. Sometimes it’s not pretty, or comfortable, but it is what it is. And whether you think the truth is a positive thing or a negative thing, it doesn’t impact the reality. It might feel better to bury our heads in the sand sometimes and look at the favorable side of human acts of kindness, but I just want you to know that if we bury our heads in the sand, we are ignoring the unpleasant realities that can have huge impacts on our lives, our health, our economy, and our environment. So that’s one of the reasons I do this podcast.
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So, let’s take a quick stroll down food bank memory lane.
The first food bank was started in 1967, it’s called St. Mary’s Food Bank in Arizona. The idea was conceived by a man named John van Hengel, whose experience working at a soup kitchen impacted him so deeply that it ignited a desire within him to help people. He was so inspired that he started many food banks in that area, eventually founded the national organization called America’s Second Harvest, which is now known as Feeding America. After that, he also founded the Global Food Banking Network.
There is a network of 371 food banks across the United States.
These charitable organizations serve communities and help alleviate food insecurity. Y’all know that I talk about food insecurity on this podcast. Y’all know that I served on the board of an organization for almost 9 years that was specifically doing the work to eliminate the food desert in West Oakland, CA. Shout out to Community Foods Market. Y’all know that any one of us can be food insecure in a heartbeat…I’ve been there myself at times. So, food banks have served a purpose in society, especially in a growing food crisis we now call, the effects of coronavirus.
Now, let’s talk about the crisis…food banks in this current climate, are struggling to keep up with demand.
Eighty percent of food banks are serving more people than they were this time last year, and with the expiration of federal government benefits on the horizon for millions of people, more and more people are heading to their local food bank for food. In many cities across the country, food insecurity has doubled. In states like Michigan, Iowa, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Utah, Illinois, Texas, Arizona, and many more states (too many to list), the demand for food from food banks has exploded in the past 6-8 months. In Massachusetts there’s a food bank there that fed 60 families a day before the pandemic. Now they are feeding 600 families a day.
Cause and effect…with more people lining up to receive donations from food banks, it begs the question…
How can food banks survive such a surge in demand?
Well, this is where things get interesting. Food banks have budgets, like any other non-profit…in some cases, to the tune of millions of dollars, but they are now faced with the reality that they are going over budget just trying to keep up with demand. But….I bet you’re asking yourself…if they receive donations, how could they be going over budget?
Well, food banks do receive food and monetary donations from individuals and from corporations, but now there’s so much demand, that there’s not enough surplus supply to go around, and food banks are running out of money. Not to mention that the cost of non-perishable foods like peanut butter, canned vegetables, beans, pasta and rice is rising. Apparently, the cost of rice tripled this summer, and there were delays in procurement. Rice takes an entire season to grow…so when there’s no more rice in the national market, we tend to go into the global market…which if you listened to the Season Finale of Season Three on Rising Food Prices and Food Shortages, you’ll know that there’s a shortage of rice – globally.
So, what happens when food banks run out of money?
They can’t buy boxes and bags, they can’t pay staff, they can’t pay for the fuel to pick up goods and make deliveries. When there’s no more money coming in, that’s when food banks start rationing. Think…The Great Depression. We’ve all seen pictures of long lines of our ancestors waiting for hours to receive food rations and I’m sure some of you have heard stories about families eating prune pudding and vinegar cobbler. Can you imagine? But…let’s pivot for a moment.
Because the question at stake here is, are food banks helping or hurting us?
Could food banks potentially be harming the very communities they serve? Again, I want to stress that this is not about all the good people who are helping, donating and giving their time out there on the front lines. This is about the reality of what goes on behind the curtain. So, let’s pull the curtain back and look at the top dog organization, Feeding America.
There’s an interesting story that came out in 2014 in the New York Post that reported, Feeding America is the fourth largest non-profit organization in the US, whose CEO was earning more than a half million dollars every year. Feeding America’s corporate leadership and visionary partners include huge agribusiness companies like Conagra, General Mills, Cargill, Kelloggs, Walmart, Tyson, CocaCola, Pepsi, etc. And I don’t have to tell you that some, if not all of these companies aren’t always working in yours and my best interest. They are companies that are working in the best interest of their stakeholders.
Feeding America produces some questionable marketing campaigns as well.
Not only does it perpetuate the perception that our kids are continuing to go hungry – which I’d debate is a myth. People are food insecure more than they are hungry. But we’ll get to that in a moment. But it perpetuates other unfortunate consequences. So let’s talk about that…
Feeding America is a non-profit, but it is also a network of food banks. If you look at most food bank websites, you’ll see that many of them are partners with Feeding America. Here’s the big question…
If Feeding America is the largest food bank network, that supplies other food banks, but it retains partnerships with these huge agribusinesses like Cargill for example, which is one of THE largest privately owned companies in the world, with profits of $2.82 billion dollars. And just as a side note, Cargill has been named by Mighty Earth, “The worst company in the world” due to its, and I quote,
“unscrupulous business practices, environmental destruction, and repeated insistence on standing in the way of global progress on sustainability.”
I could do an entire episode on Cargill alone, but one thing we should know is that Cargill is responsible for producing a large percentage of the world’s food supply. Although it does have a “sustainability” initiative, it continues to generate environmental destruction – specifically as a result of deforestation.
Another unfortunate consequence is, which I think is much more pervasive and diabolical, food banks that receive food products and donations from these behemoth agribusiness corporations and retailers alike…
Are they contributing to health disparities in low income and marginalized communities?
Food banks serve people from marginalized communities – and that is just a fact. It’s not a racial thing, because there are low income folks everywhere, of every race and in many communities – especially right now. Marginalized people include communities of color, but also include like I said, the elderly, children and disabled people.
One of the challenges food banks are facing right now is, there’s been a dramatic decrease in local donations from local retailers and local food manufacturers, so food banks are being forced to purchase food from farther away, maybe in a different community, a different state or some food banks have had to procure food products from overseas. Which is absurd from an environmental standpoint. But let’s stick to health for a minute….
Healthy food, like fruits and vegetables (or perishable items) have not typically been available at food banks. There’s this pervasive ideology around food banks that “beggars can’t be choosers”. Just take what you can get and be happy with that. And a lot of food banks receive donations that include unhealthy foods. But what about the people in need who want to feed their families healthy food? Healthy, nutritious food is critical to our survival, especially if we want to keep our immune systems functioning optimally. Which is a good thing to focus on during a pandemic. Duh.
The good news is, there are a handful of food banks that are committed to procuring fresh food and perishable items so that people can receive a balance of food and nutrition.
But that story about Michael Jordan’s donation to Feeding America, the question is, will it actually help those communities in Chicago and all across Illinois? Will the money go to purchasing and distributing healthy food or will it go to the purchase of more food that is laden with additives, salt, sugar, fat, preservatives that impacts the health of those eating that food? Or will it go to the CEOs of Feeding America? Or to the private company Cargill? The reality is, we don’t really know…
And we may never know. Which brings us to thinking about what we can do.
I’d surmise that there is so much fresh food that gets wasted in this country that there shouldn’t be a food insecurity problem – anywhere. Most people aren’t hungry, per se. Most are primarily starved of nutrition. When we don’t intake nutrient dense food or we take in too many empty calories or too much salt, sugar, fat, GMO’s and additives and preservatives, we are compromising our health and creating a heavier health cost burden for ourselves and loved ones.
It is charitable to give to food banks that help people eat everyday. But when families consume those foods produced and distributed by agribusiness end up on the table, we are supporting, in a very indirect way, the environmental degradation around the globe. We are supporting the destruction of ecosystems and soil, and we’re supporting the contamination of our water and air. We are supporting the perpetuation of chemical fertilizers being used on our food that have been linked to cancer. We are ultimately supporting food that might keep us full, but doesn’t keep us healthy.
There is plenty of research that proves there is a direct correlation to the consumption of unhealthy food and poor health outcomes. There is a direct correlation to food deserts and the rise in diabetes, heart disease and cancer. There is a direct correlation to additives and preservatives, GMO’s and other chemicals in our food that impacts our immunity and gut microbiome – and not in a good way.
What’s more, if we are procuring food for food banks from overseas, what impact does that have on the environment? And do we have to import food with so much food production already going to waste in the US? And we know that a large percentage of imported foods lack regulatory oversight and food safety standards, and are questionable at best.
Economically, food banks directly help ease the burden of the rising cost of food because people in need can get food for free. I get it. But when we analyze the collective good, versus the collective impact economically, the impact on our health and environment, does crappy free food solve the problem of food insecurity, or food disparity at its core? Are we really solving the root problem. Some would argue, yes, it does. But at what cost?
What we see right now is, people are facing food insecurity because of the covid fallout, the loss of jobs and income, the collapse of the food service industry and the collapse of the food supply chain that we saw earlier this year. We saw farmers destroying crops and perfectly good food that could be on the plates of those in need – but governmental regulations were standing in the way of getting that food from the farmer to your plate.
Now, I know I just threw a lot of questions out to you, and these are honest questions that deserve consideration when our primary goal each and every day is to feed ourselves. Food banks are helping a lot of people keep food on the table. There’s no doubt about that, and it’s a multilayered problem. There’s no simple fix. However, I’d throw this question out there….
How CAN WE do things differently?
As a small scale farmer, I see things differently and there are things we can do. We can all grow food. Even if it’s just a little bit. We can support local farmers where we live. As farmers, we can donate surplus locally. Together, we can raise our voices and ask for local food banks to procure fresh, healthy food. We can demand transparency from food banks and figure out how the money actually gets spent to ensure that we are helping those who need it most. We can support independent food banks and soup kitchens that are not a part of the network of Feeding America.
The truth of the matter is there will always be a sector of the population that will be in need at one time or another. These are our social safety nets that come in handy when there’s an economic depression, a natural disaster, or an unexpected family emergency. We all need help from time to time, but that help should improve our lives – not put them further in jeopardy. I’d advocate that beggars can and should be choosy. Health is important to most EVERYBODY. So I throw the question out to you…
Are food banks helping or hurting us? Tell me what you think.
Connect with me on the socials @foodslain, subscribe to the YouTube channel, and also subscribe to the newsletter on foodslain.com so you get exclusive podcast updates and share this episode with someone you love, or with someone who values healthy food, but might be in need right now.
Thank you for your listening support, and if you want to support this show by making a one time donation, you can do that on the website, or you can join all the other food slayers on Patreon.com/foodslain. If you’d rather donate fresh, healthy food to a neighbor in your community, I totally support that and let me know on social media with the hashtag #FoodSlayerDoNation, and I’ll support you and give you a shout out! I know my long-time colleague, bredren Richie Francis is out there doing the work, giving away fresh food in Baltimore – and I’m hoping to get him on the show soon. A shout out to him and his volunteers and staff doing great work!
AND here’s what I can do, personally, to eliminate some of the barriers to having clean, healthy food for some of you out there motivated to grow a little sumthin.
Spring will be here in no time, and since I’m an advocate of growing what you can where you live, I am giving away 1 packet of seeds to 10 of my US listeners out there. A packet of beans to grow more beans, or a packet of squash seeds to grow more squash. Or kale to grow some nutrient dense leafy greens! My very first episode was on kale, so if you’re just joining me on this bumpy food investigative journey, I hope you get a chance to listen to that episode and many others real soon.
All you have to do is sign up for the newsletter on foodslain.com and send an email with the subject line “send me my seeds”, tell me which packet of seed you want me to send you with your mailing address to : info@foodslain.com. This offer is limited to my listeners within the contiguous United States.
Anyway, listen in next week…I’m not sure which episode will be up next week. There are a bunch of interviews in the wings, and some food topics that are real humdingers – like wine, olive oil, lab grown meat – which is super interesting. Either way, remember to eat clean, eat healthy and love your food…and I’ll see you on the other side of the plate. Chow.
