The rise of food banks and the challenge of matching food assistance with potential need: towards a spatially specific,rapid assessment approach

In the United States, food banks served an estimated 46 million people in 2015. A combination of government policy reforms and political economic trends contributed to the rising numbers of individuals relying on private food assistance in the US, the United Kingdom and other high-income countries. Although researchers frequently map urban food environments, this project is one of the first to map private food assistance and potential need at the census-tract scale. We utilize Geographic Information Systems, demographic data, and food assistance locations to develop a rapid assessment tool that could support food banks, pantries, soup kitchens, and government agencies that seek to answer the question of whether people with the greatest need have food distribution sites in close proximity. We define access based on distance and then calculate potential food insecurity using either poverty rates or a food insecurity index. We apply these methods in a case study analysis of Santa Clara County, California. Our findings suggest that food assistance distribution locations match the areas of potential need in more than 80% of urban census tracts. However, there are several potentially underserved locations and populations that could benefit from new food assistance operations. The poverty and index-based approaches show significant spatial overlap in mapped areas of high food insecurity and low access. The poverty only approach produces a higher estimate of food insecurity rates, is easier to calculate, and draws attention to the need to address poverty as a root cause of hunger.     

Hiding hunger: food insecurity in middle America

This is a community based research project using a case study of 20 people living in middle America who are food insecure, but do not use food pantries. The participants’ rate of actual hunger is twice that of food insecure community members who use food pantries. Since most of the participants are not poor, the Asset Vulnerability Framework (AVF) is used to classify causes of food insecurity. The purpose of the study is to identify why participants are food insecure and why they do not use food pantries. Findings reveal that the participants restrict the quality and quantity of food eaten as a strategy to manage their budget. Following AVF, this strategy allows them to offset lower returns to labor assets, cover rising costs of human capital investment, protect their two most important productive assets of housing and transportation, and compensate for household relationships that increase their vulnerability. In addition, food insecurity itself inhibited social capital formation, further increasing vulnerability. The main reasons the participants do not use food pantries is to protect their social capital assets: almost all of the participants hid their hunger from colleagues, friends, relatives, and even the people they lived with. The participants described fear of societal shaming and blaming as motivations for hiding their hunger. However, using food pantries could reduce their food insecurity. Therefore, there was a feedback loop between food insecurity and social capital: food insecurity reduced social capital and efforts to protect social capital prevented participants from improving food security by using food pantries.     

食物安全测量指标比较与影响因素分析

为探究农户饮食多样性得分和食物消费得分2种食物安全测量指标的差异以及影响食物安全的因素,采用陕西省镇安县、洛南县,云南省武定县、会泽县和贵州省盘县、正安县2015年1 368户农户实地调研数据,并运用Logit模型进行影响因素实证分析。研究结果表明:1)农户饮食多样性得分和食物消费得分的相关性较高,但从定义、测量方法到结果都有差异,饮食多样性得分的食物消费追溯期短,获取的食物消费情况更准确,而食物消费得分设定不同的食物种类权重更能识别真正食物不安全人群;2)家里有婴幼儿、劳动力平均受教育年限、家庭人均年收入、家里养殖牲畜对农户食物安全具有显著的正向影响。基于以上分析,食物安全评估和测量指标应该根据不同的需要进行选取,且在减贫的同时应关注贫困地区农户的食物获取能力以减轻农户食物不安全的状况。     

Reweaving the food security safety net: Mediating entitlement and entrepreneurship

The American food system has produced both abundance and food insecurity, with production and consumption dealt with as separate issues. The new approach of community food security (CFS) seeks to re-link production and consumption, with the goal of ensuring both an adequate and accessible food supply in the present and the future. In its focus on consumption, CFS has prioritized the needs of low-income people; in its focus on production, it emphasizes local and regional food systems. These objectives are not necessarily compatible and may even be contradictory. This article describes the approach of community food security and raises some questions about how the movement can meet its goals of simultaneously meeting the food needs of low-income people and developing local food systems. It explores the conceptual and political promise and pitfalls of local, community-based approaches to food security and examines alternative economic strategies such as urban agriculture and community-supported agriculture. It concludes that community food security efforts are important additions to, but not subsitutes for, a nonretractable governmental safety net that protects against food insecurity.     

Advancing the human right to food in Canada: Social policy and the politics of hunger, welfare, and food security

This article argues that hunger in Canada, while being an outcome of unemployment, low incomes, and inadequate welfare, springs also from the failure to recognize and implement the human right to food. Food security has, however, largely been ignored by progressive social policy analysis. Barriers standing in the way of achieving food security include the increasing commodification of welfare and the corporatization of food, the depoliticization of hunger by governments and the voluntary sector, and, most particularly, the neglect by the federal and provincial governments of their obligations to guarantee the domestic right to food as expressed in international human rights law. The interconnectedness of hunger, welfare, and food security issues in a first world society are explored from the perspective of progressive social policy and food security analysis and the development of alternative strategies. In terms of advancing the human right to food in Canada, particular emphasis is placed on the role of the state and civil society, and the social and economic rights of citizenship built on an inclusive social policy analysis and politics of welfare, food security and human rights.     

Food provisioning strategies,food insecurity,and stress in an economically vulnerable community: the Northern Cheyenne case

Living in poverty is associated with high levels of protracted stress associated with health problems. Economic and food insecurity are particularly poignant aspects of poverty and condition the work of securing basic daily needs of families. Recent studies suggest that levels of stress increase as family food needs rise. This paper presents new findings which clarify the relationship of food provisioning to stress levels, by examining actual food provisioning strategies and food insecurity among the Northern Cheyenne Indians of southeastern Montana. Results clearly show that stress varies by types of food acquisition strategies. Contrary to our expectations, more complex strategies, including relatively unpredictable and cumbersome food provisioning activities, are not linked to higher stress levels in our analysis. Controlling for food security levels, households using a combination of local programs and informal subsistence sources are the least stressed, despite the demands of managing a large number of food sources. Households primarily using Food Stamps are the most likely to experience high levels of stress. Interviews with Food Stamp recipients show that potential sources of stress include inadequate allocations of Food Stamps, difficulty achieving and maintaining eligibility, challenges to complying with paperwork and appointment requirements, as well as personal obstacles and community barriers to making food stamps last. Analyses indicate that contradictions between local cultural norms for food provisioning and the realities of food insecurity in this context promote strategies emphasizing greater independence from federal food programs.     

Hunger in Canada

Hunger is defined as the inability to obtain sufficient, nutritious, personally acceptable food through normal food channels or the uncertainty that one will be able to do so. After the depression of the 1930s, widespread concerns about hunger in Canada did not resurface until the recession of the early 1980s when the demand for food assistance rose dramatically. The development of an ad hoc charitable food distribution system ensued and by 1992, 2.1 million Canadians were receiving food assistance. In the absence of national monitoring systems, this remains the best available estimate of the prevalence of hunger. Hunger appears to be linked to poverty, unemployment, and numbers of people receiving social assistance. Although the Canadian social security system has traditionally been characterized by government-run universal and targeted programs designed to address income issues, hunger raises concerns about the current safety net. The primary response to hunger has been the proliferation of food banks, the agencies at the heart of the charitable food assistance system. On a smaller scale, community-based programs and advocacy initiatives have emerged. Nonetheless, the demand for food assistance continues to rise. The trend raises questions about future directions for social policy in Canada and concerns about the development of a two-tiered food distribution system—one for those with adequate money and one for the poor.Barbara Davis is the former Chair of The Canadian Dietetic AssociationAd Hoc Committee on Hunger, Editor of the Canadian Dietetic Association Nutrition and Food Security Network Newsletter, and Coordinator of the Masters in Health Science Program in Community Nutrition at the University of Toronto.     

Compounding crises of economic recession and food insecurity: a comparative study of three low-income communities in Santa Barbara County

Santa Barbara County exhibits some of the highest rates of food insecurity in California, as well as in the United States. Through ethnographic research of three low-income, predominantly Latino communities in Santa Barbara County, this study examined the degree to which households had been experiencing heightened levels of food insecurity since the economic recession and ensuing coping strategies, including gender-specific repercussions and coping strategies. Methods included administering a survey with 150 households and conducting observation and unstructured interviews at various local food-centered venues. Results indicated that households from the three communities were experiencing heightened levels of food insecurity and that all three communities were employing diversification of procurement, adjustments to a reduced or limited food budget, reliance on food assistance, and revitalization of the home as a site of domestic food production and preparation as coping strategies. The results also suggested that women suffered disproportionately higher psychological and physical costs associated with compounding crises. In conclusion, the experiences narrated by low-income households reflect a form of citizenship that appears compromised by a host of variables perceived to exist outside the realm of local control. Shifting toward an operational framework of food sovereignty may allow these communities to become more resilient in the face of future political, environmental, social, and economic stressors.     

辐照技术在食品加工中的应用与发展

食品辐照加工技术是对核能的一种和平应用。文章从紫外线杀菌、射线杀菌两方面阐述了食品辐照技术的原理,总结了该技术的特点,探讨了辐照食品的安全性问题以及辐照技术的发展前景。     

确保中国粮食安全的科技发展战略与政策

科技进步在保障粮食安全过程中具有越来越重要的地位,而中国粮食科技发展的现状却不容乐观。未来粮食科技发展的战略目标是为确保21世纪中国人口高峰期到来之际的粮食安全提供科技储备,战略重点是力争在粮食科技的若干重大领域取得关键性突破。为此提出了实施国家粮食安全重大科技攻关计划,运用“绿箱”政策加大对农业科技的投入,建立新型粮食科技推广体系等政策建议。     

Food assistance through “surplus” food: Insights from an ethnographic study of food bank work

In Canada, food assistance is provided through a widespread network of extra-governmental, community-based, charitable programs, popularly termed food banks. Most of the food they distribute has been donated by food producers, processors, and retailers or collected through appeals to the public. Some industry donations are of market quality, but many donations are surplus food that cannot be retailed. Drawing on insights from an ethnographic study of food bank work in southern Ontario, we examined how the structure and function of food banks operate to facilitate the distribution of foods not marketed through the retail system. Our findings indicate that the handling of industry donations of unsaleable products is a labor-intensive activity, made possible by the surfeit of unpaid labor in food banks, the neediness of food bank clients, and clients lack of rights in this system. The marshalling of volunteer labor to serve a corporate need might be construed as a win-win situation because the work of salvaging edible foodstuffs from among industry surplus helps to feed the hungry while also diminishing the amount of refuse deposited in landfill sites, sparing corporations disposal costs and landfill tipping fees, and helping them forge an image of good corporate citizenship. However, the reliance of food banks on industry donations means that food assistance becomes defined as that which the corporate sector cannot retail. Moreover, the intertwining of food bank work with corporate needs may function to further entrench this ad hoc secondary food system and mitigate against initiatives to develop more effective responses to problems of hunger and food insecurity in our communities.     

世界粮食不安全现状、影响因素及趋势分析

世界粮食供需基本处于紧平衡状态,但区域不平衡特征明显,一些地区粮食短缺现象依然严重。2000年以来世界饥饿人口数量下降趋势明显,但近期呈现反弹迹象,撒哈拉以南非洲等发展中地区形势严峻。总体来看,有效需求不足是造成世界粮食不安全的重要因素,贸易在全球粮食供应量中的占比较小,无法从根本上解决粮食安全问题。世界粮食生产潜力有条件满足未来粮食消费的有效需求,但受冲突、气候变化等多种因素叠加影响,世界粮食安全形势仍将长期面临多重不利因素的持续挑战。     

Attitudes,beliefs, and prevalence of dumpster diving as a means to obtain food by Midwestern,low-income,urban dwellers

Dumpster diving is a term generally used for obtaining items, in this case food for consumption, from dumpsters. This study evaluates the prevalence of dumpster diving in two low-income urban communities in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Additionally, attitudes and beliefs of adults who engage in this behavior are reported. Surveys (n=396) were used to collect data including individual dumpster diving behavior, food security, health, and demographic data. Nearly one-fifth of those surveyed had used dumpster diving as a means to obtain food. Focus groups (n=17) were conducted to further evaluate dumpster divers attitudes and beliefs about dumpster diving, use of food assistance programs including benefits and barriers, and other strategies used to obtain food such as stealing. Focus group participants were primarily homeless and most were high school educated. Ways to improve delivery of food assistance are suggested. In conclusion, more research on the use of dumpsters as a source of food is needed. Utilizing more of the 96 billion pounds of food wasted each year in the US through food recovery and donation programs could help to provide socially acceptable means for low-income urban dwellers to obtain food.     

我国食品环境安全问题与对策

食品环境安全是关系人民健康的重大公共卫生问题,不安全食品造成食源性疾病危害人体健康,影响人们生活质量和社会稳定,而且带来巨大经济损失,影响国家整体经济实力。本文阐述了食品环境安全现状及面临的问题,初步分析了产生食品安全问题的原因,并提出了解决我国食品环境问题的对策。     

论中国粮食安全的观念、制度与技术创新

针对当前中国粮食安全形势和未来发展趋势,提出中国粮食安全的观念、制度与技术创新思路。在粮食安全观念创新上,要树立“大粮食”观念,逐步实现粮食的数量安全、经济安全和营养安全三级目标,确保粮食增产与增收同步,并重点保障口粮安全,开放非口粮市场。在粮食安全的制度创新上,要推进土地股份合作制,强化耕地评审管理制度,建立和健全粮食安全监测预警体系、粮食市场购销体系、农产品质量标准体系,强化粮食产购中的调控与管理力度。在粮食安全的技术创新上,着重调整粮食产销的区域布局,推行多熟超高产生产技术,构建“大粮食”生产结构。     

乡村振兴背景下的粮食安全策略研究

分析了乡村振兴战略与粮食安全的内在联系,探讨了通过科技创新、生产结构优化、农村经济环境改善、农产品流通体系建设以及政策支持等手段加强粮食安全的途径。指出乡村振兴战略是中国新时代农业发展的关键。同时,构建现代化农产品流通体系,缩减了农产品自种植地至餐桌的距离,提升粮食市场供应效率。文章还强调了政府在政策支持、法律法规优化、科技研发投入方面的作用,为粮食安全提供了长期稳定保障。综合评估了乡村振兴战略下粮食安全策略的实施成效,为全球粮食安全问题提供了借鉴。展现了科技创新和政策支持的重要性,为乡村振兴战略和社会经济增长奠定了基础。     

信息技术对食品工业的影响

从信息技术对食品工业专业人才的培养、食品科技及高新技术在食品工业中的应用、食品企业管理体制的变革等方面阐述了信息技术对食品工业的发展所起的促动作用。     

Right to food; right to feed; right to be fed. The intersection of women's rights and the right to food

This paper explores conceptual and practical linkages between women and food, and argues that food security cannot be realized until women are centrally included in policy discussions about food. Women's special relationship with food is culturally constructed and not a natural division of labor. Women's identity and sense of self is often based on their ability to feed their families and others; food insecurity denies them this right. Thus the interpretation of food as a human right requires that food issues be analyzed from a gender perspective. For example, the paper asks how the rights to food intersect with the rights of women and other human rights; what the policy implications of these intersecting rights are; and how their integration will contribute to the effort to view all human rights as mutually reinforcing, universal, and indivisible. The second half of the paper speculates on the significance of distinctions between the right to be fed, the right to food, and the right to feed for understanding the relation between gender and food.     

我国粮食安全现状与科技对策

总结了粮食安全的基本内涵、评价指标,根据我国粮食发展的历史进程、特点,将我国粮食生产历史划分为7个阶段,客观分析了建国以来我国粮食总产和单产的变化轨迹,系统考察了我国粮食生产现状。对我国粮食安全面临的严峻形势和存在的主要问题进行了讨论,从加强农业科技进步与创新、加强粮食安全关键技术研究、加强粮食科技成果推广应用、加强粮食科技人才培养和学科建设等视角提出了提高我国粮食综合生产能力和粮食安全科研保障能力的科技对策。