Biology Homework

2

Food Insecurity: History, Effects, & Solutions

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Trident Technical College

Professor Johnathon Fish

SOC 205: Social Problems

October 2, 2021

Food Insecurity: History, Effects, & Solutions

The United States Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity as having multiple disruptions in eating patterns and/or reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet (USDA, 2021). Approximately 10% of households in the United States experience food insecurity every year (USDA, 2021). This does not account for the rising number of homeless and their inability to acquire consistent meals (United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2021). In the 1960s Food insecurity became a staple problem to solve in the United States. The documentary ‘Hunger in America’ brought attention to the existence of food insecurity to its middle-class audience, creating a demand for federal programs to eliminate poverty. Even though demand for a solution was great, according to the National Research Council, various agencies and organizations could not agree on how to measure hunger, and even used malnutrition and hunger interchangeably, causing further confusion for tackling the issue. Eventually, a distinction was made between two types of hunger. One definition of hunger, used by science and medicine, was explained as, “the actual physiological effects of extended nutritional deprivations” (National Research Council, 2006). The other definition of hunger, more relating to the societal meaning, was explained as, “the inability, even occasionally, to obtain adequate food and nourishment. In this sense of the term, hunger can be said to be present even when there are no clinical symptoms of deprivation” (NRC, 2006). No evidence could be found of significant amounts of malnutrition or undernutrition in the United States using the clinical definition. Further, under the social definition of hunger, there was little research conducted to measure the extent of or document the severity of the levels of hunger in the United States. To rectify the problem of having almost no research of hunger, throughout the 1980s both government and private organizations conducted extensive research to better understand the amount of hungry and malnourished people in the country. After years of research, in 1990 an understanding of the ability to accurately measure hunger was reached. It was also in this year that an agreement was made on the definitions of the terms, “food security,” “ food insecurity,” and “hunger.” These definitions were used as a blueprint for the USDA definitions that are still used today (NRC, 2006, p. 23-26).

Causes of Food Insecurity

Food Insecurity is caused by a variety of factors, but the most prominent is a lack of money to buy consistent amounts of healthy food (Gunderson & Ziliak, 2017). The amount of money needed to maintain a level of food security is diminished as physical resources, such as an owned home, are accrued. Furthermore, access to low-cost food and cheaper utilities eases the burden of purchasing food. Situations that worsen food insecurity include homes with grandchildren, elderly, disabled, and single-parent households (Gunderson & Ziliak, 2017). Some other causes of food insecurity include drug-use, poor mental and/or physical health, and weak emotional and social support networks (Gunderson & Ziliak, 2014). Being an immigrant also increases a person’s likelihood of becoming food insecure. Reducing government assistance programs also contributes to creating food insecurity for marginalized communities (Gunderson & Ziliak, 2014).

Effects of Food Insecurity

Food insecurity creates many problems, particularly of the health of the sufferer. Malnutrition caused by food insecurity can lead to anemia, lower nutrient intake, birth defects, more prevalent levels of aggression and anxiety, lower cognitive skills, greater chance of hospitalization, dysthymia, asthma, mental health issues, poor oral health, depression, diabetes, and other chronic diseases (Gunderson et al., 2011). Further effects of food insecurity are the inability to plan over long periods of time. Due to lack of nutrition, the ability to focus on tasks outside immediate gratification become increasingly more difficult as hunger rises.

Solutions to Food Insecurity

Solutions to food insecurity don’t have to be difficult to implement, but current laws and societal incentives greatly favor the overproduction of food and then the subsequent destruction of approximately 40% of the food that is produced (USDA, 2021). If the United States could prevent the waste of half its food production and ensure that excess reach the mouths of people who are hungry and malnourished, then nothing else would need to be done to currently address food insecurity in the United States (Buzby et al, 2014). Unfortunately, great measures will have to be made to traverse the current economic system that incentivizes throwing away food because discarding food is more profitable than feeding the hungry. The simplest solution would be to create a system of teamsters to ferry food from farms, grocery stores, restaurants, and food wholesalers to the people that need the food. To eliminate waste in the process of shipping, food banks allow storage of excess food without the purchasing middleman that prevents consumption of a perishable good, as seen in grocery stores that throw away approximately 30% of their stock (Buzby et al, 2014). To lessen the need for an already bloated agribusiness, community gardens and farms can be established close to communities that need fresh produce. This shrinks the resources necessary to ship the food, and it allows for greater control for a community to produce food that more closely fits their dietary and nutritional needs.

Establishment of Food Banks

Food banks are extremely valuable for solving food insecurity. They exist to eliminate the cost of purchasing food (the main reason people can’t satiate hunger) while also holding a community’s store of food for ease of use and distribution. This is an ancient concept that can be used in modern America to effectively eliminate food insecurity. The establishment of food banks provides a structured way to collect grown and donated food. Food banks also provide a beacon that can be used as a focal point for distributing collected food to a community. Food banks essentially act as food wholesalers and grocery stores, but without the incentive for profit. With no societal coercion between food (a necessary component of human life) and the hungry, food banks work as a more efficient way to provide the service of localized food storage, replacing the need for our modern concept of a grocery store.

Food banks can be constructed using tax credits, government grants, and community donations (Elmes et al, 2015). Tax credits can be used to reimburse donators of physical goods used in the building of food banks. There are government grants that exist to fund the construction and maintenance of food banks. Further, donations in the form of resources and labor can be used for the construction of food banks. To fill the food banks with resources, an initial food drive can be used to collect donations from the community and local businesses. After communal gardens and supply lines are established, charitable donations from concerned citizens will lessen as a priority of needed assistance. Emphasis must be made of the need for effective supply lines to bring food from whatever functions as a supplier to the food bank for localized storage. Without supply lines, food banks will quickly empty their stores and become useless (Elmes et al, 2015).

Establishment of Community Farms/Gardens

The building of community gardens is an effective way to solve food insecurity because community gardens are localized pockets of food production that do not rely on long shipments of food, or the need of currency to provide authentication for use of a food item (Munesue et al. 2015). Community gardens require minimal upkeep and starting costs and can grow plants that are desired by the community in which they exist, instead of relying on the few staple vegetables provided by grocery stores. Community farms and gardens, including greenhouses, can be paid for using government grants. Tax credits also exist to reimburse anyone involved who uses their personal money to help build these food production facilities. From providing dirt to using gas to transport materials, any costs in the pursuit of non-profit community gardens are tax deductible. Of course, charity is always an option when building communal facilities, but charity can’t be an expected avenue for success. To procure the land needed to grow the gardens and farms, there are various ways to tackle this issue. First is donation of land usage by private property owners. This is easiest because empty yards can quickly be converted to farmland. This includes the allowance of existing farmland to be dedicated to the production of food solely for the sake of communal use, not for profit. Another way to acquire land is through purchasing it. This is by far much more difficult, but through collective power, large amounts of land can be purchased for relatively little money. A final way is to shift public land, like parks, from using aesthetic plants to plants that provide food. Bushes can be planted that produce berries, and trees can be planted that produced fruit and nuts. Flowering plants that have edible parts can be used, instead of inedible plants that are of no use to anyone. Through these combined efforts, localized communal food-growth facilities can be easily established as needed to anywhere that contains a willing population of stewards to tend to the maintenance of the plants.

Establishment of Supply Lines

Building supply networks is essential to ending food insecurity. Without food being able to reach the hungry that need it, food becomes useless as a product. To establish supply lines, either they can be created or modified from existing routes (Riches, 2011). If a farm is already overproducing food, and it is willing to donate that overproduction, the company receiving purchased food can be swayed to ship donated food if they are informed that the cost of doing so would be reimbursed by the government. Alternatively, private citizens could provide their own vehicles to transport food, again using government reimbursement to fund them (Riches, 2011). Further still, public transport can be converted to ferry food as they traverse their various routes around a community. Major hubs of human connection, an example being churches, can be used as major drop-off points from food banks, which can then further spread food through a community to the people who need it (Elmes et al, 2015). These networks can be envisioned as branches on a tree, with the trunk being the food banks that collect all produced food for ease of sorting and distribution, much like the postal service. The tree limbs can be major areas of human congregation, and smaller branches being inter-personal relationships, or smaller gatherings. With the transport of food being ingrained in every facet of sociality, fresh food should be readily available to anyone along a supply line who wants it. With an abundance of fresh produce in most public places, there will be no reason for a person to miss a meal or be coerced into eating nutrient poor food just to survive.

Push-Back

With so much change to the establishment of how food is used in American society, push-back is guaranteed by those who benefit from the current, exploitative, and wasteful system. Firstly, almost all food related businesses would be wary of losing profit, their sole driving force for existence. With creating a new system that doesn’t require money to function, agri-business will have a difficult time competing to survive. Agriculture companies already heavily lobby the government for laws that give them an edge for making more profit. If a competitor arises those charges nothing for a product, established businesses will have to find a different way to remain in business. The most likely would be to continue to lobby but push lawmakers to illegalize the free spread of food, with the excuse that free food is unregulated and dangerous. If this concern was legitimate, then they could be addressed, and communal food can be regulated just the same a food business. A way to mitigate this push-back would be to promote shifting food related businesses from providing survival as a commodity to providing food-related items as a luxury. A few examples would include artisan goods like jams, herbs and spices, nutrient poor food that are appetizing like sugar, and foods that alter a consumer’s mental state like alcoholic beverages. Another way to mitigate push-back would be to create a public action committee for people who want the decommodification of food, so they can lobby the government for laws to be passed for their protection. A final way to prevent push-back is to rally public support. If lawmakers are shown that they would not be reelected if they interfered with the will of their constituents, then they may be pressed to inaction.

Conclusion

Overall, the causes of food insecurity are as simple as a lack of ability to pay for food, not in the creation of food itself. To easiest way to eliminate the need for money to pay for food would be to create a system that requires no money to function. At face value this seems more difficult than raising the funds necessary to buy food, but plants grow with minimal effort from humans. The main obstacle would be creating supply-chains to optimize food distribution before rot. The second obstacle would be unforeseeable business and government retaliation. Since it is unknowable how exactly retaliation would occur, it cannot be prepared for when building this new system. These solutions to food insecurity rely much more on individual effort and communities working together than our current system of coerced labor. If this new system was created, it would only thrive because the people involved were willing to put forth the effort needed to make it so. It is not a difficult task when attempted in great numbers, but a small amount of people can do little to address the problems of food insecurity.

COMMENTS: This is exceptional. Very well done. It’s a page short, but still, very impressive. GRADE: 96

References

United States Department of Agriculture. (2021, September 24). Definitions of Food Security. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/definitions-of-food-security.aspx

United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. (2021, September 24). Homelessness Increasing Even Prior to Covid-19 Pandemic. https://www.hud.gov/press/press_releases_media_advisories/hud_no_21_041

National Research Council. (2006).  Food Insecurity and Hunger in the United States: An Assessment of the Measure. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/11578.

Gunderson, C., & Ziliak, J.P. (2017, December 3). Food Insecurity Research in the United States: Where We Have Been and Where We Need to Go. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 40(1), 119-135. https://doi:10.1093/aepp/ppx058

Gunderson, C., & Ziliak, J.P. (2014, Fall). Childhood Food Insecurity in the U.S.: Trends, Causes, and Policy Options. Future of Children. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1042789

Gunderson, C., Kreider, B., & Pepper, J. (2011, August 11). The Economics of Food Insecurity in the United States. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 33(3), 281-303. https://doi.org/10.1093/aepp/ppr022

Buzby, J.C., Wells, H.F., Hyman, J. (2014, February). The Estimated Amount, Value, and Calories of Postharvest Food Losses at the Retail and Consumer Levels in the United States. United States Department of Agriculture, 121. https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/43833/43680_eib121.pdf?v=0

Munesue, Y., Masui, T., & Fushima, T. (2015, January). The effects of reducing food losses and food waste on global food insecurity, natural resources, and greenhouse gas emissions.  Environ Econ Policy Stud  17,  43–77. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10018-014-0083-0

Riches, G. (2011, June 29). Thinking and acting outside the charitable food box: hunger and the right to food in rich societies. Development in Practice, 21(4-5), 768-775. https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2011.561295

Elmes, M.B., Mendoza-Abarca, K. Hersh, R. (2015, June 11). Food Banking, Ethical Sensemaking, and Social Innovation in an Era of Growing Hunger in the United States. Journal of Management Inquiry, 25(2), 122-138. https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492615589651