The Hunger Industrial Complex, Harvest Boxes, or Food Sovereignty: Alternative Blueprints for the Nation's Nutrition Programs

Zoom Link: https://iastate.zoom.us/J/97489420949

This event is not available for attendance tracking for extra credit.

The 2021 Research Symposium for the Graduate Program in Sustainable Agriculture is e excited to host Andy Fisher as our keynote speaker this year. Andy Fisher is the co-founder of the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC), a first of its kind national alliance of hundreds of groups working on urban food access and local food. He authored the book, Big Hunger: The Unholy Alliance Between Corporate America and Anti-Hunger Groups (https://www.bighunger.org) in which he argues that many key anti-hunger advocates are missing an essential element of the problem: economic inequality driven by low wages. His research finds that efforts to end hunger, reduce obesity, and reform farm subsidies are compromised by corporate interests. Below is the abstract for Andy’s keynote address.

The Hunger Industrial Complex, Harvest Boxes, or Food Sovereignty: Alternative Blueprints for the Nation’s Nutrition Programs 

The US government spends over $75 billion per year on nutrition programs. It comprises an enormous market segment for the retailers, food service companies, processors, producers, and related enterprises that make up the nation’s mainstream food industry. The anti-hunger community is linked to Big Food at the hip in support of these programs. The Trump administration’s zombie proposal to parcel out part of the SNAP program in “harvest boxes” threatens this unholy alliance between retailers such as Walmart and the food banking community. This talk will explore these relationships, tensions, and the possibility of a third option to use federal nutrition funding to create a more sustainable food system.