GUEST BLOG: The Case for Community Food Utilities
The Case for Community Food Utilities
By John Ikerd
Hunger in the world of today is not necessary, it’s a choice. It’s a decision that we have made as a society. In the words of Doria Robinson, who works in a low-income, minority community in Richmond, California, “We have decided that it doesn’t matter enough to change the way we do things so that people don’t go hungry.” We have the ability to provide everyone in the United States, even in the world, with more than enough safe, nutritious food to meet their needs. People are hungry because we don’t care enough to make sure everyone gets enough good food.
Hunger today is “discretionary” rather than “necessary.” Discretionary hunger began in western society in the 14th century, when lands used “in common” to produce food were “enclosed” or fenced off as private property. Before then, if anyone in a community that tended common property had enough to eat, then everyone had enough to eat. If we care enough to eliminate hunger, we will need to reimagine and rebuild food systems that reaffirm the principles of “community commons” in the context of 21st century reality.
First, we must accept the fact that hunger is what economists call a “market failure.” When people no longer had access to commons to produce their own food, they were forced to rely on markets. Those without access to land had to work for someone else to earn enough money to buy enough food. This situation still exists today. Markets do not respond to necessity, but instead to scarcity—which is determined by willingness and ability to pay. We may all be of equal “inherent worth,” but we are “inherently unequal” in our abilities to earn enough money to meet our needs. There have always been, and always will be, significant numbers of people in any society who simply cannot earn enough to buy enough good food. That’s a market failure. The poor will always be among us, but if we care enough, the poor need not be hungry.
Second, impersonal government programs will not ensure food security for those who can’t afford the market costs of meeting their nutritional needs. The English Poor Laws of 1601 signaled the beginning of government programs designed to address the failure of markets to provide food for the poor. A variety of approaches have been used by governments over the centuries, including the New Deal and Great Society, which led to current government food assistance, such as the National School Lunch Program and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Local food charities, which preceded the Poor Laws, have continued through the centuries and still fill many of the gaps in government food assistance programs.
Food assistance by the government and charities have provided food for millions of hungry people and no doubt have saved many from starvation. However, food assistance programs have not solved the centuries-old problem of persistent, systemic hunger caused by poverty. We have more people in the U.S. today who are “food insecure” than before the Great Society programs of the 1960s. In addition, many of those who receive food assistance today are getting too many calories and too little nutrition—resulting in an epidemic of obesity and diet related illnesses.
The only times in human history without “discretionary hunger” have been times when people in local communities accepted a common responsibility to ensure that everyone had enough safe, nutritious food. The primary difference between those times and today is that relationships then were “personal”—people knew, cared about, and depended on each other, personally.
The economy won’t feed the hungry, because earning and spending are impersonal economic transactions. Today’s government food assistance bureaucracies, likewise, do not allow a sense of personal connectedness and mutual-respect between taxpayers who fund the programs and those who receive of government benefits. Even many of today’s major food charities have taken on many of the impersonal characteristics of markets and government programs. If we care enough to eliminate hunger, we must recreate communities of people who accept a “personal” responsibility to ensure that everyone has access to enough good food.
In today’s world, communities committed to eliminating hunger will need an organizational structure. I have suggested organizing as “public utilities”—specifically, Community Food Utilities or CFUs. Public utilities are commonly used to provide electrical, water, and sewer services. In such cases, it is economically logical to have only one service provider. This would create a monopoly with the power to exploit its customers—a case of market failure. However, public utilities are appropriate in any case of market failure—including hunger.
A local public utility would allow decisions regarding the production or acquisition and distribution of food to be determined “internally,” by the utility, rather than by the market economy. A primary reason hunger has persisted in the U.S. is that current interstate commerce laws have prevented local communities from interfering with the commercial agri-food system which has promoted junk foods and limited food access in low income communities. “Food deserts” in America will persist as long as communities are unable to insulate local food systems from national and global markets. CFUs would have the power to protect local communities from continued economic exploitation.
A CFU would also allow local communities to “internalize” and “personalize” current government food assistance programs. As a public utility, the CFU could administer government food assistance for current recipients who choose to join the CFU. Assistance provided through the CFU would be personalized by ensuring that each member of the CFU received enough good food to meet their unique needs, regardless of their current government assistance funding. Local food procurement and locally grown foods would provide personal assurance the foods provided meet locally-determined standards of wholesomeness, nutrition, and socially responsible production methods. The CFU could be organized as a “vertical cooperative” to ensure equitable benefits for all, from food recipients to food producers. Food provisioners and other community members could be allowed to join the CFU, but would pay the full cost of membership.
No blueprint or recipe for development of a CFU exists or is possible. Each community would need to develop its CFU to fit the culture of its community and its agricultural area. A vertical cooperative organizational, leadership and membership structure would foster a sense of personal connectedness, mutual caring, and sharing among food recipients, local farmers and food providers, and members of larger communities in general. Over time and with local successes, local CFUs could form regional and national networks, which over time could be opened for all to join and within which there would be no hunger or malnutrition.
Eliminating discretionary hunger will not be a quick or easy task—or it would have been done long ago. But I’m convinced it can be done—one caring community at a time. We obviously don’t know what will work, but we do know what won’t work. The question is, “Does it matter enough to us to change the way we do things so that people don’t go hungry.”
John Ikerd is a Professor Emeritus of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Missouri. He currently lives in Fairfield IA, where he continues his work on issues related to agricultural and economic sustainability.
