The Effects of Income and Class on Food Security
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Transcript of The Effects of Income and Class on Food Security
The Effects of Income and Class on Food Security
Elaine Power, Ph.D.School of Kinesiology & Health Studies
Queen’s University
Food Security
exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
Canada’s Action Plan on Food Security, 1998
Many layers
• individual• household• community• region/foodshed• national • global
Two main emphases
• physical & economic access to healthy food for ind’ls & households; skills & knowledge to prepare healthy food.
• sustainable food system - ensuring that food producers are able to produce food that is healthy for humans, the environment and other creatures
Contradictory Needs
• low income consumers need healthy food at a low cost
• local food producers using sustainable methods need fair and adequate compensation for their work
Both groups are marginalized from the dominant system but
in different ways
Marginalization & indignity in the food system
• inability to inability to feed one’s family as one would wish
• for some, the indignity of having to rely on charity, e.g., the food bank
• lack of choice• lack of food
Marginalization in health
• higher rates for health problems, esp mental health, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, etc.
• malnutrition• physiological effects of the stress of
living in poverty• not well-treated in the health care
system
Marginalization in Consumer Society
• inability to be “normal” and do “normal” things
Consumer ethic often rejected by proponents of fair & just
food systems, but most people living in poverty wish only to
“belong” to the dominant society to restore their dignity
“Logic of Practice”
Logic of food practices living on low income
• staving off hunger• preventing your child from going hungry • symbolic ways of belonging to consumer
society • preventing additional indignity (your own or
your child’s) • making the children happy • keeping the man of the household satisfied
How do those of us in the middle class keep an open mind and heart to hear the “logic of practice” of those living on low-incomes? i.e., can we walk a mile in the
shoes of another?
Two modest suggestions:
• to make the food system sustainable and just, focus on the middle class
• a guaranteed annual income (aka Basic Income) could solve the problems of both low-income consumers and sustainable food producers
Proposal: Income security is a necessary but not sufficient condition for food security.
The shadow is deepest when the light is brightest