The Effects of Income and Class on Food Security

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The Effects of Income and Class on Food Security

• Elaine Power, Ph.D.
• School of Kinesiology Health Studies
• Queens University

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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.

Canadas Action Plan on Food Security, 1998
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Many layers

• individual
• household
• community
• region/foodshed
• national
• global

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Two main emphases

• physical economic access to healthy food for
  indls 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

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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

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Both groups are marginalized from the dominant
system but in different ways
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Marginalization indignity in the food system

• inability to inability to feed ones 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

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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

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Marginalization in Consumer Society

• inability to be normal and do normal things

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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
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Logic of Practice
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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
  childs)
• making the children happy
• keeping the man of the household satisfied

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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?
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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

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Proposal Income security is a necessary but not
sufficient condition for food security.
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The shadow is deepest when the light is brightest