Alison Cohen: Hunger is a political issue. It can be solved. We need the political will. That's what we need to end hunger. We don't need more donations. We don't need to capture more food waste. We need political will. And, if we have that political will to do things like raise the minimum wage to a living wage, then we could end hunger.

Sam Fuqua: That's Alison Cohen, and this is, Well, That Went Sideways! A podcast that serves as a resource to help people have healthy, respectful communication. We present a diversity of ideas, tools, and techniques to help you transform conflict in relationships of all kinds. In this episode we talk with Alison Cohen about the conflict between a food system that has the capacity to produce enough food to feed everyone, and the fact that 47 million people in the US are food insecure. This is the first in a two part series on Food Justice. Alison Cohen is a co-founder and director of the National Right to Food Community of Practice. We spoke with her at the 2025 White Privilege Conference in Hartford, Connecticut.

I'm Sam Fuqua, co-host of the program with Alexis Miles. Hi Alexis.

Alexis Miles: Hi Sam.

Sam Fuqua: Very pleased to have Alison Cohen with us for this episode of Well, That Went Sideways! Hello.

Alison Cohen: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Sam Fuqua: We're speaking to you at the 2025 White Privilege Conference. And so to start off, some people might wonder, well, what is the connection between white privilege, white supremacy, anti-racism work, the bread and butter of this conference, and, uh, and food insecurity, which is the, the space you work in.

Alison Cohen: Yes, it is. And I have been, I've spent many years pro, well, at least lemme say the last 10 to 15 years, trying to blend these two inquiries together. How do we end hunger and what does racism have to do with it? So, being able to be here at this conference and really address that and, and workshop it and talk about it with folks here has been really important, and, um, and really an honor to, to do that. So, what I have been talking about here with folks is that food justice is racial justice. If you don't have racial justice, you don't have food justice, and vice versa. We know in this country that people of color, in particular black communities, are twice as likely to be food insecure as white communities. Right now, we have the highest rate of hunger that we've ever experienced in this country, save for the 18 months or so during COVID where there was a big spike, 47 million people on record are, uh, food insecure. But we know that closer to 50 million are using food banks and food pantries on a regular basis. So, it's an issue for many, many, many people, and majority of them, uh, live in communities of color. And so, when we talk about what's the root cause of hunger, we say, well, the root cause is poverty. But you can't stop there. The root cause of poverty is the legacy of racial injustice that has been upheld by institutions, policies, practices, and structures since the founding of this country.

Alexis Miles: Well, Alison, especially these days, I think people would argue with you and say, no, the root cause of hunger is not poverty. It's laziness. If those people just followed the system, did the right things, exhibited merit, because this is a meritocracy, they would have good jobs and they would be able to get food.

Alison Cohen: Yep.

Alexis Miles: How would you respond to that?

Alison Cohen: I would respond by saying that, first of all, more than 50 percent of people that use food banks on a regular basis, by regular, I mean monthly because they can't meet all their food, food needs have at least one full-time working adult in their household. So, it is not about laziness. When you live in a, a society like ours that hasn't changed the minimum wage since the 1970s, we know that we could end hunger pretty much overnight if we changed the minimum wage, if we changed, uh, the way that we honor employment in this country by paying more, by providing, um, healthcare, by providing other kinds of benefits, sick leave, a variety of things that we could do to really structurally change the, um, ability of people to feed themselves with dignity. And that's what people want. By and large, they do not want to stand in lines or receive a boxed of food from a food bank. That's, that's a fallacy.

Alexis Miles: So, you're saying it has nothing to do with the character of people or their worthiness as people? It has more to do with structures.

Alison Cohen: Yes. And I think that's where the intersection, uh, with white privilege and white supremacy values comes into play. The white supremacy values are rooted in ideologies that are, we might call individualism and paternalism. And, the kind of argument that the poor will always be with us. And, and that if they could just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, forget that they maybe don't even have boots, but if they could just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, then they, they wouldn't be hungry. And that in and of itself is, uh, an example of the deeply rooted beliefs and values that come out of white privilege.

Sam Fuqua: So, you've said that the root cause of hunger is poverty. What are some of the, expand on the structural issues or problems within the food system.

Alison Cohen: I will, um, start by saying that we have something in the US called the Farm Bill. It comes up every four years. Although we have not had a new farm bill now for the last couple years, it was due two years ago. We haven't had it for lots of reasons, um, that have to do with people not being able to negotiate it around the same table together. However, the Farm Bill is where the funding and the decisions get made about agricultural subsidies. And SNAP, which is our food stamp program, we now call it SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Um, to underscore that it's meant to be about nutritional assistance. It's very, um, insufficient, inadequate. That's where those decisions get made. What has happened over many, many decades is that, uh, agriculture's become consolidated. We've lost many, many small farmers, and in terms of race, it's black farmers whose, who have been dispossessed of land, um, throughout the 20th, the whole 20th century, 98 percent of black farmers lost land. Black communities lost land.

We now, in terms of, we look at the farming, uh, landscape in the country today, um, in 1910, it was one out of every seven farmers was a black farmer. Now it's one out of every 78. And that isn't to say that white farmers also haven't, you know, a lot, land has become consolidated, the industry has become consolidated, and so we now have a agricultural system that is dominated by corporations. So, we have a corporate food industry, which is underpinned by the Farm Bill, by our tax dollars, by the policies that are 

made. That in turn means that we have fewer farmers growing less food. In fact, this country grows more non-food crops than we grow food crops, and we export most of that. So, we grow a lot of food, food, food products, agricultural products that produce ethanol, and that, that feed cattle that aren't supposed to be eating corn in the first place. So, we have a, a, a food system that is set up to benefit a small number of corporations instead of thinking about food as a human right. So, what has happened is that we now think of food as a commodity. We don't think of food as a basic human need, and therefore a basic human right. It's become a part of our commodity system.

Alexis Miles: Well, you refer to food as a basic human need, and you talked about SNAP, which, um, and which includes the word nutrition.

Alison Cohen: Yes.

Alexis Miles: So, is it true that if you don't have adequate nutrition when you're younger, it has impacts on your life when you're older, that might impact your ability to get a job?

Alison Cohen: Yes. Right. So, there's this, this vicious cycle, right? So, we know that we need good nutrients, good nutrition from day one in order for our minds and our bodies to develop. And in the first, and I'm not an expert in nutrition, but in the first five to seven years of our lives, that's where the, where we need the most nutrition in order to give ourselves a real, um, head start in, um, intellectual, emotional, physical growth. And, when you are in a food insecure family and you don't have access to food, perhaps you don't even have a grocery store in your neighborhood, or you're reliant upon a food pantry where more often than not, it, you don't get a choice. You get what food is available. And, a lot of it is sort of the corporate castoffs, right? So, the food that didn't get sold, that's heavily packaged, and heavily, um, preserved and processed. And so, that is not what you should be eating to grow your, the mind and body of your, of yourself, of your children at that age.

Sam Fuqua: So, what do you say to someone who says, well, I, I recognize hunger as a problem. I'm doing my part by contributing to my local food bank. Uh, I even volunteer at my local food bank.

Alison Cohen: I would say that is amazing. Great. We really, we as, as I've said before, it would be irresponsible to pull the plug on food banks tomorrow. We have a lot of people that are in a lot of need. And, I would say, it isn't enough. You can give to your food bank. You can volunteer at your food bank. But if you're also not doing the work to understand the root causes of hunger, and doing what you can to begin to change that for the future, then it's not enough. So, give to your food bank, volunteer at your food bank, and then think about who you're putting in office that is making decisions about the Farm Bill. Think about who you're electing in your state. Think about, um, ways in which you can understand and learn from people who have lived experience of hunger.

Sam Fuqua: When I think of, uh, large charitable sectors, the United Way, which gives to a lot of social services. Uh, animals, the Humane Society. Uh, how does the food sector compare as a, as a charitable, uh, entity? How big is it?

Alison Cohen: Yes. So, the, this is only since COVID actually, but Feeding America, which is the primary network of food banks in our country - they have more than 200, uh, large scale food banks that are 

members of Feeding America - they have now outpaced United Way as the number one charity in this country. They have more income, they receive more donations, they're larger in size than any other charitable sector. So, the number one charitable sector in our country.

Sam Fuqua: And do we know how many people volunteer at food banks?

Alison Cohen: I don't know that number off the top of my head, but it's, um, it, it, it's, yes, it's high. It's very high.

Sam Fuqua: And so, an, a great opportunity for education and advocacy as you spoke of. We don't know which food banks are doing that, which aren't, well, we might know some that are doing it, but many potentially aren't.

Alison Cohen: One of the food banks that we've been working with, um, that it's actually, they, they're not quite, they're not a regional food bank. They're a smaller food pantry in Denver is called Metro Caring, and they're doing amazing work. They have, um, they're working directly with their staff to, uh, do this, kind of, political education where people are really cognizant of what the root causes of hunger are, and what are the structural issues in the city of Denver and in the state of Colorado that are, uh, perpetuating chronic food insecurity. They're really quite admirable in that, in that respect. And then, they're also bringing those people together that use their food pantry to come up with various policies and structural changes that they would like to see. One example is they've been working for a number of years now on, uh, a community food utility. So, um, you know how we have public utilities for water and electricity? This would be a community owned and managed utility for food, and it would require and ensure that everyone has the right to food. Meaning that that food is accessible, it's available in their communities, it is grown sustainably, and that they are participating in defining what their food system looks like.

So there's, there's really admirable work happening in many of these food banks and food pantries across the country. I don't want to vilify them at all because we need them right now. And, imagine if we could harness the power of all those volunteers and all of those. Employees at those food banks to begin to shift their own thinking instead of the, oh, well, the hungry will always be with us, and so we're gonna always need a charitable solution to actually if we just started advocating for a living wage, or a thriving wage, then we would probably reduce the hunger numbers overnight. But in fact, many food pantries and Feeding America as the network, um, does not advocate for economic justice policies. They do advocate for SNAP, to protect SNAP, to grow it to, to, you know, but they say, oh, it's mission creep if we start talking about and advocating for Congress to raise the minimum wage. That's not us. That's a different sector. I would argue that it's not.

Sam Fuqua: Right. But this is an area of conflict within the, the anti-hunger, uh, movement broadly defined?

Alison Cohen: I, I think it is, and you could call it that. It can be a conflict. And, I prefer to think of it as a contradiction that we have to hold. We don't think charity. We've seen it. We actually know the data. We've had food banks for more than 50 years now in this country, and they keep growing and growing and growing, and so has hunger. So clearly, food banking does not, is not really an anti-hunger strategy, right? It's a, it might be a short term anti-hunger strategy, right? We, and we're always gonna need some kind of 

emergency food system. But it's, m, changed from an emergency food to, system, to a, sort of a, defacto grocery store for many, many working people who don't make enough money to feed their families. So, it's a contradiction we have to hold. And yes, it can be conflictual in some, in some cases, and it doesn't have to be. The food banks that I cherish and that I champion are those that are doing a kind of political education with their volunteers. Often the volunteers will come in, they learn about food handling, safe, food safety, handling food safely, um, they learn about how to package things. Maybe they learn a little bit about how to interact with people who are houseless or, you know, that kind of thing. But those that are saying, okay, we need you at this food bank. This food bank is necessary right now. And, we also want you to learn a little bit more about who's hungry in our, in our city or our, uh, community. Uh, what do they look like? Where do they come from? Where are they hungry? Who's working? What are the, what are the structural reasons? And what are some of the things that you can do to help change those structures and systems?

Alexis Miles: Could you take a moment and educate me? And the in, in the short form. Because from my perspective, don't we have enough food in this country to feed everybody nutritious food?

Alison Cohen: We do. In fact, we produce enough food. This is a, a, a statistic worldwide, but we have enough food to produce one and a half times the amount of nutritious food that we need for a population, the population we expect 30 years from now. You'll often see a lot of, um, you know, a lot of folks that say, well, we just need to produce more food. We need to produce more food. That's why we need the bigger farms, and we need the greater consolidation so we can be more efficient in how we produce food. And in fact, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of our farms are not producing food that we can eat. They're producing food, feed for cattle, or they're producing corn that's then turned, and soybeans that are then turned into ethanol. So, imagine if we could convert all of that land into more of a patchwork of smaller farms that are producing a diversity of foods and fruits and animals, meats, and predominantly, not exclusively, because I like to eat bananas and they don't grow in New York, but predominantly growing food that is then consumed within the same region where it's, it's grown. I think that would be a more just food system, and a food system that would take us to a place where there is greater equity in access to nutrition.

Alexis Miles: So, if I'm hearing you correctly, if people could earn enough money to live, this would, a, a large part of hunger would take care of itself because people would be able to buy the food that they need.

Alison Cohen: Yes. Hunger is a political issue. It can be solved. We need the political will. That's what we need to end hunger. We don't need more donations. We don't need to capture more food waste. We need political will. And if we have that political will to do things like raise the minimum wage to a living wage, then we could end hunger. If we could, if we, if we had, uh, universal basic income, if we had free healthcare, if we had adequate childcare or support for childcare, food is, for most families, food is the most flexible part of their budgets. And so they won't go without childcare. They won't go without a car. What they will do, and medicine, but what they will do is cut down on their food consumption. And often, it's the adults they will feed their children first, and I would say that it's predominantly the women that wind up sacrificing some of their own nutrition and consumption in order to feed their children and the rest of their families first.

Sam Fuqua: So, the demographics of people who are food insecure, uh, we know it's people who are lower income, higher percentage of people of color. What else can you tell us about people in this country who are food insecure?

Alison Cohen: One of the things that we know is that hungers can be largely invisible. In this country that we don't, we may work with, I mean, you've got one of seven adults, right, that are hungry. So, you think about it walking down the street, there's, you know, that's, that's quite a lot of people. The person working maybe at the front desk answering the phones, maybe isn't making enough to feed an entire family. Maybe they're the only person in their family with an income. So, I think that, yes, we can talk about demographics, but we, I think we also need to talk about the invisibility of hunger. That there are many people that are, um, we think about hunger as traditionally, right, as, as people with gaunt faces that, that are obviously, look like they're obviously malnourished. That's not the case anymore. Hunger can coexist with obesity. Hunger can coexist with all kinds of chronic illness and diet related disease. It can be, not necessarily about calories, but about the quality of the food that you're getting as well. So, that's why you can have hunger and obesity that, that coexist.

Sam Fuqua: So, I think about sectors of the economy where, uh, the pay is low. And one of those is, uh, the food sector, ironically.

Alison Cohen: Yeah. And the, there's an amazing organization called the Food Chain Workers Alliance, and they have, um, they've done this study every ten years or so, and it consistently shows that people that work in the, along the food chain, whether they're serving people in a restaurant or they're working in a slaughterhouse in the Midwest, or picking strawberries out in California, the food chain sector is where you have the highest number of people who are food insecure using food pantries, relying on SNAP, um, if they can, if they qualify, if they're eligible, and most of them are working in some way or another. They're just not making enough, or they don't have vacation, or they don't have sick leave and, or they're not, um, documented, but they're working. So we, we know this, that's a, a study that has confirmed that people who work in the food sector are the highest among all other jobs, have the highest rate of food insecurity in this country.

Sam Fuqua: So, let's, let's go to a big box grocery store. Take us to a place like, uh, say, super Walmart. How does that connect to this issue?

Alison Cohen: It, it connects really deeply. It's a, it, it can be a little bit complex, but Walmart is largely responsible for the loss of the small downtown in, in rural areas, right? Many rural areas now Walmart is almost the only place where you can buy food, and your hardware supplies, and other things that you used to get from these individual, um, uh, businesses in, in, in small town Minnesota. And, by virtue of that, they have the corner on the grocery market and on the food market in their, in their particular area. Many people have no choice but to go to Walmart. Walmart also is, um, talks a lot and demonstrates that they give, you know, millions of dollars every year away to food banks or to organizations that are working on, on, um, anti-hunger. And in fact, the majority of the money that they give away comes from the consumer, the shopper, who, you know, gives a little bit more at the checkout.

Sam Fuqua: Would you like to round up?

Alison Cohen: Exactly. And that's a big piece of what, um, of, of, of the money that they then regift for food charity. The thing that is, I find the most egregious, is that Walmart is the retailer that earns the most, that redeems the most from food stamps, from SNAP. So SNAP is, um, is one of the, uh, one of the largest contributors to their, to their income, to their wealth. There's lots and lots of, um, stories and this is well 

documented that often when you go to, um, work, uh, for your first day at Walmart, they will often give you a SNAP form, assuming that you're not going to be working enough hours or you're not gonna be making enough, and so they want to be sure that you're able to get on SNAP. So essentially, our tax dollars are supporting Walmart's growth in the stock market.

Alexis Miles: And I hear that supported in several ways. People are spending their SNAP allotments at Walmart.

Alison Cohen: Yes.

Alexis Miles: We as consumers are con, rounding up.

Alison Cohen: Right.

Alexis Miles: And that money goes back to Walmart and the purchase of food, like food banks and other folks are, are using that money to purchase food, if I understand you correctly. That's...

Alison Cohen: I'm not sure that they're, I, I don't, I can't speak to the fact that, that the food banks are purchasing food from Walmart. Walmart donates a lot of food and they donate money for food banks to purchase food. I don't know that it's bought back from Walmart. But many of the Walmart shoppers are supporting their charitable giving. Walmart's charitable giving. At the same time that Walmart is redeeming more than any other retail sector, they are redeeming a lot of money from SNAP.

Alexis Miles: It reminds me of the thing people say, um, like about farm workers, they can pick the fruit, but they can't eat the fruit.

Alison Cohen: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and there's, um, it's an interesting time that we're in now for many, many reasons, but thinking about farm workers, a lot of farm workers, a lot of folks that are working in the fields go wind up using food banks and food pantries in order to meet their family's food needs. And, many food banks and food pantries are reporting that they're not seeing those folks anymore because they're afraid to be in public. And so, they're having to come up with different methods of reaching these people that they're, uh, very concerned or not getting enough food for their families now because they're afraid to go out into public spaces. So, it adds an entire 'nother, a whole 'nother layer of, of complexity and of, um, injustice to, to a system that's already pretty unjust.

Alexis Miles: My jaw is almost dropped, that we are a rich country and there are people, there are humans, there are children, who are hungry.

Alison Cohen: Right.

Alexis Miles: It's almost incomprehensible, especially because we think of ourselves as a kind and generous nation. We take care of each other, we take care of our neighbors, and yet there are people that go to bed hungry at night through no fault of their own.

Alison Cohen: Right. And there are millions of us, right, that that do care and that are generous, and we are giving food, and we're giving our time, and we're giving money, and we don't want people to be hungry. And, we're not taking, we're not going the, the one step further to understand what the roots of this problem are and how we can have an impact on those roots. That this is not, this is not the fault of individuals. This is not a problem of individuals not working hard enough. Not wanting to care for their own families and children. It is a structural, systemic issue that can be solved with political will.

Sam Fuqua: Alison Cohen, we appreciate you making the connections for us and appreciate your work. Thanks for your time.

Alison Cohen: Thank you so much. It's been a lot of fun.

Alexis Miles: It's been enlightening to hear you speak. Thank you.

Sam Fuqua: Alison Cohen is a co-founder and director of the National Right to Food Community of Practice. We spoke with her at the 2025 White Privilege Conference in Hartford, Connecticut. This is the first in our two-part series on food justice. In our next episode, we'll hear from activists working to strengthen local food systems in Mississippi and in New England.

Thanks for listening to Well, That went Sideways! We produce new episodes twice a month. You can find them wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, sidewayspod.org. Our site has information on our guests, interview transcripts, and links to more conflict resolution resources. And, we encourage you to sign up for our newsletter. That's at sidewayspod.org. Our production team is Mary Zinn, Jes Rau, Norma Johnson, Alexis Miles, Alia Thobani, and me, Sam Fuqua. Our theme music is by Mike Stewart. We produce these programs in Colorado on the traditional lands of the Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Ute nations. To learn more about the importance of land acknowledgement, visit our website sidewayspod.org. And this podcast is a partnership with the Conflict Center, a Denver-based nonprofit that provides practical skills and training for addressing everyday conflicts. Find out more at conflictcenter.org.