Hunger Inc.: Building Solidarity Beyond the Food Bank

Due to multiple political and economic crises, the demand for charitable food aid has increased enormously since 2020. Initially seen as an emergency measure, corporate-backed food aid programs are now entrenched ’solutions’ to hunger. But who really benefits from them?

Kayleigh Garthwaite traveled across Britain, North America, and Europe, working with food banks, co-ops, urban farms, and food justice organizations. She documents the limitations of these programs and how institutionalizing charitable food aid absolves governments of their responsibility to ensure that people have a right to food.

As hunger and inequality continue to rise within advanced capitalist countries, this issue is more urgent than ever.

Hunger Inc. proposes radical key policies for government and explores alternative community-led responses grounded in solidarity, not charity, to end the need for food aid before the indignity of food banks becomes wholly normalized.

Kayleigh Garthwaite is Associate Professor in Social Policy at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is the author of the British Academy Peter Townsend Prize-winning Hunger Pains: Life Inside Foodbank Britain. She co-founded the Global Solidarity Alliance for Food, Health, and Social Justice (GSA), an international collaboration between scholars, NGOs, and grassroots campaigners.