<i>Sweet Charity</i>, revisited: Organizational responses to food insecurity in Hamilton and Toronto, Canada

TLDR

Emergency food provision has become institutionalized over the past two decades, yet critiques argue it fails to address hunger sustainably, while growing environmental concerns and grassroots initiatives have attracted new organizations into the food security arena. This study investigates how emergency food provision has evolved in response to the rise of community food security discourse and practice since Sweet Charity. The authors analyze organizational documents and conduct key informant interviews to trace these changes. Results show that providers respond in partial, incongruent ways, constrained by structural limits, while emerging organizations pursue community food security projects that both challenge and reinforce the charity model, offering insights for progressive food organizing.

Abstract

In the last two decades, emergency food provision (e.g., food banks, meal programmes) has become an increasingly institutionalized form of hunger relief. Critiques of the emergency food system, as articulated by Poppendieck’s 1998 book Sweet Charity? suggest that such programmes are unable to cope with growing hunger in a meaningful, stable, efficient, or culturally appropriate way, and that they may facilitate government retrenchment. Meanwhile, popular attention has increasingly focused on the environmental and social costs of our globalized industrial food system, and efforts to challenge it (e.g., urban fruit gleaning, chicken rearing) are becoming widespread. These efforts have drawn new kinds of organizations into the world of food (in)security. Drawing on organizational documents and key informant interviews, this paper examines how emergency food provision is changing because of the rise of ‘community food security’ discourse and practice in the period since Sweet Charity? Findings suggest that emergency food providers have responded to critiques in partial and incongruent ways. Organizations face structural constraints that curtail their ability to reorganize, while new kinds of organizations are engaging in community food security projects, both challenging and reinforcing the charity food model in ways that have relevance for progressive (food) organizing more generally.