Adopted by the Board of Directors
August 2020 | Teleconference
Resolution 2020-002
The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity as a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life. A deteriorating climate, growth of global population, rising cost of food, environmental stressors, and social and economic processes will impact food security for decades to come. While the world’s farmers produce enough food to feed the global population, many people around the world, including millions of people in the United States, suffer from a lack of access to food, which poses serious, long term consequences to health and wellbeing. While large-scale programs in the United States have been successful in food insecurity in the U.S., they do not adequately address the underlying causes. Humanism calls on each of us to act for human dignity and agency, which includes taking seriously the issue of food insecurity and interrelated causes of concern.
WHEREAS food security is recognized as access by all people at all times to enough food that is nutritionally adequate and meets individual and collective consumer preferences; and
WHEREAS in the U.S., low-income households are much more likely to be food insecure and households headed by women, Black households, Latinx households, Indigenous households, people returning from incarceration, and undocumented immigrants are disproportionately affected by a higher risk of hunger; and
WHEREAS unemployment, lack of an adequate minimum wage, rising housing costs and housing discrimination, medical debt, and other burdens can make it difficult to purchase adequate, nutritious food; and
WHEREAS people experiencing food insecurity may engage in health compromising coping strategies, including forgoing medication, postponing or forgoing medical care, and making trade-offs between food and other basic necessities; and
WHEREAS food insecurity is associated with serious, potentially dire, health complications in adults and children; and
WHEREAS access to healthy foods is affected by inefficient allocation and distribution of retail food markets and inadequate/nonexistent transportation infrastructure. In the U.S., people with disabilities, residents of rural areas, and communities of color are at higher risk of lacking transportation to healthy food sources and are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity; and
WHEREAS climate change will have an impact on food insecurity due to changes in agricultural yields and farming and the most food insecure populations are those most harmed by climate-related events; and
WHEREAS the United States’ food waste is between 30-40 percent of the food supply; and
WHEREAS the implementation of national programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), has been successful in reacting to food insecurity but has not adequately addressed the root causes of hunger, diet-related disease, economic inequality and structural racism in the food system,
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION, in pursuit of a society with access to food that is nutritionally adequate and meets individual and collective consumer preferences,
AFFIRMS its support of measures aimed at achieving the full realization of the human right to food- that establish food security as a fundamental entitlement to a minimum standard of living and a guiding theme for achieving economic, social and political equity; and
AFFIRMS its support of policies that ensure the procurement of adequate affordable food so as to not compromise the attainment of other basic needs; and
AFFIRMS its support of policies that protect all workers, especially agricultural workers, and enable them to become financially secure; and
AFFIRMS its support of actions ensuring that all households and individuals have the means to obtain enough food for an active and healthy life by providing food assistance programs, strengthening social safety nets, ensuring access to universal education and health care, increasing the minimum wage; and
AFFIRMS its support of measures that enable community control over food production and distribution to maximize community self-reliance, social justice, and democratic decision-making. Measures include farm to school programs; local business incubation and food policy councils; increasing access to evidence-based job training programs, work supports and better-paying jobs; increasing affordable housing; providing economic incentives for the development of full-service supermarkets; providing affordable and accessible transportation to existing food outlets; and transforming parks and abandoned spaces into community food gardens and other measures that promote local production and distribution of food; and
AFFIRMS the need to minimize food loss and waste through more efficient distribution systems and its support of projects and other social programs that use donated food, or viable food discards, from agricultural fields, supermarkets, and restaurants; and
AFFIRMS its support of strengthening environmental agencies for prevention and mitigation of climate change effects on world food production and providing structural incentives for environmentally sustainable production; including resilient, technologically driven agricultural practices that help maintain ecosystems and can adapt to climate change and natural disasters; and
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION calls upon all who are able and should be concerned about food insecurity and hunger to do your part to make this a better world for us all now and in the future. Support, with your voice, vote, time, energy, resources, and participation, the legislation, candidates, and action groups that work to end food insecurity and hunger.