The Problem
Our group has chosen to address the intersecting problems of food insecurity, food equality, and environmental sustainability. Last year our school started a backpacks program to feed families in our school that experience food insecurity. For that program, students can (anonymously) take home a backpack full of food at the end of each week and then return the backpack the next week. The problem is that the backpacks mostly contain low quality, highly processed food. We believe that providing low quality food to address the problem of food insecurity only makes the problems of food inequality and environmental sustainability worse. Because these families are given highly processed foods, they do not experience food equality with others who are able to benefit from organic, pesticide-free foods. These highly processed foods also come from many companies that are part of the industrial food system and not from local producers. Buying more organic foods from local producers helps minimize environmental damage. Our campaign will replace the highly processed foods that are currently part of the backpack program with organic and locally produced food to help with the intersecting problems of food insecurity and food equality here in the school community, and environmental sustainability.
