Jan 25 2022 (IPS) - The pandemic – alongside growing threats from climate change, widespread malnutrition, economic instability and geopolitical conflict – has heightened problems with the ways we produce, distribute and consume food. And it’s made clear the urgent need to make global food systems more just.

An example of modern food injustice is that if you’re poor or an ethnic minority in the US, you’re less likely to have easy access to healthy food. This situation, worsened by COVID-19, has been termed food apartheid. It’s also often the case that corporations, not local growers, control the food produced by communities: taking money out of their hands.

If this is to change, it’s important to understand who wins within existing food systems and, more importantly, who loses by being pushed to the sidelines and losing out on access to healthy food.

To do this, those who design food systems need to consider how different factors that determine if someone is marginalised – like gender, age, disability, ethnicity and religion – can combine or intersect, making some people more vulnerable.

For example, international development programmes by governments and charities often focus on helping women because they are considered vulnerable. But this risks overlooking different causes of poverty including class and race issues, marginalising other vulnerable groups.

In Tanzania, this kind of oversimplification when deciding who receives resources has been found to reinforce existing power hierarchies within communities, meaning that those who had little social power to begin with – such as poorer women – don’t get to benefit from the resources provided.

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