Non-market distribution serves society in ways markets cannot: A tentative defense of food charity from small-town New England

It has become fashionable to call for ending food charity. Anti-hunger activists and scholars advocate instead for ensuring through government programs that everybody has enough money or vouchers to purchase all the food they need. Their criticisms rightly denounce charitable food for being incapable of eradicating hunger, but they neglect the advantages that charity confers as a non-market food practice—that is, an activity that produces or distributes food that is not for sale. Our interviews with non-market food practitioners in the Brattleboro, Vermont, area demonstrated that distributing food for free strengthens relationships, fosters resilience, puts edible-but-not-sellable food to use, and aligns with an alternative, non-market vision of a desirable food future. Interviewees suggested that market food systems, in which food is distributed via selling it, cannot replicate these benefits. Yet food pantries and soup kitchens tend to imitate supermarkets and restaurants—their market counterparts—since purchasing food is considered the dignified way to feed oneself in a market economy. We suggest that charities might do well to emphasize the benefits specific to non-market food rather than suppressing those benefits by mimicking markets. But charities face limits to making their food distribution dignified, since they are essentially hierarchies that funnel gifts from well-off people to poor people. Food sharing among equals is an elusive ambition in this highly unequal world, yet it is only by moving in this direction that non-market food distribution can serve society without stigmatizing recipients.