BOOK REVIEW: Closing the Food Gap

Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty

Reviewed by Victoria Streib Smith

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Many of us don’t even know what food insecurity is, much less that it is a problem affecting every American. Chances are we have never been to the inner city grocery store, and we have not looked food insecurity in the eye.

Author Mark Winne helps us to do so, by sharing his own first trip to the grocery store in the inner city of Hartford, Connecticut, where his career began in the 1970s. Today, we take his recollection of the unappetizing food choices in the inner-city market for granted. Or we find that those same streets are riddled with fast-food franchises. If we have the choice, we either dodge around them or resign ourselves to eat at one when we’re really hungry.

But those without a choice, who’ve lived for years in this urban food desert, pay the high price of poor health for regularly satisfying their hunger with fast foods. Fast-food establishments have sprung up here in response to a long-standing scarcity of grocery stores in which to buy food that is not overpriced and inferior. If you’ve no alternative but to purchase food in the urban food desert, you know that your country has not won the war on hunger or poverty. Not simply an inconvenience, this is one face of food insecurity.

As the USDA puts it: “Food security for a household means access by all members at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food security includes at a minimum (1) the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and (2) an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (that is, without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies).”

Winne makes the words “food security” real and human throughout his entire treatise, and carefully untangles the complex factors that perpetuate it. He shows how our food system is land-mined with deep injustices that we are almost inured to, and challenges us to think again about how we do food in this country, so that all may find healthy food that is not dependent on class status.

Not only does Winne hold the" powers that be" accountable, he holds himself so as well. He also makes clear the cost we all pay when we choose to simply throw money and food at the problem of poverty.

Winne speaks with the authority of a man who has carefully looked inside his own heart to arrive at universal truths. His journey from a comfortable, middle-class upbringing in New Jersey to community organizing in the gritty, underserved neighborhoods of Hartford, Connecticut is witty and informative, demonstrating why he has become a leader in this nation's food-security movement.

He explores the roots that have been developing since his own childhood in the 1950s, when so many Americans were relieved that their lives no longer directly connected with the farm, soil and nature. It’s an easy step to wonder if our current food crisis exists because we have removed ourselves from nature and our food and instead allowed big business to decide how to supply our needs.

Michele Simon, author of “Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back” (Nation Books, 2006), closely follow books on the subject of food policy. She says, “[Winne] has been in the trenches and speaks from first-hand experience, which is rare to find among writers on this topic.”

Indeed, this is a compassionate presentation from the perspective of an average white guy, but one who just happened to make feeding the hungry his life's work. Mark Winne takes his years of humble experience in the field of food justice to show us the steps we can take to bring everyone to the same table, with liberty and food justice for all.

There are no easy solutions to the problems Winne so carefully articulates. But people are starting to make a difference when they strengthen their own relationships with farmers – by creating and participating in farmers' markets, community gardens, and community supported agriculture. His realism and his optimism and commitment are contagious.

Closing the Food Gap will take just an afternoon or two to read, but it may just change your life and that of your own community. I can’t help but echo Simon’s marching orders: “Read this book and then pass it on.”

Victoria Smith is an ARCPACS certified soil scientist, mother and freelance writer in Athens, Georgia.