Portside

Before the pandemic and recession, California’s food banks were struggling with an overwhelming need, due primarily to housing costs and large undocumented population. But food banks, meant to be safety nets, fear the worst may be yet to come.

Some activists say the World Bank itself is partly to blame for the conjoined problems of climate change, food insecurity and desertification, by pushing its agenda of large-scale agriculture and mono-crop plantations on the developing world.

The U.S. Congress is fighting over how much to cut food assistance to needy families. Everyone knows that women and their children are the poorest people in America, but strangely, the faces of women have disappeared from the debate and have been absorbed into abstract “needy families.”