Since 2020, we have seen a huge increase in the demand for charitable food aid, due to multiple political and economic crises. Initially seen as an emergency measure, corporate-backed food aid programs are now entrenched 'solutions' to hunger. But who really benefits from them?

Kayleigh Garthwaite travelled across Britain, North America and Europe, working with food banks, co-ops, urban farms and food justice organisations. She documents the limitations of these programs, and how institutionalising charitable food aid absolves governments of their responsibility to ensure that people have a right to food. As hunger and inequality continue to rise within advanced capitalist countries, this issue is more urgent than ever.

Kayleigh Garthwaite proposes radical key policies for governments and explores alternative community-led responses grounded in solidarity, not charity, to end the need for food aid before the indignity of food banks becomes completely normalised.

'How do you close a food bank – a beacon of what is wrong? By turning it into a shop – preferably a co-op. Kayleigh Garthwaite’s ground-breaking work explains why food banks prolong hunger and what must be done'

'This is the book we need right now, as inequality rages and people across the 'wealthy West' turn in ever greater numbers to food banks and other types of food support. Crucially, it gives us something to hang on to: solutions. An absolute must read not just for policymakers, but for everyone'

Kayleigh Garthwaite is Associate Professor in Social Policy at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is the author of the British Academy Peter Townsend Prize-winning Hunger Pains: Life Inside Foodbank Britain. She co-founded the Global Solidarity Alliance for Food, Health, and Social Justice (GSA), an international collaboration between scholars, NGOs, and grassroots campaigners.