“I don’t do breakfast or dinner, dinner is only when I feel hungry if not I mostly do a snack in the evening just to manage the rations for the month.” These were the words of one woman interviewed by Red Thread Guyana on how the increased cost of living has been impacting grassroots persons. There were similar stories of skipped meals, reduced budgets and hunger in households that now have to make concessions to their diet. The health and social impacts of this are immense and will continue to disadvantage those who are low income workers. As we assess the impacts of food insecurity on working class people, I also wanted to take the opportunity to delve a bit into the issues that contribute toward this lack of access.
Given the globalised food economy wherein we are heavily dependent on imports and food businesses, this has resulted in food over the years shifting from being framed as sustenance or nutrition, toward a commodity that can be bought, sold and withheld. Private interest groups have successfully set the foundation for the way that the global food economy functions.
