Food First was founded in 1975 by Joseph Collins and Frances Moore Lappé—author of the revolutionary bestseller Diet for a Small Planet—to end the injustices that cause hunger. Since its first book, Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity, the organization has published over 60 books and hundreds of articles and research reports while responding to the most pressing needs facing food producers and consumers worldwide. Over four decades, the injustices causing hunger have grown more complex—including land grabbing and concentration, climate change, corporate control of seeds, militarism, structural racism and sexism, violence against women, trade liberalization and deregulation, and labor exploitation throughout the food supply chain. Yet movements for the democratization of food, land, and political systems are also stronger than ever.
Why It Matters: Food First has insisted that hunger is caused by injustice, not scarcity—a framing that shifts focus from producing more food to transforming the systems that prevent people from accessing food that already exists in abundance. By connecting land grabbing, corporate seed control, labor exploitation, structural racism, and other injustices as interconnected causes of hunger, Food First provides analysis that strengthens movements working across these issues. The organization’s pride in being part of a flourishing movement—alongside international peasant movements like La Vía Campesina and the growing political power of food producers, workers, and consumers—reflects an understanding that ending hunger requires solidarity and democratization, not charity or technical fixes.
