The New Breadline: Hunger and Hope in the Twenty-First Century

A humanitarian with over two decades of experience at the United Nations takes aim at the global food crisis—revealing how hunger anywhere affects lives everywhere, and what steps we can take to change course

At the turn of the twenty-first century, the United Nations believed we were well on our way to eradicating world hunger by 2030. But with only a few years left before that goal, America is experiencing levels of food insecurity not seen since the Great Depression. How could the richest country in the world have so many people going hungry?

In The New Breadline, aid worker and activist Jean-Martin Bauer unravels this paradox. Bauer’s family fled to America during the terrors of the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti. A nation balanced on the brink of mass starvation, it was Haiti’s difficult history that inspired Bauer to pursue his life’s work in food justice. During his career with the UN, Bauer learned firsthand that the problem of hunger is always political—and like all political conditions, he knew it was something we could work to change.

Traveling to the most hunger-prone countries across the globe—from Haiti, where elites hoard imported French cheese, to Madagascar, where foreign corporations are snatching up viable farming land from locals,to right here in America, where the lines at food banks continue to grow—Bauer weaves profound personal insight with a keen understanding of the structural systems of racism, classism, and sexism that thwart true progress in the battle against hunger. The New Breadline is an inspiring call-to-action to end what he persuasively argues is one of the greatest threats to our society, boldly envisioning a world where we can always feed ourselves and each other.