Janine Jackson interviewed Northeastern University’s Christopher Bosso about food assistance programs for the October 20, 2023, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: Listeners may remember the images from the spring of 2020: farmers dumping milk, smashing eggs and plowing produce under, even as people were lining up at food pantries.
CounterSpin spoke with scientist Ricardo Salvador, who explained that it wasn’t perversity so much as a result of the structure of our systems of food production and distribution, that don’t work exactly the way we might think.
While more complex than it first appears, that imagery still reflects a difficult reality: the paradox of want amidst plenty that is at the core of our next guest’s new book.
The book is called Why SNAP Works: A Political History—and Defense—of the Food Stamp Program. It’s out now from University of California Press. We’re joined by author Christopher Bosso, professor of public policy and politics at Northeastern University. He joins us now by phone; welcome to CounterSpin, Christopher Bosso.
