Food charity in the United States has grown into a critical appendage of agro-food supply chains. In 2016, 4.5 billion pounds of food waste was diverted through a network of 200 regional food banks, a fivefold increase in just 20 years. Recent global trade disruptions and the COVID-19 pandemic have further reinforced this trend. Economic geographers studying charitable food networks argue that its infrastructure and moral substructure serve to revalue food waste and surplus labor in the capitalist food system. The political–legal framework undergirding this revaluation process however is still poorly understood. Drawing on a 6-year institutional ethnography of the food banking economy in West Virginia, this paper takes a supply-side approach to examine the material and moral values driving the expansion of food waste recovery as hunger relief. Empirically, it focuses on the laws, contracts and fiscal incentives regulating charitable food procurement at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Feeding America. The assemblage of government agencies, private businesses and non-profit organizations enrolled into this gift economy at different scales I argue, serves to enclose food waste into a public–private governance structure that regulates food surpluses and ensures these will not disrupt the scarcity logics driving profitability along primary food circuits.

中文翻译：

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调节盈余：慈善与餐厨垃圾圈地的法律地理

美国的食品慈善机构已经发展成为农产品供应链的重要附属物。2016 年，45 亿磅的食物垃圾通过 200 个区域食物银行的网络转移，仅 20 年就增加了五倍。最近的全球贸易中断和 COVID-19 大流行进一步强化了这一趋势。研究慈善食品网络的经济地理学家认为，其基础设施和道德基础结构有助于重新评估资本主义食品体系中的食品浪费和剩余劳动力。然而，支撑这一重估过程的政治法律框架仍然知之甚少。本文借鉴西弗吉尼亚州食品银行经济的 6 年制度民族志，采用供应方方法来研究推动食品垃圾回收扩大以缓解饥饿的物质和道德价值观。从经验上看，它侧重于美国农业部和美国饲料部管理慈善食品采购的法律、合同和财政激励措施。我认为，政府机构、私营企业和非营利组织以不同规模参与到这个礼物经济中，有助于将食物浪费纳入一个公私治理结构，以调节食物过剩，并确保这些不会破坏驱动的稀缺逻辑沿主要食品回路的盈利能力。