Growing up on the Big Island of Hawaii, I always understood that food insecurity is a real and pressing issue. The island’s geography makes it vulnerable to a phenomenon known as a “food desert” — a place without an accessible source of fresh, nutritious food. In the Honokaa region, where I grew up, the closest grocery store is an hour away. Traveling more than a mile to a grocery store might not seem like a big deal, but it is part of people’s difficulties in the Honokaa neighborhood and others like it.

The residents of Honokaa are predominantly Native Hawaiian and Filipino, people who have struggled for generations to overcome racism, overt and subtle. They have to combat discrimination in employment, health care, and now even access to fresh foods.

Many low-income communities lack access to affordable food, which results in poorer general health. But food deserts are just one product of our unsustainable food system. It is time to rethink our food systems to ensure that our current capitalist system does not discriminate against people from having access to fresh foods.

The unequal distribution of food is an injustice that dates back to our colonial days. The social, economic and political aspects of food shaped by colonization were the seeds of injustice that has grown into a worldwide food insecurity crisis.

One example is through agribusinesses which creates a market system that is unsustainable and self-perpetuating. Foreign agribusinesses are changing agriculture methods, driving out local farmers, continuing the colonization mentality of “land grabbing,” making food a financial investment and inaccessible even to local farmers. This is similar to the history of Hawaii as the United States understood it could profit off of the cultivation of sugar and rich resources of the Hawaiian islands, which eventually lead up to Hawaii’s Annexation.

Our food production system is one of the capitalistic structures that allow society to destroy nature. Capitalism thus becomes a process of alienation, dispossession, and commodification of the environment and those who inhabit these ecological spaces.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. federal executive department responsible for developing laws regarding farming and food, conducted a study that found that nationally, 20.5% of the Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islands adults face very low food insecurity. Between 2016 and 2018, the USDA estimated that 8% of Hawaii households were food insecure. A study by Feeding America shows that one in six Latinx households suffer from food insecurity.

The demographics of the affected neighborhoods all have one thing in common — people of color predominantly populate them. While Native Hawaiian and Latinx populations are not the only ones affected by food deserts, one factor contributing to these percentages is racial discrimination. Food insecurity stems from racism. Twenty-three million Americans live in a “food desert,” but many food justice activists chose to call it “food apartheid,” which is a system that disenfranchises people of color rather than a food desert that does not fully grasp our capitalist system’s economic and political power.

The fact is, Honokaa isn’t the first to face such a problem, nor is it the only town in the region to see food sources in low-income neighborhoods disappear. Food has historically constructed and maintained a society’s identity. In that sense, food has never been about the simple act of pleasurable consumption.

But as long as the current food system is upheld and financial incentives are prioritized over people, people of color will continue to suffer for years without access to fresh food. Helping people have new, nutritious food should be an essential step toward correcting long-standing inequality.

Zhanelyn Cacho is currently a student at Georgetown University.