• Leftist think tank that views capitalism and globalization as the causes of world hunger and poverty

A self-described "peoples' think tank," Food First, also known as the Institute for Food and Development Policy, is a program of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. Food First was founded in 1975 by anti-globalization activists Frances Moore Lappé and Joseph Collins. Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink for Peace and Global Exchange, is a graduate of Food First, which has identified capitalism and globalization as the principal "root causes" of global hunger and poverty. 

Lappé, who came to prominence with her 1971 best-selling ode to vegetarianism, Diet for a Small Planet, told an audience in Florence, Italy in February 2003 that advocates of expanded international trade are agents of oppression. "We can portray the promoters of this [free market] system as they really are—the renegades and the extremists pushing something on faith," said Lappé.

Because Food First ascribes poverty and hunger directly to the free market and globalization, it opposes potential remedies that would clash with its anti-capitalist catechism. In June of 2003, for example, Food First campaigned against the Bush administration's plan to alleviate hunger in Africa through the introduction of genetically engineered crops. Despite numerous studies noting that this biotechnology would spur agricultural productivity in Africa and could reduce the continent's number of malnourished children by as much as 40 percent, Food First remained decidedly opposed. Food First Co-Director Anuradha Mittal claimed, "The Bush administration and the biotech industry are shamelessly using the poverty and hunger of the Third World to further their corporate agenda."

Since 1995, Food First has partnered with anti-globalization groups like the Organic Agriculture Group and the Center for the Study of Sustainable Agriculture to trumpet the virtues of communist Cuba's distributionist agricultural programs. Food First praises Cuba's rigidly enforced, collectivized "system of food production and distribution" which "the government and the community together have implemented." The organization ignores the fact that Cuba's agricultural economy stays afloat largely on the strength of independent agricultural markets that were warily introduced by the Castro regime in 1994; these miniature free markets permit state and private farmers to sell their surplus produce at market prices, rather than government-fixed prices. Despite subsequent government attempts to curb their influence, these markets reportedly feed some 60 percent of the country's population and drive down prices on the black market.

Dr. Raj Patel, a policy analyst at Food First, advocates "equitable and pro-feminist farming" to increase land ownership among women. She complains that "globalization has increased sexism and entrenched patriarchy the world over." Patel intimated in a 2002 lecture titled "Feminist Perspectives on Ecological Sustainability and Equity" that Food First's chief priority ought to be the elimination of ownership inequality between men and women. "I'm proud to be fighting with you for an end to the gender differences we know today," said Patel, "…because the rules that subjugate me and the regime that draws my blood on the streets of London, spits in my eye in New York and kills my comrades in Harare, the struggle against that regime [globalization] is our fight, is my struggle."

Food First was a signatory to a 1999 petition of so-called "civil society" organizations that opposed globalization and "any effort to expand the powers of the World Trade Organization (WTO) through a new comprehensive round of trade liberalization." The organization also endorsed a 2003 "Our World is Not for Sale" campaign similarly condemning the WTO.

Food First is a member of OneWorld Network, an umbrella organization of more than 1,500 leftist groups that, according to the OneWorld website, seek "to promote sustainable development, social justice, and human rights."

The program coordinator of Food First is Christine Ahn.

In 2002 Food First received a $50,000 grant from the J.M. Kaplan Fund.