Howard Jones: "there are communities in which hunting is an essential food-harvesting activity". Can this really be true in a modern developed country....

Yes, as noted by others, in Alaska there are a number of communities that rely on 'food harvesting'. It is called Subsistence Living. It is an official designation.

In some of the off-shore islands and its communities, I am told by Alaska Natives (another official designation; it does not mean someone who was born in Alaska. Instead, it refers to the indigenous people, people who were here thousands of years before the white man came.) that some villagers are being corrupted to the extent that there are individuals and families who now prefer the junk food that many of us enjoy.

Much like some communities in the Marshall Islands, I am told, who mostly abandoned their fishing and gathering lifestyle, and turned to the stores of the west.