Category Archives: Other

What is a food club?

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I recently had an interview with a reporter from The Grocer about the role of food clubs in the UK. A food club is not a food bank. Instead it is a low-cost, community-based food project that makes available food that is often donated by retailers and food producers. The food is within date, but frequenlty short-dated, so not suitable for sale at the usual outlets. These community food clubs are place-based and utilise volunteers who are also frequently members of the service. The impacts from food clubs is more than just low-cost food. I would place food club activity at Rung 2 of the Food Ladders. You can read the article here:

https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/analysis-and-features/the-rise-of-food-clubs-and-how-they-differ-from-food-banks/701353.article

The Grocer is a well-established British trade publication focusing on the grocery retail market. Its purpose is to provide news, analysis, and data related to the UK grocery industry. It caters to professionals working in food and drink retail, from supermarkets to independent stores. It covers market trends, product launches, pricing and industry news. It has been publishing since 1862.

Social Justice in a time of crisis–Society, community and reflections on how we might evaluate those running for election and the recent UK budget.

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I read the newspaper this morning, and like yesterday morning, most of what I saw was crisis talk. With good reason. Wars and conflicts are multiple. The increase in frequency and magnitude of weather events (which are scientifically linked to climate change) results in large numbers of deaths and longer-term effects such as loss of property and livelihoods.  Once vibrant communities struggle to recover. 

These events have long-lasting effects. Hurricane Helene, which struck North Carolina (USA) at the end of September, illustrates this. My mother, who lives in a retirement community, is safe, but one month still does not have drinking water. She tells me it is difficult, but it is okay, given they have electricity and broadband service now. She says her inconvenience is minor as hundreds of people remain missing in Asheville. One resident described it as a post-apocalyptic landscape.  

We also have what seems like three patterns of crisis —The sudden and many catastrophic crises that seem to happen without warning, the crises that emerge out of political and ideological differences, greed, and a desire for control, and then the quiet and persistent crises that become a way of life for so many who have just had the misfortune not to be able to reside among the wealthy and powerful.  Or maybe they are all just manifestations of the same thing. 

“Anti-imigrant sentiments, nationalist populist authoritarianism, militarised security discourses, racist policies, regressive gender politics, and climate change denial (or hostility) are linked, whether in the United States, Italy, Inda, Hungary, the Philipeans, Brazil, Israel, or Poland. …The global economic system is ever more integrated under neoliberalism, hostility to immigrants and refugees is high. Economic inequality has reached levels never seen before in any period of human history. …Interwoven are crises of modernity (including declining faith in technical authority and scientific knoweldge, attacks on media institutions, and the winding down of the American centry (albeit with bellicose American exceptionalism denying its demise).

The moment of crisis is the moment of rupture. Domiant belief systems and ideologies that dispute them come into view, or sharper relief.

Starting from the premise that environmental damages are interwoven with political and social conflicts, … how organisers, communities, and movements fight, survive, love, and create in the face of environmental and social violence that challenges the very conditions of life itself.” (Sze J. Environmental justice in a moment of danger. University of California Press; 2020, p. 2-4)

I teach a module at the University of Sheffield called Social Justice in the Time of Crisis.  We introduce notions of crisis and consider how these are made within the contexts Sze discusses. We also talk about justice. Do we want to live in a perpetual crisis, or are there ways to move beyond and redesign a system that has produced the crises we are now experiencing? This is a discussion of world views and what social relations should look like. It requires an understanding of ethical perspectives on what is right or just. We don’t all hold the same views, and understanding and thinking critically about where we stand on the fundamentals is imperative for how we decide to proceed. Knowing this helps us to answer some fundamental questions such as who gets what? To what extent can people live the lives they can reasonably consider to be valuable? What is the role of recognition? Who should be involved in making decisions and who are we asking to make decisions for us?

I was speaking to someone recently who claims to not “do politics” while at the same time progressing the understanding that to be a socialist is a bad thing. It turns out he did not actually know what socialism entails. This is a man who is caring and kind to others. Works in a care home for people with dimentia.

In the remainder of this post, I first unpack different approaches to justice. and then I reflect on the US election and the 2024 UK budget. The use of the terms conservative and progressive does not refer to specific political parties per se, but instead, ideologies that have been termed conservative and progressive. These terms existed long before the specific parties, although the parties do align (sometimes loosely, sometimes more tightly) with these ideologies.

What kind of justice?

Conservative justice starts from a position that people deserve what they get. It is a merit-based form of justice, whereby what you deserve or don’t is based on what you have done. There is no recognition of how past social inequalities linger and shape intergenerational outcomes in this view, nor of how social norms ask certain groups to disproportionately do the unpaid work of care that limits their ability to engage with paid work. There is also no recognition of a public good. The foundational belief is people should be able to keep what they have earned and then pay at the point of use for those things they want. A belief that we should not have to pay for school meals, childcare, or education if we do not have children is an example of such thinking. This thinking fails to recognise that we all benefit from having well fed and educated children. There is a focus on equality, whereby everyone is treated the same way, regardless of the myriad differences that make us human. This is in stark contrast to equity, where people are provided with what they need to succeed. Everyone should not get the same because our needs are not the same.

While equity is an essential first step in achieving progressive justice, it is insufficient because it does not acknowledge that past injustices have effects that linger into the future and create barriers that require dismantling. Progressive justice is about improving social conditions or making a better world. Drawing on Rousseau, progressive justice also recognises that the social order (e.g., class structure, conventions on behaviours linked to gender) does not come from natural selection but instead is founded on social conventions that have given advantages to some and, therefore, work for those who benefit and disadvantages to others and as such do not work.

Progressive justice also depends on recognising that we only achieve the position and value we have because others recognise that value. If I refuse to acknowledge your position, I am also denying your position. A president only has authority if people grant them that authority. Where conservative justice fails is that it does not acknowledge this fact. Hegal argues that acknowledging this fact of recognition is (part of) what creates society. He contends that we only achieve our own autonomy through mutual recognition–I recognise you as someone who has the authority to say that I have status. The irony of freedom is that we cannot be free except in terms of our relations with others and through being in society.

Humans desire and need to receive and give recognition because it helps us to have a sense of ourselves. We commit acts of moral violence through misrecognition and denial, such as when we deny rights or refuse social inclusion. People who experience this moral injury experience indignity and are denied self-hood, which is the core experience of injustice. Recognition creates community.

So what does this mean for crisis?

To mitigate crisis, we must prevent it before it happens and eliminate vulnerabilities. This cannot occur through conservative justice that reifies individualism, sees difference as rooted in a pre-given (god given?) natural order, and starts from a position that people deserve what they get. Real human progress can only happen if we acknowledge the community’s central role. Among the stories of difficulty and hardship that resulted from Hurricane Helene, there also emerged quiet stories of care and community. People hauled water for those who could not do it themselves. Food was shared with those who were without. People opened their homes for those lacking shelter. These are not stories of conservative justice, but of progressive justice and illustrate that we all benefit from a society that breaks down barriers that limit the capabilities of people to thrive and succeed.

On Tuesday, 5 November, there is an election. The only way to achieve a better world is to evaluate those running for political parties on a justice basis. Even when choices are not perfect, a balance in favour of progressive justice is progress. Indeed, candidates that call for individualism, maintenance of hierarchies established in the past and their corresponding misrecognition can only lead us into more profound crises, which, without community, we will not survive.

Today’s news also included the key takeaways from the UK Budget. People have been talking about this for some time now and there will be more talk, no doubt. The doubters will be angry, regardless. But I contend that much of this doubt stems from a lack of understanding about the ethical underpinnings. The budget increases taxes by £40 billion. A big number even in national budget terms. Beyond understanding in household budget terms. But the importance is in the how not the what.

  • The minimum wage will increase for those over 21. This will increase tax takings because incomes will be higher for so many (and yes, businesses will say it cuts into their ability to survive and for some, it will, but for many, it will just mean the bonus to the big boss may not be so high. I’ve written about this elsewhere). It will also impact charitable organisations and social enterprises that deliver so many of our community services, which is worrying. One of the groups most vulnerable to food insecurity is young people. A decent wage is necessary for a healthy diet and wellbeing. A healthy workforce is also more productive.
  • Employer national insurance is increasing. This, again, is a benefit to society because National Insurance pays for health care. A healthy workforce is also more productive. Universal Health Care benefits us all and is a public good. You may not need it now, but in all likelihood, you will one day.
  • Capital gains tax will be more in line with income tax from employment. Many who pay themselves through dividends do not pay income tax, and they have been doing this to avoid paying taxes. Most people with lower incomes do not have the option to take dividend payments. This progressive tax increase asks those who are more advantaged to pay a bit more of their share.
  • The conservative party froze tax band thresholds for those who receive wages. These will rise at the rate of inflation from 2028. This is progressive as it acknowledges that it is more expensive to be poor compared to being rich.
  • Those who are sick and disabled will get an increase in benefits. Current rates create a bare life for many. This will go a little way toward increasing the opportunities for people who are sick and disabled to be able to thrive.
  • Carers’ allowance income thresholds will increase, and the unpaid work people do to care for others will save the public purse a lot of money. Pushing them into or keeping them in poverty only undermines their health. This is progressive.
  • The household support fund is to increase. This is generally good, as so many local authorities are using some of this money to build community interventions that increase resilience (for example, by funding interventions at rungs 2 and 3 of the food ladders. However, I am not convinced by the cash-first approach that has also been used because I do not see it as a human development approach, as I’ve elaborated here and here.
  • Fuel duty will be frozen at 5p.
  • The duty on draft beer will go down by 1.7%. It remains to be seen if this will extend to the customer or even the pub landlord. Let’s wait and see.
  • Tax on cigarettes, tobacco, and vaping will increase. From a public health perspective, this may be a good thing as it is thought to encourage people to cut back or not start. However, a large number of smokers get their tobacco from abroad, where they are much cheaper. People who go away bring them back for their smoking friends.
  • VAT will be charged on private school fees. One effect will be that these schools will become even more elite as those who can only just afford to send their children to these schools will no longer be able to do so. However, these children will still need to go to school, and this will push these children into state schools, which may not be a bad thing. The budget also has money to rebuild or replace schools that are not fit for purpose. This feels like a progressive policy in the round.
  • The budget for school breakfast clubs will be increased. I’m torn on this one. Breakfast clubs can be good and help a lot of children. I would rather see the funding go toward an uplift in the threshold for free or universal free school meals. However, if this latter were to happen, we would need a new mechanism for calculating the pupil premium.
  • Increased spending for those children with special education needs. This is progressive in that it can reduce the barriers that SEN impose on people’s life chances and their ability to thrive in later life.
  • HS2 between West London and Birmingham will go ahead. It is not my first choice for public spending, but I can see some benefits.
  • Tax on private jet travel will increase by about £450 per passenger. The hope is that this will reduce such air travel. This has positive environmental implications, and it is unlikely to impact those who struggle the most.
  • The soft drink levy will go up. Again, there are health implications. However, it pushes such beverages into luxury product territory.

Overall, this is a much more progressive budget than expected and that we have seen in a very long time. It is likely to impact those who can afford it much more than those who can least afford it.

*New* Food Ladders Toolkit Launched

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On the 10th of September 2024 we launched the Food Ladders Toolkit. The event was held in Lambeth at the Community Shop. Food, based on the food stories of people who use Community Shop, was cooked for us by community members. It was absolutely fantastic. We want to thank all those who helped with the day and those who came and joined us.

If you were unable to join us for the launch and would like to know more, there will be a webinar on 1 October 2024, this time hosted by Sustainable Food Places. I will be talking about the food ladders and will be joined by Mark from The Bread and Butter Thing, another organisation that uses the Food Ladders to structure their support. The link to the event is here.

So why do we need a toolkit?

People in wealthy and poor countries struggle to have the food they need to live their best lives. The reasons for this are complicated. There is a mix of individual, group, community, and national factors. The food ladders is a framework to help communities, service providers, local government, and others develop an understanding and a pathway toward a food system that meets community members’ needs and desires, both now and in the long term.

We can’t expect communities that are already struggling to be able to do this on their own, but we also cannot do it without them. Building something new is hard work. It takes commitment and motivation. This toolkit aims to support those who can help to be able to do so. This toolkit is primarily aimed at those in local government and local food networks. There will be elements that community organisations may also find helpful. It is not a toolkit for those who are struggling.

The toolkit is based on interviews we conducted with about 30 people working in local governments across England. We wanted to understand how people were using the framework. In particular, we wanted to understand its utility and also where the difficulties might be. We found that organisations and local authorities across the UK use the framework to structure their planning and approach to community development, community resilience, health, and poverty. Local authorities using the framework have shifted to partnership working, with public consultation happening at the start of the process rather than toward the end. We learned about joined-up support networks in these places that cut across a variety of projects and organisations who come at the issues from a multitude of different directions. We saw an understanding of how places are designed, how we engage with people, and how we communicate with each other creates positive change.

But we also found several areas where this process can be complicated. Food work touches on multiple departments within a local authority, and coordinating that is needed. Motivation and momentum can flag. Sometimes, community members meet the effort with scepticism. Sometimes, we lose sight of the vision or forget to clearly define what we are building toward. Sometimes, messages are misunderstood. To help with this, we have created workshops, case studies, videos and diagrams and currated links to the work of others that we feel can help overcome these difficulties.

Enter the Toolkit here

I hope that these tools will be helpful. If you think a tool is missing, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me. Likewise, I would love to hear stories about how the Food Ladders is being used in your area. You can use the form below to do so.

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How we think about poverty makes a difference to how we address hunger

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This entry focuses on two approaches to understanding poverty and its links to how people may be food secure. The first approach, the economic model, is described, and its implications are considered. The second, the capabilities approach, is similarly explained and elaborated. The entry also argues that the links between poverty and food security are as salient for wealthy countries as for less affluent countries. The entry concludes by discussing future research and practice informed by the capabilities framing.

This blog post is a slightly extended version of an entry in the forthcoming Elgar Encyclopedia of Food and Society.

Keywords:  Food Security, Poverty, Food Poverty, Capabilities, Place, Food Ladders

Dr. Megan Blake, ORCID: 0000-0002-8487-8202

INTRODUCTION: POVERTY AND FOOD
Ending hunger, food insecurity, and all forms of malnutrition is a sustainable development goal to be achieved by 2030. Approximately 38% (3.1 billion people) of the world’s population is estimated to struggle to get the food they need to live a healthy life (FAO et al. 2022). Food insecurity is defined as the ability, now and in the future, to access, afford and utilise food of a sufficient quantity that is safe, healthy and culturally appropriate. It is widely recognised that poverty strongly predicts vulnerability to food insecurity.

Poverty itself is a somewhat contested term. Some understand it as being defined in absolute terms based on a single monetary dimension such as income level (heretofore referred to as the economic model of poverty). Others understand it as a relative phenomenon linked to the ability to achieve well-being and health, although an individual may or may not exercise that ability in action (Nussbaum 2011). This later view of poverty is known as the capabilities approach. According to Sen, who first developed the Capabilities approach, addressing poverty must consider people’s diverse needs and characteristics and their inability to achieve key ‘beings and doings’ that are basic to human life, such as feeding oneself and one’s family. 

How poverty is conceptualised has implications for understanding its effects individually and cumulatively and addressing poverty and its impact.  The economic model sees the effects of poverty as it relates to food security as the inability to afford food and measures it as going without.  In this framing, the solution is to give people food or money to purchase food. Because it is multi-dimensional, the capabilities approach focuses on what people can or cannot do and gives room for understanding the implications of those constraints on the ability to do as the effects of poverty (Conconi and Viollaz 2018).  Concerning food, this is calculated according to the ability to be food secure, which might include purchasing healthy food but also has other possibilities, such as the ability to grow, cook, or carry it home from where it is obtained.  These different possibilities work together to determine the ability of someone not to be malnourished or hungry. This approach also gives room to understand how a person’s circumstances (e.g., being in good mental and physical health), their geographical contexts (local and national), and their orientations toward certain doings shape their capabilities.  Addressing food security within this more complex and multi-dimensional understanding means enhancing people’s access to the necessary tools to avoid food insecurity.

The United Nations Development Programme adopts the capabilities approach to addressing poverty, and capabilities directly inform how they conceptualise food security. How poverty and food security is predominantly understood and measured in economically developed nations follows the economic model. This is evidenced by the questions used in the USDA food security module that emphasise the affordability of food and do not consider other aspects that also influence the ability to be food secure.  There is also a prevailing myth that countries commonly conceived of as economically developed (e.g., the United States and Canada, most European Countries, Australia, and New Zealand) are food secure. However, among these nations, there is significant variation.  For example, in England, an economically wealthy nation, one in five adults was classified as having low or deficient food security (Armstrong et al., 2023).  In Sweden, a country typically understood as having high levels of food security; evidence suggests food insecurity is still relatively low but increasing (Rost and Lundalv 2021). Given that there is food insecurity in wealthy countries, research and interventions need to be implemented in these countries and the countries that have traditionally been the focus.

FOOD POVERTY OR THE CAPABILITY TO BE FOOD SECURE

While we may intuitively understand poverty, it is often not a term people use to describe themselves.  People can apply it to others whose life experience is worse than their own:  That person living on the street, the child who comes to school in old clothes and is chronically hungry, the people living in a shelter rather than a home, someone somewhere else. This section outlines the economic model that casts food insecurity as food poverty and highlights some of the limitations of this approach. The section then turns to a discussion of the capability approach as applied to food security and sketches out the need for a systems perspective that considers the different forms of resources or tools needed to achieve food security beyond just the finances.  The section argues that interventions must focus on multiple scales, not just individuals or households, to address food security.

Food Poverty

Food poverty is a sub-category within the economic understanding of poverty. In this approach, poverty is the lack of sufficient income necessary to purchase a bundle of goods to guarantee survival, and food poverty is the lack of income to buy enough food required. Rowntree (1902, 2000:133-4) defined poverty as mere physical existence in, what is arguably, the subject’s first scientific exploration.  When income is inadequate to meet all needs, the only recourse is to cut back on food. This, he argues, sacrifices physical health because food intake is insufficient. Food poverty is frequently used by researchers, policymakers, the press, and charities in economically developed nations.

The economic model reduces food to calories, whereby food insecurity equates to insufficient calories to maintain energy (Burchi and De Muro, 2012). Rowntree’s study was undertaken in an era before highly processed foods, characterised by high calories and low nutrients, were available at prices often considerably lower than those that help maintain a healthy life. The transition to a food system that has introduced these high-calorie, low-nutrient foods means that the physical manifestation of undernourishment is no longer reducible to being underweight.  The food-poverty nexus is manifested as an increased risk of diet-related health outcomes that disproportionately affects those who struggle financially.  These health inequalities, in turn, deepen poverty. They do so by undermining the physical energy needed to maintain or improve one’s circumstances, extending the duration and magnitude of the harm caused by poor health and increasing the financial burden that living with poor health extracts (Dowler 1998).

Acknowledging the importance of sufficient nutrients as a critical aspect of the food-poverty nexus is an important area of investigation by nutrition, medicine, and public health scholars. However, it sits awkwardly in the economic model.  This approach reduces food to a financial exchange. Focusing on the ability to make a transaction (e.g., buy food) in each moment does not consider the cumulative effects that transactions can have (e.g., purchase of low-nutrient food leading to poor health).  When people purchase low-quality food, the public health response assumes they are making poor choices because they do not understand what healthy food is or its importance. However, within economic rationality, people purchase low-nutrient foods. They provide better value for money than high-nutrient foods because they are filling, taste good, and are less likely to be wasted (Blake 2019).   

Another way that the economic model positions itself awkwardly is that it presumes that the economic market is the ideal location to source food. Not only does this approach discount the other ways that people access food, but it promotes a solution to engage with the same market that contrived a food system dominated by cheap, unhealthy food. Nothing in the economic model directly challenges the contributing role that market actors who commercially supply food play in producing poor nutritional outcomes and lack of food access for people in places with a concentration of poverty.  Indeed, it is possible that providing a cash transfer so that people can purchase food may result in deepening health inequalities as there is little incentive to re-introduce healthy foods into these localities by these actors. There is little evidence that providing cash increases diet diversity. 

Changing what people understand to be food, shifting diets, and increasing diet diversity is critical for addressing climate change and improving health.  Because of its transactional focus, the economic model does not acknowledge the issues presented by entrenched food cultures among people experiencing poverty.  In wealthy countries, where highly commercial food systems have long operated, these food cultures are characterised by narrow diets and low uptake of fruits and vegetables (Dowler and Turner 2001). Nor does it halt the transition from more traditional diets toward high environmental impact diets that are also highly processed and occurring in countries considered less economically developed, such as Uganda (Auma et al. 2019). These transitions are caused by introducing convenient, low-cost, shelf-stable, low-nutrient foods combined with a positive lifestyle narrative that makes these foods attractive.

Finally, the economic model takes the household and what happens with food within it as a black box.  It assumes that food allocation within households is equal. However, evidence shows that parents feed children first, and mothers are likelier to skip meals to ensure other family members are fed (Dowler and Turner 2001). There is also no acknowledgement that other demands, values, and emotions may influence what and how much is eaten. For example, poor mental health makes planning difficult, poor physical health makes it difficult to stand at a cooker, addictions divert resources, or lack of motivation to cook because of living alone.  

The Capability to be Food Secure

In Hunger and Public Action, Dreze and Sen (1989) set out the capabilities approach and its links to hunger when arguing a shift from instrumental control over commodities toward a focus on human capabilities. They argued that it is means rather than ends that are important as ends operate in the immediate, whereas means allow for addressing needs now and in the future.  Thus, for them, “A more reasoned goal would be to make it possible to have the capability to avoid undernourishment and escape the deprivations associated with hunger (p.13)”.  In doing so, the approach acknowledges all four pillars of food security identified by the UN.

The four food security pillars include access, availability, utilisation and stability. While a narrow conceptualisation of access as affordability is acknowledged in the economic model, the other aspects are not. In the capabilities framing, access also comprises other means, such as the absence of legal or religious barriers or the presence of social networks through which food is given. Availability is the presence of food in the place where people are. If there is no food close enough to where people are, it will not be available regardless of cost. Utilisation, a vital component of the capabilities approach, involves knowing how and being able to process, store and cook food safely. It also includes knowing if certain things are edible or will cause personal harm; for example, they will not be poisonous, cause an allergic reaction or induce an otherwise adverse reaction. Utilisation also includes access to complementary inputs, for example, cooking equipment, fuel or electricity, sanitation, and water.  Stability means having all of these all of the time and is what offers security.  This means having national and local-scale policies and infrastructures in place to ensure food is produced or imported to meet population needs and provide people with opportunities to acquire the resources needed to access food. 

Resources in this context extend beyond money that can be exchanged for food to include other elements that enhance the capability of someone to be able to achieve food security.  We can think of money as a communicative resource that enables smooth exchange between buyer and seller. Money in the household context must be exchanged for its use value to be realised and then replenished. Social capital, although potentially less efficient than money, is also a communicative resource that must be replenished if used.  A second form of resource, assets, contribute their utility not by being exchanged but by being used.  Assets are both intangible and tangible. Intangible assets include but are not limited to health, knowledge, motivation, inventiveness, and know-how.  Tangible assets include things such as land or equipment, including cooking equipment.  Selling one’s cooking utensils may enable food to be purchased now, but the problem of how to cook food today and tomorrow arises instead and undermines security.  There are also place-based resources that enable food security and that support both communicative resources and assets.  Local resources that enable the replenishment of communicative resources include a local labour market that provides good jobs that pay sufficient wages for the time spent working and is open to all.  Linked to this is childcare that supports people to take advantage of that labour market while protecting their children. Community spaces and activities enable the development of social networks, as do opportunities to participate in social life.  Those that enhance assets include, for example, a foodscape that provides the diversity of food needed to live a healthy life and does so without bias and few limitations, a health and welfare system that protects people when they need support, an education system that enhances people’s knowledge and know-how, and safe outdoor spaces that facilitate good health.

The UN argues that all four pillars must be present for food security to be achieved and maintained.  Vulnerability to food insecurity arises when communicative resources are not replenished and assets and local resources are not maintained.  Sen clearly states that different people have different abilities to be food secure based on their unique circumstances, the resources they control, and their contexts.  Place plays a central role in the capability to be food secure.  Physical, social, legal, political and economic processes determine what is in a place and how resources are available to people to access and utilise food to maintain health and well-being. Geographical concentrations of people with few resources lead to the creation of unhealthy or barren foodscapes. An inability to socialise, linked to the inability to share food, leads to isolation. This isolation, in turn, increases social divisions and fear of crime. At the same time, anti-social behaviour that arises from feelings of anger that result from hunger and disadvantage reinforces this fear, leading ultimately to community breakdown. Thus, to increase the capability to be food secure, we must develop both people and places so that they can act in ways that ensure their food security.

FOOD AND POVERTY FUTURES

As the previous section argued, food security capability is complex, and it is not sufficient to focus only on access to food in the immediate.  Basic capabilities such as achieving or maintaining good health, being educated, and having the opportunity to participate in household decisions and community life are also needed (Burchi and De Muro 2012). In short, we must develop human capability, including in high-income nations.  This suggests several future challenges and needs that shape how we understand and act on this relationship going forward.

To know where to provide support, better data that captures these capabilities is needed.  As mentioned above, many wealthy countries collect food security data based on affordability.  While this data is only a partial picture of food security, it is made more partial by the lack of a fine enough geographical scale. Local-scale data linked to administrative units can use policy to target and repair the localities within which struggling people live, which is needed for intervention and decision-making. 

While we know that different approaches to addressing people’s food insecurity vary in their effects, for example, considerable stigma is associated with charity food parcels. People who use low-cost food clubs, food hubs, or so-called social supermarkets that are place-based report feeling more connected to their communities, increased diet diversity, and increased uptake of fruits and vegetables. Provider evaluations of voucher schemes for fruits and vegetables report dietary improvement and increased diversity. Children’s school meals and breakfast clubs are linked to children’s readiness and ability to learn.  There is a need to understand what other interventions would support and be acceptable for people who struggle to achieve food security.  There is also little systematic research examining how different interventions enhance access to the resources needed to achieve food security. There is a lack of research that systematically compares outcomes from other interventions.  This research would support those seeking to improve population health and well-being and increase food security to make informed decisions regarding services to introduce and support.    

But there are hungry people now. It is also quite likely that there will be hungry people who need emergency support in the future, even if we build capabilities. To that end, I have created a framework for thinking not only about how to transition people away from charity emergency food support but to provide them with immediate help when they need it urgently. The Food Ladders framework positions emergency support as the bottom rung. This should be immediate and temporary. It can be in the form of cash or food, although quite often, by the time people reach urgent need, cash may not be the right answer to ensuring they are fed. The ladder’s second rung is where the focus of most effort and support should be. This is the capabilities rung. The activity enhances people’s assets so they can acquire the resources they need to achieve food security. The final rung is the transforming rung. These are the activities whereby our food system shifts from one that is harmful to one that nurtures people. It could include a more cooperative form of market. It may be more local. It focuses on food that meets nutritional needs, self-organised effort, social connections and local prosperity.

To meet the sustainable development goals, household capabilities and the contexts that help shape those capabilities must be addressed.  A considerable body of research and innovation has focused on countries where food insecurity is recognised. Research and activity are also needed that consider how existing learning and innovation could be adapted for economically wealthy countries.

REFERENCES

Armstrong, B, King, L, Clifford, R, Jitlai, M, Jarchlo, AI, Meers, K, Parnell, C, and D Menasah 2023. Food and You 2—Wave 5. [Available Online  https://www.food.gov.uk/research/food-and-you-2/food-and-you-2-wave-5] Food Standards Agency. (Date Accessed 12 July 2023)

Auma, C. Pradeilles, R, Blake, M, and M Holdsworth 2019. What can dietary patterns tell us about the nutrition transition and environmental sustainability of diets in Uganda, Nutrients 11(2):3422  https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11020342

Blake, M K (2019) More than Just Food: Food Insecurity and Resilient Place Making through Community Self-Organising, Sustainability 11, no. 10: 2942. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11102942

Burchi, F and P De Muro (2012) A Human Development and Capability Approach to Food Security: Conceptual Framework and Informational Basis. [Available Online: https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/migration/africa/Capability-Approach-Food-Security.pdf], UNDP. (Date Accessed 14 June 2023).

Conconi, A, and Viollaz, M. (2018) Poverty, Inequality and Development: A discussion from the Capability Approach’s Framework, in BBVA OpenMind (eds) The age of Perplexity: Rethinking the world we knew. [Available Online https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/articles/poverty-inequality-and-development-a-discussion-from-the-capability-approach-s-framework/], Penguin House Grupo Editorial. (Date Accessed 14 June 2023).

Dreze, J and A Sen (1989) Hunger and Public Action, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dowler, E (1998) Food poverty and food policy. IDS Bulletin, 29(1), pp.58–65.

Dowler, E, and S Turner (2001) Poverty Bites: Food Health and Poor Families.  London: Child Poverty Action Group.

FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO (2022) The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022 [Available Online https://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/cc0639en] Rome: FAO. (Date Accessed 12 July 2023).

Nussbaum, M. (2011) Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach.  Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. 

Rost, S and J Lundalv, (2021) A systematic review of the literature regarding food insecurity in Sweden, Analysis of Social Issues and Public Policy, 201:1020-32.  https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12263

Rowntree, B S, (2000) Poverty A Study of Town Life, Centennial Edition (Reprinted edition), Bristol: Policy Press.

FURTHER RECOMMENDED READING

The following further reading elaborates and summarises the capabilities approach to poverty and food security and provides a valuable commentary on its implications and future directions.

Burchi, F and P De Muro (2012) A Human Development and Capability Approach to Food Security: Conceptual Framework and Informational Basis. [Available Online: https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/migration/africa/Capability-Approach-Food-Security.pdf], UNDP. (Date Accessed 14 June 2023).

Conconi, A, and Viollaz, M. (2018) Poverty, Inequality and Development: A discussion from the Capability Approach’s Framework, in BBVA OpenMind (eds) The age of Perplexity: Rethinking the world we knew. [Available Online https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/articles/poverty-inequality-and-development-a-discussion-from-the-capability-approach-s-framework/], Penguin House Grupo Editorial. (Date Accessed 14 June 2023).

Hick, R (2011) The Capability Approach: Insights for a New Poverty Focus, Journal of Social Policy, 41(2): 291–308. doi:10.1017/S0047279411000845