What Food Ladders Is and Isn’t.

Food Ladders is a way of thinking about community food provision. It aims to help structure approaches to building local food security, moving away from an individualistic, poverty-based approach. Food Ladders hopes to change how people understand food security and our local food systems. In doing so, resources and policies can be strategically developed to support the growth of resilient, food-secure communities.

Food Ladders is not, however, a step-by-step guide for implementing certain practical measures. Whilst such guides exist (and we are keen to recommend their use, particularly in Sustainable Food Places), we have identified Food Ladders as playing a separate role. Successful practical implementation requires commitment and buy-in from a wide range of stakeholders with a shared vision and understanding of the issues and context of their work. Food Ladders is a useful tool for generating this shared vision and understanding, as it gives a structure for introducing new ways of seeing local foodscapes.

Moreover, we are not proposing Food Ladders as a silver bullet. The focus of the model is local-scale, community food infrastructure. We believe cohesive and coherent local foodscapes greatly increase communities’ well-being, security, and resilience. However, we recognise that this is only one part of the picture. National policies have a large part to play in creating food security for communities: provision of universal incomes and services, sustainable funding of public infrastructure, and regulation of private markets. Similarly, private food industries, especially food retailers, have much power over our food system and local communities.

Traditional approaches to food insecurity see it as an inability to afford food. Such approaches focus on immediate solutions to hunger, often at the individual or household level, such as food banks or in a cash-first approach. This approach meets immediate needs but does very little to change people’s circumstances in the long term.

In contrast, Food Ladders form part of a social development approach, recognising food insecurity as a wider lack of resources and opportunities.