Food insecurity is not a competition.

Posted on February 9, 2023 by geofoodie

I give a lot of talks and interviews about food security. Last week I gave 2; the week before, I gave one; and at the beginning of January, I gave another. I am grateful that people what to hear what I have to say and that it is, hopefully, helping in the fight to get people to listen to the issues that people are facing around food security.

Food insecurity exists in wealthy economies where there is enough food to feed everyone, but it is not available to everyone. Food insecurity is not just something that people somewhere else experience, be they in war-torn or poor countries or places where there has been a disaster. I am not trying to diminish the experience and trouble people in these “other” places face. Indeed, their trouble is awful.

But food insecurity is experienced in bellies and in minds and in bodies. It is personal. Food Security becomes geographical when multiple people from the same place are similarly impacted.

Saying that support should go to the “most needy” creates an insidious competition. To get help, you have to prove you fit into this category. Many people don’t see themselves that way–there are always others we can point to who are worse off. Many don’t want to participate in that competition because of the stigma of failure surrounding it–you win but lose simultaneously.

Some who provide help get worried that they are not reaching the “most needy” and create all sorts of barriers and demands for proof. The logic is that if we give this thing to you and someone needier comes along, we won’t have any for them. At the same time, there are worries about “foodbank tourism”, where people go from location to location to get help. They have “won” the race to the bottom and are using this success as a survival strategy. And then are stigmatised and denied because they have successfully proved their need. Note that success here is encouraged and created by those most worried that the “most needy” won’t get what they need. In the meantime, people don’t get the help they need. Some of whom may indeed be the neediest.

This competition is also something that involves judges and competitors. You cannot be both, but you can undoubtedly become one or the other if your circumstances change. But who are we to judge? Food insecurity is experienced individually.

So what do I propose? Let’s stop with the competition. Mutual support recognises that giving and receiving help is not a competition and that everyone can participate equally and in multiple roles.

If you are interested in hearing more. The talk I gve in early January to Gather Movement is here:

Talk about food scapes and food support

The talk I gave about my Food Ladders approach to the EU Joint Health Initiative: A healthy diet for a healthy life can be seen here:

Webinar for @JPI_HDHL

The interview was included in a BBC radio 4 broadcast as part of the Inside Health programme. The interview is available here:

The radio show is really well done. It highlights the advantages of pantries. The women interviewed highlight the stress and anxiety of food insecurity, but also the belief that projects are not for them. Pantries, and now some food banks, provide fruit and veg, bringing in additional support to help people move on from their food services. People are also introduced to new food. These women also demonstrate just how capable they are. These women are not failures. They have strategies and capabilities. They want to feed their families well and can do so.

The data I discuss–and more analysis–is provided in this report I wrote. You can download and read the report here. It also provides some further detail about different forms of support.

Presentation for Gather Movement on Food Security and Asset-Based Approaches

Posted on January 23, 2023 by geofoodie

Presentation to Gether Movement

In early January, I gave a talk to Gather Movement about food security in the UK and how to embed asset-based approaches into food support for communities. Asset-based approaches (or Asset Based Community Development–ABCD) focus on and develop the resources (or assets) that are already within a community before going out to secure additional resources that might be needed to achieve outcomes desired by the community.

Gather Movement is a collection of charities and churches aiming to achieve transformation in thier communities.

After the presentation, there were reflections from food security experts, including Dr Dianna Smith from Southampton University and Danni Malone from the Trussell Trust.

The Right to Food

Posted on December 1, 2022 by geofoodie

I co-teach an MA module here at the University of Sheffield called Theories and debates in food security and food justice. One of the lectures is on the right to food. I asked twitter folk for some reading recommendations. These were very helpful. Thank You. I am sharing the slides that I prepared in this blog post.

We filled two hours just getting through slides 1-7. Many of the students had some previous knowledge about the Right to Food. I wanted to get into the different dimensions of the right, so we examined the language and objections to food as a right. We had a robust and wide-ranging discussion. It is a good topic to consider with students.

Many countries, including the UK, signed up to the UN Convenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which includes reference to the Right to Food (with definitions agreed in General Comment 12). Although the right to food is recognised and implemented in many parts of the world*, the UK and several other economically wealthy countries did not codify it into national legal frameworks.

Interestingly, one of the arguments against positioning food as a right concerns how we understand food (in)security in wealthy economic nations. Here, and quite explicitly, food (in)security is reduced to the ability to afford food. I have frequently argued that food security is tied up with income because we live in a capitalist society, but this is not a necessary relationship. Instead, it is contingent. Food security is not reduceable to economy because food and how we access and utilise it is also not reduceable to economics. Food is more than nutrients and calories that are commodified. Food is also about how we use it, how we know it, how we understand it, how we share it, how we eat it and other aspects that reflect our values and personhood. When we are food insecure, these other non-economic aspects and the wider resources we need to achieve these aspects are also in deficit.

Food as a right has been dealt a further blow in that the right to food does not appear as such in the Sustainable Development Goals. Not only do the SDG’s move away from a rights-based approach (although some are recognised in the SDG’s, such as the right to water), goals are also targets. You can miss a target, but you cannot violate a right. As illustrated in the slides below, the UK is failing to improve against many of the SDG’s. In some cases progress is replaced by a move backward, notably SDG2, which concerns moving toward zero hunger.

In Winter 2021, 3 out of every 10 adults in the UK was not food secure, but just 1 out of every 3 adults is food secure in some parts of the UK. It is likely that these figures are worse now with the cost of living crisis–a crisis underpinned by a lack of aspiration among ministers to ensure that we meet our goals combined with Brexit benefits that include a weaker pound and lower buying power. The London School of Economics has estimated that Brexit alone – before the effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine are accounted for – is responsible for a 6% rise in food prices. Post-Brexit, UK exports to the EU fell by 14% in 2021. The Centre for European Reform estimated that Brexit had, by the end of 2021, reduced trade in goods between the UK and the EU by 13.6% and left UK GDP 5.2% lower than it would have been had the UK stayed in the EU single market.

This is the structure of the module:

Week 1: Introduction, what is justice and what is food? (MKB)

Week 2: Food has never been secure. (RVJ)

Week 3: What is food security? (MKB)

Week 4: Embodying food security. (RVJ)

Week 5: How we have succeeded and failed in our attempts to achieve food security (MKB)

Week 6: No lecture, reading week

Week 7: Citizen responses for food security. (RVJ)

Week 8: Food as a right? (MKB)

Week 9: Climate Change and scales of responsibility. (RVJ)

Week 10: Food Ladders as a structure for community responses. (MKB)

Week 11: Wrap up (MKB/RVJ). Guest Lecture from Pamela Richardson Nwengya

*Countries that have incorporated the Right to Food into their constitutions include: Belarus, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Congo, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Fiji, Guatamala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Kenya, Malawi, Maldives, Mexico, Moldova, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Panama, Paraguay, Philippines, South Africa, Suriname, Ukraine, Zimbabwe. Others have given it explicit recognition as a goal or directive principle: Bangladesh, Burundi, South Korea, Gambia, India, Iran, Ireland, Myanmar, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Uganda, and Venezuela (see: See: https://www.fao.org/3/i3892e/i3892e.pdf).

SafeFood Presentation: Food ladders: a framework for moving beyond emergency food support

Posted on November 29, 2022 by geofoodie

In September, I presented my research to SafeFood at a workshop event they organised. The workshop was organised because they recognise that the cost of living crisis is a critical public health issue across Ireland. As the cost of living continues to rise, it is expected that the numbers experiencing food poverty will increase. Food is often the ‘flexible’ element in the household budget. This workshop explored the impact of the cost of living crisis on food poverty and what initiatives are taking place to support those experiencing food poverty. For more information about the workshop, visit https://www.safefood.net/events/hungr…

SafeFood presentation on food insecurity

There is a more extended report with further analysis of Food and You 2 data, that also discusses research evidence around interventions. The report also extends the food ladders to include a ladder for health.

The current state of food insecurity in the UK and why we should stop asking “what can people do?”

Posted on July 28, 2022 by geofoodie

I was invited to participate in yesterday’s BBC Radio 4 show Money Box Live. The show included people struggling to make ends meet and worried about what the autumn and winter will bring as the cost of living increases. Front-line service providers talked about what they see on the ground. It was an interesting show with a strong reminder of the struggle that people face. The guests told their stories with dignity, truth and openness. These stories are not, sadly, unique. I have heard them before. We are a wealthy country, yet this is where we are.

This is in a context that is illustrative of our current situation. Dad’s House, which is one of the interviews, is a bit worried about how they will meet the increased demand and continue to provide the great range of community support that is so needed. On the other hand, today’s news reported that the owner of British Gas, one of if not the UK’s major household energy providers, posted billions of profits and are paying dividends to shareholders. One of the interviewees told us, with clear anxiety, how difficult he was finding it to feed his family and how his energy bills have exploded in the recent months and are only set to increase further in the autumn and winter. This is appalling.

The interviewer, like so many do, asked me at the end, “What can people in this situation do?” I knew she was going to ask this question. I was encouraged not to be ‘political’ and just provide advice that households might be able to utilise. I understand where this comes from. There is a clear desire to be helpful and to give people encouragement.

And there are practical things individuals can do. My advice is: Ask your neighbours if they have any tips for how to manage. If you are part of a food club, ask others who are part of that. Share what you do with them. In my research experience, the people living at the sharp end have developed brilliant budgeting strategies and crisis management skills that are effective within the constraints imposed by the wider context and where they live. They know what it is like and have the answers. We should listen to them as they are the experts.

These strategies will help with the stretching, but people and money can only stretch so far. There is only so much elasticity. If the gap is too wide, the money won’t reach and the people will break. This is happening now. I fear for the winter.

When discussing wider contextual changes or ways to intersect with opportunities, that is where academics, service providers and industry experts can provide advice. Martin Lewis is an excellent example. Some of what he says will be relevant, and some won’t. Just take from his toolbox and tell your friends.

The point of this blog post really is to interrogate that question just a little bit more.

This question always makes me uncomfortable because I see it as individualizing what is now largely a social-political-economic problem. It somehow implies that people should be doing more to make their money stretch in this time of a cost of living crisis.

What I want to say in response to this question is:

Push back. Write to your government representative. Join a union if you can. Support the unions if you can’t. Organise one if your sector does not have one. This collective engagement is the opposite of individualization. If we collectively demand better wages and better working conditions, our lives will improve because that will become normal. If we stay quiet or divide ourselves, things will only get worse. Don’t believe the hype. Trickle-down does not ever work and failure is more common than success in business. Very few are actually, truly self-made. Believing you will be the one to succeed where others have failed is highly unlikely. Good on you if that happens, but in a socially just society, it should happen anyway if you have aspiration and drive, regardless of what wages are being paid. So why not live a better life along with your neighbours than suffer on your own? There are clear examples of people achieving individual success in places where the safety net works as it should and where wages and services are sufficient (see for example Sweden).

Individualisation is a neoliberal tactic and, as such, is just as ‘political’ as statements about collectivization. But individualization has become normalised and is perceived as a-political. It is absolutely not. Individualisation is also harmful. It breaks people down and isolates them. It makes them vulnerable to crisis. It creates division and then imposes hierarchies that stigmatise and cause shame. This settles into people. It makes them physically ill and contributes to a further cycle of food insecuirty.

Collective action, mutual support, and community are not the same as state control of everything. It is not communism as far-right cheerleaders would have us believe when they tell us we must sacrifice for the ‘common good’. There is no freedom in hunger.

I always find it ironic that those who dogmatically subscribe to neoliberalism make the arguments about sacrifice and common good. What they are saying is go it alone–survival of the fittest, where the fittest are those who have the most money. Most of whom were born into this wealth. I don’t see those who are advocating this stance making any meaningful sacrifice. Instead, they make more money while those who can bear it least carry all the risk and sacrifice (remember dividends while people starve).

Let us stop asking that question–what can people in those circumstances do? In the current context it is not appropriate. Let us instead ask what needs to change? How is the system creating the conditions of hardship and want? What can we collectively do about it? We are a wealthy country. We have the resources.

Everyday food security: Place-making through community organising in the UK

Posted on June 16, 2022 by geofoodie

Earlier this week (14 June 2022), I participated in a conference as a keynote speaker on urban landscapes in transformation, hosted by SLU Urban Futures in Sweden. Unfortunately, I had to attend virtually because of airline disruptions. It was a really interesting conference with excellent research focusing on how we might make more inclusive and sustainable foodscapes for all. This is the presentation I gave at the conference. Thank you for inviting me to participate.