My first food poverty blog series existed from 2016-2020 (i.e. mostly pre-Covid) and there were 21 blogs, several of them written by guests but mostly by me. They were written between 2014 and 2019 during the period when I was conducting research on food poverty in the London Borough of Barnet and the County of Sir Benfro (Pembrokeshire) in West Wales. The final report was published online in 2020 (https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/31672/) although several articles and other blogs had appeared by that time.
In 2023, I offered my services to the London Borough of Barnet which was then formulating a new Food Plan; I sent in written comments on early drafts. Subsequently I was invited to join Barnet’s Steering Group for the implementation of the Food Plan.
One of the aims of the Plan was to invigorate voluntary local bodies concerned with food and in 2023, the Barnet Food Partnership was born. This in turn generated a number of Working Groups, including a Food Security Action Group of which I became a member, but there was also activity around growing food and food education.
While not carrying out formal research as previously, I began to think of myself as more of an activist, involved in seeking to find ways to improve the food situation in the Borough, along with like-minded other activists. The Food Partnership formed a Committee which I joined and we met most weeks, aiming to move the Partnership, particularly in terms of food security, into new territory, away from food banks to different models of food aid. These stress the agency of people with ‘lived experience’, who are members of and have some say in how such organisations are run, as well as allowing for choice of food and low-price purchases.
In this new blog series, I’ll be talking about some of these developments, the aims of such organisatjons, why and how they succeed and what are some of the obstacles in their way. I’ll also be looking at the large terrain of voluntary organisations which exist from national to local level and are concerned with some aspect of food.
All of these developments are taking place against a backdrop of increases in both poverty and social inequality, lack of financial resources at the national and local authority levels which mean that benefits remain very low, and much work is often poorly paid and precarious. Meanwhile the demand for food banks has accelerated while the indices of well being such as nutritional scores, morbidity and longevity have worsened.
I’ll be looking at the army of volunteers who work in food banks and other forms of food aid and asking about the role of charity. Equally important is the food industry and the way in which surplus food is channeled into the charity sector, contributing to the companies’ claims of corporate social responsibility.
In short, then I hope that this blog will be of interest to both activists and to academics, as well as the wider public which often does not understand why so many people in this country and this borough fall into food insecurity.