The UK Part II: The Rise of Food Banks

Since 2010, there has been an incredible explosion of food banking in the UK. While structural economic issues including stagnating wages and unstable employment have increased food poverty, the rise of food banks has been in large measure a response to need generated by the Tory government’s (Conservative Party) austerity initiatives. Welfare program reforms and punitive sanctions (in which welfare recipients are kicked off benefits for months at a time for not meeting cumbersome program requirements) have been key factors in driving up food insecurity and forcing people into food banks. (One nomenclature thing—UK food banks are roughly equivalent to US food pantries. They don’t have the large warehouse food banks as we do in the States with some exceptions as will be described below).

The rise of food banking is highly politicized. The media, the Labor Party, and anti-hunger advocates perceive it to be a consequence of cutbacks in the current Conservative Party government. When a Tory Member of Parliament (MP) attends the opening of a food bank, it often engenders enormous outrage. The liberal media and advocates see it as a collusion between the non-profit sector and the conservative government to shirk its responsibility to the poor. Tory MPs have been known to praise the growth of food banks, as an example of Britain’s compassionate nature, and have even called it “uplifting.”

The Conservative government has streamlined multiple welfare programs (such as unemployment insurance, housing assistance, and old age pensions) into a single program, called universal credits (UC). While UC was intended to address some legitimate issues, its roll out in parts of Britain has been enormously problematic, as beneficiaries are made to wait at least five weeks- and sometimes two or three months – to receive their checks, with no retroactive pay. As a result, there is great fear that landlords will evict many tenants this winter, causing a surge of homelessness. In addition, the housing portion of UC payments will now be made directly to recipients rather than to landlords, with many concerned that doing so will lead to increased homelessness, as recipients prioritize other expenditures over housing.

The conservative media for its part tends to call out food banks as enabling the “undeserving poor”, those it calls the scroungers and skivvers (freeloaders), to avoid a hard day’s work.

Types of Food Banks

The number of food banks in the UK is a political flashpoint, as evidence of the impact of austerity on the British public. Sabine Goodwin of the Independent Food Aid Network found some two thousand food banks in the country. Two thirds of British food banks are linked to the Trussell Trust, a Christian organization, which collects an upfront fee of roughly $2,000 per affiliate, and a smaller annual fee.  I was able to visit a closed Trussell Trust food bank in the town of Salford, just outside Manchester. The basic model works as follows:

Average Food Parcel at Trussell Trust food bank in Salford

·      Recipients must get a voucher from a health care provider, social service agency or other similar entity attesting to their need for surplus food. They can only get three vouchers in a six-month period (although Trussell Trust staff have said that as long as there is food available they will not turn anyone away, especially given the dramatic rise in demand). Each voucher is good for a three-day supply of food, based on the household size. The purpose of this voucher is to verify the individual’s need, ensure that they do not become dependent on the food banking system, and to some degree assure donors that their clients are not freeloaders.

·      Individuals coming into food banks often chat with volunteers about their needs, and get directed to other services that can help address the broader issues in their lives. Social service agencies will in some cases be in attendance to help direct clients to other services.

Trussell Trust Food Bank, Salford (These bins are ubiquitous)

·      Clients have limited choice over what they receive. Volunteers who run the food banks will often honor requests based on dietary preferences/ needs.  Clients receive pre-sorted bags of food, grounded in rough nutrition standards. There are variations of the standard food parcel, for homeless persons or for those who can only heat up water but don’t have stoves. Cans of baked beans seem to be the dominant item. The food package I viewed has a fair amount of cookies and other sweets in them, which volunteers perceive to be nice treats.

North Paddington Food Bank food supply

·      The food is donated by community members, and tends to be all pre-packaged or canned. Most food banks do not have refrigeration or the ability to handle perishables. Major supermarkets have bins in which shoppers can place their purchases on an on-going basis. Trussell has agreements with major supermarkets such as Tesco and Sainsbury to run campaigns once a year in which the stores will write a check for 20% of the value of the food collected. Clearly, these food drives are an inefficient way of raising food, given that donors are paying retail prices. But, they do create a framework in which donations are directed to local need.   

About one third of the food banks are outside of the TT network, some of which are linked together through the Independent Food Aid Network. Each food bank operates differently. Most require vouchers. Some do not, preferring to serve all persons and not creating further hoops for families in crisis to jump through. Some are tied to specific religions, as with Muslim foodbanks in the heavily immigrant town of Bradford in the northern part of England (Maddy Powers of York University documented that Muslim participation in food banks has been quite limited due to strong familial ties and the powerful stigma associated with patronizing them).

I went to the North Paddington Foodbank, located in a community center in an immigrant-rich London neighborhood. It ran in a very similar fashion to a TT food bank, providing bags of canned food donated by individuals, and requiring a voucher. What impressed me however was the attention that the director of the food bank, Tara Osman, provided to as many of the 60+ recipients that came in the door within a two-hour period as possible. She sat down with each of them to understand their situation and provided them with guidance on how to navigate their problems. In addition, a debt counselor was on location to provide financial counseling to the clients. 

The UK Part I: Scottish inspiration

Admit it. When I say Scotland, you think of beautiful scenery, golf courses, bagpipes, castles, the Loch Ness monster, guys in kilts, Braveheart (Mel Gibson in a kilt), and maybe a referendum to split off from the UK. Scottish food brings to mind deep fried Mars bars and haggis (sheep stomachs filled with sheep heart and other vegetarian delights). 

Well, get this. Scotland is at the cutting edge of food policy. I had the opportunity in early November to meet with food policy leaders and discovered that they are far ahead of our thinking in the U.S.

Following a UK-wide surge of food banks (see next blog post) over the past 7 years, the Scottish government and leading NGOs Nourish Scotland and Menu for Change (part of Oxfam UK) among others have taken some very interesting steps:

In 2015, the Scottish government commissioned a working group on food poverty to make recommendations to the government on future actions. It issued a report in June 2016, entitled “ Dignity: Ending Hunger Together in Scotland.” “The Dignity Report,” proposed that the solution to food insecurity be grounded in a right to food approach, and that the government seek to meet the UN-mandated Sustainable Development Goal of ending hunger by 2030.

Most importantly, the report lays the groundwork for moving away from food banking. It asks, “ How can society’s response to food insecurity, and especially hunger, be grounded in dignity?” The report goes on to explicitly exclude emergency food aid from a dignified anti-hunger approach: “the right to food is understood as a matter of justice rather than charity.”  It lays out four core principles to a dignified approach to food insecurity:

·      People who have direct experience with food insecurity must have a seat at the table in running programs and centers related to food security;

·      A dignified system is one which recognizes the social and transformative value of food to the community;

·      Impoverished persons should have opportunities to contribute through volunteering, producing food, learning new skills, or sharing their existing skills.

·      Impoverished persons should ensure that as far as possible people are able to choose what they eat.

Finally, the working group recommended that the Scottish government only fund groups that “demonstrate how its approach promotes dignity and is helping to transition away from emergency food aid as the primary response.” The Scottish government has moved forward with this recommendation.

People's Palace in Glasgow

The Dignity report is part of a compelling narrative in Scotland – that everyone should lead a decent life and that the government has a central role in guaranteeing that decency. There are some great examples of how the government is supporting these efforts in civil society:

·      A network of 43 community cafes exists in Edinburgh, some  neighborhood-based and others supporting specific sectors of society, such as autistic children. The National Health Service provides funding to support the network that links these cafes, as well as many other projects that build social capital.

·      The Scottish government funds organizations to transition away from a charitable approach through its £1 million per year Fair Food Transformation Fund. It gives grant of £20,000 per year and up.

·      The National Lottery supports Menu for Change in leading an action-learning project in three Scottish communities to assess the effectiveness of community-based strategies to end food insecurity.

·      Through the support of the faith community, the Poverty Truth Commission cultivates the leadership of impoverished persons to speak up about their lives as well as to mentor civil servants about the realities of living in poverty. One of their accomplishments was to convince the National Health Service to offer a free hotline for individuals needing to speak to them about their benefits rather than charging them 24 pence per minute. One Poverty Truth Commissioner that I met said it had cost her £8 (about $10) for a phone call!

The Scottish context has been inspirational in its desire to close the Pandora’s box of food banking. I note a real urgency in the tone of advocates, as they remain fearful that food banks could become a permanent feature of the Scottish landscape. They see their existence as undermining human dignity and the government’s responsibility for ensuring the right to food.  Advocates, the government and even food bankers are looking for an exit strategy to ensure that people’s food needs are met in a sustainable and dignified way.

Moving into 2018, the Scottish government is moving forward with a Good Food Nation Bill. This cross-cutting piece of legislation includes numerous policy prescriptions and would codify the right to food in Scottish law. It would establish a principle of sustainability into law, as well as create a citizen commission to promote transparency and community involvement.

HUNGER INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX POWERPOINT PRESENTATION

This 25 minute presentation contains six video PSAs from the main anti-hunger organizations in the US and the UK touting their corporate linkages and top-down approaches, as well as a powerful video about the colonizing effects of soda. Feel free to show it and discuss it at your meetings.

Food Bank Board of Directors

Are food banks social service agencies or agents of social change? One indicator is who's on their boards of directors. We did some research in September 2017 and found data on 79% of food banks. Here are two spreadsheets. One is the raw data for each food bank (my apologies for typos- this is based on unpaid labor), and the second file shows which Fortune 1000 companies or their privately-held or internationally-held equivalents have their employees on food bank boards. Read the new Food Economy article on this topic as well.

Reflections on Capital Area Food Bank's No Junk Food Policy

In her recent article, Pound Foolish, in the Stanford Social Innovation Review,  the former CEO of the Capital Area Food Bank, Nancy Roman writes about her experiences convincing manufacturers not to donate unhealthy foods to the food bank. She also discusses how the organization reframed its evaluation indicators away from just pounds distributed to:

“We now measure the following: pounds of produce distributed per person; pounds of wellness food distributed; wellness pounds donated by retailers; wellness pounds ordered by partners; and vegetable consumption among students and families, to gauge the success of our school-based markets.”

It is wonderful to see such an article discussing this critical issue. I applaud CAFB and Ms. Roman for inverting the power relations between the food industry and food banks, demonstrating that food banks are not beggars, but providing a service to food manufacturers by taking their food off their hands. The food industry receives many things for their excess food: reduced garbage dumping costs, tax credits, earned media, and the ability to continue with their business model without confronting the challenging moral dilemma of throwing out edible food.

It has long been my contention both that food banks need to turn the tables on the food industry to stop taking their garbage, as well as to shift away from measuring their poundage as an indicator of their accomplishments. From my perspective, poundage is a measurement of a logistical success but a strategic failure to prevent hunger in the first place.

CAFB’s new indicators are a step in the right direction. I agree it is better to be counting how much kale rather than the number of Coke bottles you give away. At least CAFB, like most food banks, is not touting the distribution of toxic foods as proof of its fight against hunger.  

Yet, these new metrics don’t challenge the fundamental contradiction of food banking: that you can’t food bank your way out of hunger. Food charity is necessary in 2017, but far from a sufficient approach. Until the food banking industry embraces this contradiction in its programming and moves toward fundamentally changing the way it does business away from a transactional approach, it will never solve the hunger problem, but only cause collateral damage to the dignity of the poor and our collective ability to establish food as a human right.

On one hand, reducing the distribution of junk foods to the impoverished can only contribute to improving their health, reducing their medical bills and allow them to live healthy and productive lives. On the other hand, just measuring success in terms of good food distributed does not really get at the crux of the problem. If the old adage that you get what you measure is accurate, then feeding the vegetable need is still feeding the need. It is still a medical model, treating hunger with doses of albeit healthier food, rather than going upstream to prevent hunger in the first place. Food banks with their enormous resources and outreach capacity (46 million clients and 100 million volunteers and donors per year) can and should be doing much more.

As much as I admire Capital Area Food Bank’s refusal to accept and distribute soda and sheet cakes in the District of Columbia, it is a partial answer begging for systemic action. During a recent visit to Baltimore where I spoke at Johns Hopkins University, I was told by multiple sources that the Maryland Food Bank (which serves the entire state except for Prince George’s County), has seen a dramatic rise in the amount of junk foods it is being offered by local food industry actors. Like a river blocked in one place, the water – or sugar sweetened beverages in this case- simply flows around the blockage, making its way downstream into the refrigerators of food bank clients.

Instead we need structural solutions to reduce the over-production and dumping of disease-producing foods on the impoverished. Feeding America is the best entity that can work with the food industry and food banks to develop a coordinated refusal to accept these foods. Likewise, it is high time we eliminate the tax credit that the food industry receives for donating unhealthy foods, such as sugar sweetened beverages. Tax credits for toxic foods is simply bad public policy.

Reflections from the Road October 2017

Tacoma Washington was the site for the third iteration of the Closing the Hunger Gap conference. The largest one to date, this event brought together 600 food bankers and others to discuss how to move from charity to solidarity.  Having attended all three of these meetings, I have seen hat over time attendees are taking on meatier questions about the very model of food charity. While four years ago they were discussing the side programs that food banks operate in economic development or food production, they are now talking about the inherent racism of food banks and how that oppression can be addressed. They discussed the class and racial disconnect between food pantry/food bank employees and boards and their clients.  One thread throughout the conference was whether anti-hunger groups should take money from hunger-causing corporations such as Walmart. Farmworker advocate Rosalinda Guillen was clearest in her urging of groups to stand up to Walmart and collectively refuse their grants. Malik Yakini gave a rousing speech about the roots of hunger in oppression and the capitalist economy: He noted: "You can’t be anti-hunger and pro-capitalism.”

Each of the major university systems in California (Cal State, community colleges and Univ. of Calif.) have an advocate working to reduce student hunger. They are engaging in some very sophisticated and high-level action at the campus and statewide levels, including facilitating student enrollment in CalFresh (SNAP).

East Coast

I had the good fortune to meet two amazing Witnesses to Hunger: Tianna Gaines from Philadelphia and Kim Hart in New Haven. These women are powerful advocates for improving the well-being of families living in poverty. Kim emphasized the importance of living wage jobs over being on SNAP or having to rely on food charity. “I could get a job at McDonalds but would still need assistance.”

Kim Hart

Check out the New England Food Vision. It lays out a picture for how the region could produce half of its food by 2060 while ensuring the right to food. Its co-author, Brian Donohue and I gave a joint talk in Western Massachusetts for Berkshire Agricultural Ventures.

Brian Donohue expounds on the New England Food Vision, Sheffield MA

Morocco

Yellow pomegranates for juicing in Casablanca

I had the good fortune of being invited to participate in a dialogue about food security in the Middle East and North Africa hosted by the Hollings Center and the University of Central Florida. Held in Casablanca, Morocco, the dialogue brought together about 25 academics, government officials, businesspersons, and NGO staff from across the US and the Middle East to discuss the most pressing challenges to food security in the region. It was a fascinating lesson to an incredibly complex topic. Some highlights:

§  The region is facing a great demographic shift, as the population will go from 400 million to an estimated billion persons. Simultaneously, the agriculture sector has declined as a share of GDP from 25% to 11% in recent years.

§  Climate change, land degradation, labor shortages, urbanization, and water scarcity (80% of water usage in the region is used by agriculture) are all constraining factors on the ability of the region to grow food for its burgeoning population. By one estimate, agricultural output could decline by 20-40% by 2080 because of climate change.

§  Poor infrastructure has resulted in a loss of up to 40% of food grown in the region.

§  Conflict is integrally linked to food insecurity. In Yemen and Syria, 70-80% of residents are food insecure.

§  Corrupt governments limit the ability of the public sector to be a strong presence for rural and agricultural development.

§  The region is one of the most dependent on food imports of any place in the world, making it more vulnerable to price spikes as seen in the 2007-08 food crisis.

§  The triple burden of food insecurity, obesity, and micronutrient deficiencies are prevalent in many parts of the region, such as Egypt.

I learned of three very divergent approaches to addressing food insecurity in the region.

§  The World Food Program has developed a school lunch program in Tunisia, based on a Brazilian model to source 30% of the food as locally as possible, starting with neighborhood gardens managed by parents.

§  The High Atlas Foundation works with rural communities in Morocco to develop organic supply chains for produce such as figs, dates, and walnuts for European markets.

§  The Saudi company Almarai has purchased over 17,000 acres of land in Arizona and California to produce water-thirsty alfalfa to feed dairy cows located in Saudi Arabia. It is part of a broader plan to secure a stable food supply for the heavily-import dependent country. 

An Open Letter to FRAC and Feeding America

October 2017

Jim Weill                                                                                Diana Aviv

Food Research and Action Center                                    Feeding America

Dear Jim and Diana:

I’ve been to your joint anti-hunger policy conference five or six times over the years. It’s been remarkable how it has grown. Congratulations. It has become a great contribution to the anti-hunger sector, as the prime gathering for leaders in the field to learn what’s happening in DC, gain new skills, and how to affect public policy at multiple levels of government.  I didn’t make it to the 2016 event, as I was in DC the week before for a federal grant panel, and couldn’t squeeze in an extra trip. I heard that it was much better than previous events, as it focused on a broader set of issues than in the past.

Here’s an idea for how to make it even better.

Open it up.

I’m sure your evaluations must have brought this up, but frankly, the event has been too controlled, too top down. I know you have a lot of issues to cover in a few days. But, as the main gathering of anti-hunger groups, there needs to be more opportunities for sharing and mutual learning. You’ve been leaving a lot of issues off the table over the years. The field would be healthier if there were a forum to discuss them in earnest.

So, here’s my suggestion: Let anti-hunger groups in the field set the agenda, at least partially. At the 20 national conferences that I organized while at the Community Food Security Coalition, a planning committee comprised of staff and Coalition members set the agenda. At least three quarters of the workshops were the result of proposals from attendees (which were reviewed by a group of staff and committee members).

It’s probably too late to put out a request for proposals for workshops for the 2018 event. But it should become a permanent part of events for 2019 and beyond.

For 2018, why not let half a day be dedicated to a modified open space format?

I know it’s hard to do with 1,000 attendees, but there are ways to get attendees to propose sessions before the event and to combine them to fit the number of breakout rooms you have. It’s work, but it’s doable. There are lots of conference planners who could help you with it. I recommend Tim Merry. You’ll find the attendees energized from being able to discuss their most pressing issues.

It’s also a great way to keep the camel’s nose in the tent. After all, the way that you have controlled the agenda so tightly has resulted in blowback. The inability to discuss issues of concern to the hunger movement at your conference led to the creation of the Closing the Hunger Gap conferences, the mini-revolt of the Demeter Network, and frankly my book, Big Hunger. From a purely Machiavellian perspective, opening up the conference to audience leadership is a great pressure valve.

While we’re talking about opening up the conference, I would encourage you to provide more scholarships and opportunities for participation by more people affected by hunger, more food bank clients, food pantry leaders, and SNAP recipients. You both have deep pockets and can make this happen.  The need for greater grassroots participation in these troubled times is paramount.

So, I hope you take this suggestion in earnest, as a constructive critique, that will be a very positive step in building a more resilient and powerful anti-hunger movement.

Sincerely,

Andy Fisher