Matthew Kessler
This is Feed, a food systems podcast presented by TABLE. I’m Matthew Kessler. Today, we return to Hunger on our Doorstep. 1 in 7 people are food insecure in the UK. Part 1 asks, what’s at the root of that? UK. Part two asks: what can be done?
For the rest of this year on Feed, we’re exploring one big question: how does change actually happen in the food system? In this episode, you’ll hear from advocates calling for government action to tackle hunger. But it can’t just be top-down. The people living with food insecurity need to be part of shaping the solutions—so they actually work.
That’s the case you’ll hear today.
Richard Kipling
Welcome to the second episode of our podcast ‘Hunger on our doorstep’. I’m Richard Kipling
Ruth Mattock
And I’m Ruth Mattock.
Richard Kipling
Last time, the importance of recognising the complexity of food insecurity, of involving those who are struggling to access good food in designing solutions, and of tackling the root causes of the issue, were all highlighted by the people we spoke to.
Ruth Mattock
In this episode, we’ll hear about some of the initiatives targeting food insecurity in the UK.
Dominic Watters
Instead of Farm to Fork, I've created the concept of estate to plate.
Glory Omoaka
Policymakers, you need to influence them to make decision. Thankfully, many of them are listening.
Ryan McShane
I've often thought that, you know, food can make people, and food systems can ultimately show people, show the best of people.
Part 1 - Vouchers for food
Ruth Mattock
When we think about those initiatives that get food to people, food banks probably spring to mind first, but there’s so much more going on.
Jonathan Pauling
We are seeing a sort of mushrooming of local voucher schemes. So small schemes are starting to develop across the UK.
Ruth Mattock
Here’s Jonathan Pauling, former CEO of the Alexandra Rose Charity, and now director of the Pesticide Action Network, talking about their fruit and veg voucher scheme, and how it was inspired by the work of a man called Gus Schumacher in the US.
Jonathan Pauling
He ran an organization called Wholesome Wave, and they'd been at the forefront of pioneering what they kind of call double value vouchers in the US. Food Stamps are a really large part of the welfare system there, but the food stamps themselves were being used in just general supermarkets and general shops, and quite often on food that wasn't doing people any long term good. And so he decided to come up with a scheme where he doubled the value of those food vouchers, but they were to be used in local markets to buy fresh fruit and veg.
Ruth Mattock
Jonathan saw an opportunity to implement something similar in the UK
Jonathan Pauling
Food banks have done an amazing job at addressing acute food insecurity, but by their very nature, because they rely on the surplus supply chain, the contents of an average bag from a from a food bank doesn't include much fruit and veg, and generally it includes processed and packaged food, and so we thought this was a different way of addressing food insecurity. But what was also intriguing was that it then put money back into the local food economy and supported the sort of healthy retail environment that we also thought was needed. We need access points to healthy food. We need more of them. We need the existing ones to survive and thrive. And so that money going back to support local food economies seemed like a wonderful circular benefit.
Richard Kipling
The voucher scheme was an idea that seemed to have a lot of potential - but could it be transferred to the very different context of the UK?
Jonathan Pauling
Originally Gus came from a family farming background and so he wanted that those vouchers used in farmers markets to support local farmers close to those urban centers, and to support sustainable agricultural practices as well.
And so when we looked at setting this up in the UK, we also looked about joining up with local and seasonal and organic or agroecological supply chains. But what we found was that those types of supply chains don't often set up in low income areas. Where they do set up, the producers doesn't meet the diverse cultural needs of local communities. The price point is much higher, and therefore the value of the vouchers don't go as far.
But also in focus groups, families told us that they wouldn't feel necessarily, that that was a shopping environment for them. They didn't feel comfortable, or they didn't feel welcome. But what they did say was that the traditional, London street market, was an area where they could access the diverse cultural produce that they liked. They could get value for money. They felt comfortable in that environment to be able to shop.
Richard Kipling
In different ways, access to food underlies all the interventions we’ll hear about in this episode. Especially early in life, not having access to healthy food can create huge issues, and tackling food insecurity amongst children has become a focus for action.
Part 2 – Focusing on childhood
Ryan McShane
I think because I was growing up in poverty, that and especially food poverty, and there was certain things that I was quite insecure about trying. Because I don't regularly eat that, I don't want to take a risk, almost. And I was quite undernourished, you know. And I was always, you know, underweight.
Richard Kipling
Food poverty and related issues can affect people in different ways at different points in their lives, and finding solutions to improve things for children is particularly important.
Ruth Mattock
Jonathan explains Alexandra Rose’s approach to support through the early years of life.
Jonathan Pauling
Early years model, I think, is a great example. So you can start on the project from when you're 10 weeks pregnant, and you can stay on the project until your child goes to school. And so what that does is that basically creates a sort of formative experience for that child where fruit and veg is the norm in their household. The number of times I hear the story repeated by different families that say, “The wonderful thing is, I can just, finally, I can just put a fruit bowl on the table and let my kids help themselves to fruit whenever they want.” And that's a luxury we all take for granted, like the fruit bowl. Everyone's got a fruit bowl, haven't they? Not these family. These families have to put food on a top shelf, and they have to ration it out to make sure that it lasts the week, and suddenly they have this extra cash to be able to buy a large amount of fruit and veg and put a fruit bowl out on the table which their kids can help themselves to. That's a massive transformation for them. They become advocates for fruit and veg.
Ruth Mattock
The charity is finding that the project is having big effects on children’s diets, and their relationships with food.
Jonathan Pauling
For example on our early years model at baseline, those children, only 7% of them are eating the government recommended five a day. By the end of six months, that's gone up to 64% so it's a huge growth in consumption of fruit and veg. On average, it goes up by three portions a day.
Richard Kipling
In her work as a Veg Advocate with the Food Foundation and with the charity YoMo in Glasgow, Glory has been teaching kids about food and cooking.
Glory Omoaka
I took them to the supermarket to pick what they want, what they like, and then we brought them back to the school kitchen. We prepared them, and then we ate together. So I found out that they were so happy eating it because they know they prepared it together. Some of them chose vegetables, then some of them chose unhealthy stuff, which I said “No" to. Like one of them said to me, I never eat vegetables, I never eat salad, but it's so nice. And I said, Why is it because my mom don't prepare them for me and and I said, why? Mom said they are expensive. People just eat to feed their tummy. They just eat to survive, not to nourish their body, and it's so sad.
Richard Kipling
For Glory, free school meals are a vital piece of the puzzle in relation to food access for children.
Glory Omoaka
They help a lot, because most parents don't have enough to make decent meal. But then, one square meal at school in a way relief parent. And they said a hungry man is an angry man. So a child that is hungry can never concentrate on his or her studies. And we want these children to flourish. Want them to excel. So how do we support them to achieve all this?
Part 3 – Food and culture
Glory Omoaka
If I buy, like yam or plantain. And then I make my tomato sauce. I can improvise, using that tomato sauce to eat my plantain, to eat my yam, to eat rice, or to eat what we call swallow. So that again, can save money for you, because if you eat out, eating out is just a one off, but if you cook your food at home, you are able to save some in your freezer for tomorrow.
Richard Kipling
I think the link Glory makes there is really interesting - because she has ingredients she’s used to and knows how to cook, she can take more control of what she’s eating and save money too. She also talks about how food culture can help create deeper understanding and links between communities.
Glory Omoaka
There are some communities that I participate, and we just bring recipes. We share recipes amongst ourselves. We share stories. And then you see people asking questions, like in my church, for instance, there are times we do something like harvest, and everybody just cook meal. And I find everyone liking it. and it's, you know, my African food. And I feel so happy. I feel that sense of belonging, that sense of acceptance, that sense of okay, you know, people, you know, accepting my own culture gives me joy as well.
Ryan McShane So I like seafood. I like partly that is again, around, you know, our amazing coastlines and our amazing, you know, fishing communities that ultimately go above and beyond to make our Scottish produce what it is. So for me, there's a wee bit of like patriotism there. How I like to eat is based on, mostly the people that are around me.
Effie Papargyropoulou We have examples of organizations on the ground.
Ruth MattockDr Effie Papargyropoulou, associate professor of sustainable food networks at the University of Leeds, talked to us about an initiative that tries to take people’s culture into account when offering them food.
Effie Papargyropoulou We have examples of organizations on the ground, again. Hamara and they have a cultural, culturally appropriate food hub. So what they're trying to do is they have a food pantry type of operation, and some of that food is supplied by local businesses that do source food from from different, you know, probably for different cultures. And when they have new members, they do a bit of a survey and ask them, what food would they like? How you know, what type of what are the staple foods that they use? What are the foods that they would like to have but they can't afford, they can't access, so they tailor that provision accordingly to what their community needs.
Richard Kipling
For Glory and others, the importance of culture and community in relation to food, is not only about eating together, but also through getting involved in preparing and growing food.
Ruth Mattock
There are lots of ideas and initiatives based on that link between producing food and eating food.
Part 4: from farm to fork
Glory Omoaka
Where I came from, we know the farmers, we know the markets and we know the seasons. So but here food can feel, you know, distance, like processed, distance processed, and then is disconnected from the earth.
Ruth MattockGlory expresses again the issue of disconnection of people from food production. It’s an issue that a range of initiatives are trying to address.
Effie Papargyropoulou
We have community supported agriculture type of schemes where communities will get involved in the growing of the food. And then they might have a veg box scheme, and they could purchase some fruit and vegetables. They are part of that food growing activity. So that's a lot has benefits beyond just the food security side of things. It has huge mental and physical health benefits. Being outside, being part of the group. It gives agency to communities, because they are the ones that are producing the food - the growing the food that they will consume. It offers opportunities for volunteering and skills learning.
Richard Kipling
From this perspective, culture and food links all of us who eat food to the people who make it, including through communities getting involved in supporting local farmers as well as by getting involved in growing themselves. For Ryan, this can take us from a place where food is a problem, to it being a source of pride and part of our identities.
Ryan McShane
I often talk about people that make Glasgow. That is our motto in Glasgow is that people make our city. And suppose I've often thought that, food can make people, you know, and food systems can ultimately show people, show the best of people. And I think if we really get that across. That food systems are integral to everything. And when it comes to food in our schools being placed in front of us, then every young person knows the process, the supply chain, who's involved, the money involved, the resources, the climate involved. Then, to really be a nation that recognizes what regenerative farming is - regenerative farming is about people. It's about planet, and it's about our climate. And I suppose if you're always looking at that context, then we can really take the farming industry and people, young people with us on that journey, and recognize that we're all in this together.
Jonathan Pauling If we want a healthier food culture and a healthier food environment, we need to grow and produce more of that healthy food, right?
Ruth Mattock
Jonathan feels that improvements in agricultural policy could make a big difference.
Jonathan Pauling
What better incentive could you come up with and then incentivizing people to produce, farmers to produce the type of food that the community, the wider community, needs most. And from my perspective, that's healthy fruit and veg, that's pulses, nuts. I think the amount of fruit veg that we grow in the UK has been declining, and that needs to be addressed if we want a healthy food culture and a healthy food environment, we can't rely on an importation of all of our fruit and veg. You know, there's food security risks as well to that.
Richard Kipling Effie highlights the importance of thinking carefully about the change needed.
Effie Papargyropoulou
By no means we should be advocating for cheap food. I think we should be advocating for affordable food and those that might be different things. So food production, the true cost of food production, is not what included in the price tag of food products at the moment. There are huge environmental costs, the huge cost that the farmers bear. Advocating for affordability is a lot better option than trying to make it cheaper food, and some of those transitions will have some initial costs. So that's where I mean about national level, policies can come and to remove some of those risks and to promote and financial incentivize those transitions.
Richard Kipling
We can recognise in the farming community many of the frustrations about feeling marginalised and disempowered that we hear from Dominic, Ryan and Glory. When those facing food poverty and producers have a chance to come together, Dominic senses common ground.
Dominic Watters
I spoke for the first time in front of farmers at the Oxford farming conference in January, and the feedback from what I shared about my council estate and as a single dad, was amazing. And farmers seem to deeply, deeply hear the pain that we go through to access fresh produce and fresh vegetables and meat and everything
Ruth Mattock
That feeling of connection encouraged Dominic to develop a project connecting these two communities.
Dominic Watters
Instead of Farm to Fork, I've created the concept of estate to plate, and farmers will have offered to back me in in providing subsidized produce to my estate shop. I've actually got a meeting next week with Jamie Oliver to make a step where I can take over the estate shop and provide fresh food and cooked meals to the most vulnerable and disadvantaged families together with school kids. And it would be a beautiful thing. I've got people from different cultural backgrounds, people on my estate and off my estate that that could help with the cooking, and there's different levels, because it would help the residents, but also the kids from other estates across Kent that traveled to school at the Academy here. If anyone listening to this hears my voice and connects with it, my vision is called Estate to Plate. You can directly fund it through my GoFundMe.
Richard Kipling
Issues like how we connect to food, where we’re used to shopping and where we feel comfortable shopping, all suggest that there’s a lot more to addressing food insecurity than dealing with the purely practical issues.
Ruth Mattock
And that brings us to a big theme people talked about - dignity, cutting through the stigma some people feel about getting food from places like Food Banks and empowering them to make choices about their food.
Part 5 – dignity and empowerment
Glory Omoaka
The dignity project is all about putting dignity at the front of everything we do in the food system,
Ruth Mattock
Glory talks about Nourish Scotland’s Dignity in Practice project, which seeks to pull together the different strands of empowerment and dignity into a coherent approach which those involved in tackling food insecurity can apply.
Glory Omoaka
Relating that to the food bank, like in the past, when you go to the food banks, they just hand you a bag, whether you want to sit there or not, don't care. But with Dignity project, we try to gather everybody around the world, to do workshop to teach these people how to treat people better, people who access food banks.
Richard Kipling
The project is based on five principles that relate to giving people control and choice around food and eating. It’s workshops workshops bring together people who design, deliver and take part in initiatives around food insecurity, to explore how to put these principles into action. You can find a link to their principles in the show notes.
Ruth Mattock
A focus on empowerment can also include opportunities to grow food. One project recently implemented in the Netherlands, in Almere near Amsterdam, takes an interesting approach.
Effie Papargyropoulou
It has been made policy, the planning requirement for households to produce, to use at least half of their property land to grow food. And it hasn't just been pushed down as a as a regulation, but it has been the households have been supported as well on making how's that going to happen? How are people going to start producing food? And that is not anticipating that they're going to produce all the food that they would need as a household. But it has to do with empowering the food consumers to become food citizens. So taking more agency over what we eat, how we grow it, connecting to that food production element that it used to be common, common practice to grow some food on your land.
Richard Kipling Not everyone has space to grow food – but, at a time when we’re ramping up house building – Could providing land for growing, and requiring households to get involved as a condition of moving in, be a way forward?
Effie Papargyropoulou: Everybody that moved in, they were not farmers just taking on these properties, they were just the general population, and through a community of practice, they learned. They experiment a lot, and this still is a process, and not everything worked. But coming together and taking agency and ownership and pride over their own food production, the are seeing now that it is given fruits, excuse the puns, that that's coming to fruition.
Ruth Mattock
We’ve heard how, in many places dignity and empowerment have become central to the provision of support around food.
Richard Kipling
And that links us back to that big issue from our first episode, about people being given a voice to affect change.
Ruth Mattock
As a Food Foundation Food Ambassador and former youth activist, Ryan both sees food as an area in which advocacy, especially by young people, can have a big effect.
Ryan McShane
it's heartening when you see younger generations who are actively working with folks like Jamie Oliver, you know, ultimately food ambassadors at the Food Foundation. Who are, you know, ultimately campaigning on sugar tax, you know, etc. These are big steps, you know, the big societal things. And we can continue to do that.
Richard Kipling
Glory talks about an upcoming meeting with her MP.
Glory Omoaka
I'm going to talk about the free school meal, especially. So if Scotland can extend the free school meal to year five or year seven. Why can't all nations do that? We should lobby these politicians and see how they can push this forward. Thank God is happening in Scotland. What about other places?. That's what I really want to push for when I meet him tomorrow.
Ruth Mattock
The importance and potential of engagement with policy is clear, but it needs to be reciprocated by willingness amongst politicians and policymakers to listen and make changes.
Effie Papargyropoulou
There's quite a lot talked about food insecurity in the UK. We're seeing a lot of that responsibility who needs to do something about that pushed down quite significantly, I would say, from a national level down, push down quite a lot to the local authority, regional governance level. And that falls to local authorities a lot of the time to deal with. And on the other hand, local authorities have reduced budgets. A lot of them face bankruptcy at the moment. And then there is a next level of pushing down that responsibility. I guess it has fallen to predominantly the third sector – organizations and community groups to deal with those pressures, and that lack of responsibility is leaving a big gap and is an emerging need to be addressed.
Richard Kipling
Despite these issues, Effie highlights some current initiatives which are starting to work on problems in ways which change the narrative around food, and address the issues of disempowerment and struggles for both producers and communities.
Effie Papargyropoulou
There's a lot of discussion about food as a human right, and we're trying to understand how that could actually exist on the ground, practically, what does that look like? And one example of that in the UK, I would suggest, is the example of the Hull Council, where they have put into practice the right to grow, which obviously is one part of that. They're not the same things. But they have managed to make it possible, or at least open up the way for public green spaces to be used for food production by communities themselves, so taking away some of those barriers. So in practice, an example linking those two of sustainable and regenerative agriculture and food poverty.
Ruth Mattock
There are so many layers to these issues, and to the solutions too. We’ve got this idea about pushing down problems to the local level that Effie spoke about. And we’ve got this idea from different people that things need to be looked at more holistically.
Richard Kipling
I think that really comes through in places where people are trying to link up action on food insecurity to services focused on other problems.
Part 6: Joining the dots
Effie Papargyropoulou
A lot of the time we see that these organizations do more than one thing, so they might have a food pantry, and next to they might have a Community Cafe, and that will bring more of a social element to that interaction. So a lot of these organizations work on building a community around their members. They might have programs to do with kids or elderly or different groups however they identify, whatever the local needs are. And they're very good these organizations of knowing their neighborhoods, their communities, and that's really good, because their responses are very much based on that.
Richard Kipling
Jonathan also picked up that point about linking different types of support and services.
Jonathan Pauling
We work with existing organizations locally. So in the instance of early years program that's a Children's Center, a Family Hub, a family center, or early years provider in a local area. Their aim is to engage with those families who are having the biggest challenges.
Effie Papargyropoulou
I would like to bring another example of an organization in Bradford. They're a network of charity organizations doing food hubs, food countries, type of activities. But they also have a Credit Union Savings Program, which is quite unique, So helping, for example, through that membership fee, some of that would go to access some groceries in the food pantry, but a part of it will go to a savings account, and then that helps people with debt and planning. So that's, that's another way of dealing with the bigger picture.
Ruth Mattock
Just as actions around food insecurity can link people into other services, food can also provide solutions to the issues those services are trying to deal with. Alexandra Rose is forging a link between healthcare and access to nutritious food.
Jonathan Pauling
Our other model is fruit and veg and prescription, which is working with people of all ages who are suffering from food related ill health. So that might be overweight and obesity, it might be type two diabetes, it might be cardiovascular disease, hypertension, which is high blood pressure, and quite often a combination of different ailments. And they also tend to go alongside issues around mental health, because people have got long term health conditions, they're living in poverty and they're living in substandard housing, and that all contributes to affecting their mental health as well. So the fruit and veg on prescription is working with social prescribers, GPs, practice nurses, to engage those people with long term health conditions and give them vouchers that they can use to improve their dietary quality.
Richard Kipling
Using support around food as a connection to other services that people might be missing out on really puts the issue of food insecurity into that wider context of people’s lives.
Ruth Mattock
And that link from healthcare to food too. But making those sorts of connections between issues can pose a challenge for policymakers.
Effie Papargyropoulou
A lot of these initiatives are very localize, are quite small scale. So scaling up some of those initiatives is quite challenging, and we don't always need to scale up. We don’t always need to make things bigger. We can learn best practices and share that best practice and see what works in each context. So we don't all have to do exactly the same, but we can learn from that. And in that scaling up, I think those organizations could use with some support, again, from the local regional level of governance. I think that's the biggest challenge that they're facing at the moment.
Richard Kipling
Ana Maria Narvaez, who we heard from in episode 1, summarizes some of policy changes Food Foundation believe are required.
Ana María Narváez
The Food Foundation has a manifesto that provides a road map of key policies that can improve access and affordability of nutritious food and shape healthy and sustainable food environments. And it goes from making healthy and sustainable food affordable. Stop the junk food cycle. Invest in children diets. Also provide all the necessary action to unleash the full potential of the food system.
You can find different specific policies such as: build on the success of the soft drinks industry levee. Require that the cost of healthy and sustainable diets are taken into account when setting benefits levels and the minimum wage. Support local authorities to enact their powers to improve local food environments. Provide free school meals to all children. And we have this big ambition of trying to get the government to commit to an ambitious horticulture growth plan.
Richard Kipling
You can find different specific policies such as: build on the success of the soft drinks industry levee. Require that the cost of healthy and sustainable diets are taken into account when setting benefits levels and the minimum wage. Support local authorities to enact their powers to improve local food environments. Provide free school meals to all children. Improve the uptake and increase of the value of the Healthy Start, that is this nutritional safety net dedicated for children and therefore in low incomes. We have this big ambition of trying to get the government to commit to an ambitious horticulture growth plan and improve the transparency by introducing mandatory public reporting from food businesses.
Richard Kipling
Meanwhile, Jonathan and Alexander Rose have plans to build on the success of their voucher scheme
Jonathan Pauling
We want to take the evidence base from our work and the work of others and try to influence the policy development. So exciting news is that government recently announced their plans for neighborhoods program, which is 2 billion of funding over the next 10 years for the 75 most disadvantaged communities here in the UK. And one of the interventions that they pre approved for the spending of that money locally is vouchers for healthy food and fruit and vegetable on prescription programs.
So policy makers are now aware of this work and aware of the great impact that it can have on the development of local economies and the health and well being of local communities. So we're working on the National Food strategy to try and influence that we're trying to influence around health and well being, health inequalities, public health grant. At the same time, we need to, we need to intervene a little bit more in the food system. We need to regulate and legislate for healthier food environments.
Ruth Mattock
We’ve heard about a lot of exciting initiatives, projects, ideas for the future, from some of the inspiring people working on them.
Richard Kipling
Let’s round off with some of their final thoughts.
Effie Papargyropoulou
I think it's really easy to get very overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenge, but I would like to finish in a more positive with a more positive message that taking a more active role - becoming food citizens, moving from food consumers to food citizens, and making that conscious choice, if we can, I think that can can bring a lot of benefits and rebuilding our communities. We are not individuals, we are community. So I think there's huge power in that, in our you know, using our political structures as well to to inform and influence how how things happen in our society, we have power to change things. So hopefully we can do that.’
Ryan McShane
There's a band in Scotland called the Skippinish, and that they recently did a song called, “The clearances again.” Some of the quotes are really bold. They’re like don't leave your communities behind, and don't let the clearances happen again, what they did previously, because they're ultimately feeling that again, and don't let political, you know, coalitions and you know parts of the political spectrum go one way and leave us behind.
Jonathan Pauling
Our ultimate goal is, you know, a food system and a food culture where everyone has access to healthy and affordable food. That's going to take a lot of time, there's a real urgent need, and we need to make some some considerable steps soon, or we're really going to find ourselves swamped by the health epidemic that's related to poor food and nutrition. We need to do something bold, and we need to do something soon.
Ruth Mattock
At every step in this story, the people we’ve spoken to have highlighted the importance of involving those experiencing food insecurity in the development of the policies that shape our food system.
Richard Kipling
And we’ve heard how people are coming together to address the issues we’ve discussed. But there’s also a view that coordinated, bold government action is needed to nurture and replicate these positive examples of change.
Ruth Mattock
These are just a few ideas that people are working to address food security in the UK are exploring. Over these two episodes of ‘Hunger on our doorstep’ we hope you’ve been inspired to find out a bit more about the food initiatives near you.
Richard Kipling
A big thanks to you for listening, and once more, our thanks and appreciation to the guests who contributed to the two episodes of this podcast. There’s more information about them and their work in the show notes and episode webpage, which you can find at tabledebates.org
This two part series was funded as part of the Agile Initiative Sprint project ‘Reckoning with Regen’ supported by the Natural Environment Research Council. This episode was written and hosted by Richard Kipling and Ruth Mattock.
It was edited by Matthew Kessler and produced by Richard Kipling, Ruth Mattock, and Matthew Kessler. Special thanks to the Food Foundation and the Agile Initiative team. Music by Blue dot sessions.