Turning Food Provision Threat Into Opportunity

Will people and policy makers use the lessons learnt from the Covid-19 pandemic to transition towards more sustainable practices of food production and consumption?  

Not a Corner of Society Untouched

It’s no exaggeration to say that the Covid-19 pandemic has presented huge challenges across every part of society – from education to employment, healthcare to welfare, environment to transportation. Not a corner of society has remained untouched by the fear and more often than not, the material harm inflicted by Covid.

And of course, the food production and distribution system has been no exception.

But as a version of normality returns – the ‘new normal’ – what’s the legacy of the pandemic in the context of food provision, and what might the future of food provision look like? 

How will systems shocked and stress tested to breaking point, and sometimes beyond, reshape and reconfigure? 

Might the ‘bounce back’ present new opportunities to create a kinder, fairer, more equitable, more environmentally friendly future when it comes to food provision? And again, what might that future look like? 

Or will recovery struggle to reach escape velocity and be destined to repeat and recycle the poverty, food waste, and waste pollution of the past? 

A new paper Bouncing back to “normal”? Food Provision Disruptions in the UK and Transient Opportunities of Systemic Level Sustainability Transitions by Steffen Hirth, Filippo Oncini, Frank Boons and Bob Dohertyby explores whether disruptions ‘have led to fundamental, incremental or no change at all’, and discusses food poverty and waste problems in the context of food support (FSP) and on-the-go (OTG) provision in the UK.

An Imperfect Past

As the paper makes clear, even before the pandemic, food poverty, food waste, and plastic waste have become increasingly visible and concerning issues the world over.

In the UK, years of austerity, layers of clumsy social security reform, benefit sanctioning, and the growing unaffordability of basic foods has seen a burgeoning number of food aid providers step in to support the hungry, with food insecurity now affecting 16% of the UK population. 

Over the same period much of this charitable food provision has come from food surpluses created in the booming OTG sector and offered as donations that, ‘In order to avoid food waste, are used for FSP, mainly through third sector organisations such as food banks’.

In fact, as the authors note, FSP has relied on OTG sector food surpluses.

‘It is not a provocation to say that an emergency response was in a sense afoot before COVID19, as thousands of charities were already providing food support to families all over the country,’ write the authors. 

Greater Manchester Poverty Action (GMPA) alone mapped more than 200 food support providers active in the county, each expert, experienced, and knowledgeable in stocking, managing, preparing, and distributing groceries or cooked meals with the help of a small army of professionals and volunteers.

And of course, as the OTG industry has grown, so too has the impact of food waste and packaging waste on sustainability and climate change.

An Imperfect Present

As the ‘lifestyle that was the basis for food OTG’, locked down at home when the COVID-19 crisis hit, the government, local councils and the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector (VCSE) quickly stepped in to provide expert support to mitigate the disruption to charity food provision. 

A job, largely well done, as the paper notes: ‘From an organizational point of view, it is undeniable that the emergency response was overall effective and arguably “essential” for staving off even greater misery.’

Essential too in offering the researchers an opportunity to ask whether, in seeking to alleviate short term poverty reduction, FSB’s growing reliance on OTG had actually created more problems than it solved through, ‘single-use packaging, resource intensive food surpluses, and charity instead of poverty reduction.’

Rather than perpetuating the FSP and OTG relationship, so often presented as a win-win ‘capable of improving resource efficiency and environmental sustainability while addressing the needs of the most disadvantaged’, might a new normal present new opportunities to ‘transform socially or ecologically unsustainable regimes?’

A Perfect Future?

It would seem not unfortunately.

Nearly 18 months on from the first wave of Covid-19 it appears, somewhat dispiritingly, that the on-going nature of the crisis has undermined any, ‘long-term systemic transitions towards more just and sustainable practices of production and consumption’.

With FSP and OTG proving themselves essential, resilient and intertwined, the paper concludes that only ‘strong policy interventions’ will prevent that relationship continuing as was post-Covid.

‘A system doomed to fail,’ write the authors, as society and policy makers especially fail to seize this unexpected opportunity to upgrade food systems to, ‘the sustainable practices that address the root causes of social and ecological problems.’