Kevin Higgins, Advice NI – Written evidence (FPO0020)

We welcome the more holistic perspective of linking food, poverty, health and the environment.  These elements are interrelated and interact in ways that can either compound the problems or provide the solutions.  Considering them collectively is the only way we can genuinely tackle the root causes rather than simply the symptoms.

Food insecurity can take two forms: insecurity resulting from the unavailability of food i.e. we simply can’t produce enough to feed ourselves; insecurity resulting from the inaccessibility of food, i.e. the food can be produced but we can’t get access to it for whatever reason, often financial.

Never before in human history have we been able to produce such an abundance of food.  We have more than enough to ensure that not a single person ever goes hungry.  Therefore, the unavailability of food is not the issue.

The issue then comes down to accessibility.  While hunger and famine have always been with us in some form or other, in more recent times it exists because of economic inequality and injustice.  Africa, for example, is an incredibility resource-rich and bountiful continent.  But the aftermath of colonisation along with contrived and crippling debt has left it devastated by a host of socio-economic problems, including famine and hunger.  For the last hundred years or more, the West has been largely protected from food poverty.  The majority of us have experienced times of plenty, with few suffering from malnutrition or starvation.

The question begs to be asked: why, now, in the early twenty-first century are we seeing a level of food poverty that has resulted in the proliferation of foodbanks, the demand for which can barely be met?  The evidence for this is widely available, for example, from the Trussell Trust[1], Fareshare[2] and the Child Poverty Action Group[3].  The need for foodbanks is a deeply disturbing and retrograde step for our society.

The answer is obvious: austerity, especially the welfare cuts.  Austerity is a policy choice, it’s not an inevitability.  Current government policies are choosing to take more money and more public services away from ordinary people.  Welfare ‘reform’, cuts to benefits, the benefits freeze, cuts to education and health services, the low-wage gig economy, all of these policies are driving people into destitution: foodbanks, rent arrears, debt, evictions and homelessness, not to mention the impact this hardship has on physical and mental health, on family relationships, on the most vulnerable including children.  Austerity is taking money out of people’s pockets, leaving them with less and less to live on.  It’s no coincidence that in areas where Universal Credit had fully rolled out, use of food banks has increased by 52%[4].

Meanwhile, little or nothing is done to recoup the £billions lost each year to tax debt and regressive taxation policies.  Austerity is discriminate, it’s targeted at those of us who can least withstand it.

The central question of this inquiry, how to make a healthy, sustainable diet accessible and affordable for everyone, is a problem too deep-rooted and too pervasive to be addressed by tweaking the system so that it’s a little less painful.  Because the problem is complex with multiple component parts (food, poverty, health, environment and policy), it cannot be tackled using simple solutions.  Rather it needs solutions that recognise the complexity.

Foodbanks alone are not a solution.  Apart from being a short-term fix to prevent immediate hunger, the best they can offer is evidence that something’s wrong and that austerity is an outrage.  Charity alone is not a solution.  People have a human right to food and a society with chronic food poverty has to address that problem in ways that don’t expect those in need to take handouts.

Healthy eating and healthy lifestyle programmes alone are not a solution.  These programmes certainly do have a role in raising awareness.  But they can imply that ‘poor’ people are living unhealthy lives because they don’t budget properly or because they choose not to eat good food or because they don’t know any better.  These programmes tend to ignore the fact that healthy clean food such as organic produce and fresh fruit and veg is much more expensive and out-of-reach for people on low incomes than processed high-sugar-high-fat-high-salt foods.  For too many people, eating healthy is beyond their budget despite being aware of what’s healthy.

Holiday hunger schemes alone are not a solution.  They give valuable respite to parents during the long summer holidays and they ensure children have something to eat but long-term they are an indicator of a society with deep problems.

Food waste is a huge environmental problem, not to mention a travesty when so many are going hungry.  The idea that the food supermarkets would ordinarily waste is instead sent to foodbanks, on its own, is not a solution.  On the surface, it appears to be a tidy solution and it does have flaws.  When it comes to food waste, we should remember that reducing waste is the optimal situation.  Reducing food waste should be all our responsibility and more work is needed to make that happen and to raise awareness.

There is ample research available from academics, C&V sector organisations and public bodies on the links between poverty, food insecurity, health inequalities and the sustainability of food production.  Unfortunately, this research isn’t being acted upon and isn’t being used often enough, or deeply enough, to inform decision making.  We have many problems but we have solutions to all of these problems.    The real question is whether we have the political will.

A range of solutions, operating symbiotically, can go a long way towards making a healthy, sustainable diet accessible and affordable for everyone.  Some of these solutions might be:

• Local authorities have a role:
• Councils could develop local food markets, involving all residents, establishing urban gardens, permaculture initiatives and allotments where food is grown alongside training programmes in horticulture, food nutrition and cooking.  Low-cost veg boxes could be provided and consumer food cooperatives could be set up to sell the produce grown.   In more rural areas, this same work could be carried out in partnership with local farmers.  Sustainable Food Cities[5] has multiple projects addressing food poverty which have been developed in consultation with local communities.
• Councils could fund projects to educate residents about reducing food waste.  And they could recycle our food waste, not through using landfills or incineration, but through composting and anaerobic digestion with the resulting compost used as fertiliser – possibly on the urban farms and gardens, and on farming land.  An example of this solution in action is Fife Council in Scotland[6].
• It’s entirely feasible for islands like Great Britain and Ireland to be self-sufficient in producing healthy, affordable food in an environmentally sustainable way.  The agri-food industry and industrial farming practices are at the core of why this shift hasn’t already happened.  Our current food production system is disproportionately industrialised and focused on meat production, with more arable land used in growing crops for animal feed than growing food for human consumption.  There’s also a heavy reliance on chemical fertilisers and pesticides, and highly competitive markets that give the farmer a poor return on his/her investment.  We could swing the pendulum to alternative farming practices where we eat less meat, grow more food for human consumption, use compost for fertiliser and natural processes to protect crops from pests.  These changes would create a more sustainable food production system that would be healthier for us and our environment.  Having localised food markets would remove farmers from the aggressive free market system and reduce food miles at the same time.  Regenerative farming techniques[7] are one approach to making changes in farming which can help reverse climate change, address food poverty and provide us with healthy, clean food.
• Producing food sustainably works hand-in-hand with tackling food insecurity and dietary health; e.g. an urban garden; run by residents; they become more knowledge about growing food and eating healthy; they use the compost from food waste to fertilise their plants; they sell their healthy, fresh produce locally at low-cost; it’s not a hand-out or a hand-up, it’s empowerment.
• Public procurement can become part of the solution:
• Tenders can be written to include greater social value and benefit.  For example, hospitals and schools procure the food to provide meals to patients and children.  If they were to work with local food growers and producers, the food could be provided locally.  This would have a number of benefits: less food miles, boost to the local food economy, patients and children eating a healthier diet of fresh food locally produced.  An example of public procurement working in this way is the Rafael project in Enniskillen hospital.
• Government could implement changes at a national policy level:
• Roll back on social security cuts for low income households both in and out of work.
• End austerity.
• End the benefits freeze.
• Introduce a living wage for all workers.
• End zero-hours’ contracts and insecure jobs.
• Incentivise sustainable farming practices, smaller growers and urban growers, rather than the big players in the agri-food industry.
• Introduce progressive tax policies.
• Provide additional funding to HMRC to specifically focus on gathering the tax debt.
• Promote the use of social value in public procurement.
• Tax processed food products containing high salt and saturated fat, driving up their prices and making them less attractive to buy, and helping to discourage the production of such products in the first place.  This would have to be done simultaneously with local food market projects so that the cheaper processed foods are replaced with cheaper fresh, nutritious products.  The taxes collected could be used to fund the local food market projects.

Advice NI Policy Team

Kevin Higgins (Head of Policy)

11 September 2019