Food support provision in COVID-19 times: a mixed method study based in Greater Manchester

Filippo Oncini

doi:10.1007/s10460-021-10212-2

Abstract

COVID-19 has brought to light the severity of economic inequalities by testing the capacity of the poorest families to make ends meet. Food insecurity has in fact soared all over the UK, with many people forced to rely on food support providers to not go hungry. This paper uses a unique dataset on 55 food support organizations active in Greater Manchester during the first COVID-19 wave, and 41 semi-structured interviews with food aid spokespersons and stakeholders, to shed light on what they overcame, the complications and drawbacks of the food emergency response plan put in place. The results indicate that food aid organizations that remained open were surprisingly effective despite the growth in user demand and the decrease in volunteers. However, the necessity to maintain a timely supply food at all costs came with important drawbacks. The lockdown measures that followed COVID-19 not only affected the financial stability and management of the organizations, and the availability of food, but undermined the ways in which food support providers used to operate. Owing to physical distancing measures and to the increasing numbers of users, more or less intangible forms of support such as financial advice, empathic listening and human warmth were partially lost, probably when they were needed more than ever.

Highlights

The outbreak of COVID-19 and the lockdown measures that followed had a significant impact on our food systems and soon became a litmus test for the extreme inequalities of our times
The spread of COVID-19 in the UK laid bare how much its retrenching welfare system relies on the third sector to support people in need
The case of food support provision is probably emblematic, as national and local government both leaned immediately on the existing third sector organizations, aware they could count on their embeddedness in particular areas

Summary

Introduction

The outbreak of COVID-19 and the lockdown measures that followed had a significant impact on our food systems and soon became a litmus test for the extreme inequalities of our times. The crisis highlighted how much the EU’s agricultural output relies on exploitation of the migrant labour force, with governments quickly having to embark on policies to secure the food supply chain by granting temporary working permits to farm workers (Barling 2020; Neef 2020). The UK Government (2020a) stressed ‘we are all in this together’ as a national motto to foster solidarity and cohesion, some were much further ‘in’ than the rest.. The UK Government (2020a) stressed ‘we are all in this together’ as a national motto to foster solidarity and cohesion, some were much further ‘in’ than the rest.1 Such universalistic claims fall short in recognising how diverse people’s capabilities to face a major crisis can be and limit our possibility to rethink the right to good and sustainable food (Moragues-Faus 2020) The UK Government (2020a) stressed ‘we are all in this together’ as a national motto to foster solidarity and cohesion, some were much further ‘in’ than the rest. Such universalistic claims fall short in recognising how diverse people’s capabilities to face a major crisis can be and limit our possibility to rethink the right to good and sustainable food (Moragues-Faus 2020)

Objectives

Results

Conclusion