Community supermarkets could provide a more sustainable way to help families out of food poverty
The cost of living crisis has found its most troubling expression in the rise of food bank users. For many people visiting a food bank is tantamount to losing their independence and can be an upsetting experience.
Furthermore, food banks can only do so much – the majority require users to be referred by a GP, job centre or other agency that can issue clients with three single-use vouchers a year. Each voucher provides three days of food – so that’s nine days of guaranteed food per year.
Think tank Demos have today published research into what might be a sustainable alternative: the community supermarket. Found more commonly in the US, Australia and Europe, community supermarkets sell food at below market prices with the explicit social aim of tackling food poverty and its effects (malnutrition, social isolation). They are distinguished from food banks by the fact that they sell groceries rather than prepared meals, and the food is not provided for free.
Demos points out that families turn to food banks when they reach crisis point, and so the work of food banks, while admirable, is to help families ‘subsist’ rather than sustain themselves. The report suggests four models of community supermarket which could be used to address food poverty in a more long-term way:
- Buying clubs – With this model, individual members select from a range of available products, and then orders are placed collectively with a wholesaler. Produce is delivered in bulk and sorted and distributed between members. This means that members can buy at wholesale prices, as well as saving costs associated with premises and storage; this model effectively cuts out the middle man.
- Box schemes – This is another form of collective purchase, where members pay a set price for a box of produce which is delivered either weekly or monthly. Emphasis in this model is placed on locally and ethically sourced produce that encourages people to eat more healthily at the same time as relieving financial pressures.
- Food cooperatives – These may be member owned or worker owned, and usually require members to invest some time in helping to run them. Many of these stores require an upfront investment from members which is then used to deliver bulk, wholesale orders. Again emphasis is placed on small, local suppliers.
- Excess stock – This is where unsold or unusable food from all levels of the supply chain is redistributed. This model usually requires clients to meet an eligibility criteria ie. by providing evidence of low income. Demos suggests that excess stock schemes are more likely to be reliant on external funding, and that it is common for their users to have access to other kinds of support including social care and CV-writing classes.
Ambitiously, the report recommends that the government halve the number of food banks by 2020 and help existing providers to launch community supermarket endeavours.
Although coalition policies including welfare reform have had an undeniable effect on levels of food poverty in the UK, Demos point out that the demand for affordable food is not a ‘phenomenon’ of the post-recession period. Even when the economy has recovered, community supermarkets could provide valuable support for families at risk of unemployment or social isolation.
Demos believes that entering the age of the community supermarket could mean better community cohesion, a dramatic reduction in food waste, and healthier lifestyles for the UK’s most vulnerable people.
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
8 Responses to “An alternative to foodbanks?”
littleoddsandpieces
Social supermarkets do not serve customers who are not on benefit.
There are over 1 million unemployed out of the benefit system, either by being sanctioned or just falling off benefit by losing it and gaining no work, including the chronic sick and disabled who are equally sanctioned as able bodied, of all ages.
From 6 April 2016. many pensioners (early retired on low works pensions
from the massive austerity cuts to reach 2 million by what Autumn Budget said last year)
will see they will get –
NIL STATE PENSION FOR LIFE
See why, under my petition, in my WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT section, at:
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/state-pension-at-60-now
Not in my name
Benefit sanctions have been shown definitively to be the root cause of food poverty. The solution is not cheaper food (which those under sanction will STILL have no cash to purchase) but to SCRAP THE BRUTAL REGIME OF SANCTIONS that has spiralled out of control
Sanctions should never have been allowed to exceed 7 days in length or more than 10% of an individuals benefit.
Moreover why has the DWP not been giving out food vouchers/prepaid cards ROUTINELY to those they have sanctioned? This would have safeguarded their and their children’s health. There again it has been expressed DWP policy that sanctions WERE EXPECTED to damage the health of those targeted.
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/21360
Then again, sanctions and benefit ‘reform’ are also now the main cause of homelessness.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/04/homelessness-study-welfare-reforms-crisis
The solution is surely NOT to build prisons and workhouses BUT TO STOP THE TORTURE OF THE POOREST and the reversion to the 1930s
Labour should be pledging to scrap the vindictive sanctions clawback as soon as they regain power, ensuring no child is left hungry, and no more vulnerable citizens starve to death.
Guest
And Hamas-loving sites will help the poor how, exactly? What bombs do we need?
Leon Wolfeson
As you note, the UK’s Food Banks are about subsistence rather than being sustained. They’re for emergency use. Hence, they’re not something which can be “replaced” – alternative food models are good, but high-price local produce is not going to displace supermarkets any time soon, in an era when the poor have less and less to spend on food.
Leon Wolfeson
You’re ignoring the rapid fall in the real-world value of benefits and the economically inactive, there.
Sanctions are just a part of the problem, sadly, as much as I agree with you on them.