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5.7 The role of food aid in the comparator countries

Having examined the welfare states of both Scotland and Finland, focusing in particular on recent changes to the social security systems in each context, this section briefly considers the role of food aid in each country. While Chapter Three explored the rise of food aid across the Global North, focusing on the UK evidence base in particular, here the nature of food aid provision and the political and policy responses to it in the case study countries are highlighted. This provides important background for the comparative analysis presented in Chapter Nine.

5.7.1 Food aid in Scotland

Chapter Three provided an overview of the growth of food aid in the UK and a summary of recent research evidence on the scale, drivers and impacts of its use. The picture in Scotland is largely similar, although with some clear differences in the nature of the political debate surrounding it. Early studies commissioned by the Scottish Government sought to map provision, better understand the types of services on offer, and their relationships with statutory services (Sosenko et al., 2013; MacLeod, 2015). Recent

mapping of food banks in Scotland shows there are around 120 food bank outlets affiliated with the Trussell Trust, and over 70 which are identified as ‘independent’ (i.e. not

affiliated to the Trussell Trust) (Independent Food Aid Network, 2017).

In 2015 the Scottish Government commissioned an independent working group to

investigate food poverty and produce a series of recommendations for addressing it. In its final report, the group concluded food poverty to be a problem of income and the rise in food bank use driven by problems with the benefits system, as well as insecure and low-paid work (Independent Working Group on Food Poverty, 2016). It also identified the indignity of the food parcel hand out, and along with a series of recommendations to improve the adequacy and security of people’s incomes, the group called for investment in the community food sector – including support for food banks to ‘transition’ to “more dignified forms of food access”, including community meals and pay what you can community cafes.

In 2014 the Scottish Government launched its Emergency Food Fund which provided

£500,000 of funding to the food redistribution charity Fairshare, and a further £500,000 in grants to individual food banks and other emergency food projects. Unlike the UK

Government which has not provided direct funding to food banks, the Scottish

Government suggests that it aims to support such projects as part of its attempt to mitigate the impacts of UK welfare reform measures. It is important to note that, unlike the UK Government, the Scottish Government is clear in its recognition that austerity measures and welfare reforms have driven the increase in food bank use. Indeed launching the initial Emergency Food Fund, the First Minister used the growth of food banks as a symbol of the damage caused by Westminster policies and sought to assert Scottish social policy

difference in stating: “only an independent Scotland will have the full powers we need to protect people from poverty and help them fulfil their potential in work and life” (Scottish Government, 2014a). In their response to the recommendations of the Dignity report, the Government also made a commitment to consider enshrining the Right to Food within domestic law (Scottish Government, 2016b).

Drawing on the recommendations from the report of the Short Life Working Group on Food Poverty, the second round of this fund – renamed as the Fair Food Transformation Fund – sought to fund projects that “give a more dignified response to food poverty and help to move away from emergency food aid as the first response” (Scottish Government, 2016c). This version of the fund was also aligned to ongoing efforts to develop Scotland’s food policy, and framed as a means of helping achieve the aim of becoming a ‘Good Food

Nation’ (Scottish Government, 2014b). The Scottish Government has also supported the development of a resource aimed at promoting dignity within the community food sector, which the report considers: “well placed to respond to current crises and promote and restore dignity at a local level” (Bloemen et al., 2018: 1). It is important to note that community food initiatives in Scotland are not new; indeed in 1996 the Scottish

Community Diet Project (now Community Food and Health Scotland) was established to promote and focus community action on food and diet within low income neighbourhoods (Dowler and Caraher, 2003). What is new, however, is a more direct focus on community food activity as a response to the food bank phenomenon. Such shift in focus is reflective of the sorts of responses to the rise of food banks which have occurred elsewhere, as discussed in Chapter Three, whereby local community responses to food insecurity develop to include a wider range of social and environmental concerns. The extent to which this current policy focus in Scotland on “dignified food access” might be considered as an “improve the food bank” response to food insecurity (McIntyre et al., 2016) is

explored in detail in Chapter Nine.

5.7.2 Food aid in Finland

Charitable food aid expanded in Finland in the context of economic recession and rapid growth in unemployment as described at 5.3 above. Food aid provision in Finland is commonly referred to as the “breadline”, literally referencing the queues of people waiting to receive bread and other items of food aid, but also used in the Finnish literature, as Salonen (2017: 220) states, “in a broad sense to refer to the places that provide charitable food assistance for people living in weak social and economic situations”.

It was the Lutheran church in Finland which was the first to speak out on poverty during recession years and bring the issue of hunger to public attention (Hilamo, 2012). Food aid, or breadlines, began to proliferate in 1997 when they were included in church’s annual Common Responsibility Campaign. The role of food aid in Finland was further

strengthened with the application to the EU's Food Distribution programme for the Most Deprived Persons (MDP), which was supplemented with donations from local stores and food industry. Again the church gained a dominant position in the coordination and distribution of the EU food aid provision.

According to Hilamo (2012), the church assumed its food bank project of 1997 would be a temporary measure that would not be required after a few years. However, as economic

conditions improved some food banks did close but they remained in most deprived areas, an indicator that: “general economic improvement no longer guaranteed that people would be lifted out of poverty” (Hilamo, 2012: 408).

The recession of the 1990s clearly prompted a significant change in the social welfare role of the church in Finland. However, it is important to note that the church has a long history of providing social welfare support in Finland and which, contrary to welfare state regime theory, did not die out following the establish of a social democratic system of welfare support. Indeed the position of the Lutheran Church in Finland remains strong, and in 2012 almost 80 per cent of the population were members. Its poverty alleviation work is

maintained though church taxes paid by the membership and delivered by professional nurses and social workers trained and employed by the church. According to Pessi and Grönlund (2012), the role of parish nurses and social workers extended considerably during the recession period from their previous focus on the provision of pastoral care for elderly parishioners, to provide increasing practical and financial support for working-age people. Interestingly, according to Pessi and Grönlund (2012), in contrast to the

complementary role played by the church’s pastoral, or diaconal activities in the other Nordic countries, in Finland such work serves the necessary role of filling in the gaps and deficiencies in public social security.

Evidence of the scale of food aid provision across Finland, the nature of use, and the characteristics of recipients is very limited. Ohisalo et al. (2013, cited in Salonen (2017)) whose recent work has sought to survey the populations of food aid recipients, estimate that food aid operates in over 220 municipalities throughout the country and serve over 20,000 people on a weekly basis. There is no national coordination of provision and food aid is generally provided without means-testing or recording any information about recipients (Salonen, 2017).

Commentary on the growth of food aid in Finland has focused on its symbolism in relation to the changing role of the welfare state and the apparent failures of the social security system. For example, Silvasti and Karjalainen (2014: 80) comment on the “entrenchment of emergency food aid in Finland as mission of churches and charity”. Similarly, Salonen (2016) suggests that food aid in Finland has become “a permanent secondary social safety net for the deprived”. Echoing critics from North America, the UK and elsewhere, Salonen (2014: 11) suggests that such a system creates divisions in how food is consumed;

rendering those accessing these services as “secondary consumers”. She highlights how people in poverty are excluded from culturally acceptable forms of consumption and that

within a consumer society they are relegated to function as “objects of charitable giving and as users of seasonal surplus”.