Modern day consumer society generates a considerable amount of surplus food. Surplus food is that which is consumable, but has become surplus to the market and unsellable. It is, as Alexander and Sanje (2008: 1291) describe, “surplus to a retailer’s ability to generate profit”. Food may become surplus at different points in the supply chain, for example at the retailers this may be because of damaged or incorrect packaging, over-ordering, out of date promotions, or end-of-line runs. The use of commercial cosmetic standards for fresh food also generates a large amount of surplus at the point of production (Caraher et al., 2016). The global scale of food waste is significant. WRAP estimates that by 2030 global greenhouse gas emissions could be lowered by as much as 1 billion tonnes CO2eq per year through food waste reductions (WRAP, 2015). In this context, as Midgley (2013: 1874) states “food poverty and food waste are potent symbols of inequalities and inefficiencies found in contemporary food systems”. Over recent decades infrastructure has been developed to enable the redistribution of this waste, or surplus food to people who might not otherwise be able to afford to buy these items when they are in the shops. Surplus food forms a central component of the food aid provided in many western countries.
National and international agricultural policies have often led directly to over-production, and therefore the generation of surplus food. For example in the 1970s and 1980s under the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), financial incentives for farmers to produce food led to significant overproduction. Similarly in the USA farmer subsidy policies of the early to mid-20th Century generated considerable surpluses (Poppendieck, 2014). It was the desire to make use of these surpluses without distorting markets which prompted the development of processes and programmes of redistribution. The EU’s Food Distribution programme for the Most Deprived Persons (MDP), which was seen essentially as part of agriculture policy, ran from 1987 until 2013, and distributed surplus food
through aid agencies within member states (Caraher, 2015). Reforms to CAP and rising food prices in the early 2000s meant the redistribution of surplus food, from an economic and agricultural perspective, was no longer required and MDP was stopped. However, under pressure to continue to address the social demand for food aid, the EC committed 3.8 billion euros to a new social programme – Fund for European Aid for the Most Deprived (FEAD) – for the six year period 2014 – 2020.
In many instances then, models of formal charitable food aid were motivated at least in part by economic or environmental concerns to find a use for surplus food. At a national
level, the redistribution of surplus food from the retail sector has, over recent decades, become an established part of third sector activity within the UK. Surplus food is collected from supermarkets and food producers by third sector agencies which store, sort and then deliver from retailers to local charities who use it to prepare meals or food parcels for their service users. This model of food provision for local charities has been largely welcomed by policy makers and politicians, perceived as a logical response to the dual problem of vast amounts of food waste on the one hand, and the growing numbers struggling to afford food on the other.
While it is the austerity and welfare reform policies of the Coalition Government which, as discussed previously, are seen to have precipitated recent rapid expansion in food banks across the UK, it is New Labour’s encouragement of a more professionalised third sector and of more public-private links which is recognised as having established a favourable policy landscape in which early models of surplus food redistribution could develop (Hawkes and Webster, 2000; Lambie-Mumford 2015). Indeed in 2000 John Prescott, then Deputy Prime Minister, was quoted as stating:
"Retailers' involvement in Crisis FareShare [charity which coordinates surplus food redistribution] is an inspiring example of how effective partnerships between the voluntary and business community can make a real impact on contributing to improvements in the lives of homeless people” (Hawkes and Webster, 2000)
In 2006 the approach was first recommended by Defra in their Food Industry Sustainability Strategy. In their Food 2030 Strategy, the benefits, both ecological and environmental, of surplus food being “shared with or redistributed to vulnerable people” (Defra, 2010: 56) were stated even more explicitly. Such practices were recommended in order to help enable “low income and other vulnerable groups ... [have] access to affordable, nutritious food to give them food security” (Defra, 2010: 13).
In the UK Fareshare is the largest national distributor of surplus food with twenty distribution centres across the country providing food to over 1,700 charities (Fareshare 2015). The premise of Fareshare’s work is that providing food to agencies such as homeless hostels which already serve meals to their clients saves the charities money which they can redirect into other areas of their work. According to their website, Fairshare handles two per cent of the surplus food available in the UK (Fareshare, 2015). Currently Fareshare provide food for a wide range of services including womens’ refuges, youth organisations, and older people’s lunch clubs. Certainly the valuable role of surplus food in
initiating and maintaining client contact with support services such as these has been highlighted (Midgley, 2013).
However the redistribution of surplus food is a highly contentious practice, from both food poverty and food waste perspectives (Midgley, 2014: 1874; also Alexander and Smaje, 2008). Indeed as early as 2000, when organisations such as Fareshare were in their infancy, an enquiry concluded that the actual impact of food redistribution schemes on food
insecurity and nutritional outcomes, given their limited reach and unpredictable coverage, was minimal (Hawkes and Webster 2000). In addition to concern as to the capacity of food redistribution to meet nutritional needs, the stigma associated with surplus food, and its impacts on those who receive it, has also been highlighted. This perspective relates to the social participation dimension of food poverty and the importance of the social
acceptability of how food is accessed, as discussed in Chapter Two.
Midgley (2013) describes the process of re-qualification of surplus food whereby it becomes ‘othered’ – adopting a place outside of normal market mechanisms. Tarasuk and Eakin (2005) have also commented on how the redistribution of surplus food creates an ad-hoc secondary food system. Consequentially consumers of surplus food themselves
become ‘others’, experiencing both material inequity in receiving food which is perceived to be sub-standard, and process inequity through being unable to participate in the
mainstream market system of food access (Midgley 2013: 1878). While the high quality of the food being redistributed is emphasised by food redistribution charities in an attempt to minimise this experience of ‘otherness’, the process of food redistribution is inherently one of power imbalances which restricts the agency of those in receipt of the food (Tarasuk and Eakin, 2005; Lambie-Mumford, 2017). This loss of agency is an important issue for
analysis when considering the experience of poverty and poverty relief measures which, across diverse social, cultural and political contexts, has been found to attract significant social stigma (Narayan et al., 2000; Walker et al., 2013). Shame and stigma associated with food poverty and food bank use are of particular interest for this thesis and are discussed in more detail below.
For Lambie-Mumford (2015: 10) the processes of accessing redistributed surplus food are characterised by: “the exclusion, the lack of choice, the vulnerability and neediness, and the ‘otherness’ of the experience”. She also argues that “the lack of rights of recipients…
and the reliance on volunteer labour forces further distances the emergency food system from that of commercial markets and social security provision”. Such features of the charitable food redistribution model could be seen to reflect wider shifts in the state-third
sector relationship, and changes to role of the welfare state in meeting people’s basic needs which are explored in more depth later in this thesis. Indeed in 2000 Hawkes and Webster highlighted the link between the growth of surplus food redistribution and the shrinkage of state funded welfare systems, suggesting (2000: 23): “it could be argued that the
privatisation of welfare in the UK is not, and will never be, so widespread as the U.S. and, since the scale of surplus food redistribution in the UK is so small”. At the time they concluded surplus food redistribution in this country to be no more than what Poppendieck (1998) deemed “a kindly add on” to an adequate state welfare system. However, since then models of charitable food aid in the UK have developed and their role expanded to the extent that their position as additional to the welfare state might be called into question.
The most significant development in food aid provision in the UK since these early models of surplus food redistribution has been the expansion of formal food banking systems.
While surplus food is not a central feature of food banking in the UK, which is largely supplied by donated food, elsewhere food banking systems are supported by the
redistribution of supermarket surplus. Section 3.3 examines the nature and origins of food banking, considering how it has evolved in different countries and exploring the existing evidence base as to the drivers and impacts of food bank use.