Compassion: Shifting from Food bank to Food co-op

Churches were largely responsible for inventing food banks and are now, through the work of the Trussell Trust, the largest providers of emergency food aid in the UK. But Trussell and their church-based Food Bank allies also lead on a national campaign to ‘end the need for food banks’ in their work with the ‘All Party Parliamentary Group on Ending the Need for Food Banks’ and their recent Inquiry ‘Cash or Food? Exploring Effective Responses to Destitution’.

Their argument is that until adequate government protection against poverty is in place, food banks will always be needed to provide an essential community service to people unable to afford food. Until government provides adequate financial support to people in poverty through the benefits system, there will always be a need for food banks, so the way to end the need for food banks is to campaign to get adequate financial social protection in place through the benefits system so that everyone can afford to buy food – a ‘Cash First’ approach to ending food poverty and the need for food banks.

An informal consortium of church-based food banks and alternative food providers in Hull, together with similar consortia in other parts of the country maintain that a form of self-generated ‘Community Cash First’ grants system is also needed to make the ‘Cash First’ approach sustainable in the long run and end the need for food banks in the first place. In order to achieve this, they are at varying stages of:

• transitioning food banks and other alternative food providers into food buying groups or food cooperatives providing non surplus as well as surplus food for their service users and members.
• cooperatively growing their own fresh seasonal fruit and veg for their service users and members.
• cooperatively growing additional commercial cash crops and other commercial value-added food products to generate an income for a cash grant system for participating food banks and other alternative food based providers to bulk buy their own supplies of non-surplus food and supplement the dwindling supplies of surplus and donated food available to them.
• providing a new ministry to ex-offenders by staffing their food-growing initiatives with people subject to Community Payback unpaid work requirements and providing them with structured progression routes into paid employment and self employment in the wider food sector on successful completion of their unpaid work requirements – thus helping them out of food poverty as well as the beneficiaries of their payback.

The consortia’s contention is that this evolving model of food-based provision and low cost community food retail, supported by community cash-based grants, generated and distributed by the participating food buying groups and cooperatives themselves, potentially provides a model for ending the need for food banks and emergency food aid for anyone who is a member, either individually or collectively of the food buying clubs and cooperatives concerned.

Community Payback (CP) is a court sentence requiring adult offenders to undertake up to 300 hours unpaid work of benefit to the community. During lockdown CP workers across the country worked on allotments and community growing projects and in surplus food distribution centres like Fareshare as well as helping out in food banks and pantries like Your Local Pantry, growing food and packing and delivering food parcels for families in food poverty. Many CP workers are in food poverty themselves and continue to ‘do their hours’ in the same way post-covid lockdown.

Increasing demand for surplus food due to the cost of living crisis, together with increased supermarket efficiencies and labour shortages across the food sector are all reducing the supplies of surplus food available for both emergency and longer term food aid through food banks and pantries. Many are also seeing the government grants that saw them through lockdown disappear as well. Some are now seeking new sources of income to bulk-buy non-surplus food to supplement what surplus food is still available and to reduce reliance on the similarly dwindling sources of government financial support. Pantries in particular are also looking to access new supplies of locally grown food without having to put up Pantry membership fees to pay for it, which would negatively impact their mission to help families out of food poverty in the longer term.

Both food banks and pantries are increasingly looking at alternative and complementary food redistribution models as well as alternative and complementary food supply sources in order to help eventually end the need for food banks. These alternative redistribution models focus on food banks and pantries transitioning into food buying groups or food cooperatives of their members and service users and/or into consortia of the food banks and pantries themselves. These food buying groups and food aid consortia aim to source more locally grown food and other wholesale non-surplus food more cheaply and sustainably and reduce the need for emergency food aid through food banks and ultimately help end the need for them in the first place.

‘Unfortunately the evidence to date suggests that despite food buying groups and consortia’s increasing success in opening up access to locally grown food and other cheap wholesale non surplus food supplies, they still remain difficult for their members on low incomes to afford. Food banks and pantries who are members of food buying consortia similarly require additional income streams to access local and wholesale food supplies. In other words, both individuals on low incomes and food aid organisations need grant aid of some sort, or ‘Cash First’, if they are successfully going to use food buying groups to both end their reliance on dwindling supplies of surplus food as well as help end the need for food banks as providers of emergency food aid in the first place. ‘Community Cash First’ for both individuals in food buying groups as well as food aid organisations in similar consortia is going to be needed both to keep those food aid organisations going as well as to help them transition to more sustainable food buying clubs.

Building on Payback experience with food banks and pantries during lockdown, the Hull consortium of Church-based food banks and pantries together with similar consortia and food buying groups in other parts of the country, are currently at varying stages of developing their own growing schemes on church and public land which use Community Payback workers to

• supply participating food banks and pantries with regular supplies of seasonal vegetables, salads and soft fruits at no cost.
• grow additional commercial cash crops to provide an income for a Cash Grant system (‘Community Cash First’) for participating food banks and pantries to bulk buy their own supplies of non-surplus foods to supplement dwindling supplies of surplus and donated food.

In this new evolving model Community Payback workers ‘do their hours’ working on ‘mini market gardens’ owned by consortia of church and charitable food buying groups and cooperatives

• growing seasonal fresh fruit and veg for distribution to their service users and members
• growing additional commercial cash crops and prepared and processed fruit and veg for onward sale at discount rates to supermarkets and other food services companies. In return for the discount rates these companies sign a form of ‘Local Labour Agreement’ committing them to recruit new paid staff from those successfully completing their Community Payback with the ‘mini market gardens’.
• making ‘Community Cash First’ grants back to the members of the consortium out of the proceeds from the onward sales to enable consortium members to bulk buy non-surplus food supplies to supplement the dwindling supplies of surplus and donated food available to their service users and members.

This evolving model begins to end the false dichotomy between cash or food as an effective response to destitution; it supplements the benefits-based ‘Cash First’ approach with self-generated ‘Community Cash First’ grants and begins to end the need for food banks by presenting a sustainable cooperative alternative.

• FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: david.nicholson@smitf.org
• The content here-in represents the direction of travel of the eight church-based food providers in Hull through their involvement of the initiative as described.