Is there a more vivid depiction of acute poverty than the terrifying food-bank scene in Ken Loach's award-winning drama I, Daniel Blake? One of the protagonists, a penniless and starving single mum, tears open a can of baked beans and in a frenzy of hunger stuffs the contents into her mouth with her fingers. This moment of acute desperation is where people end up, the film suggests, when you not only rip apart the social security safety net but also leave the vulnerable individuals who then fall through it precariously reliant on charity handouts to survive.

The food bank was a perfect location for Loach's film; it is emblematic of political and economic changes in the UK over the past decade. Most people had never heard of food banks in Britain in 2009; now there are thousands, all over the country. Food banks have been absorbed into mainstream political and cultural discourse as a kind of shorthand for poverty, the consequences of austerity and the punitive nature of neoliberal social security reform. There was widespread shock when the UK's biggest food-bank network, The Trussell Trust, began rapidly expanding at the beginning of this decade; ironic quips about food banks being a ‘growth industry’ in a time of recession mingled with incredulity and embarrassment that so many people in one of the world's wealthiest countries went hungry because they were too poor to feed themselves and their families.

Arguably, the initial shock at the rise of food banks in the UK (they have been around for much longer in Canada and the US) has subsided. It is entirely possible that, in media terms, we have reached a point of ‘peak food bank’. The appetite for news reports from the food charity frontline has diminished through repetition; how often, after all, can you keep telling the same awful story? Similarly, public outrage at the revelations of The Trussell Trust's annual audits (which, after early double-digit increases, show the volume of food given out each year to be roughly stabilising at enough to feed more than 1.1 million people) has faded slightly. As The Trussell Trust pointed out in 2016, there is a danger that reliance on food charity has become the ‘new normal’.

Sustainability, by right to food standards, requires adequate amounts of food to be accessible in the short, medium and longer term. As a practical response to the problem of food insecurity, this means that, in emergency food systems, both the ability of emergency providers to make enough food available in the immediate and longer terms, and the ability of recipients to access this food through these organisations now and into the future, are important points of analysis. To explore whether this is true of the systems emerging in the UK, this chapter explores questions of availability and accessibility through an analytical framework of power.

For the purposes of this chapter, power is seen as the ‘capacity for exercising agency’ (Elder-Vass, 2010, p.87). For questions of sustainability (as the availability and accessibility of emergency food), the agency of emergency food providers to secure a food supply and the agency of people in need to access it are particularly important points for empirical exploration. Given the importance of structure embedded within the conceptualisations and definitions of food insecurity and the right to food adopted for the book, agency (as power) is also understood here to occur within the context of structures that shape it. In particular, this chapter explores the agency of emergency food providers to make food available within the structures of the food system on the one hand, and the agency of people to access that food within the structures of emergency food provision on the other. In arriving at conclusions from the findings presented, the work of Poppendieck (1998) on the ‘seven deadly “ins”’ of emergency food – notably, instability and inaccessibility – is drawn on.

In exploring the agency of emergency food providers to make food available, this chapter focuses on the relationship between these organisations and the wider food system by exploring their agency in relation to two key aspects of this dynamic: in sourcing food; and in corporate partnerships and future planning. The direct sourcing of food is clearly imperative for emergency food organisations to make food available now and into the future, but – as will become apparent in this chapter – corporate partnerships with food retailers and others are also important aspects of how these organisations are able to operate now, and are shaping the way they will operate into the future.

The recent rise of food charity in the UK can usefully be placed into a wider historical, international and national policy context. As this chapter demonstrates, looking to the history of emergency food provision in the UK highlights that the modern manifestation of this charitable initiative is distinct from the country's long tradition of local food assistance. International food security and food charity research also provides insight into the growth of food charity in other country contexts and points to potential parallels, particularly in terms of the relationship between welfare reform and food charity growth.

Situating the rise of food charity and household food insecurity into the contemporary UK policy context highlights some of the key challenges facing policy and practice work in this area. The absence of accepted definitions and direct measures of household food insecurity means that a robust evidence base – and corresponding policy understanding – of food access is lacking in the UK. But it is the social policy context of the rise of food charity that is particularly important – and contentious. Food charity provision has grown at a time of unprecedented change in the UK welfare state, and the relationship between the rise of food charity and welfare reform is one of the most hotly contested – and politicised – aspects of this research area.

The rise and distinctiveness of modern food charity in the UK

The provision of free or subsidised food to people in need is not new in the UK. Churches and other charitable initiatives have long provided such assistance in local communities (McGlone et al., 1999). However, the last 10 years has seen the establishment and proliferation of national-scale organisations that are facilitating or coordinating this work in more formalised ways (Lambie-Mumford et al., 2014). Their professionalisation, coordination and scale make these initiatives distinct, and they have come to symbolise an increasing role for charities in caring for people in food insecurity in the UK. These organisations are therefore different from historical responses to hunger, which have been more ad hoc and localised and relatively out of the view of the mainstream media.

The two most prominent food charities in the UK – the Trussell Trust Foodbank Network and FareShare – provide prime examples of the distinctiveness of these newer initiatives.

As the first of two empirical chapters on respecting, protecting and fulfilling the human right to food, this chapter explores the role of emergency food charity in practice in its current form. Having examined the nature of and ways of working within the case study organisations (Chapters Four and Five), and given the absence of evaluative data, we need to know more about the aims and perceived achievements of emergency food providers from their own perspectives to better understand how their current practices (and potential future practices) fit within the context of protecting, respecting and fulfilling the right to food.

To better understand this emergency food provision in relation to the problem of food insecurity, the notion of ‘need’ is explored in the first instance; that is, what is need for this provision, and how does it relate to the experience of food insecurity? This chapter also explores the notion of success in emergency food provision, to come to a better understanding of how this provision might fit within the context of right to food solutions. It asks: what difference do these projects think they are making (in terms of success), and how does this relate to the right to food framework presented in this book?

This chapter also explores a more normative question about the role of charity in responding to the problem of food insecurity and realising the human right to food. It draws on the notion of responsibility to explore these issues. The ways in which these providers are, in practice, assuming responsibility for protecting against hunger is discussed, but a further question is raised: what role should these charities be playing? These questions set the scene for detailed discussion of the role of charity versus the state in Chapter Seven.

Care ethics is employed as a theoretical lens to guide the analysis. There is a rich literature exploring care and ethics; this framework is drawn on here in a particular way, adopting the term ‘care ethics’ to refer to ‘a critical ethic of care and responsibility’ (Lawson, 2007, p.2). Seeing care ‘as a form of ethics’ (Popke, 2006, p.506), the concept is drawn on to frame an understanding of care as social.

This chapter sets out theoretical approaches to both food security and the human right to food. Food insecurity is employed here as a specific way of interpreting the ‘problem’ that leads people to seek assistance from emergency food providers, and the right to food as a way of envisaging not just the ‘solution’ to these experiences but a more comprehensive approach to the realisation of socially just food experiences for all. So, while the notion of ‘food security’ is a prerequisite for the realisation of the right to food, the progressive realisation of this right actually incorporates much more, as will be discussed.

Terminology surrounding food poverty, food insecurity and hunger are not necessarily clearly defined, widely used or understood in the UK. As such, this chapter begins by setting out a clear conceptualisation and definition of the problem of food insecurity. This is informed not only by previous work on food poverty and food insecurity but also by theoretical work on poverty itself, particularly that of Lister (2004). The right to food, its historical context and the UK's relationship to it are also set out.

Two particular aspects of the right to food are focused on: issues of adequacy, acceptability and sustainability; and the state's obligation to respect, protect and fulfil the right. These two elements are explored through utilising several concepts and theories for framing the analysis of empirical data: othering; agency; care; and social protection. By employing these concepts the book engages food insecurity and the right to food with literatures on exclusion, power, care ethics and welfare states.

A theory of food insecurity

The variety of language used to describe the experience of lack of access to food is a significant challenge to UK research in this field. ‘Hunger’, ‘food poverty’ and ‘food insecurity’ are all utilised, and food poverty and insecurity have come to be used interchangeably in the UK (see Dowler and O’Connor, 2012). The idea of food poverty has particular resonance when applied to household-level experiences (BBC, 2014; Cooper and Dumpleton, 2013; Dowler et al., 2001; Hitchman et al., 2002; Lang et al., 2010; Oxfam, 2013). ‘Food security’, on the other hand, has often (but not always) been used to refer to national food supply issues and global or national food systems rather than lived household experiences, particularly by the UK government (Kneafsey et al., 2013).

In the context of economic crisis, recession and austerity, charitable initiatives have emerged providing food to people in need on a widespread scale in the UK. The formalisation of this provision and its facilitation and coordination at a national level is unprecedented in this country, and raises important questions about what drives need for emergency food and how best to respond to that need. This book explores the recent rise of emergency food provision in the UK and its implications for ensuring everyone has access to adequate, appropriate food experiences.

The scale of charitable emergency food provision (voluntary initiatives helping people to access food they otherwise would not be able to obtain) has grown exponentially in recent years. In 2015–16, the Trussell Trust Foodbank Network – the UK's largest food-bank organisation – distributed 1,109,309 food parcels to adults and children across the country; an increase from 128,697 in 2011–12 (Trussell Trust, n.d.a). FareShare, the UK's largest redistributor of surplus food, now provides food to 4,652 charities (FareShare, n.d.a).

These years have also been formative for the emergency food movement in the UK in terms of public profile and political discourse. The Guardian (Moore, 2012) declared 2012 to be ‘the year of the food bank’, and hunger and the rise of food banks have been the subjects of articles and segments in many of the country's leading newspapers and on numerous television and radio stations (see, among many, Boyle, 2014; Channel 4 News, 2014; Morris, 2013; Mould, 2014). In the realm of national politics, food banks have been debated in parliament, have sparked the establishment of an All-Party Parliamentary Group and were the subject of a Parliamentary Inquiry in 2014 (Food Poverty Inquiry, 2014b; Hansard, 2013; Register of All-Party Groups, 2014).

The recent growth of food charity has occurred within a context of economic austerity and welfare reform. Public sector finances have been set on a programme of cuts, some of which are yet to kick in. An agenda of extensive welfare reform has introduced caps to entitlements and increased conditionality and an ethos of individualised risk.

This chapter explores the question of whether receiving food from emergency food providers is an acceptable process of obtaining food, by right to food standards. It does so by exploring the nature of this provision in the cases under study and exploring key elements of how food is sourced by and acquired from them. In particular, the chapter explores whether emergency food provision as it is emerging in the UK forms a recognisably ‘other’ system of obtaining food, and considers critically what this might mean for the realisation of the human right to food in the UK.

The analysis presented here is framed by two particular sets of arguments. In the first instance, evidence from this research is combined with previous findings from Tarasuk and Eakin (2005) to discuss how far emergency food provision forms an identifiably ‘other’ system of food acquisition. Comparing key characteristics of these charities (including the lack of recipient rights, recipient neediness and food operating outside the market) with the most readily accepted form of obtaining food – through shopping – indicates that they do form distinctly ‘other systems’.

However, theoretical and empirical evidence from Cloke et al. (2010) and Midgley (2014) also provides an analytical framework for exploring other data collected, which highlights the dynamic social and market-based qualities embedded in these systems. Cloke et al.'s (2010, p.101) work on organisational ethics – ‘the performance of organisational ethos’ – provides a framework for identifying the moral imperatives on which these systems are based, including ‘feeding the hungry’ and ‘preventing food waste’. Beyond these identifiable social qualities, Midgley's (2014) work also helps to identify how the foods provided in these systems could still be said to contain recognisable market qualities, through discourses of surplus and the donation of privately purchased foods. However, as further data shows us, while identifiable moral and market-based qualities do reside within these systems, this does not necessarily compensate for the ways in which they are experienced as ‘other’ by those who have to turn to them – and who are then themselves ‘othered’ through their participation in them.

The chapter argues that ultimately these organisations do make up an identifiably and experientially ‘other’ system of obtaining food.

The focus of this chapter is the role of the state in respecting, protecting and fulfilling the human right to food. Building on the work in Chapter Six on the role of charities, the role of the state is explored through the lens of social protection, specifically the ways in which state-provided social protection, through a welfare state, impacts on food insecurity and interacts with the rise of emergency food provision. The particular focus here is on the relationship between the changing welfare state in the UK and the rise of emergency food provision in the form of food banks. Social protection can be provided through civil society-or state-based organisations, and emergency food provision could be seen to represent an example of civil society-based protection. While De Schutter (2013, p.4) highlights the importance of informal, community-based social protection, from a right to food perspective the state is seen as the ultimate duty bearer for ensuring the right is protected, respected and fulfilled for all. Within a right to food context, universality, rights and entitlements are also important, particularly in relation to the fulfilment of the right to food when people are unable to access food for themselves. Food charity, then, insofar as it is neither universal nor an entitlement, poses a challenge to the right to food approach. This chapter explores the relationship between the formal welfare state in the UK and the rise of emergency food provision, and looks in particular at how changes to the welfare state are impacting on both the need for and shape of this ad-hoc charitable provision.

State-managed social protection takes many forms, and includes pensions and labour market policy as well as parts of healthcare. However, this chapter specifically examines aspects of the welfare state that protect people from poverty; namely, social security and services providing assistance to those in or at risk of poverty or out of work. It focuses on the relationship between these parts of the welfare state and the rise of emergency food provision as civil society-based social protection. This is a particularly important site for investigation, given the experiences of this relationship in other country contexts.

The empirical chapters of this book explored the acceptability and sustainability of emergency food systems in relation to the availability and accessibility of the food they provide (Chapters Four and Five), and the role of charity and the state in this provision and in relation to the right to food (Chapters Six and Seven). In doing so, these chapters explored emergency food provision as a system and the adequacy of that system in terms of its social acceptability and sustainability, as well as critically engaging with the role of charity in helping people to access food.

A large amount of data was collected through the duration of this study. This book has done its best to shed light on the wide range of insights and detail this data provided into the emergent and changing phenomenon of emergency food provision in the UK. Its system-level analysis and wider sociopolitical critique enabled the presentation of new findings about these systems, their relationship to wider social and political shifts and their future trajectories.

These findings reveal the complexity of emergency food systems in relation to the range of moral and ethical motivations and values that give meaning to the endeavour, from the perspective of those running these organisations and local projects. The analysis also highlights some of the tensions embedded within these systems in terms of the accessibility of the food to those in need. Framing the analysis with a sociopolitical critique enabled the book to explore how the emergence of these systems is intimately connected to shifts that open up space for this kind of provision – such as a retrenched welfare state and increasingly diversified safety nets – and link to wider political and discursive shifts that emphasise individualised responsibility and risk for poverty.

This concluding chapter discusses some of the key findings arising from these analyses, how they extend our knowledge of emergency food systems and their implications for how we might progressively realise the right to food in the UK. Guided by the theme of ‘opportunities in crisis’, the chapter emphasises the question of what can be done on the basis of the findings, and how the circumstances underpinning emergency food provision and the need for it may present a chance for more progressive ways forward. Emphasis is therefore placed on the implications of the findings, and how they can practically be responded to.