Authored by FareShare South West CEO Lucy Bearn
When I started working at FareShare South West in 2018, the dual mission was immediately compelling. A charity that rescues good-to-eat food directly from the food industry, food that would never reach the shelf or even leave the farm gate – and then sends that food out to hundreds of smaller charities, all across the south west?
Environmental problem, social solution. Food that would otherwise turn into animal feed, anaerobic digestion or landfill, and instead reaches some of the 1 million people in our region who live in poverty.
It still compels me. I’m so proud of what our little team achieve every day.
But I’m not oblivious to a rising tide of voices asking legitimate questions about how we got here as a society, and whether our response is actually helping.
People like Rob Kidd, who rightly point out that 34 tonnes of food waste rescued from Silverstone isn’t a good news story: it’s evidence of a catering company planning poorly, and passing the responsibility to others while claiming credit. People like the Alliance for Dignified Food Support, whose research into the ‘moral injury’ created by asking volunteers to replace what used to be state-led, funded social services is a sobering and painful read. Their campaign for a food bank-free Britain is compelling too. Thousands of people are relying on community food support that is inherently precarious, upheld by philanthropy. It feels borderline Victorian.
Meanwhile, FareShare South West is growing. We’re moving into a new hub in Plymouth before the end of the year. In Bristol, our partnership with WECA (through Mayor Helen Godwin’s Child Poverty Action Plan) and Bristol Charities will see us open a huge redistribution and youth employability hub next year, with a Multibank to provide non-food essentials like white goods, period products and clothes.
As we draw closer to these plans becoming reality, I have to ask: are we risking turning something that was meant to be a pragmatic response to waste and need into a permanent edifice of UK policy failure?
In short: are we part of the problem?
Last week, our national partner Felix announced a new covenant: an agreement across the whole food redistribution VSCE sector to work collaboratively, pool resources, and unite in one voice on policy. Starmer’s announcement of the National Programme to Redistribute Surplus Food, which aims to triple the amount of food rescued and shared over the next ten years, prompts actions far beyond the charity sector. It lies with the food industry to align with the food waste hierarchy, prioritising good food for people above alternatives. And above all, it lies with government, to heed the sector’s calls for a Good Food Bill that delivers food security and promotes health.
Within Felix’s statement, one thing is made indelibly clear:
“It is hugely important that redistribution is not seen as a way to solve food insecurity.”
FareShare South West, like the other charities within the Felix network, has always been a facilitator: a link in the chain between good-to-eat food and the frontline charities supporting local people with long-term routes out of poverty.
But our vision is a future where no food is wasted and all people can thrive. We’re not here to prop up a broken food system. We’re here to drive systemic change – change that should ultimately mean we as a charity are no longer needed.
Where does food rescue and redistribution sit within systemic change?
To me, food redistribution charities are both a necessary interim infrastructure that sustains people and communities to eat well and build resilience, and the driver of systemic change in our broken food system.
The blunt reality is that need for food support is 45% greater now than during the pandemic, when we delivered the government-funded emergency food response across the south west. Food costs are spiralling due to global crises. We can’t keep calling it a cost-of-living crisis when high prices for basic goods, housing, fuel are persistent while incomes remain static. And that’s before we mention the elephant that’s been very firmly in the room this summer: climate impact more immediate and troubling for our food security as well as our wellbeing than anyone anticipated.
Food redistribution cannot, should not shoulder the burden of community resilience alone.
But it can be, must be an active participant in how we reform our food system to become sustainable, equitable and secure.
We have proven solutions that can draw out food at risk of waste from within the food industry: our own work with Charlie Bigham’s (who now produce zero edible food waste), Alliance Manufacturing’s collaboration to utilise spare capacity on production lines, Felix’s extensive experience with juicing and canning. We can use established logistics and community food support networks to place fresh food in the hands of communities alongside other support: food deserts where cash-first solutions don’t support the resilience that comes from having access to the tools, the knowledge and the time to scratch-cook a cheap meal – and in the process improve wellbeing and health. We can use the same logistics infrastructure to support rural farmers to get fair access to the market locally, ensuring people can access the food grown on their doorstep and growers are paid fairly.
At the same time, we’re driving action on the ground across the south west: the Bristol Food Equality Strategy and Action Plan, the five-year Food Strategy in Bath and North East Somerset, the Good Food Strategy in Devon, proactively aligning the need for a sustainable food system with food justice.
Food redistribution isn’t the solution to food inequity, but as a unified sector we can play an essential role in driving change, in parallel with the other policy changes that are needed to underpin our food security, our social services, our health service, our environment.
