From the 18th – 23rd September Feeding Liverpool will be supporting the Right to Food Campaign’s week of action to raise our demands for legislation to address hunger and foodbank use across the country.

In 2021 Liverpool became the first “Right to Food City” in the UK when the city council unanimously called for the Right to Food to be incorporated into the National Food Strategy. However, whilst other cities have taken up this pledge, there remains a lack of national leadership from policy makers to address the food insecurity faced by millions of adults and children in the UK. Right to Food Week 2023 aims to put the question of food back on the political agenda and call for decisive action to end hunger.

How to get involved
The campaign is detailing a number of ways to get involved as groups or individuals during the Right to Food Week. In Liverpool, the Right to Food Campaign will be holding a Hunger March on Saturday 23rd September at 12 noon. Feeding Liverpool will be supporting community food spaces, schools and community groups to take part in the week of action and join the Hunger March on 23rd September.

Ideas to get people from your local community food space engaged in the week could be:
• Hold a banner making session to create materials for the march on the 23rd
• Use your social media to promote the march and Right to Food graphics use #RightToFood #RTFWeek2023 #HungerMarchLiverpool
• Create a video from your community food space explaining why the Right to Food is important for members
• Hold a Right to Food stall at your community food space to talk to others
• Contact your local schools, community groups and workplaces to make connections and get them involved

If you are interested in getting involved in the week of action, mobilising for the Liverpool Hunger March, or want to find out more, email [email protected]
Download The Right to Food Campaign leaflet here.

More on the Right to Food Campaign
Feeding Liverpool support the Right to Food Campaign – calling on the government to enact legislation to protect people’s right to access good food.

The Right to Food Campaign demands:

• Universal free school meals to ensure no child goes hungry,
• Reviews of minimum wage and benefits to ensure everybody will be able to afford food
• New independent regulators to ensure the government is protecting the right to food
• Food policy which secures sustainable and fair long-term solutions to our food problems
• Support for Community Meals provision to offer alternatives for families and elderly

Feeding Liverpool are supporting the national campaign led by the National Education Union and Fans Supporting Foodbanks to call on the Prime Minister to extend Free School Meals to every child in primary school in England.

To date, more than 200+ civil society leaders and decision-makers have added their name to a joint open letter to the Prime Minister to back Free School Meals for All. In Liverpool, many have added their voices including: Together Liverpool, Feeding Liverpool, Diocese of Liverpool, Mayor Steve Rotheram, and four Liverpool MPs.

A Feeding Liverpool Trustee and a local campaigner will be joining Ian Byrne MP at 10 Downing Street to hand in the joint letter, and contributions from Liverpool primary school pupils, on 29th June.

Why Free School Meals for All?

In England, Free School Meals are universal up to the age of seven. From Year 3 on, this stops and millions of children don’t get enough to eat during their school day. When children are hungry, they can’t learn. It’s hard for them to concentrate and their attainment suffers.

Providing a Free School Meal for every child is the only way to ensure that no child goes short of food at school. It increases healthy eating for every pupil, and lets children eat and socialise together, free from stigma or shame.

Scotland, Wales and London have already pledged to make school dinners free for every primary school child. It’s time we get this done for children in the rest of England too.

Kallie, a food justice campaigner and Ann Marie, a teacher from Monksdown Primary School, Norris Green shared with Radio Merseyside why this campaign is important to them.

 

Week of Action

From 24th – 30th June, a Week of Action has been called to engage and mobilise our communities and put pressure on the Government to take action.

The week highlights the many benefits to children, families and schools of extending Free School Meals by focussing on a key theme each day (faith, education, public health, tackling inequality, and food with the importance of good nutrition and diet).

Feeding Liverpool have been supporting Community Food Spaces and local schools to get involved in the campaign:
• Wednesday 28th June: St Andrew’s Pantry in Clubmoor, and community shop Everyone’s Aigburth will be holding awareness raising efforts with parents and volunteers.
• Thursday 29th June: Christ Church Pantry in Norris Green are holding a coffee morning for parents.
• Friday 30th June: children from Monksdown Primary School, Norris Green will lead a demonstration of support for Free School Meals for All in the school playground.

Take action:

Sign the open letter here: https://freeschoolmealsforall.org.uk/take-action
Find out more about the Week of Action: https://sites.google.com/thesmallaxe.org/fsmforalltoolkit/week-of-action?
Want to host a school or community based action? Get in touch with [email protected]

Why are we supporting this campaign?

We want to live in a world where everyone can eat good food.

We want to support the coalition forming around the Plenty to Share campaign in creating a world without food waste or poverty.

We believe that this will be achieved by designing an economic system which wastes less and shares more equally.

This coalition includes our friends and partners IFAN, Feeding Britain, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Together Liverpool, Feedback and many more.  Read the full declaration below.

How can I get involved?

Find out more via this article in The Big Issue: ‘System in crisis’ as ministers fail to fight food waste and poverty | The Big Issue

Visit the campaign Toolkit for Change which provides an accessible introduction to the campaigns out there calling for systemic change, and opportunities to get involved

If you’re an organisation, academic or public figure who would like to sign up to the Food Abundance and Equality Declaration please do so via this form and if you’d like to get in touch with the campaign founder please email martin@thisisrubbish.org.uk

Watch Plenty to Share’s videos

Plenty to Share declaration

Read the declaration below and find out more about the campaign: Plenty to Share – This is Rubbish

We the undersigned believe in creating a world without food waste or poverty.

We believe that this will be achieved by designing an economic system which wastes less and shares more equally.

Many of us have worked hard to get surplus food to those most in need through food banks and charities, seeing the urgent needs of hungry people suffering. But this too, as becomes painfully apparent when doing this work, is only a short-term sticking plaster.

The abundance of food we grow and agricultural land we use to grow it should not be wasted in the first place. In a world that is richer than any time in history, and in the sixth richest country in the world[i], nobody should go hungry or need to rely on food charities to survive.

We believe that we have an abundance of wealth, food and land for everyone globally to enjoy a good quality of life on a safe planet, if we redesign the system to waste less and share our abundance more equally. Ultimately, food waste and poverty require two separate sets of systemic solutions. We thus call for the following systemic shifts:

1) Wasting less: We need to design food waste out of the industrial food system – including through regulation, ambitious government action and more equal sharing of the risks and costs of food waste by businesses causing waste – to reduce emissions, free up grassland to plant trees and restore nature, and free up cropland to grow food sustainably so everyone has enough to eat.

2) Sharing more equally: We need to design poverty out of the system so nobody goes hungry, by sharing wealth more equally, strengthening social safety nets, and designing a food system based on people’s needs not profit, to ensure everyone can afford to eat healthy, sustainable and culturally appropriate food.

 

We live in a world of abundance.

There is enough food produced globally to feed everyone on the planet, plus the people expected on the planet by 2050[i] – but an estimated third of this food is currently wasted[ii]. The cropland freed up by halving UK food waste could produce enough food to feed 28% of the UK population[iii].

But simply ending food waste, or producing more food, will not automatically get food into the hands of those who need it. To do that, we need to end poverty itself.

There is enough money globally to end food poverty multiple times over – but the richest 1% own 44% of the world’s wealth[iv] whilst approximately a quarter of the world’s people are moderately to severely food insecure[v] and nearly half live on less than $5.50 a day (about £4 a day)[vi]. Just 5% of all new income generated since 1990 went to the poorest 60% of humanity – at this rate, to ensure every person earns above $5/day (about £3.70 a day) the global economy would have to grow to 175 times its present size[vii], impossible within environmental limits.

There is enough wealth in the UK to end poverty many times over – but currently over half of the UK’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of the richest tenth of people[viii], whilst an estimated 10% of people (8.4 million) in the UK live in food insecure households[ix].

There is enough money and expertise to save humanity and nature from climate crisis – but only if the richest countries act quickly enough. The richest 10% of people globally already cause half of global emissions, whilst the poorest 50% will bear the brunt of climate crisis despite causing only a tenth of global emissions[x]. Even within the UK, the lifestyles of the richest 10% cause roughly 5 times more emissions per person than the poorest 50%[xi]. Those most responsible for climate change are also those most able to avert it – richer countries need to reduce their emissions as close to zero as possible within the next decade to save us all[xii].

There is enough land globally to restore nature, end species extinction and help avert climate crisis. The FAO estimate that 28% of the world’s agricultural land is used to produce food that is wasted – equivalent to the landmass of India and China combined[xiii]. Halving UK food waste and planting trees on the grassland freed up by this would not only create 3 million hectares of woodland but result in emissions reduction greater than the entire UK agriculture sector[xiv].

 

There is enough – if we design a system which wastes less and shares more equally within environmental limits.

 

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[i] Stuart, T. (2009) Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal. London: Penguin.

[ii] FAO (2011) Global food losses and food waste: extent, causes and prevention. Rome: FAO. Available at: http://www.fao.org/3/a-i2697e.pdf.

[iii] Feedback (2020) Bad Energy: Defining the Role of Biogas in a Net Zero Future. London: Feedback. Available at: https://feedbackglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Feedback-2020-Bad-Energy-report.pdf (Accessed: 11 September 2020).

[iv] Credit Suisse (2020) Global Wealth Report 2019. Credit Suisse. Available at: https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/about-us/research/publications/global-wealth-report-2019-en.pdf (Accessed: 9 November 2020).

[v] FAO and IFAD (2020) The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020: Transforming food systems for affordable healthy diets. Rome, Italy: FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO (The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI), 2020). doi: 10.4060/ca9692en.

[vi] World Bank (2018) Nearly Half the World Lives on Less than $5.50 a Day, World Bank. Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/10/17/nearly-half-the-world-lives-on-less-than-550-a-day (Accessed: 11 September 2020).

[vii] Woodward, D. (2015) ‘Incrementum ad Absurdum: Global Growth, Inequality and Poverty Eradication in a Carbon-Constrained World’, World Economic Review, 4, pp. 43–62.

[viii] In most European countries, the richest 10% own roughly 60% of the wealth, and the poorest half of the population own less than 5%. Source: Piketty, T. (2014) Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Harvard University Press. p. 257
The estimate that in the UK the richest 10% of households hold over 50% of the UK’s wealth is likely to be an underestimate. Source: Alvaredo, F., Atkinson, A. B. and Morelli, S. (2016) ‘The Challenge of Measuring UK Wealth Inequality in the 2000s’, Fiscal Studies, 37(1), pp. 13–33. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-5890.2016.12084.

[ix] End Hunger UK (2019) ‘UK food poverty now a public health emergency’, End Hunger UK, 7 February. Available at: https://www.endhungeruk.org/2019/02/07/uk-food-poverty-now-public-health-emergency/ (Accessed: 4 September 2020).

[x] Oxfam (2015) Extreme Carbon Inequality. Oxfam. Available at: https://d1tn3vj7xz9fdh.cloudfront.net/s3fs-public/file_attachments/mb-extreme-carbon-inequality-021215-en.pdf. p. 4

[xi] Oxfam (2015) Extreme Carbon Inequality. Oxfam. Available at: https://d1tn3vj7xz9fdh.cloudfront.net/s3fs-public/file_attachments/mb-extreme-carbon-inequality-021215-en.pdf. p. 7

[xii] Civil Society Review (2018) After Paris: Inequality, Fair Shares, and the Climate Emergency – A Civil Society Science and Equity-Based Assessment of the NDCs. Civil Society Review. Available at: http://civilsocietyreview.org/files/COP24_CSO_Equity_Review_Report.pdf (Accessed: 31 August 2019).

Climate Equity Reference (2019) Climate Equity Reference Calculator, Climate Equity Reference Calculator. Available at: https://calculator.climateequityreference.org/ (Accessed: 30 August 2019).

[xiii] FAO (2013) Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on natural resources – Summary report. Rome: FAO.

[xiv] Feedback (2020) Bad Energy: Defining the Role of Biogas in a Net Zero Future. London: Feedback. Available at: https://feedbackglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Feedback-2020-Bad-Energy-report.pdf (Accessed: 11 September 2020).

[i] IMF (2020) International Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook (October – 2019) – GDP statistics, International Monetary Fund. Available at: https://tinyurl.com/y2wmcnes (Accessed: 4 September 2020).

Statement of Support – 19th January 2021

Feeding Liverpool is supporting the Right to Food campaign as Liverpool seeks to become a Right to Food City.

Why are we supporting this campaign? 

Through this campaign, we are calling on the Government to enshrine the Right to Food into legislation as a key building block towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, agreed by the UK Government in 2015.

The first three Sustainable Development Goals set out a commitment to ‘end poverty in all its forms, everywhere’, ‘end hunger and achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture’, and ‘ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages’: in short describing a society where everyone is able to afford healthy and nutritious food – where no one goes to bed hungry.

Sadly, these goals are yet to be realised, with many households across Liverpool and the UK in 2021 still locked in poverty, unable to afford to put healthy food on the table. Over the last six week’s Feeding Liverpool’s Winter Boost scheme – providing fresh fruit and vegetables to vulnerable households, was called upon to support 3297 people in our city, including 1169 children. This is not right.

We are proud of the tremendous collective effort across our city in supporting the most vulnerable during the Covid pandemic, yet despite this, poverty is becoming further entrenched, with the pandemic disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable households in Liverpool.

2020/2021 has seen a rise in the number of households accessing emergency food provision, applying for help via the Liverpool Citizens Support Scheme and requesting Discretionary Housing Payments. Whilst these trends have been accentuated by the pandemic, they follow the direction of travel of the last few years as we see more households struggle to stay above the breadline, in a city crippled by the effects of austerity.

Our city’s food-banks repeatedly report ‘Low Income’ as the most common reason why households need to access emergency food provision, showing that the safety net is not working. We are in desperate need of policies that ensure adequate household incomes to enable households to afford healthy food.

Through the Right to Food campaign we are calling on the Government to take a proactive approach to address what we are seeing and hearing in our city, to choose to step towards a society where every household can afford healthy and nutritious food, every day, by building a legislative structure that will hold successive Governments to account to the vision set out through the Sustainable Development Goals.

This is not a new ask, nor will it solve all the problems we see today, but it is a vital building block towards safeguarding the lives of future generations.

How can I get involved? 

Read more about the Right to Food campaign on founder Ian Byrne’s website 

Join in the conversation about Right to Food on twitter using the hashtag #RightToFood and following founders Fans Support Foodbanks @SFoodbanks and @IanByrneMP 

Write to your MP asking them to support the Right to Food 

Download Sustain’s Right to Food guide for advice on how to take action 

We want a UK in which everyone can afford good food and no one has to go to bed hungry.

Sadly, despite our best efforts in the city of Liverpool, this is currently not the case.

The problems of hunger and food insecurity are getting worse, it is time to do more than simply responding to need.

We need a change of course. We need to address the root causes of poverty. And we need our national political leaders to lead on this.

The End Hunger UK campaign – which includes around 40 national charities, anti-poverty organisations and faith groups – are calling on the Government to commit to developing a cross-departmental action plan to halve household food insecurity by 2025 and end hunger by 2030 – a commitment they have already made through the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

To do this, the campaign is calling on the Government, and all our political leaders, to set out a clear road map on how they are going to address the root causes of poverty.

Feeding Liverpool – in partnership with Together Liverpool  – have coordinated Liverpool’s response to this strand of End Hunger UK’s campaign, gathering over 40 people together including residents, councillors, local churches and anti-poverty organisations.