Content area
Full text
Introduction
The rise of food aid provision and uptake, particularly in the form of food banks providing parcels of food for people to take away, prepare and eat, has become increasingly high profile and politicised in the UK in recent years. The country's largest group of food bank projects – the Trussell Trust Foodbank Network[1] – reports rising numbers of food parcels distributed from just under 41,000 in 2009-2010 to over 900,000 in 2013-2014 (Trussell Trust, 2013, 2014). These data are much cited as evidence of need for emergency food provision in the UK and as an indication of an emerging problem. In 2013, research by Oxfam and Church Action on Poverty (Cooper and Dumpleton, 2013) estimated that 500,000 people were reliant on some form of food aid and Cooper et al. (2014) estimated that over 20 million emergency food meals were given out between 2013 and 2014. The growth of this charitable food assistance is situated within a context of rising food, fuel and housing costs, stagnating incomes and a wider backdrop of austerity and welfare reform (Defra, 2014; Lambie-Mumford, 2014; Cribb et al., 2013).
Interpreting these numbers and understanding the relationship they have to wider socio-economic and political shifts is therefore a key challenge facing researchers in the UK. This paper presents evidence from two reviews that the authors have been involved in examining evidence on drivers of the need for, and provision of, food banks and other forms of food aid in the UK conducted for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lambie-Mumford et al., 2014) and the Cultures and Communities Network+ (Dowler and Lambie-Mumford, 2014).
The review for Defra was undertaken between February and March 2013, and drew systematically on available published and grey literature supplemented by brief case studies and an expert workshop, to provide ‘understanding of the “food aid” landscape in the UK and the “at risk” individuals who access such provision, as well as the means and drivers for seeking access’ (Lambie-Mumford et al., 2014, p. iii). The second, scoping review was conducted between October 2013 and February 2014, and included an updated literature sweep, policy review and a small number of in-depth interviews with food aid recipients with the aim of...