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UN Warns of Global Food Crisis — Women Especially Impacted

Wmc features National Food Service 102020
The National Food Service is a nationwide network in England campaigning for equal access to food to become a human right protected by law. (Photo courtesy of National Food Service, North London branch)

Despite being the sixth largest economy in the world, the U.K. has one of the worst rates of food poverty in Europe, with rising cases of malnourishment in both children and adults. Women are among the worst affected, with food bank charity the Trussell Trust reporting that one in five mothers regularly goes hungry to feed her children. The situation is so bad that medical experts have labeled it a public health emergency.

But this was before COVID-19 was even a whisper on the horizon. Now, seven months into the pandemic, the nation has plunged into the worst recession of its history and of any major economy. Sectors largely staffed by women, such as beauty, hospitality, and retail, have experienced severe losses, with unemployment rising by the day. The drop in income and loss of meals provided by schools while they remained closed led to demand for emergency food parcels increasing by 89%.

Globally, lockdowns and travel restrictions have greatly disrupted food supply chains, whether it’s farmers in India or workers in U.S. meat plants unable to work due to the virus. Some countries have placed a ban on major food exports to ensure there’s enough available domestically, leading to a rise in prices as well as shortages. This perfect storm means regions that were already suffering — like Yemen, where a five-year war has been causing widespread starvation, and East Africa, where a plague of locusts has wreaked havoc on food supply — are on the verge of catastrophe. One in nine people is currently going hungry, but the U.N. estimates this will double by the end of the year, warning that unless action is taken, the world will sink into the worst food crisis seen in 50 years.

During times of famine, women are much more likely to go hungry. Violent conflict is the biggest cause of food poverty, destroying economies and leaving women to run the household with few if any means when men die. In some parts of the world, patriarchal norms such as being the last to eat after men and children are causing many women to become malnourished. Meanwhile, natural disasters due to climate change are an increasing problem for farmers, who in the developing world are 50% women; paradoxically, the population's overall access to food relies significantly on women, who produce up to 80% of the world’s food in rural areas, and who experience huge gender inequalities, including lack of land rights and insecure employment.

In June the U.N. outlined a number of guidelines for governments around the world to act on to prevent a global food crisis. Secretary General António Guterres presented a three-point plan: focusing aid on regions where risk is most acute; strengthening protections for the most vulnerable, including children and pregnant and breastfeeding women; and rebuilding food systems to be environmentally sustainable and to provide more inclusive access to food.

The plan states that access to food for those most likely to experience food insecurity must be protected, either by increasing their economic means or providing food directly through government or community-based programs. It also emphasizes the need to substantially expand the capacity of community-based schemes to tackle malnutrition. In developing countries where economies are fragile, the U.N. is calling for international aid and debt cancellation to encourage local initiatives. “If we do these things and more,” Guterres said in his address, “we can avoid some of the worst impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food security and nutrition — and we can do so in a way that supports the green transition that we need to make.”

In Sheffield, a city in the north of England that, despite having a prestigious university, has had economic problems since the coal and steel industries declined in the 1980s, a cafe called Foodhall provides food on a pay-what-you-can basis. It was founded in 2016 by volunteers, with the aim of tackling food poverty and bringing the community together. As the founders put it, there is no line between the volunteers and the visitors — here everyone has a platform to share their skills or interests with others, with regular film screenings, pottery workshops, bike fixing events, and live performances hosted by people living locally.

Foodhall was the first project formed under the umbrella group of the National Food Service, a nationwide network campaigning for equal access to food to become a human right protected by law. There are now 12 similar grassroots groups spanning all corners of mainland Britain, where volunteers typically collect surplus food from traders that would otherwise go to waste and turn it into hot meals. These are served in a cafe or community space, and those turning up to eat are supported to take an active part in the project, whether volunteering to prepare food or running an event.

Their goal is to roll these projects out as a public service, but unlike the typical provider-consumer model of welfare or past government-run programs like the National Kitchens, which fed the hungry during World War I, here the community takes an active part in growing, sourcing, and preparing food as well as eating, following the concept of mutualism, which has cooperation as a key tenet.

The COVID-19 lockdown meant local branches had to close to the public, but within days they turned to delivering food, using hyperlocal mutual aid groups on Facebook and WhatsApp to reach those most in need. Most have since re-opened their community spaces while continuing to provide this emergency relief.

The speed at which the mutual aid groups multiplied to respond to neighbors’ requests for food, medicine, and essential items like diapers showed there is an appetite for people to help in their local communities — within a couple of weeks of launching the first group there were more than 4,000 up and down the U.K. These self-organized groups have had a bigger impact than centralized, government-backed schemes, with a report finding that “many vulnerable people would simply not survive this crisis without the work that is being done — autonomously and voluntarily — by mutual aid groups.” It added that the U.K. government should help fund community-based schemes, echoing the U.N.’s recommendation to increase access to food through community initiatives.

“People worldwide need a social security system that acts as a decent safety net. They also need secure jobs that are well paid, and to ensure there’s adequate child care provision. But we need to think about how food is grown and manufactured,” says Mary-Ann Stephenson, director of the U.K.’s Women’s Budget Group, about restoring global economies in the wake of the devastation caused by the pandemic. “It’s very important to have solutions that are built from the bottom up and include the people that they’re intended to help as actors in the solution, rather than passive recipients. Local and community-based initiatives are needed, because those are often more responsive to particular local needs.”

“It’s also really important to recognize that human rights aren’t just civil and political. The right to health, education, shelter, and food are the most fundamental of rights,” she adds.

Initiatives in many parts of the world show how community-run projects can successfully prevent hunger. In a district in the east of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, a group of women leads the food cooperative Unidos San Agustin Convive, which is providing food to the city's population entirely independently from intermediaries and big companies. Venezuela is among the ten countries worst affected by food poverty at the moment, caused by ten years of U.S. sanctions and a rise in the price of oil. COVID-19 has deepened the crisis by pushing the price of food up while wages have dropped. “The minimum wage in Venezuela is around $2 a month, which is not enough for a basic family food shop,” says Martha Lia Grajales, co-founder of the cooperative. Founded in 2016, it sources produce directly from farmers and organizes distribution as part of the Pueblo a Pueblo (Town to Town) program. At weekly assemblies the members discuss their activities, distribute food at substantially lower prices than in supermarkets, and host a large communal meal.

“The benefit [of the program] is really significant for families in terms of nutrition because they’re able to get better quality food and in bigger quantities,” Grajales explains. “It also promotes self-organization and strengthens bonds within the community, and means we’re building alternative supply chains that give us access to healthier food that’s cheaper than the market rate.”

Unidos San Agustin Convive is one of a number of similar models in Venezuela, most of which are run by women. The Vertientes de Agua Viva Cooperative, situated in a remote village in the Andes, has been growing native potatoes that had been on the verge of disappearing because foreign seeds were more profitable to grow. National production is crucial to the concept of food sovereignty — the right of a nation to be self-sufficient and guarantee food supply to the whole population — which is written into Venezuela's constitution. This has become even more vital with the disruption caused by COVID-19. “In Venezuela there are a lot of successful projects that have a community-led power structure,” Grajales says. “Right now, these initiatives are proving that through collective, communal efforts we can face and transform the difficulties that have arisen not just from the pandemic, but the blockade on our country. They allow us to not just access food but also basic, everyday items.”

Like mutualism, food sovereignty isn’t new. Also like mutualism, it was widely viewed as a radical idea when it was first introduced, by a group of international farmers in 1993. But its main principles — equal food distribution, increasing people’s participation and gender inclusion in managing local food systems, and minimizing waste and pollution — seem tailor-made and entirely necessary for today.

Across the Caribbean Sea in Honduras, the women-led OFRANEH collective (which stands for Black Honduran Fraternal Organization in Spanish) was formed to protect the land rights of the Afro-indigenous Garifuna communities, who’ve witnessed tourist resorts and other corporate interests encroach on their farmland over the years. Their “olla comunitaria” (community pot) scheme was established days after the pandemic began, with local people sharing food and preparing meals to make sure nobody went hungry. The idea caught on and the U.S.-based Fund for Global Human Rights now funds grassroots groups in other parts of Honduras to provide community pots.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Mali’s Convergence of Rural Women for Food Sovereignty is a network of 36 women’s cooperatives numbering 3,900 members. They support female farmers to have control over their produce in the face of foreign businesses who will typically only deal with male land owners. A U.N. program is funding similar schemes in Ethiopia. In Sri Lanka, the Movement for Agricultural and Land Reform has mobilized small farmers and marginalized communities to work toward food sovereignty and lobby for the rights of women and mothers.

These groups demonstrate the possibilities of a different kind of food system, one that is designed to provide equal access to food and prevent hunger instead of lining corporate pockets, while being kinder to the environment and securing women’s rights as caregivers, workers, land owners, and as the backbone of the world’s food production and provision.



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