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Food Poverty – at the same time as we waste more than 30%?

I was lucky enough to spend an hour with Mark Goodway this morning, talking about his organisation – The Matthew Tree Project.

     At first sight, food poverty isn’t core business for the Green Capital Partnership, but a lot of what Mark talks about – people at the margins, struggling to get by but generally and genuinely wanting to do the right thing – strikes at the heart of our issues of well-being and how we are kidding ourselves if we believe this consumer society is heading for nirvana.

The numbers are staggering. TMTP estimate that there are just under 40,000 income deprived people in South Bristol alone. These aren’t people who some would say are frittering away their benefits on booze and fags – these are people who are struggling to keep a roof over their heads and who often don’t have enough money left to buy food for their families without turning to loan sharks. For an increasing number, austerity doesn’t mean tightening of belts – it means not eating. I know from my time working with people who have serious drug problems, that prevention is way, way better than cure – and sometimes that starts with the basics – decent food being one of them. This is where TMTP step in – trying to help people in that hour of need, before they end up hungry and then homeless.

City Food Growing

It turns out that the green agenda has a lot to offer – we have an amazing city wide system of allotments, many of which have surplus at various times of the year. Instead of swapping it with your neighbour, who probably also has enough to eat – how about passing it to people in need.

We share an agenda on the big supermarkets too – at the moment TMTP have to ask customers to go into a store, buy extra and then donate it. TMTP get 70% of their stock that way – ironically helping the retail giants with their profits. Two suggestions here – lets find ways to encourage Asda, Tesco and Waitrose to donate their warehouse wastes instead – there is plenty of it, and it mostly ends up in landfill. (I’m told Sainsburys already do this for Fairshare). Secondly, lets talk to the food suppliers and distributors and take their waste too – a lot never even makes it out of the fields, getting ploughed back in when the retailers decline to take up their options.

Unless the green agenda can do more to demonstrate our ability to help those most in need – we will be forever in the territory of middle class organics. I urge Bristol’s Food Policy Council to pick this issue up, and in turn I hope to ensure that the Green Capital Partnership gets behind The Matthew Tree Project – its proposal to help people to help themselves by setting up growing initiatives, cooking lessons and budget management training provides a model for a system that cuts to the heart of what a green capital should be about. As climate change affects food production world-wide – projects like this will also provide local resilience – so if you need to think about it that way, then please do – its in all our interests to help people be productive.