manchester climate monthly

MCFly writer Laurence Menhinick goes to a useful  event about food poverty. [Update: here are links to the presentations mentioned below.]

If you didn’t know or didn’t believe that food should be our number one priority when combating social injustice, then just glance at the list of who was at this forum; you’ll be convinced how all aspects of our lives are interconnected by food alone. Organisations involved in growing, distributing, cooking, and nutrition were present, but also public health, universities, faith groups, housing, energy and environment services, council committees, community engagement groups, and recycling were all present. The issues around poverty and food are obviously interlinked, and the forum was the chance for all to meet and not only hear of the daily struggle facing an increasing number of Mancunians, but also the challenges of dealing with the problems on the ground.

David Regan, Director of Public Health, introduced the food futures programme and set the scene for changes ahead when public health is to move to local authorities in April 2013 (this may allow for more focused actions and solutions based on local requirements).

Colin Cox of Public Health Manchester, followed with an introduction to the many sides of food poverty: as well as malnutrition and health impacts, this is also a symptom of the lack of choice people have to live with, linked to other forms of poverty (income obviously, but also fuel or education for instance) and the lack of choice and access: no local shops, expensive transport or poor quality food on offer. With food prices having increased by 12% since 2007 whilst incomes have either stagnated or dropped, choices are reduced and social exclusion also sets in. Factor in the impact of climate change on the global food system and lack of food security is bound to worsen problem in the future. Unfortunately, little data indeed is available to measure food patterns in the city, however some work around food access (supporting markets for instance) must be sustained in the future in order to offer better choices to the population.

Eileen Fairhurst from the GM Poverty Commission introduced the findings of the report to be published later this year, seeking to understand the impacts of poverty in people’s lives and how to concentrate efforts in the most effective way. Four questions were asked in order to building up a basis to measure the impact of future actions:

• How poverty affects you or your services users/members
• Is the situation getting worse?
• What difference would it make to you or your service users/members if your or their current financial situation, well being or life chances were improved?
• What changes do you think would have to happen to improve either your situation or that of your service users/members?

Social exclusion was a very strong theme (everything needs money to get there or access it), with added anxiety due to the stigma poverty brings and the perception others and society in general have of you: the loss of dignity, the shame of asking for help, being treated like 3^rd class citizens. Sadly, circumstances can change for any of us at any time ( ill-heath, redundancy, divorce, loss) and the lack of power people feel when things spiral out of control was palpable from the quotes we were given.

Judith Vickers introduced Lifeshare, which is a food provision service to help homeless and vulnerable people in Manchester and Salford, offering warm cooked breakfast at the Charter St. Mission building on Dantzic St. Together with the Booth Centre, they also distribute food parcels, clothing and sleeping bags. She explained that the number of people in need of food parcel in increasing: youngsters from hostels, but also people or families whose benefits have been stopped or reduced. She clearly emphasized that people put the blame on changes in the welfare system since Atos took over the assessments, and the problems linked to mandatory work, job centers not helping or changes in benefits regulations.

Finally we heard Faith Bulleyment from Creative Concern, introducing Real Food Wythenshawe – “a five-year programme to engage and excite the people of Wythenshawe in growing and cooking fresh, sustainable food”. As a garden city, Wythenshawe includes 18 woodlands and 5 parks and each house has a large garden. But it is developing and transforming itself thanks to improvements in housing trusts, high schools, transport (metro link) and the Real Lives campaigns, which helped all local initiatives to link into a large community network. Emphasis around food is visible with growing, cooking and business enterprises being developed. As well as holding regular public events such as the garden city festival, and developing outdoor growing and food mapping for distribution, Wythenshawe strives to be innovative and ground-breaking in food growing with the project on the Manchester College Campus to work on a sustainable indoor growing system ( based on a closed loop bio-system).

The rest of the forum allowed for a few questions, networking, discussions and ideas to improve the situation and some comments from the floor. I must mention here the comments from Sebastien Serayet¹ of Fareshare (who re-distribute surplus food which would otherwise be wasted, to organisation providing food parcels and free meals) about the absence of retailers at the forum, and the absolute urgency to treat the root cause of the problems of poverty as people are in dire need today and a proper network of re-distribution is required to do so.

If you want to know more, volunteer or get involved, the following organizations seeking volunteers in Manchester were present at the forum:

Food growing and cooking

Feeding Manchester

AfSL

Incredible Edible Prestwich
and if you want your own allotment ask  AMAS

Food distribution:

Fareshare

Health:

Skelmersdale Community Food Initiative

Communities/ Faith groups

Urban Outreach, Bolton

Church Action on Poverty

Mustard Tree

Voluntary Action Oldham

Tree of Life ( Wythenshawe)

Groundwork

LifeShare

If you want to learn to cook: Cracking good food

Laurence Menhinick

1) Fareshare have been nominated in the BBC’s Food and Farming Awards. You can listen to an update and interview of Sebastien Serayet broadcast on 25^th November.