Our growing, multidisciplinary International Development list includes leading researchers in the field including Jo Boyden, Pádraig Carmody, Gustavo Esteva, Garth Myers and David Simon and supports decolonial thought, indigenous research and transdisciplinarity.
Building on our reputation for publishing on poverty, inequality and social justice, and our not-for-profit status, the list explores key social challenges including poverty, cities, infrastructure and urban development, migration and health, and covers the impacts of COVID-19 in the Global South.
International Development
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‘Panic buying’ at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic generated enduring media images of empty supermarket shelves and calls for food rationing. The fragility of the Just-in-Time food system was seemingly exposed yet, as the pandemic progressed in the UK, there were remarkably few food shortages. This book reveals the changing patterns of food provision in the UK during that period, looking at how diets changed, and retail, processing, distribution and production businesses adapted. But beneath the apparent logistical success story, there were injustices as the more vulnerable struggled to access good quality food and some businesses received inadequate help.
The authors consider the winners and losers in a time of rapid social change, the lasting impacts on the UK food system, and lessons to be learned for a food system dependent on imports and large retailers and with a high burden of diet-related health issues.
This chapter examines the food challenges faced by the most vulnerable during the COVID-19 pandemic, already affected by the UK’s increasing social inequality, and the response to COVID-induced challenges from government, private and third sector actors. COVID-19, and associated lockdowns, exacerbated and added to long-established inequalities in the UK. Many of the most vulnerable, including the elderly and those with underlying mental and physical health conditions, as well as people on low or insecure wages, many of whom were designated key workers, felt the worst effects of COVID-19 including increasing debt, food insecurity, social self-isolation and loneliness. As well as exposing sources of vulnerability, COVID-19 highlighted factors contributing to well-being and social reliance such as local independent alternatives to the supermarket, and familial, neighbour and community support networks. Perhaps inevitably, responses from the government, local authorities and the third sector were not always coherent, consistent or effective. In particular, the pandemic revealed government’s reliance on certain food system actors, mainly supermarkets, to maintain food supplies.
This chapter looks at the COVID-19 winners and losers in the food hospitality and service sector as a result of the change to consumers’ diet and eating habits. Eat-out businesses such as restaurants and pubs saw a virtual overnight freeze in business while businesses providing takeaways and meal kits saw large increases, with the biggest winner being online food retail where sales volume in 2020 increased nearly 80 per cent compared to 2019. For many consumers, required to stay at home working or on furlough, COVID-19 was an opportunity to shift to home cooking and cooking from scratch, as evidenced by the early pandemic craze for home-baking. Overall, the impact of COVID-19 on consumers’ diet and eating habits was uneven reflecting existing inequalities in society. Higher socioeconomic status households generally had time and income to prepare meals from fresh ingredients while less food secure consumers lacked varied diets and struggled with food expense. Post-pandemic, the ratio of eating out to eating largely reverted to pre-pandemic levels, though online food retail retained some of its pandemic increase in sales.
This chapter begins by taking the humble loaf of bread to demonstrate the inherent complexity in the UK food system, and notes the interplay between the pandemic and Brexit, before summarizing each of the book’s chapters. In re-telling the stories of how the myriad food system actors closest to the everyday world of food provisioning were impacted by, and responded to, waves of demand-side shocks peaking with each lockdown, the book seeks to provide an accurate and unbiased account of what happened to food in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This chapter examines the response of supermarkets and their supply chains to COVID-19. Despite significant demand-side shocks arising from rapid changes in consumers’ shopping and eating habits, and supply-side shocks resulting from labour supply issues, the supermarkets’ just-in-time (JIT) systems proved effective in keeping food on the shelves. Key to this was the ability of food processors, food wholesalers and logistics in the ‘hidden middle’ of the supply chain, to effectively adapt to huge demand and supply-side shocks apparent in the initial chaos during the first COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020. As a result, conventional food retailers performed well during the pandemic. Convenience stores and the big supermarkets ended 2020 with increased sales by volume and value compared to 2019, with online food retail accounting for the most dramatic increases.
This chapter looks at the role played during the COVID-19 pandemic by alternative food networks (AFN) comprising a range of local food enterprises (LFEs) such as farm shops and markets, local independent shops, community gardens and food hubs, all of which can be characterized by direct-to-consumer short food supply chains and societal embeddedness. LFEs played an important role in plugging the gaps in the supermarkets’ food supply, particularly at the outbreak of COVID-19 and subsequent periods of lockdown. Societal embeddedness meant many LFEs also contributed to maintaining the social resilience of their local communities, including for those missed by the conventional food system, who are often people vulnerable to food insecurity. As the pandemic wore on, the intensity of demand and uncertainty took its toll with individuals responsible for LFEs often left feeling burnt out. Although there was some hope the consumer turn to AFNs would continue post-COVID-19, the evidence to-date suggests most British consumers have returned to buying their food from supermarkets, with the post-pandemic cost of living crisis increasing the shift back to the conventional retail sector.
This chapter examines the UK food system, its physical and financial flows of people and products, and considers critical assessments by food policy experts such as Tim Lang and Henry Dimbleby, who wrote a national food strategy at the request of the UK government in 2019. The chapter proceeds to explore the UK’s food security through examination of export and import trade flows of key food commodities, before looking at the UK’s diet and food provisioning habits. It concludes that at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic early in 2020, the UK food system might be described as robust in terms of trade, supply chains and logistics but inherently weak with regard to diet, health, social justice and equality.
This chapter looks at the how the UK’s primary producers of dairy, meat, fish and horticulture responded to COVID-19, coming on top of uncertainties created by ‘Brexit’, the UK’s exit from the EU. In combination COVID-19 and Brexit exacerbated the chronic labour shortages in essential harvesting and processing roles across all primary produce sectors. The failure of campaigns such as ‘Pick for Britain’ to mobilize a domestic workforce, emphasized the need for structural change across primary production including improved pay, conditions and entitlements for migrant workers. The impact of COVID-19 was largely dependent on the markets primary producers served with those dependent on export and hospitality markets having to pivot to direct-to-consumer channels to remain in business. Despite facing huge operational and financial challenges, many of the UK’s farmers and fishers proved themselves resilient and adaptive throughout the pandemic. But for the sector to thrive, the Government must address structural weaknesses and create a more enabling policy environment.
This chapters considers the lessons of COVID-19 and how the UK can build a more resilient and socially just food system able to withstand the increasing likelihood of shocks from future pandemics and extreme weather, climate change and changing geopolitical interests and conflicts. While the COVID-19 pandemic exposed pre-existing fragilities of the UK food system, most keenly felt by those most exposed to its flaws and inequities, in the main what COVID-19 proved was the resilience and adaptiveness of our food system, or more particularly the people within it, and that significant change at pace to a healthier, more resilient and just food system is not some ideological fantasy but an eminently realistic objective.
