Hunger on our doorstep

Exploring food insecurity through Agile

For many of us, hunger doesn’t play a part in our daily lives. We might see it in other countries on the news or associate it with Dickensian Britain or the days of the Great Depression, before our welfare state was created by the Labour government in the wake of World War II. But recently, it has become an almost accepted part of UK society. Figures that 20 years ago would have been shocking, now seem everyday: 11% of people in the UK in households with low food security, 2.9 million emergency food parcels distributed in 12 months between 2024 and 2025 – and the list goes on.

When myself and my colleague, Ruth Mattock, set out to explore regenerative agriculture and its implications as part of our Agile funded Sprint project, we were keen to consider the connections between UK agriculture and food insecurity. Could change in the farming sector affect food insecurity – and if so, was that change likely to create risks or benefits?

Backed by an additional Equality, Diversity and Inclusion grant from Agile, we were able to work with the Food Foundation to interview three of their Food Ambassadors – campaigners for change in our food system who have themselves faced food insecurity and its consequences. We also spoke to the Alexandra Rose Charity, to Dr Effie Papargyropoulou of the University of Leeds, and to Ana Maria Narváez who was part of the team behind Food Foundation’s 2025 Broken Plate report. Here I’d like to share a couple of insights which stood out for me from this work.

Firstly, amongst the very concrete practical issues facing those struggling to access and to afford to buy and cook the nutritious and healthy foods they need, was a focus on a lack of understanding of food, how it is produced, and how to prepare it. For our interviewees, this represents a loss of connection to culture and community as well as contributing to diet-related health problems.

When people are given the opportunity to engage with others to grow and prepare food together and to share food related to their different cultures, benefits can go far beyond physical health, into learning, engagement with others and pride in their areas and communities. Examples of people becoming involved with food across local supply chains show people as food citizens rather than just as consumers, taking an active role in shaping the food available to them – for example through community supported agriculture schemes, community kitchens and shops. This involvement is an important part of the concept of food sovereignty.

Secondly, and related to the first point, the Food Ambassadors we spoke to emphasised how they and others with lived experience of food insecurity were positively influencing policy, including with the support of the Food Foundation. However, they also told us that their voices were often marginalised in policy discussions, and that when they were involved it was often in the role of people sharing problems and not in the role of people with knowledge offering solutions. Again, food sovereignty is about people having control over the food that is available to them and how it is produced. For policy to properly reflect need and effectively tackle the issues, policy processes need to value and integrate the solutions put forward by those at the hard end of the issues.

Thinking about these challenges, we recognised connections between the feelings of disempowerment and marginalisation amongst those we interviewed and the same feelings amongst many farmers. One of our interviewees, Dominic Watters, told us about talking to farmers at the Oxford Farming Conference, and finding connection “farmers seem to deeply, deeply hear the pain that we go through to access fresh produce and fresh vegetables and meat and everything”.

Perhaps shorter, local supply chains, which bring farmers and citizens closer together, could be one way to bring a bigger proportion of the value in food chains to producers and public and to solve some of the problems our interviews highlighted. But, as always, the issues are complex and people hold widely varying perspectives about the solutions.

Can local supply chains and community growing schemes really provide huge urban populations with the food they need? Perhaps intensive farming and the fortification of processed foods would be a better way to solve the crisis of food insecurity and diet-related ill health. Or perhaps we need a diverse mix of solutions, adapted to different local contexts and the needs of their communities and making use of technology in innovative ways.

Whatever the ways forward, our interviews showed us the determination, imagination and knowledge amongst those with first-hand experience of food insecurity. As we, as a society, develop the solutions to the many crises surrounding our food system, those facing food insecurity today need to be engaged, listened to and valued in the process.

With thanks to all those who took part in the interviews described in this article and to everyone at the Food Foundation who supported this work.

If you would like to further explore our work and findings, the two part podcast based on interviews we carried out is available on the TABLE website – episode 1 and episode 2 – and we present some of the challenges and solutions shared by interviewees in our end of project report.