The Rise of Food Charity in Europe

Hannah Lambie-Mumford, Tiina Silvasti, Lambie-Mumford, Hannah, Silvasti, Tiina, Hannah Lambie-Mumford, Tiina Silvasti

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781447347583
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Agricultural Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

As the demand for food banks and other emergency food charities continues to rise across the continent, this is the first systematic Europe-wide study of the roots and consequences of this urgent phenomenon.

Leading researchers provide case studies from the UK, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain, each considering the history and driving political and social forces behind the rise of food charity, and the influence of changing welfare states. They build into a rich comparative study that delivers valuable evidence for anyone with an academic or professional interest in related issues including social policy, exclusion, poverty and justice.

1

New frames for food charity in Finland

Tiina Silvasti and Ville Tikka

Introduction

In 2017 in Finland, approximately 1,843 tons of food aid was delivered by initiatives financed by the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD) alone. Nationally, the FEAD’s operational programme is focused exclusively on combating food poverty. It works to distribute food aid to the most deprived people throughout the country using 650 distribution centres run by partner organisations. These are usually parishes, faith-based organisations (FBOs) or nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). Altogether, 271,723 food parcels and 55,754 meals were provided to recipients within the year. However, it is estimated that only 23 per cent of all food distributed by partner organisations is funded by the FEAD. Donations are another source of food, and some partner organisations also buy food for distribution using their own resources. There are no up-to-date official statistics on the use of charitable food aid in Finland. According to the FEAD’s partner organisations, out of Finland’s population of 5.5 million, 284,352 people received food assistance at least once during 2017 (Mavi, 2018). Furthermore, based on an extensive survey conducted as part of the hard-to-survey-populations strategy during 2012/13, it is estimated that over 22,000 people have been turning to charitable food assistance every week (Ohisalo, 2014: 40; 2017: 51).

These figures prove that there is a need for charitable food aid in Finland. According to earlier research, the primary reason for this need is income poverty (Riches and Silvasti, 2014). Where people lack sufficient earned income to provide a decent standard of living, they are entitled to social security. However, the European Committee of Social Rights¹ has repeatedly criticised the minimum level of basic social security benefits in Finland. In particular, the labour market subsidy,² sick leave allowance and income assistance have been highlighted as being too low to provide an adequate standard of living (European Social Charter, 2018).

It may be claimed that in monetary terms, as well as numbers of recipients of charitable food aid, the phenomenon is a minor factor in undermining the foundations of the Nordic welfare regime compared, for example, to an increasingly unequal public health-care system. However, in a wealthy country such as Finland, satisfying the basic human need for food and nutrition should be regarded as a matter of social principle. Furthermore, if we accept the argument that the problem is insignificant, it could be claimed that it is surely trivial enough to easily be solved. The solution can simply be implemented within the existing social security system by raising the minimum level of basic social security benefits, as the European Committee of Social Rights has suggested. Given the relatively small number of people in need of food aid, the budget required to put these poverty policy measures into effect should not be prohibitive. Yet, the political will and appetite to tackle the poverty problem seem to be lacking.

Even in the absence of effective political action to fight hunger, public interest and research concerning food poverty and voluntary emergency food provision have varied over the last 25 years. The initial wave of media interest dates back to the 1990s, when breadlines and food banks appeared on the nation’s streets for the first time (Karjalainen, 2008). At about the same time as this media debate, the first studies on the topic were also published (for example, Kontula and Koskela, 1993; Hänninen, 1994; Heikkilä and Karjalainen, 1998).

The focus of discussion in both the media and research was on the escalating poverty problem as a welfare paradox in the context of a Nordic welfare state regime. Finland definitely identifies itself as a Nordic welfare state, together with Sweden and other Scandinavian countries. The overall picture presented in the media discussion was contradictory. The obvious inconsistency between a Nordic welfare regime and rising food aid delivery conducted by charitable actors was certainly identified, but there was still no serious political debate about the fundamental basis or future direction of welfare policy in Finland. Over time, the subject became less newsworthy, and media interest ceased. Gradually, people became used to the phenomenon. Charitable food aid received a kind of tacit approval, and it was normalised (Silvasti, 2015). Under these circumstances, little by little, food aid as a means to fight food poverty became embedded as a concern of the realm of charity (Silvasti and Karjalainen, 2014).

Although both media and academic interest in charitable food provision had temporarily fallen at the beginning of the 2010s (Tikka, 2019), the situation has changed in more recent times, with plenty of research on food aid being published, especially in the field of social policy (for example, Silvasti and Karjalainen, 2014; Ohisalo, 2017; Laihiala, 2018). In addition, the scope of research has expanded to encompass several disciplines and approaches. These include: theological examination of the Christian underpinnings of the motives and practices of charitable actors, conducted by ethnographic methods (Salonen, 2016); philosophical reflection on the social and environmental injustice of charitable food aid (Kortetmäki and Silvasti, 2017); and social-scientific media analysis from an environmental perspective, framing food aid not only as a social issue of poverty, but also as an environmental ‘solution’ to food waste (Tikka, 2019).

Similarly, the focus of media discussion has also varied. During the 1990s and early 2000s, charitable food aid was understood to be a social policy issue. As such, it was connected to topics such as increasing income inequalities, cuts in social security and deepening poverty. In the context of a Nordic welfare regime and a strong public commitment to the ideal of state responsibility, increasing social inequality and deepening poverty were regarded as social evils. This offered a negative interpretational frame through which to view charitable food aid (Silvasti and Karjalainen, 2014). However, during the 2010s, interest in charitable food provision as a means to reduce food waste in the name of environmental protection has increased. Framing food aid (Arcuri, 2019; Tikka, 2019) as a means to recover otherwise wasted food, and, as such, as an environmental act, provides a new positive frame for interpreting charitable food provision. Combining these two frames, the new line of discussion celebrates the win–win situation, where ‘the planet is saved by fighting food poverty’ and surplus food is delivered to people afflicted with food insecurity. This combination of frames constitutes a new form of legitimisation for charitable responses to poverty.

Furthermore, over the quarter of a century of modern food aid provision in Finland, the administrative framework for such action has changed. There has been the will and an active tendency to develop – rather than shut down – the practices of charitable food aid delivery. This chapter asks: what does this kind of entrenchment of charitable food aid provision tell us about the Finnish welfare state? The chapter begins with a short history of the development of modern charitable food aid provision in Finland. That is followed by an examination of poverty, and food poverty in particular, in the context of Finnish social policy. There is then a discussion of the new interpretational frames for charitable food provision, such as food aid as an environmental act preventing food waste, and charitable food delivery as part of an emerging charity economy. In the conclusions, the Finnish case is summarised with reflections on the social justice implications of reliance on food charity in the context of a Nordic welfare regime.

A short history of modern food aid in Finland

After the Second World War, Finland was a poor, war-torn country in need of foreign food aid. The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) was founded in 1946 to provide emergency food and health care to children in countries that had been devastated by the war. As one of the first beneficiaries, Finland received food aid between 1947 and 1951 (UNICEF Finland, 2019). The pace of reconstruction was fast during the 1950s, and the Finnish economy developed strongly throughout the 1960s. The most intense period of building the country’s welfare state, mainly following the Nordic model and the example of Sweden, dates back to the 1970s and 1980s. During those decades, people in Finland were convinced that in the name of universalism, the welfare state should satisfy the basic needs of all citizens. The old social evil of hunger was thought to have been eradicated for good (Silvasti and Karjalainen, 2014).

However, this turned out not to be the case, and in the early 1990s, the need for emergency food assistance unexpectedly returned during an exceptionally deep economic recession. The first indication of ‘the hunger problem’ came about as a by-product of a survey exploring the health impacts of the economic slump. According to this survey, 100,000 Finnish people were experiencing an extreme situation where ‘the fridge was empty and there was no money to buy food’ (Kontula and Koskela, 1993). The first charitable food distributor, and the biggest actor in the field to this day, was the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (ELCF). It has been organising food provision with the help of voluntary workers since 1993. The first operation in Myllypuro in Helsinki was originally named according to the way in which it practically functioned: ‘the breadline’. The first food bank was initiated two years later by the ELCF in Tampere. In the Finnish context, the term ‘food bank’ does not refer to the central warehouse or stock of donated food. Instead, food banks operate as sites to deliver food directly to recipients.

The 1990s’ slump was recognised as a transient state of economic emergency. Thus, originally, charitable food provision was meant to be nothing more than a temporary solution to the short-term food poverty caused by that specific situation. It was thought by deacons working within the ELCF that the Christian voluntary work community could meet the immediate food needs of people sooner than the public sector. It was not their intention that responsibility for people suffering severe poverty should be permanently delegated to the ELCF and the third sector (Malkavaara, 2002).

Policymakers’ initial reactions to rising income insecurity and food poverty were typically disbelief and denial. For example, in 1990, then Prime Minister Harri Holkeri criticised Finnish citizens for favouring expensive food when cheaper alternatives were available: ‘the use of herring should be increased and tenderloin reduced’, he advised (YLE, 1990). Generally, it was argued that the problem of hunger was being exaggerated. Hunger in Finland was belittled by comparing it with famines in the developing world. The problem was also minimised by insisting that the supply of free food from charities inevitably created demand for it. If the problem of food poverty was recognised at all, the reason for the situation was readily attributed to the hungry people themselves. Through blaming and shaming victims, it was concluded that the reason for food poverty was essentially individual: people in need of food aid were deemed incapable in some way, for example, drug abusers, the ‘new poor’ or ‘new helpless’. By contrast, cumulative weaknesses in the social security system were never seriously discussed (Karjalainen, 2008).

In the end, the existence of food poverty was acknowledged in public discussion, if not officially recognised in any political statement. It was widely accepted that the level of income assistance (the very last resort of means-tested income security) was too low to sustain an adequate standard of living. However, at the same time, it was argued that the state could not afford to increase spending on social security, even when the national economy was recovering. In fact, during the early 2000s, charitable food aid provision as a solution to the hunger problem was tacitly accepted as being a task for religious actors and the third sector while there was simultaneously exceptionally strong growth in Finland’s gross domestic product. This development clearly indicates the way in which Finnish basic social security moved away from a traditional Nordic welfare regime, based on public responsibility, in the direction of a liberal welfare regime and the Anglo-Saxon model (Silvasti and Karjalainen, 2014).

Economic recession and social security cuts, motivated by a neoliberal direction in economic policy, were not the only factors that contributed to the establishment of food aid. Finland joined the European Union (EU) in 1995, and the very next year, in 1996, as the only Nordic welfare state in the bloc, it also joined the EU’s Food Distribution Programme for the Most Deprived Persons of the Community (MDP). It is fair to say that the decision to accept MDP assistance reinforced and institutionalised the concept of charitable food aid delivery in Finland. Back in the early 1990s, there was no nationwide distribution system to deliver food aid to recipients, nor were there systems for regular large-scale corporate food donations from retailers and the food industry to charities. Both systems have grown up and become established since the implementation of the MDP programme, when food from the EU provided the first basic stock that enabled regular and continual food aid provision for many parishes, FBOs and NGOs.

The peculiarity of this process is that the MDP was not an integral part of social and poverty reduction policy. Rather, it was part of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and therefore classified as marketing support. Consequently, from 1996 to 2013, social and poverty policy and the governance of EU food assistance were the responsibilities of different domains within the Finnish administration. There was no cooperation or coordination of food aid between the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health (MSAH) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction: exploring the growth of food charity across Europe
• 1. New frames for food charity in Finland
• 2. Social exclusion and food assistance in Germany
• 3. The role of food charity in Italy
• 4. Food banks in the Netherlands stepping up to the plate: shifting moral and practical responsibilities
• 5. Redistributing waste food to reduce poverty in Slovenia
• 6. Food aid in post-crisis Spain: a test for this welfare state model
• 7. Food banks and the UK welfare state
• 8. Conclusion: food charity in Europe