Actually Existing Food Resilience: Community Food Provisioning in Tāmaki Makaurau in Covid-19 Times

Abstract

Food insecurity is increasingly recognised as a significant public health issue in high-income countries (Tarasuk, 2005), an issue that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated. The dominant approach to hunger and food insecurity in high-income nations has historically leaned on the charitable distribution of food through community-led, not-for-profit, third sector organisations and projects. For the most part, literature on food charity as a response to food insecurity focuses on its negative impacts, such as depoliticisation and the stigma and shame associated with receiving food charity. Yet, the extent to which food aid organisations have acknowledged and responded to these critiques has been underexplored (Wakefield et al., 2013). Taking together the concepts of food security, food charity and food resilience, this research aims to address this gap by exploring what actually existing community-based food provisioning looks like. This research utilises experiential qualitative methodology, using semi-structured interviews and participant observation to collect data. The primary data is supplemented by documentary sources and grey literature such as media reporting, official reports, policy and other organisational documents, and thematic analysis was used to code and interpret the data. Findings indicate that community-led food aid organisations can be largely constrained within a charitable model of food provision because of the massive demand for their services and the need to alleviate the immediate food insecurity of recipients. This is compounded by many challenges organisations encounter in their day-to-day operations. These challenges create a state of instability, whereby these organisations are constantly in flux or are subject to ad hoc resources and relationships. Despite these challenges, organisations appear to be employing diverse strategies in their actually existing food provisioning, contributing towards local food system resilience.