Challenges
The supply and demand sides of Scottish food and drink are disconnected. Scotland produces food and drink products of the highest quality from diverse, internationally renowned, and often challenging land and marine environments that require careful management to balance production, biodiversity, and amenity. However, many Scottish food producers struggle to stay in business.
Food consumption in Scotland tends to be associated with low intake of fruit and vegetables and with high rates of obesity and related ill health. These associations tend to be stronger for the economically disadvantaged. Economic disadvantage, marked by insufficient and insecure incomes, is also the main driver of food insecurity. The Family Resources Survey estimated that in 2019-20 eight per cent of Scottish households experienced food insecurity. Given that the average number of people per household in Scotland was 2.15 in 2019, it is likely that more than nine per cent, and possibly nearer 15 per cent, of the Scottish population has experienced some level of food insecurity in recent years.
Efforts are being made to bring Scottish producers and consumers together, such as through farmer’s markets. In parallel, networks have developed to supply large food banks which, in turn, provide smaller organisations and consumers with free or heavily discounted food and drink products. Such networks have expanded significantly since the 2000s and now cover much of Scotland.
These networks remain under-studied in Scotland. However, research done elsewhere raises questions about the extent to which their charitable and often eligibility-dependent provision of food can address the economic conditions that they seek to alleviate and be compatible with the Scottish Government’s dignity principles. Working with people who have faced food insecurity is particularly important to build bridges across the divide between Scottish food production and consumption. While there is much quantitative evidence on overall consumption patterns, not enough is known about the attitudes of low-income consumers and the consumption habits of food-insecure people.
Questions
- What are the barriers and potential mechanisms for addressing food insecurity in Scotland?
Solutions
This project aims to inform policies to build food and nutrition security in Scotland. The research will review and generate new evidence and recommend new ways of providing dignified options for Scotland’s more vulnerable residents to consume healthy food and drink in ways that provide opportunities for Scotland’s food and drink sector to operate in an environmentally and financially sustainable manner.
Network, knowledge, and solutions development
We will explore the potential for bringing together economically marginal groups on the food and drink demand and supply sides to inform policies to build food and nutrition security in Scotland. Working with a steering group, containing policymakers and public bodies, food industry groups, third sector organisations and representatives of groups vulnerable to food insecurity, this research will:
- Identify opportunities for Scottish producers and intermediaries to supply healthy, local and lower-environmental-impact produce to food-insecure and low-income Scottish residents.
- Recommend ways to increase food-insecure Scottish residents’ physical and economic access to healthy food by identifying a preferred mechanism(s) to replace food banks as a primary response to food insecurity.
Food supply chain issues
The project is exploring ways to increase physical and economic access to food by studying food supply chain issues that can exacerbate food insecurity and how and why new food supply networks develop and function.
International efforts to eradicate the need for 'food aid'
We are reviewing studies and mechanisms that have sought to eradicate the need for 'food aid', at any stage in the supply chain, particularly those which:
- Quantify their impact and value for money
- Assess their relevance to Scottish industry and consumers
- Are alternative to charitable provision (for example, co-operatives, community food initiatives, social supermarkets)
Identify gaps in Scotland's ‘food aid’ distribution
We are mapping and quantifying the ‘food aid’ distribution network in Scotland to better understand the ‘supply side’. We seek to identify key gaps (and swaps) that can be filled with healthier and lower-environmental-impact alternatives from Scottish producers.
Project Partners
Progress
An important part of this research is that it learns from, and is relevant to, people involved in developing responses to food insecurity. Thus, an early priority was to assemble a ‘steering group’ of potential research users to inform the design and conduct of the work. Our ‘steering group’ met in Glasgow (and online) in September 2022 and has since been invited to comment on the draft of our systematic literature review, on the list of attributes and models for replacing food banks, and on the draft report of the study described in the next paragraph. We also engage directly with policy makers through biannual meetings to discuss progress and ensure that our research remains relevant to their needs.
Our first piece of ‘fieldwork’ sought to build an improved understanding of how disruptions to the food supply chain can exacerbate food insecurity and to identify how adaptations, such as those made during the COVID-19 ‘lockdowns’, could inform what effective responses to future disruptions might look like. This involved conducting in-depth interviews with people working to provide emergency food and other assistance, in order to learn from their experience and expertise.
Other work in Year 1 sought to develop our understanding of potential alternatives to the use of food banks in Scotland. A systematic review of efforts to eradicate the need for 'food aid' in high-income countries was conducted. Work has also been done, in conjunction with our ‘steering group’ and other stakeholders, to identify potential attributes and models to replace food banks. The findings from these two strands of work will feed into a survey to be conducted in Year 2, the findings from which will inform choice experiments that will be conducted in Year 3.
Presentations, reports, posters.
- Poster: "Understanding the Lived Experience of Food Insecurity amongst Adults in Scotland over time" presented at RESAS Science, Evidence and Policy Conference, Edinburgh, 18 May 2023.
- Report: “Exploring the perceived impact of food system disruptions on food insecure people in Scotland and what effective responses might look like”.
- Report: “Food system disruptions and strategies for delivering and maintaining food insecurity: academic and grey literature systematically reviewed”.
This research is examining the barriers to, and potential mechanisms for, addressing food insecurity in Scotland. In 2023-24 we continued engaging with project stakeholders to inform the conduct of our research and to ensure that it continues to meet the requirements of this fast-evolving policy area. Talks and briefings were provided to the Scottish and UK governments. These are listed under ‘outputs’ below.
A major policy development in 2023-24 was the publication of the Scottish Government’s plan Cash-First - Towards Ending the Need For Food Banks in Scotland. To provide ‘baseline’ evidence for this plan, we conducted internet searches and an online survey to create a database of the locations and activities of food aid organisations (including food banks) operating in Scotland. This work, the first of its kind since before the COVID-19 lockdowns, identified 638 food support organisations operating through 1,008 outlets. In urban areas, the distribution of outlets was concentrated where overall deprivation was highest. Food support outlets were also present in rural areas, but their distribution tended to be concentrated in remote small towns. Thus, rural residents tend to be further away from sources of food support than people in urban areas. These findings, while in line with expectations, could not be assumed, as there is no obligation on voluntary bodies, which is what most food support organisations are, to locate in specific areas. An article discussing our findings will be published in Scottish Affairs in early 2025.
We conducted detailed case studies of 13 food support organisations, located in urban and rural Scotland. We collected detailed interview, financial and other data in order to:
- Identify links between food support organisations and bodies they interact with.
- Provide insights and, where possible, estimates of the sources of different types of food, drink and other products they receive, and the extent to which these products are sold or donated to and by them.
- Document the range of non-food products and services they provide.
- Understand challenges faced by, and opportunities available to, food support organisations in terms of: their financial resources; the characteristics (e.g. shelf life and storage requirements) of the food and drink products they supply; areas of unmet demand; opportunities for obtaining food, drink and other products locally; and moving beyond charitable food relief.
- Explore attitudes towards Cash-First and the range of services that could support it to help people achieve and maintain food security.
The analysis, synthesis, writing up and dissemination of the case study data will start in 2024-25.
We designed, in close collaboration with stakeholders, and conducted a survey-based choice experiment to examine people’s attitudes towards potential mechanisms to replace food banks as a primary response to food insecurity. A choice experiment is a quantitative research technique asking individuals to state their preference for particular mechanisms and their attributes, so is well-suited to this task. We identified, in cooperation with stakeholders, the potential mechanisms and their attributes to be investigated in a representative survey-based choice experiment with 2,000 people. The survey was conducted and, in 2024-25, we will analyse people's responses to determine whether their preferences are significantly influenced by the different attributes and to determine the relative importance of each attribute. We will share our findings with stakeholders and others.
Building on this research, we secured additional funding, from the Scottish Government and the University of Aberdeen, for a PhD studentship. We have appointed a student and they began work on an investigation the healthfulness and sustainability of food practices across the life course of adults in Scotland.
Case Study
Food system disruptions and food insecurity in Scotland: learning from food support workers.
Peer-reviewed journal papers
Food Expensiveness in Scotland’s Remote Areas: An Analysis of Household Food Purchases, 2023 paper in Rural Sociology by Revoredo-Giha and Russo
Unexpected effects of urban food activism on community and human wellbeing, (2024) paper in Local Environment by Wardle et al.
Talks
F Akaichi, J Waterworth and L Toma, ‘Social Supermarkets in the UK: Consumer Preferences and Manager Perspectives on Alternative Models’, XVII Congress of the European Association of Agricultural Economists, Rennes, August/September 2023.
C Revoredo-Giha and W Dogbe, ‘Having a closer look at the food inflation figures in the UK’, Scottish Government (RESAS) online seminar, October 2023.
C Russo and C Revoredo-Giha ‘An analysis of food prices in Scottish remote rural areas’, Defra and Agricultural Economics Society one-day conference, Fairness in the agricultural supply chain, London, December 2023.
Reports
J McKenzie and D Watts (2024) Exploring the perceived impact of food system disruptions on food insecure people in Scotland and what effective responses might look like.
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