The National Preparedness Commission has called for the widespread adoption of Right to Grow policies as a key part of securing our food system.
The new report, by Professor Tim Lang, considers what would be entailed for the public if the status quo were disrupted. What would public reactions be? How prepared for food shocks are the British? Specifically, it sets out a challenge: the necessity to take food shocks more seriously and how to improve civil food resilience
The report identifies a range of skills and organisations that could be deployed at community level in food shocks. A national audit of such community food assets is recommended, alongside locally-conducted community audits of food assets. The report is clear that future civil food resilience planning – which should be included in the Government Resilience Framework – should consider different levels of resilience from individual to household to community and region.
The report highlights the need for Government to recognise (and support) a ‘bottom up’ approach to national food security. We already have a great many organisations and civil society groups doing the work of creating a more equitable and sustainable food system, but they are chronically underfunded.
In practice, what can the public do to enhance food resilience? There are multiple actions and pathways that can be envisaged or strengthened, going from the individual or household level to the community and to larger social scale and Lang specifically identifies community food growing as an important part of building resilience. He views this not just as an issue of food provision, though, but of arming our communities with skills around food – cooking, growing, sharing, nutrition and coming together around food. Of course, it also gives us the glue that is so important in any crisis; social capital – knowing your neighbours, and being invested in collectively withstanding and recovering from crisis.
Lang has identified in this report a need for support from authorities to drastically improve access to land for community food growing projects, and that the Right to Grow will be a key tool for making that happen. Lang calls for a Right to Grow to be written in to a National Food Policy.
You can read a summary, and the full report, here.
