Five takeaways from the Lincolnshire Food Summit 2024

On 21st November, the Lincolnshire Food Summit 2024 brought together over 70 delegates from across Greater Lincolnshire, with the purpose of working together to end food insecurity and ensure access to healthy, sustainable food for all.

1. Stop normalising hardship.

Food support doesn’t reach everyone who needs it.

Household food insecurity in the UK is on the rise, referrals for emergency food support are increasing, and organisations are stepping up to meet the need in their communities.

Even so, people who find themselves facing poverty describe feeling ashamed to admit to their suffering or to ask for help.

From students whose student loan doesn’t cover adequate food to stay healthy, to parents who go without to ensure their children eat – many people facing food insecurity feel that their only option is to suffer alone.

Asking for help feels difficult, shameful, stigmatising. People don’t want to ask for food parcels!

But we don’t accept the normalising of hardship and suffering in silence.

2. A world where no-one needs foodbanks.

Panelist Andy Cleaver, from Trussell (the UK’s largest foodbank network), referred to the Labour Party’s pledge to end mass dependence on emergency food parcels, which it called “a moral scar on our society” – an apt description.

But while foodbanks are urgently needed right now, food insecurity is fundamentally an injustice in 2024: emergency food provision is a sector whose goal is to shrink, not to grow.

3. We’re not alone. We want to work together.

Overwhelmingly, the most common challenges food support organisations are facing are: lack of funding, limited access to food (i.e. donated, surplus or affordable) and shortage of volunteers.

Delegates voiced frustration about the way that they find themselves isolated and forced into competition with each other, in pursuit of grants and resources, but strongly wished to work together and support one another.

‘We’re all on the same mission’, they acknowledged.

The Summit provided a much-appreciated opportunity to network and forge connections.

4. There’s a whole ecosystem around improving food

Whatever we do around good food has all sorts of knock-on benefits.

The community allotments, cooking projects, kitchens and cafes have powerful benefits that touch many aspects of life – health, community, relationships, mental health, confidence and so much more, and one good thing leads to another.

It unfolded during one of the panel discussions how an urban market garden in Boston had led to local school children from Tower Road Academy enjoying gardening on their curriculum, developing friendships, nature-connection, confidence and trust.

This led to the primary school negotiating with the local secondary school to share kitchen facilities, so children could learn to cook, and Boston Market Garden now has a queue of schools wanting to visit.

What might happen if local authorities and planners ensured more urban food growing spaces?

5. Good food is a pleasure!

Bombarded as we are by advertising and sales of cheap, fast, hyper-palatable, ultra-processed foods (especially targeted at children), it is no coincidence that hardship and deteriorating dietary health go hand-in-hand.

This is where making the time to take pleasure in food – exploring a variety of tastes, especially during childhood – is so vital.

Schools have a powerful role to play through sensory taste education, and community cooking projects (such as GoGro’s) have benefits, across lifetimes, families and communities. 

Thanks to the Evan Cornish family and Lincolnshire Community Foundation for supporting the Lincolnshire Food Summit 2024

This article is published in the Lincoln Independent December 2024 edition.