Tag: food

Spook-tastic ways to use pumpkins this Halloween

26th Oct 22 by Megan Romania

Across two ‘Halloween’ seasons alone, Feedback rescued around 45 tonnes of would-be-wasted pumpkins.

Join us for some Pumpkin gleaning in Sussex on November 2!

Crisp apples. Cosy sweaters. Colourful leaves. Why yes, Autumn is by far my favourite season. And with this changing season comes my favourite holiday: Halloween.

Halloween, and even the whole of October, is characterised by spook and scare. One thing is for certain, the most frightening part of Halloween isn’t the ghosts, the ghouls, the black cats or broomsticks. Instead, what sends a chill down my spine are the pumpkins. Or rather, the unnecessary food waste incurred by their existence.

Carvings pumpkins is great fun, there’s no doubt. However, in an age where food production and consumption are the greatest impacts humans have on the planet, it’s becoming ever more prudent to reconsider the role that our holiday celebrations play as well. Halloween, and our meticulously carved pumpkins, can be no exception. Boo*.

In 2021, Feedback rescued 5.3 tonnes of pumpkins from farms. This represents a massive waste of precious resources used to grow pumpkins ultimately thrown away. We can personally attest that they are tasty and would be better used for a variety of autumnal recipes!

The Alchemic Kitchen, Feedback’s social enterprise based in the North West of England, have been leading Feedback’s creative efforts to use pumpkins that would otherwise be left to rot in the fields or on front porches. Savoury pumpkin scones, a Thai yellow curry, and a delicious dahl are just a few of the possibilities.

Have a pumpkin recipe you’d love to share? Tweet us at @feedbackorg or tag us on Facebook!

*Pun intended?

Part of campaigns
Gleaning Network

Join us in the fields - it’s time to get your hands dirty!

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Food citizens

Let’s take ownership of our food - and how it reaches our plates

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Regional Food Economy – Alchemic Kitchen

Creating a better food economy for a sustainable future in the North West

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Waste in supply chains

Tracing the supply chains that bring our food from farms around the world to supermarket shelves

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Sussex Surplus

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Feedback’s response to the ADBA’s article ‘Why you MUST invest in anaerobic digestion and biogas to build back greener’

6th Nov 20 by Martin Bowman, Senior Policy and Campaign Manager

Feedback provides some clarity and accuracy on our research findings on AD.

Feedback welcome the ADBA’s response to our Executive Director’s recent article in Responsible Investor – however, since the ADBA misrepresent our view and the issues, we hope that this response provides some clarity. For more info, read our report on AD.

A summary of Feedback’s advice to investors

Don’t invest in:

  • AD plants which run on bioenergy crops like maize or grass – even if these are co-digested
  • AD plants built on newly built or newly expanded intensive livestock farms
  • AD plants which lower the costs of animal waste disposal for intensive livestock farms
  • AD plants which process food waste edible to humans or animals
  • AD plants which charge little or nothing for waste disposal or actively pay for wastes, and thus disincentivise waste prevention

Do invest in:

  • AD plants which digest sewage feedstocks
  • AD plants which process only manures and slurries on smaller-scale more sustainable livestock farms
  • AD plants which take on unavoidable food waste which is not edible to humans or animals
  • AD plants which charge higher gate fees to take on food wastes or animal slurries

 

First, the points on which we agree: AD does have some role in a sustainable future, as a last-resort waste management option – as we argue in our report, there is a ‘sustainable niche’ for AD. AD is certainly better than landfill and incineration of food waste, and is preferable to open storage of manure and slurries – practices which should be heavily taxed and banned as soon as possible. To be clear, this will require some growth in the AD industry, and investment to this end – so it is sometimes sustainable to invest in AD, within limits and in some specific situations. We also agree that sewage treatment by AD is part of this sustainable niche. ADBA’s false claim that Feedback assume AD can only be used to treat food waste is misplaced – our report and the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study on which it is based, examine bioenergy crops, manure and slurries too.

However, crucially we model two scenarios: the “industry driven AD” scenario in line with ADBA’s ambitions for AD industry growth, and the “climate optimised AD” scenario where environmentally preferable alternative uses for AD feedstocks are maximized (like food waste prevention) with remaining feedstocks used for AD. In the climate-optimised scenario, we model no bioenergy crops and about a third less food waste going to AD, and additionally we model a context where meat production (and thus availability of manure and slurries) is roughly halved – but all available slurries go to AD in both scenarios. The LCA found that the climate optimised scenario resulted in over double the emissions savings, as well as generating more energy (generated by solar PV on land previously used for bioenergy crops) and significantly higher food production on spared cropland.

ADBA’s presentation of AD as a “win-win-win-win” solution is a simplistic fantasy, although not a surprising stance to take for a body set up to promote the AD industry. Our ground-breaking LCA study, completed in collaboration with academic experts at Bangor University, shows a far more complex and nuanced picture, with some serious limitations to AD. Below, we highlight four key problems:

The first problem is that, as the ADBA acknowledge, AD is far less effective than waste prevention. In fact, preventing food waste results in 9 times more emissions savings than sending it to AD, and if trees are planted on the spared grassland, about 40 times more. The ADBA also often ignore animal feed – our LCA found that sending food waste to animal feed saves 3 times more emissions than sending it to AD. This makes food waste prevention, and using food waste as animal feed, far more effective green investments – and means that only unavoidable food waste inedible to both humans and animals should be sent to AD. Within the current legal framework, there is plenty of scope to increase the processing of food waste like bread for animal feeds – and EU-funded research found that it is possible to feed food waste containing meat to pigs and chickens safely, if EU law is reformed to allow this in a safely regulated fashion. When it comes to manures and slurries, these wastes can be prevented too – through shifts from meat to plant-based diets. For instance, switching from pig meat to a plant-based protein alternative such as tofu results in a 74% reduction in emissions and 80% in land use – land which can then be used for tree planting to offset emissions even further. The emissions savings from sending slurries to AD are far smaller in comparison – so investing in plant-based alternatives to meat would be a far greener investment, from pulses and beans to plant-based burgers and milks. Investors looking to green their portfolios should aim to support dietary shifts as a priority, with AD only used to mitigate the emissions of a smaller, more sustainable livestock sector.

The second problem is that high subsidies to AD create perverse incentives, sometimes actively impeding the better waste prevention alternatives mentioned above. It is completely disingenuous of the ADBA to claim that they are not advocating for high subsidies locked in for decades – their own report clearly advises that AD subsidies are returned to the very high levels of 2011-15, that large-scale AD is subsidised at the same high levels as small-scale plants, and that these be guaranteed for decades into the future. In Northern Ireland, AD subsidies at a similar high level to those advocated by the ADBA were explicitly designed as a means to support an explosion in the size of the country’s intensive livestock industry. Through reducing the industry’s waste disposal costs (even paying for their waste), enabling sites to gain planning permission and bypass environmental regulations, highly subsidised AD plants actually helped expand the polluting industry it was meant to be reducing the environmental effects of. In the case of food waste too, testimonies to a House of Lords enquiry complained that high AD subsidies created perverse incentives to send edible food to AD rather than ensure it is eaten, and Feedback has found many other instances of such complaints. In one case, Feedback’s investigations found an AD plant in a port that in a single day was processing an estimated 60,000 cucumbers, 10,000 figs, 4,000 cabbages and many other foods – which all appeared edible. In this context of distorting high subsidies, investments in some AD plants may thus actively prevent far more sustainable alternatives. The better way to make AD plants financially sustainable without creating these perverse incentives is to tax or ban worse alternatives to AD, such as incineration, landfill, and open manure storage, thus pushing up the supply of wastes to AD and gate fees they can charge for collection.

The third problem is that AD’s emissions mitigation potential significantly declines over time. This is a big problem, since AD plants often take decades of highly subsidised operation to break even on their high up-front costs. The reason for the decline is that as society decarbonises, the emissions that AD currently mitigates are often avoided by other means – for instance, as the electricity grid shifts to renewables, heat and transport are electrified, landfill and open manure storage are banned, AD begins to compare less and less favourably with alternatives. Our study found that some AD feedstocks like grass even begin to have a negative rather than positive environmental impact in a net zero context. This means that the green credentials of investments in AD will decline significantly over time. In comparison, food waste prevention, tree planting, dietary change and solar PV consistently far outperform AD in future decarbonisation contexts (see our report for more detail on this).

The final problem with AD is that, although the AD industry claim that they only want “unavoidable” wastes to go to AD, they have a strong incentive to downplay how much waste is “avoidable” to maximize their growth. The ADBA nowhere in its report mentions dietary shifts away from meat as an option and only currently support the UK’s unambitious voluntary targets on food waste, which pledge only a 24% reduction in post-farmgate food waste between 2015 and 2030. A 50% reduction in UK meat consumption, a genuine 50% reduction in UK food waste from farm to fork through ambitious regulation, and tree planting on the millions of hectares of land that would be spared by these measures, could together mean that UK agriculture could be net carbon negative by 2040 without recourse to BECCS. The AD industry is eager portray agriculture as “difficult to decarbonise” because it actively sidelines these more ambitious alternatives.

 

*Using 2007 as a baseline year, excluding inedible food waste, using per capita figures which also use a 2007 baseline year.

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Why a post-COVID recovery must ensure a transformation of our food system

12th May 20 by Mia Watanabe

Food is a right, not a luxury, and it’s time for our food system to reflect this.

Click here to listen to a recording of this blog

Over recent weeks in the UK we have witnessed gallons of milk being poured down drains by independent farmers who are being refused collections by supermarkets. Vegetables are rotting in fields because we cannot guarantee safety and dignity to the low-paid migrant workforces on whom we depend to harvest this produce. Tonnes of food continues to be wasted all whilst thousands of people go hungry. Why? Because our food system, that places profit over livelihoods, is not equipped to handle a crisis. This system is fragile, and we are seeing it crumble before us.

It’s no question that our food system was broken already. This has only been exacerbated by the crisis: this system simultaneously produces masses of surplus whilst failing to feed everyone, with more and more people relying on food banks than ever before to compensate for this disaster. There has been a 73% increase in supplies being distributed by food banks over the past five years, and a 23% increase from 2018 to 2019 alone. Between 2010 and 2016, 4,000 small-scale farms in the UK closed, according to Defra. These are signs of a system that is not only failing but is systematically depriving the most vulnerable in our society of their basic right to food. In a post-COVID society under economic turmoil, these issues will only become more pertinent unless drastic action is taken to transform what, and how, we eat.

The UK’s food and farming industries employ 1 in 8 working people. Those who work in food service, however, saw their sector collapse overnight. With no guarantees to a fair wage and thousands of key workers in grocery stores and food processing plants left with no choice but to face the coronavirus head on, it is imperative that any efforts to recover from the pandemic places food issues at its centre. A transformation of our food system is necessary if we are to build back better.

For many of us, our experiences of food in lockdown have been mixed. There’s been a reported 34% reduction of household food waste since lockdown started as a result of individuals being more careful about the food they consume, with visits to grocery stores becoming a somewhat perilous excursion. We’ve seen radical forms of cooperation and care-giving flourish through mutual aid networks whose actions have involved distributing free meals and delivering shopping for neighbours. Bread making has introduced an entry point to baking for many new cooks and as some people find daily catharsis through punching their sourdough, others are rage baking with their communities. Whether it’s shortening supply chains, or reducing long journeys for livestock, these resourceful, and often radical, adaptations to the way we eat under lockdown should be seen as a foundation to the world we want to rebuild.

To do this, we must challenge our “barriers of imagination”. Currently, less than 20% of Britons are optimistic that the quality and the environmental impact of the food they eat will get better in the future. Even less are optimistic about their access to healthy food. In a society that is so pessimistic about the food we eat, a just recovery for our food systems is an opportunity to imagine big and better. We must ensure we have a national food strategy that works for people, not profit. We need fair wages for agricultural workers whose labour, as we are now witnessing, provides a backbone to feeding our communities. We need access to healthy food for everyone, leaving no one hungry. And finally, we must pandemic-proof our food system to ensure that this does not happen again. Food is a right, not a luxury, and it’s time for our food system to reflect this.

Help us get good food to those who need it

The global pandemic means that our work in getting fresh, nutritious produce to people has never been more critical. We need your support to help make this happen. Any funds raised now will be committed to our COVID-19 food rescue, preparation and redistribution work.

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Feedback’s response to the COVID-19 crisis

26th Mar 20 by Carina Millstone

The response of communities, civil society and citizens are giving us a glimpse of a more resilient and fairer food system

Feedback, like many fellow civil society organisations, has emerged into this strange, deeply worrying new world somewhat bewildered and disorientated, but with a renewed determination to do whatever we can to help.

We have started to redeploy much of our work towards COVID-19 relief efforts. In Merseyside, our Alchemic Kitchen has turned its hobs and chopping boards to producing fresh, healthy and nourishing soup, which we are sharing with vulnerable people via our extensive network of community groups and service delivery organisations. At a time when many people are struggling to access enough food, there are also large amounts of food at risk of being wasted, and Lucy and her team are rescuing as much as they can from closed cafes and restaurants and wholesalers. We hope to continue rescuing food and turning it into delicious soups and other products for community groups in Merseyside throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

As many of you will know, Feedback has a long history of rescuing produce that would otherwise go to waste from farms: for many years, we have organised volunteers and trained community groups to go gleaning. In the last few weeks, we have spoken to our partner farmers and many of them are facing unprecedented challenges: some supplying the hospitality industry have seen their business dry up overnight, while others are deeply worried about lack of staff to harvest produce, a situation which will gets worse as the year progresses. Already our partner gleaning groups have been organising to recover food from fields in Kent to distribute to those in need in their local community; and we are currently working out how we can best use our networks of farmers, gleaners and community groups to make sure fresh, healthy produce does not go to waste, but instead goes to some of the more vulnerable members of our society in this difficult time.

The COVID- 19 pandemic has starkly brought to the fore the vulnerabilities of our food system. It has exposed our risky dependency on global food supply chains; it has reminded us of the country’s  food insecurity and lack of farming skills The supermarket stockpiling pandemonium has also shown us the inadequacy of individual consumer responses in facing up to the collective challenge of fair access to food – while neighbours, communities, mutual aid groups and NHS volunteers are inspiring us with their determination to make sure no one is left behind.

At Feedback, our work has always been about creating a more plant-based, less wasteful, fairer and ecological food system. The COVID-19 food crisis is showing that our work is more necessary than ever. The response of communities, civil society and citizens across the country are giving us a glimpse of the more resilient and fairer food system we strive for. Inspired by this, we will redouble our efforts over the coming months – on the ground and through our campaigns – to transform the food system, and make sure we do not bounce back but step forward from this crisis, leaving behind a corporate profit driven food system, to one that prioritises health, equity and ecological renewal.

We wish you and your loved ones well. Please stay in touch for updates and consider donating to us if you can– any funds raised now will be committed to our COVID-19 food rescue, preparation and redistribution work.

Carina and the Feedback Team

Help us get good food to those who need it

The global pandemic means that our work in getting fresh, nutritious produce to people has never been more critical. We need your support to help make this happen. Any funds raised now will be committed to our COVID-19 food rescue, preparation and redistribution work.

Donate now

What food campaigners can learn from fossil fuel divestment

20th Feb 20 by Mia Watanabe, Big Livestock Campaigner

Divestment campaigning is more than the process of divesting alone.

I’ve struggled to write this blog. Every time I sit down with the task of writing it, I am met with a strange, unsettling feeling – a collision of hope and defeat. I’ve been involved in divestment campaigning for almost three years now and yet none of the institutions for which I have campaigned have divested from fossil fuels nor arms companies. When I think back to June 8th 2018, the day our university decided to reject fossil fuel divestment after a lengthy process of reviewing the case, when I think of the university’s decision to employ bailiffs to forcibly evict students occupying its central offices in the days running up to the decision, when I think of fossil fuel divestment, I feel deflated. Yet, three years later, I am still campaigning for it. This time it’s for the end of Big Livestock.

That’s not to say that campaigning for divestment hasn’t been successful or effective. The thing about divestment is that, well, it’s not entirely about divesting.

At first glance the way it works seems simple: get institutions to remove their investments from multinational, planet-destroying corporations (historically this has targeted fossil fuels, the arms trade, and South Africa’s system of apartheid). In many cases, the value of divestment is large enough to affect financial strain on these companies. When the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, Norway’s $1.1 trillion Government Pension Fund, announced its plans to divest from oil and gas last year, 134 companies experienced a plunge of £130m from their combined stock market value. In others where the value of fossil fuel investments is smaller, the act is more symbolic – a signal of solidarity with those on the front lines of climate breakdown. Currently, 79 UK Universities, many with smaller endowments, have announced plans to divest from fossil fuels in some form. Disassociating ourselves from these destructive companies stigmatises them and consequently, BP, ExxonMobil, and Shell have become known as villains.

This is the end goal, but divestment campaigning is more than the process of divesting alone. Especially when, in many scenarios, including my own, the ‘win’ sometimes seems so far away, divestment facilitates a different kind of movement building.

My experiences with Cambridge Zero Carbon Society helped me to engage with issues far beyond the reach of an aggregate of individuals. Zero Carbon, which began in 2007 and re-launched in 2015, has seen hundreds of students involved with the campaign. I spent most of my second and third year of university plotting direct actions, writing press statements, and coordinating campaigners. Targeting the CEOs of the world’s worst corporate polluters now seemed tangible. In protesting events, blockading offices, and occupying our university’s central offices, we were fighting something bigger than us. Fossil fuel divestment has helped shift the narrative away from choices made by individuals and towards the consequences of corporate power. The burden of climate anxiety no longer isolated me but was uprooted collectively.

But the issue of industrial agriculture has lagged. The impact of meat and dairy consumption on the environment is framed as a ‘lifestyle’ issue. We are constantly being bombarded with messages to eat less meat, buy more vegetables, or go vegan and while these can be empowering choices and a step in the right direction, they are not always in our own hands. These are choices overshadowed by the structural issues and corporate powers that monopolise the industry – from systemic racism in access to nourishing food, to the wild success of meat and dairy lobbyists. We’ve moved beyond the conversations about switching off lights and cycling to work, so when it comes to an industry that’s producing 7.14 Gt of emissions each year, why do we continue to emphasise individual consumption? Divesting from Big Livestock will not only cause financial damage to some of the world’s worst polluters, but it will also open up new ways of thinking and talking about food.

By looking beyond our dinner plates and questioning who funds the meat that is on them, we begin to unpack the power structures that prop up this potent industry. Campaigning for divestment exposes the institutions complicit in Amazonian deforestation, the universities that fund slave labour conditions in meatpacking plants, and the museums and galleries that enable land grabbing from indigenous territories. Divestment is effective because it makes tangible the structural issues at play. It forms cross-campaign solidarity so that campaigners can stand with those on the front lines of climate breakdown.

Without sounding like the ‘maybe the real treasure is the friends we made along the way’ meme, the value of divestment campaigns isn’t only in the investments, the bonds, or the billions held in Shell, but the communities of solidarity, we foster in the process.

 

Image credit – Graham CopeKoga 

 

 

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Turning surplus produce into vinegar and ferments

11th Feb 20 by Keenan Humble, Development Chef, Alchemic Kitchen

At this time of year there is an abundance of citrus fruit in markets, which means that there is (sadly) a large amount going to waste.

At the Alchemic Kitchen we have spent the first few weeks of 2020 replenishing our stocks of jams, marmalade and chutney after a busy Christmas period sending hampers across the country.

We received an abundance of cranberries, strawberries, apples, blood oranges and limes (all produce that was destined for the bin). With them we have made Berry Crush Jam (cranberry, strawberry & basil), Coco-Loco Marmalade (orange, limes, cardamom & coconut) and Gamekeepers Chutney (cranberry, apple, onion & ginger). As we are suitably re-stocked and ready to do it all again for Valentine’s day, the beginning of February has been all about fermenting and making vinegars from fruit peels and cores.

We currently have jars of apple peels, bruised cranberries and citrus & chilli trimmings fermenting, ticking over, which will develop into the first batches of vinegar of Alchemic Kitchen’s tenure at our base in Stanley Grange. I am planning on using the apple vinegar to make an apple balsamic product that can be used for a sweet onion marmalade, we do not have such clear plans for the other two but I am sure we will find a use for them. It will be handy to have them to pickle vegetables as we get them, lift dishes we prepare for catering events and accent future products. I personally love this as we are reducing the costs of our products, becoming more self-sufficient and really making the produce we rescue stretch as far as possible.

At this time of year there is an abundance of citrus fruit in markets, which means that there is (sadly) a large amount going to waste. Rather than turn all of it into marmalade, we decided that we would use some in savoury pickles and condiments. We are therefore waiting on the results of our salted limes, which will go on to become lime pickle and blood oranges, which are sitting in a salt brine made of their own juice and scotch bonnet chillies.

Once the fruit has served its time in salt brine, it will be cooked with spices like mustard seed, coriander and ground ginger before being jarred and left to mature. We can then pop them open as and when we need them. I plan to use them in cheese toasties at the container (for the other tenants’ lunches, not just mine).

 

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Swap salmon for a different kettle of fish

30th Jan 20 by Christina O'Sullivan

With so much diet chat focusing on restriction - what if we opened ourselves up to exploration?

Veganuary? Dry January? The chances are some of you have started the year attempting to change your diet. Changing what and how we eat is necessary to tackle the Climate Emergency. The global food system is responsible for up to 30% of Greenhouse Gas Emissions – the single greatest impact we have on the planet.

My beef (pun intended) is not with shifting our diets in a more sustainable direction but instead with the way this is often communicated. So much diet chat focuses on restriction and promotes the idea that certain foods are inherently good while others are inherently bad. When in reality a sustainable diet is a balanced one. The food system is incredibly complicated, so whenever I see a silver bullet solution being touted I indulge in some healthy scepticism.

Enter the ‘super-food’ (this term doesn’t actually mean anything – it is purely a marketing phrase) that is salmon. Salmon is an incredibly popular fish choice in the UK – purchases of salmon have risen by 550% over the last 50 years and a recent survey showed that salmon was voted people’s favourite fish to eat. Salmon is good for us but our dedication to the salmon is a super-food mantra puts pressure on our ocean.

The salmon on your dinner plate is probably farmed, around 60% of the world’s salmon production is farmed, and in Scotland this figure reaches 100%, with the last commercial wild salmon fishery closing in late 2018. Farming salmon at an industrial scale requires large quantities of feed including wild caught fish. The current quantity of wild fish fed to farmed Scottish salmon, 460,000 tonnes, is roughly equivalent to the amount purchased by the entire UK population.

Even worse, research shows that 90% of wild caught fish used to produce feed are edible – what if we ate that fish instead of feeding it to salmon? Last year we worked with Michelin-star chef Merlin Labron-Johnson to explore that idea. Merlin cooked up herring, anchoveta and whiting – see the video below for a taste.

We are asking you to swap salmon for something a bit different – turns out there is plenty more (interesting) fish in the sea.  Sign up here to receive recipes and ideas for what to eat and make sure to tag us and use the hashtag #SalmonSwaps to show us what you cook up.

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Roast dinner leftover soup

29th Jan 20 by Keenan Humble

A great soup to make after a Sunday roast using leftovers and things from your cupboard.

This recipe is great to cook after the weekend, if you have made a Sunday roast, as you may well have the leftovers and peelings from vegetables. The recipe is really versatile and any left-over veg or veg peelings you have can form the base of the soup. The same principle can be applied with the main body of the soup; boiled potatoes, cooked rice, cooked pasta and cooked noodles can all be used. The herbs and spices you use is also completely versatile, whether you have dried or fresh – use whatever is in the cupboard!

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 onion (peeled & chopped)

4 garlic cloves (peeled & crushed)

3 leek tops (sliced)

2 tbsp oregano (fresh or dried)

2 tbsp smoked paprika

2 tsp salt

2 tsp black pepper

1.5 litre veg stock

Carrot peelings (from 4/6 carrots)

Potato peelings (from 4/6 medium potatoes)

Broccoli stalks (chopped)

Cauliflower leaves (chopped)

Mashed potato/ boiled potato/ cooked rice/ cooked pasta

1) Put your oil into a large saucepan and add your chopped onion, crushed garlic and sliced leek tops. Sweat for 3-4 minutes over a low/ medium heat until the contents of the pan have softened. At this point add your smoked paprika, oregano, salt and pepper.

2) Pour over 2/3 of the vegetable stock and add the peel from the potatoes and carrots, cauliflower leaves and broccoli stalks. Allow the veg trimmings to cook until tender, this should only take around 10 minutes in simmering stock.

3) Once your veg is cooked and tender, add your mashed potato/ boiled potato/ cooked rice etc. If you are using cooked rice, ensure it has been stored in the fridge and then cooked through fully in the stock. Whatever carbohydrate base you have chosen to use, cook it through in the stock, stirring regularly.

4) Once all of the ingredients have been added and heated through, use a stick blended, or regular blender to blitz the soup until smooth. It is here where the last of the stock may come in handy, if the soup is a little thick, add more stock until it is the right consistency for you.

5) Once blended, put the soup back on the heat and warm through. Check the seasoning and serve.

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Feedback’s responds to new food waste figures

24th Jan 20 by Martin Bowman, Senior Policy and Campaigns Manager

The government must introduce binding targets to halve food waste from farm to fork by 2030.

WRAP has published a report on food waste reduction over the past three years. The figures out today have shown that while household food waste has dropped by 0.405 million tonnes, a whopping 4.5 million tonnes is still wasted per year, and business food waste has dropped by a mere 0.07 million tonnes over the last 3 years. Read our response to the research below;

“These figures confirm that voluntary business action on food waste cannot solve the problem. Post-farmgate food businesses have collectively cut their waste by a negligible 1% per year over the last 3 years. Despite big promises to halve food waste by 2030, the food industry is planning on achieving less than half that reduction, and the huge amounts of fresh produce left to rot on farms are still excluded from national targets. With food waste a key contributor to climate change, time running out to get our emissions under control and the UN climate summit in Glasgow fast approaching, it is now absolutely clear that the government must introduce binding targets to halve food waste from farm to fork by 2030, and make it compulsory for large food businesses to report their food waste data publicly.” 

Sign our petition – tell governments to make businesses come clean on food waste now.

 

2020 is here – described by some as the beginning of ‘the decisive decade’ for the climate emergency.

2020 is also the year Feedback enters our second decade campaigning to end waste and create a healthy and sustainable food system, and we are more keenly aware of our responsibility than ever. We rely on donations from our supporters to carry out this vital work.

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Looking for Lochmuir

12th Dec 19 by Christina O'Sullivan

M&S win the 2019 Total Bull award for their 'Fake Loch' branding

*** Campaign update – victory! ***

We’re delighted to see on Twitter that M&S are now planning to phase out their ‘Lochmuir’ fake loch brand, which they’ve used since 2006 to promote their farmed salmon. Brands like this are plain misleading – supermarkets choose them to give an impression of how food like farmed salmon is produced which often just isn’t true. We’re glad M&S have decided to drop the Bull and the Lochmuir brand. See below for more on our campaign Fishy Business.

Where does your salmon come from?

It can be difficult to know what to eat – with increasing alarm over the impact that Big Livestock has on our planet and a never-ending parade of opinion pieces telling us what should be on our plates.

But I always thought farmed salmon was one of the good things.  It is marketed as healthy (loaded with Omega-3) and good for the environment (takes pressure off wild fish stocks). Scottish salmon is marketed as particularly virtuous – a local product sourced from pristine waters. Unfortunately, once you dive a little deeper into the Scottish farmed salmon industry its environmental credentials become a lot more murky.

The Scottish salmon farming industry uses hundreds of thousands of tonnes of wild-caught fish from across the globe every year to feed the salmon that ends up on our plates. In the process it dirties Scottish waters and damages local wildlife.

Farming fish requires feed: for the globally booming industry of farmed Atlantic salmon, this means feed containing wild-caught oceanic fish sourced from European, South American and West Africa waters, alongside other ingredients such as soya and vegetable oils. The Scottish industry has a large appetite for expansion – aiming to double in size by 2030.  This expansion would require a massive 310,000 tonnes of extra wild fish a year. For context, the current quantity of wild fish fed to farmed Scottish salmon, 460,000 tonnes, is roughly equivalent to the amount purchased by the entire UK population, and to fulfil growth ambitions this amount would need to increase by around two thirds.

So salmon is not so sustainable after all – but you wouldn’t know that looking at the packaging on supermarket shelves. You often wouldn’t even know it is farmed – with beautiful images of lochs and not a farming pen in site. Around 60% of the world’s salmon production is farmed, and in Scotland this figure reaches 100%, with the last commercial wild salmon fishery closing in late 2018. Marks & Spencer have gone one step further and created a fake loch ‘Lochmuir’ to market their farmed salmon. We think this is a load of bull and that’s why M&S have won our 2019 Total Bull award. Total Bull is the campaign to shine a light on the biggest bull on our supermarket shelves. We hold food companies to account for their misleading marketing and call on them to support sustainable practices before it is too late. Join us and write to M&S now!

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Spreading Gleaning across the globe

30th Oct 19 by Dan Woolley, Head of Pilot Programmes

I had never been to a commercial fruit farm before attending a glean with Feedback.

In Autumn 2017, Kako Black, an Australian student on a one-year placement at Warwick university, joined Feedback for a six-month volunteering placement. Kako had contacted us before leaving Australia, as she was especially keen to learn more about our various projects and campaigns tackling food waste.

During her time at Feedback, Kako learned about and assisted with many areas of our work; she was particularly interested in our Gleaning Network programme, especially after attending several Gleaning days on farms and orchards.

“Even though I was someone who identified as being passionate about food waste, and concerned about food sustainability, I had never been to a commercial fruit farm before attending a glean with Feedback. I realised that I had been engaging with the issue of food waste from a single perspective (as a consumer) and that there were so many other ways to get involved – including, and importantly, at farm level. Sometimes the scale of the issue feels overwhelming. But unlike many other global issues, food sustainability is something we can all take direct action on. We all eat. We all have the capacity to make significant changes and tangible impact on reducing waste. What Feedback has taught me is that these actions are not the only way to get involved. It is also vital that we expand our perspectives and move away from solely consumer impacts to learn about and change our food system. We are not just food consumers, but food citizens.”

When Kako returned to Australia in the spring of 2018, we very much hoped that she would keep in touch. She was keen to find ways to continue the fight against food waste; we hoped there would be some great local projects she could get involved with.

 

But Kako went one step further: rather than wait for something to happen, Kako seized the initiative – and set up her own gleaning project, GIVback, to rescue crops in the state of Victoria.

We’re immensely proud of Kako, and inspired to know that Feedback’s work is having a positive impact on the other side of the world.

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Where’s the talent?

16th Oct 19 by Dan Woolley, Head of Pilot Programmes

Organisations working for a sustainable future have a responsibility to take the lead.

Of all the many lazy accusations levelled at young people, the last few months have exposed one of the least fair, and most enduring: that they’re disengaged and apathetic.

Young people – children, teenagers and young adults – have caught the adults of the climate and sustainability world by surprise with the tidal wave of action, passion and change that they have unleashed over the past year. Whether it’s a 13 year old taking their first Friday off school to strike for the climate, to the young woman I witnessed last Monday padlocking herself to some scaffolding in the rain to stop the police dismantling Extinction Rebellion’s Trafalgar Square protest. Thousands of young people have found their voice – or perhaps we’re learning to listen.

Yet despite all this activity, a young person who decides that they want to turn their passion and concern for our planet into a career faces a difficult path, especially if they don’t have a degree or come from a working class, black or ethnic minority background, or any community which is faces discrimination and barriers to entering the job market.

This is a sad irony, because right now, the environmental movement needs every voice – we need the voices of all ages and all backgrounds to face the crisis that is brewing, and the many different kinds of thinking and action that will be needed to overcome it, and to overcome it in a way which is just and doesn’t just replicate the injustices and discrimination of the past.

That’s why today, on World Food Day, we’re launching a new project called Eco Talent.

Through Eco Talent, we will be working with talented young people who are passionate about the environment and want to make a difference, but currently feel that working in the environmental sector is inaccessible to them because of their background or life experiences. Simultaneously, we are forming partnerships with host organisations who wish to benefit from the energy, enthusiasm and talent that young people can bring, and from the new voices and fresh perspectives they offer. And because so often the obvious route into the environmental sector is through unpaid volunteering which is inaccessible to most young people, we are connecting these young people and organisations through creating a range of quality internships to be paid at the Living Wage.

Internships will have either a practical or campaigning focus. Practical placements will include host organisations such as community kitchens, farms, and other growing projects – an opportunity to learn about the food system and its effect on the environment as well as the practical skills of how to provide the food of and for the future. Campaigning placements will work with campaigning organisations to push for changes in the food system which will secure sustainable food production for now and future generations.

We recognise that Eco Talent is limited in the number of young people and organisations who can directly take part in, and benefit from, the project. But our long-term vision goes beyond the immediate participants: through demonstrating alternative and fairer approaches to recruitment, and through evidencing the effectiveness of a more diverse workforce in the professional environmental sector, we hope to inspire widespread change – a change that is at once necessary, long overdue and essential in the fight against climate change.

You can find out more about Eco Talent here.

 

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Environmental and Economic potential of surplus food as pig feed

31st Jul 19 by Christina O'Sullivan

Feedback's Martin Bowman outlines how Europe is getting closer to finding a safe way to safely process surplus food into feed.

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The Future of Gleaning

15th Apr 19 by Dan Woolley, Head of Pilot Programmes

Gleaning is an ancient tradition, but what is its future? Dan Woolley reflects on how far it has come, and what's coming next.

Back in 2012 Feedback took a small group of volunteers to a field in Kent to rescue a glut of cabbages and cauliflowers that were not wanted by the supermarkets. From this small seed of an idea blossomed something as bright and beautiful as a field full of brassica: we called it The Gleaning Network.

More than six years since that first gleaning day, we’re immensely proud to look back on all we’ve achieved. But it’s important to also look forward: to consider the role of gleaning in the rapidly changing landscape of food, food waste and farming. So here I want to look at the future of gleaning. I want to share ideas on how gleaning can become a sustainable, replicable and nationwide project; one that serves the interests of communities, farmers and the planet we all share.

But first, here’s a quick recap of what’s happened in the world of gleaning thus far.

Gleaning past and present

For as long as human beings have grown crops, there have been times of surplus; such is the variability of weather. Gleaning – whereby a farmer allows people onto their land to gather leftover crops or grain – seems to have arisen as both a practical and an equitable response to dealing with such instances of surplus. No one knows for sure when and where the practice originated, but we do know it’s referenced in the Old Testament. “Now when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest… you shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger.” (Levictus 9:9-10).

Fast forward to the 21st century, food surpluses still exist – only they no longer occur sporadically, unpredictably, or at small-scale. Instead, overproduction and waste is embedded into our agricultural systems, as a rational response by farmers to the need to guarantee their supply for capricious supermarket buyers.

Yet growing all this food consumes vast quantities of water, energy and fertiliser (as well, of course, as land), while exhausting our soil fertility.

2012: step forward, Olympians

In 2012, as our research was beginning to reveal the sheer scale of waste which can occur on farms, we decided that gleaning was needed once again. While we at Feedback have always maintained that redistribution is not, in itself, a solution to food waste, we knew that the efforts of food redistribution organisations were hindered and frustrated by a lack of access to fresh, nutritious food. It is worth adding that, sadly, redistribution agencies are all too often used by supermarkets and other food businesses as a dumping ground for cheap, poor quality, low nutrition food.

We believed, too, that gleaning had an important role beyond redistribution – one focused on the deeper systemic problems and the longer-term solutions. While food waste was slowly making its way onto the radar of both policymakers and the public, farm-level food waste was almost always absent from the conversation. The Gleaning Network sought to address this in a number of ways. By working with farmers to understand the drivers of food waste and the imbalances of power. By taking large numbers of volunteers to farms to witness first hand the scale of food waste. And by working with the media at every level we have been able to bring evidence and stories into the spotlight.

From small acorns…

The Gleaning Network has now worked with over 60 farmers and 2,000 volunteers to rescue more than 400 tonnes of fruits and vegetables. We’ve been truly inspired by so many of those people. By the volunteers who turn out in rain, sleet and driving winds to spend their day plucking kale and brassica from muddy fields (people of north west England, we salute you!). By those farmers who time and again open their fields to our volunteers, donating their time and support to the cause and their vegetables and fruits to those in need. By the college student who, surrounded by endless rows of food waste, put the situation into beautifully simple words: “food waste is crazy!” You have all been inspirational.

There are still also many people whom we have not worked with. These include the thousands of people who have signed up to our gleaning volunteer list, but who live in parts of the UK where gleaning has yet to take root. They also include the several dozen people who have written to us over the last six years to express interest in setting up a gleaning hub in their region. We’ve always wished we were able to offer more support to all these people. The reality, however, is that it simply hasn’t been possible – until now.

Community-led Gleaning

We know from the conversations we’ve had in the field, that gleaning has often been a focal point around which communities can (re)connect. We believe the time is now right for Feedback to help communities to take the lead:

  • In 2019 we will offer support and training for a number of community groups in England (for groups in Scotland, Wales and N.I., please see below), giving them the knowledge and experience they need to setup and run their own local/regional gleaning project.
  • Here we use the term ‘community group’ in its broadest sense: we are interested to work with groups, organisations, projects and enterprises of all shapes and sizes. The formal/legal structure of your group is at this point less important than your enthusiasm!
  • As part of this project we will create a bespoke gleaning website which will host a range of resources. We envisage that these resources will be made available for use by groups throughout the UK (not only those in England) and potentially beyond.
  • We will also explore ways in which these new gleaning groups can support and share knowledge with one another.

If you are interested to find out more about any of these ideas, or to register an interest in community-led gleaning, we’d love to hear from you. You can fill in the form by clicking here to express your interest.

Thank you – it’s been an amazing journey so far, and we can’t wait for the next chapter.

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Help us reveal the scale of Europe’s farm food waste

28th Mar 19 by Martin Bowman, Pig Idea Policy Officer and Stakeholder Coordinator

Tackling food waste on farms now has a deadline for action. Find out more about the problem of farm food waste and what you can do about it.

We have until the 4th April to stop the EU excluding the millions of tonnes of food wasted on farms from EU measurement and action. Martin Bowman, Feedback campaigner on farm food waste, explores why farms shouldn’t be sidelined – and how you can take action, in particular if you are an EU citizen outside the UK.

How much fresh, healthy fruit and vegetables which could have been eaten lie rotting in fields around the EU, or are ploughed back into the soil? According to Feedback’s research and experience working with farms, the answer can be enormous, yet so far EU governments have resisted steps to measure farm-level waste so it can be properly tackled.

WRAP recently estimated that the UK’s food waste on farms was a whopping 2.5 million tonnes of food, 20% of the food wasted in the country. But the UK, too, needs far better data if it wants to seriously tackle food waste on farms (currently it relies on informed estimates) – and whatever the UK’s future relationship with the EU, progress in Europe usually helps drives change in the UK.

Our hopes were raised last year when the EU agreed sweeping reforms to its waste legislation, with food waste policies introduced for the first time. A huge cross-European campaign called for the EU to create compulsory targets for EU countries to halve their food waste from farm to fork by 2030. Feedback worked with a coalition formed by This Is Rubbish of 67 groups from 18 EU countries and thousands of petition signatories to build momentum for EU action. But member states of the European Council blocked or watered down most of these measures. The Directive that was eventually agreed on was still a big step in the right direction – although it only called on EU countries to voluntarily commit to halve their food waste (and then, only at retail and consumer level), leaving it largely up to member states whether they take ambitious action or not. However, a significant breakthrough was the requirement on EU countries to measure and report their food waste.

Keeping it secret

Generally, whereas we know a lot about plastics and other recycling, food waste, where it occurs and what happens to it, has been shrouded in mystery. Now, from 2020 onwards, EU countries will be required to create robust data on their food waste levels in manufacturing, retail, catering and households sectors, shining a hugely useful light into the current darkness. Finally, we’ll know how much food is actually wasted, where and why.

Yet waste on farms is set to remain shrouded in darkness. The EU have just published their framework for EU countries to measure and report their food waste, and they have excluded in-field food waste. This is a disaster, given estimates put the proportion of EU food waste which occurs on farms at between 11% and 34% – between 10 and 47 million tonnes.

That’s a huge quantity of food – and the emissions, waste and soil fertility which went into producing it – which would be effectively sidelined from international action unless we convince the Commission to change track.

A problem of framing?

Again and again in the international literature on food waste, studies talk as if so-called “food loss” (a technical term for food waste at production level) is firstly only a problem in poorer countries, and secondly a problem which results solely from inadequate infrastructure like cool storage, which has technical solutions. This conveniently obscures that in rich countries there is a comparably large quantity of food waste on farms, and it is largely due to power relations between farmers and their buyers – retailers and middlemen. Feedback’s reports on UK farmers and on international farmers supplying Europe found evidence that farmers were being forced to waste food due to a mixture of cosmetic rejections of food for being the wrong size, shape or colour, unfair practices like last minute order cancellations, and fear of losing contracts in cases of undersupply leading to systemic overproduction and occasional price crashes. We’ve seen first hand through our Gleaning Network the truly stunning quantities of nutritious food that can be simply left in the field.

In short, the risks and costs of food waste are being dumped onto farmers – causing them a massive loss of money, time and resources wasting food they’ve toiled in the fields to grow. This food waste causes a huge loss of edible nutritious food – our UK study estimated that 2-4 million people could be fed their 5 a day of fruit and veg all year from the food wasted on UK farms annually. With estimates that England could run short of water in 25 years, British soil has only 100 harvests left unless degradation is reversed, and with the UN warning we have 12 years to avert disastrous levels of climate change, we need urgent action on food waste to avert catastrophe.

Time for change

Keeping Europe in the dark about farm food waste will harm EU farmers who’ll continue having the costs and risks of food waste dumped on them, prevent edible food getting to people who need it, and harm the environment. We can’t allow that to happen.

That’s why we’ve teamed up with Safe Food Advocacy Europe to ask people across Europe to respond to the Commission’s consultation, to urge them not to exclude farms from EU food waste measurement and reporting.

Please take action! (Particularly if you’re an EU resident outside the UK). Click here for our guide to completing the consultation!

 

 

 

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Too Much of a Bad Thing

11th Mar 19 by Carina Millstone, Executive Director

Just a Spoonful of Sugar Depletes our Soils and the NHS Budget in the Most Delightful Way (for the Weston family and their foundation)

Feedback’s Executive Director Carina Millstone explains why growing sugar in the UK is causing catastrophic soil degradation and how the industry is lining the pockets of one wealthy family and their foundation.

If you’re after evidence that we urgently need to change how we produce and consume our food, look no further than the sugar beet. Sugar beet could be considered the ‘poster crop’ for pretty much everything that is wrong with our globalised, corporatised food system.

Despite the UK’s modest size, it is the 11th largest producer of sugar beet worldwide, behind giants in the top 10 such as Russia, the United States or China. This gives our nation the dubious honour of having the largest proportion of our land devoted to sugar beets of all countries. No wonder Brits have such a sweet tooth – and spiralling rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

Whilst the disastrous health impacts of sugar are well-known – thanks to the superb work of Action on Sugar, Sugar Smart and others – yet we are only beginning to understand the catastrophic effects of sugar beets on the environment and food security.

No sugar coating

For evidence of what sugar beet is doing to the environment, two seminal reports released in the last few months come to mind. Firstly, the determinedly optimistic report from the EAT-Lancet Commission and secondly the truly terrifying This is a Crisis report from the IPPR. The former makes it very clear that sugar consumption in countries such as the UK must be reduced by at least 50% if we are to secure healthy diets for all without catastrophic biodiversity loss and climate change. The latter reminds us that global and British soils are now so depleted as to affect our future ability to grow food. Some of the most affected soils are in East Anglia, the very heart of the century-old sugar beet industry.

So why are we still growing and eating sugar when it’s quite clearly a disaster for both our health and planet? To answer this question, I asked myself who’s making money from the stuff? Some cursory googling revealed some truly startling answers.

Who really are British Sugar?

British Sugar is the sole processor of sugar beet in the UK – if you’re a sugar beet farmer wanting to bring your product to market, there’s no escaping the company. Its name may make it sound like a quaint throwback to the era of public ownership, but don’t be fooled. The monopoly is in fact a subsidiary of AB Sugar, itself part of Associated British Foods or ABF, a ‘diversified’ business whose brands include Ryvita, Twinings and, incongruously, Primark.

ABF is listed on the London Stock Exchange, but the corporation is majority owned by holding company Wittington Investments Ltd, which is itself 20% owned by the Canadian Weston family and 80% owned by the Garfield Weston Foundation. The Foundation is one of the largest grant giving foundations around, who, with no discernible trace of irony, give funds to a range of health and environmental causes in the UK (including, historically, and for full disclosure, to Feedback).

Who benefits from UK sugar production?

Put another way: British Sugar exists to line the pockets of a wealthy family, and, to give the Westons credit where it’s due, their undoubtedly generous philanthropic activities. And yet the enrichment of the Westons and of their foundation comes at a terrible cost to our soils, climate and health, which no amount of charitable donations can put right.

The true cost

Whist the environmental costs of British Sugar’s activities are hard to quantify, the cost to the NHS are all-too known. In fact, our fondness (or perhaps addiction) to sugar is one of the great threats to our healthcare system. Shocking fact: the NHS spends more on treating obesity and diabetes than is spent by the government on the police, the fire service and the judicial system combined.

Not only is the public paying for the health ‘externalities’ of British Sugar, it is also subsidising the production of beets in the first place. In fact, a recent study has shown that some 3,500 British sugar beet farmers are currently receiving public subsidies to the tune of €29 million a year to grow their beets (which is, at the same study points out, and in a somewhat pleasingly unfortunate coincidence, the same amount spent by NHS England extracting children’s rotten teeth under general anaesthetic.)

30% of the world’s arable land has become unproductive due to erosion.

Institute for Public Policy Research

British Sugar is a remarkable case of private profit generation at massive socialised health and environmental loss. I was truly shocked and angry when I realised this, and as a parent trying to limit my children’s sugar intake, still am.

Ending the sugar rush

If the government wishes to improve health in the UK, the sugary drinks tax may be a good start but will ultimately not cut it. How can we expect sugar consumption to reduce when the industry is fighting decaying tooth-and-nail to grow? What we need instead is a structured government programme. We need to both reduce sugar consumption and production: the agricultural policies need to work with health policies, not against them.

In the coming months, Feedback will be launching our Too Much of a Bad Thing campaign calling the government to support farmers to move away from growing sugar beets. Instead, support them to grow crops and manage their land to provide good nutrition. We want to see support for re-wilding or afforestation for carbon dioxide removal (possibly throwing in a few sycamore trees for our sweetness fix), in line with Mr Gove’s oft-quoted ‘public money for public goods’ principle.

Stay tuned for updates. In the meantime, British Sugar are asking us to #BackBritishSugar. I would suggest #BackOffBritishSugar is a more apt alternative for a product that is bad for us and bad for the Planet.

Image: David Wright / Sugar Beet Crop on the Saxby to Barton Road
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Come Dine Sustainably

4th Jan 19 by Isobella, Feedback volunteer

Keen advocate for ending food waste, Isobella arranged an insightful evening with delicious food made from surplus and salvaged ingredients.

One evening, seven friends gathered in a student flat in growing anticipation of what on earth they would be concocting for their supper. All they knew was that it was a ‘sustainable’ evening of food innovation.

Waste not

The array of potential ingredients were laid out, including excess fruit and veg salvaged from a local greengrocers (by Feedback’s Gleaning Network coordinator Heather), scraps from the fridge and a few dry, cupboard items. Items of interest included pumpkin, plantain & pomegranate…and some suspicious looking surplus wine.

Teams of 2 were formed for starter, main and dessert and the eager cooks competed for ingredients as they plotted what to make. This was a perfect number for us, as it worked in the space and quantities we had. The criteria was to make something delicious, producing as little waste as possible, and minimise food miles. In the end, no one bought any extra ingredients – all the courses were formed from the original stocks, which was amazing!

Let’s get cooking

It was such a fun atmosphere whilst everyone was cooking and crafting their dishes, especially in utilising all components of an item. The starter team were the most creative with presentation, utilising the pineapple as a vessel for their pomegranate chutney and salsa, accompanied by plantain fried in Toast beer – a wonderful product which we all loved, which uses surplus bread to produce a delicious brew.The main course won on taste, with curried cauliflower, veggie fritters and a red lentil dahl, followed by pumpkin pie with banana and beetroot swirl ice cream for dessert – a beautiful harmony of fruit and veg! We created sub-categories under ‘food’ and ‘sustainability’ including taste, texture, quantity of waste and environmental impact to name a few for the recipients to vote on after each course.

More than just eating

Throughout the evening we played games including ‘guess who – the food waste version’, in which we each had a food item stuck to our heads which others had describe what they would do if they had surplus amounts of that item to help them guess. Discussions were also prompted by real life scenarios in which decisions about minimising food waste were chewed over. It was really great to be able to have intentional conversation surrounding food and how we can buy, cook and eat more consciously and sustainably, after we had proven to ourselves how much could be done when you have imagination and intention.

All in all, everyone was really impressed and proud of how inventive they had been, and the joy that it is to share wholesome, home-made food with friends. I firmly believe that seeds were planted that evening, and that each person left feeling inspired, well-nourished and encouraged to cook from scratch and from scraps and better understand the journey their food has taken before it gets to the plate.

I hope this acts as an encouragement for others to host their own, with friends or strangers – you can be the catalyst!

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Where and how can I donate my surplus food?

26th Jan 18 by Christina O'Sullivan

Got surplus food and want to feed bellies not bins? 

Below is a list of organisations who can receive and use, or otherwise help with, donations of surplus food. Some of these organisations are active only in London, while others operate in various regions throughout the UK.  For more information please visit the websites of the relevant organisation.

National

FareShare accepts food from businesses and uses any stock that is food safe, including those requiring chillers, freezers, and ambient storage. They products such as those with packaging errors, short-dated food, seasonal stock, manufacturing errors, damages, etc., including meat, fish, eggs and dairy products; fruit and vegetables; chilled food, such as ready meals or drinks; frozen food, or chilled food that has been blast frozen; ambient goods, such as pasta, tins and cereals; and bakery. They do not accept cooked food from events. They have hubs all over the country and the FareShare Go Scheme connects supermarkets with local charity or community groups.

FoodCycle runs community events to cook and serve donated food to those in need across the UK. They work with major food retailers including Marks and Spencer, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose, and with local independent retailers and markets.

Neighbourly puts local stores that have surplus in direct contact with the charities and projects that can get the food to people who need it. Works with M&S, Lidl, and others.

Real Junk Food Project is a collaborative effort between catering professionals and activists to bring about a radical change in the food system. RJFP intercept food that is past its expiration date, prepare the food and serve it in their cafés on a pay as you feel basis.  There may be an RJFP open near you, or coming soon or you could open your own. Contact them via their Facebook page to find out.

Olio is an app that works with shops and cafés to reduce food waste. Their Food Waste Hero (FWH) programme involves OLIO matching volunteers with shops or cafes. They will collect any unsold surplus food at the end of the day and share within the local community. In addition, Olio’s app enables cafes or shops to upload information about surplus food directly. Local residents will be notified when the shop or cafe shares its unsold food, and they can message the shop or cafe to confirm collection. Finally, shops or cafes can host a drop box, a plastic OLIO box placed in the shop or café so that neighbours can exchange food without having to arrange for a doorstep collection.

Plan Zheroes accepts big and small food donations from restaurants, catering companies, supermarkets, food stores, stalls, etc. either regularly or occasionally. Businesses are matched with local charities who transport the food.

Too Good to Go is a food sharing app that collaborates with restaurants and food businesses around the country to redistribute their excess at the end of the day. Surplus produce is sold at a reduced price for the app users, who pick up their meal at a specific time (usually at the end of business hours).

Community Fridges exist across the country. They are run by different groups and organisations but all collaborate with local businesses and community groups to provide donated surplus food for local people.

London

City Harvest collects nutritious surplus food from all segments of the food industry including restaurants, grocers, manufacturers, wholesalers, hotels and caterers in London and donates the produce to redistribution char

ities.

Community Food Enterprise is a social enterprise. They collect surplus food and redistribute it to community groups in East London. CFE greatly needs surplus tinned fruit, cereal, coffee, cooking oils – fruit and vegetable donations would also be appreciated. They are always looking for volunteers.

DayOld is a food surplus social enterprise tackling food waste and food poverty in London. DayOld sells surplus baked goods (from brownies to cinnamon rolls to artisan loaves of bread) through treat boxes, office pop-ups, and event catering. Their baked goods are surplus, collected from artisan bakeries the previous day, preventing them from going to waste. Their profits become cash donations to charities addressing child hunger.

The Felix Project Works with supermarkets, wholesalers, and retailers to distribute donated food. As of April 2017 the organization will provide fruit, vegetables, bakery and dairy products, as well as dried goods. It does not

provide meat or fish, or accept or deliver supplies beyond the use by date.

Save the date café are an East London group fighting to prevent food waste. They turn surplus food into delicious meals and serve them on a pay as you feel basis.

The People’s Kitchen are community feasts held around London for people to share skills and food. The feasts rely on surplus donations from various retailers.

London Street Food Bank  A co-operative of volunteers who collect and distribute non-perishable foods for low I

ncome or non-income families. Also includes a group of volunteers who collect daily leftover food, such as sandwiches, rolls, salads etc. from retail food outlets and distributes them to the homeless on the streets of London.  (See also listing below)

North London Action for the Homeless accepts donations of tinned vegetarian food and accepts large donations of quality, fresh ingredients. In particular, they need regular donations of tea, sugar, squash, oil, long life milk, vegetable stock, tinned tomatoes, pasta and lentils.

South East

UK Harvest is a perishable food rescue operation that collects quality excess food from commercial outlets and delivers it to charities in West Sussex. They collect from all kinds of businesses; from fruit & veg markets, to corporate companies to film and TV shoots. If your business has excess food, you can sign up to donate here. They do not provide meat or fish, or accept or deliver supplies beyond the use by date

South West

Exeter Food Action rescues excess food from shops and suppliers and redistributes it to local charity organisations. They are always looking for new donation sources.

North West

The Bread and Butter Thing offer a deeply discounted food service to its community in Greater Manchester. They accept donations from local and national suppliers as well as from community members and take one off as well as regular donations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Surplus fruit and vegetables used in Kenya to feed thousands

26th Apr 17 by Edd Colbert

On average 45% of fresh produce is rejected in Kenya

In 2014 Feedback investigated Kenyan export supply chains and found that vast quantities of fruit and vegetables were being wasted due to strict cosmetic standards enforced by European retailers and unfair trading practices such as last minute order cancellations. On average 45% of fresh produce is rejected, and without sufficient demand in the local market the vast majority of this food is either dumped or fed to livestock. Farmers aren’t paid for what isn’t exported so wasted food not only means wasted resources, but also reduced income for rural communities.

Working with local partners we held the first African Disco Soup, bringing together people and surplus food to communally cook and celebrate the delicious solutions to food waste. Representatives from the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) joined us. We proposed the need for an effective redistribution system in Kenya alongside efforts to reduce waste through changes to business practices. Our report, Food Waste in Kenya, concluded that “in a country where millions of people are without adequate food and nutrition, infrastructure should be put in place to ensure surplus food is redistributed to those who need it”.

Following on from our work, a new project led by the WFP is using surplus fruit and vegetables to provide thousands of meals to school children daily. Its initial pilot scheme is currently feeding 2,200 school children one hot meal a day. Upon completion of the pilot the WFP plans to feed over 80,000 children per day. This program is expected to save over 1000 tonnes of food every year by paying exporters a small price for food that they would otherwise throw away.

How does the program work?

WFP collect surplus food from export centres, prepares meals in offsite catering facilities and deliver it to schools. They hope to eventually prepare food within school facilities. There is also talk of bringing in other actors to re-purpose some of this food into value added products. The WFP’s initiative will hopefully inspire similar projects to be developed in places where there is sadly both a surplus of produce to be eaten and millions of people unable to access regular quantities of nutritious food.

Redistribution alone won’t solve the food waste problem

Redistribution of surplus food is essential as it not only ensures food waste is avoided, but also provides people with good nutrition where they may not otherwise be able to access fresh produce. However, food waste is symptomatic of greater systemic imbalances in the supply chain and we cannot ignore the fact that farmers suffer when food cannot be sold despite being perfectly good to eat. Alongside redistribution efforts, the reduction and prevention of waste must be prioritised to ensure that farmers can afford to invest in their businesses and contribute to rural development. Businesses must take responsibility for the waste they cause in their supply chains. Supermarkets, large food brands and manufacturers all wield disproportionate power in the global food economy. The use of strict cosmetic specifications, unfair trading practices, and vague forecasting patterns all transfer excessive risk and uncertainty to suppliers and encourage overproduction leading to waste. Whilst these actors maintain this level of power they must equally act with great responsibility for the wellbeing of their suppliers, consumers, and the natural resources we all rely upon.

 

 

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Brexit Government urged to take control of food, farming and fisheries for public good

14th Jul 16 by fb_admin

Feedback have signed a letter alongside 83 other organisations to David Davis and Theresa May to stress the important implications of Brexit on food and farming.

Read the letter here.

With many of the UK’s food and farming policies and subsidies being defined at EU level, the UK government now has an opportunity to reshape these to ensure that taxpayers money is spent for public good.

Organisations representing the health and long-term interests of millions of British citizens have called on government to adopt common-sense food, farming and fishing policies that are good for jobs, health and the environment, when they plan for the UK’s exit from the European Union.

Concerns are expressed in a letter to Prime Minister Theresa May and David Davis MP, the Minister appointed to oversee a new Unit advising the Government and PM on the post EU Referendum strategy. The letter, co-signed by over 80 food, farming, fair trade, poverty, animal welfare, wildlife and environmental organisations, argues that good food, farming and fishing policies must be central to any post EU Referendum strategy for the UK.

The organisations point out that better food, farming and trade policies can help to cut greenhouse gas emissions from farming and food industries by 80% by 2050, and promote healthier diets to combat heart disease, cancers, diabetes and obesity, saving the NHS, and ultimately taxpayers millions. Such policies can also support a vibrant and diverse economy, supporting good jobs and working conditions, in the UK and overseas. Further, the UK could prioritise ethical and sustainable production methods, improved animal welfare, more farmland and marine wildlife, a healthy future for bees and other pollinators, as well as enhancing the beauty of the countryside and protecting the environment, whilst also providing a safe and traceable food supply.

Kath Dalmeny, head of Sustain, an alliance of food and farming organisations,  who coordinated the letter, said: “The British public has given no mandate for a reduction in food and farming standards, a weakening of protection for nature, nor a reversal of the UK’s commitment to lifting millions of the poorest people in the world out of poverty through trade. We are seriously concerned that such vital considerations may be over-run by a drive for new trade deals at any cost.”

The full letter can be read online here.

Organisations that have signed the letter include:

Action on Sugar, Agricultural Christian Fellowship, Alexandra Rose Charity, All Party Parliamentary Group: Agroecology, All Party Parliamentary Group: School Food, Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics, Baby Milk Action, Banana Link, Belfast Food Network, Beyond GM, Biodynamic Association, Blood Pressure UK, Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, Concern Universal, Consensus Action on Salt and Health, Compassion in World Farming, Eating Better Alliance, Econexus, Environmentalists for Europe, Faculty of General Dental Practice (UK), Royal College of Surgeons, Faculty of Public Health, Fairtrade Foundation, Family Farmers’ Association, Federation of City Farms &Community Gardens, Feedback, First Steps Nutrition Trust, Food Ethics Council, Food Foundation, Food Matters, Food Research Collaboration, City University, Food Systems Academy, Forum for the Future, Friends of the Earth , Fun Kitchen, Future Sustainability, Garden Organic, Global Justice Now, GM Freeze, Greenpeace, Green Party of England and Wales, Harper Adams University (Food Science & Agri-Food Supply Chain Management), Health Equalities Group, Institute for Food, Brain and Behaviour, Institute of Health Promotion and Education, International Pole & Line Foundation, Keep Britain Tidy, Landworkers Alliance, London Food Board, Low Impact Fishers of Europe (LIFE), New Under Ten Fishermen’s Association , Magic Breakfast, Marine Conservation Society (MCS), National Obesity Forum, New Economics Foundation, Nourish Scotland, Organic Growers Alliance, Organic Research Centre, Organic Trade Board, Pasture Fed Livestock Association, Pesticides Action Network UK, Real Farming Trust, Royal Academy of Culinary Arts, School of Artisan Food, School Food Matters, Schumacher College at Dartington Hall Trust, Scottish Cancer Prevention Network, Scottish Crofting Federation, Send a Cow, Soil Association, Soil Association Scotland, Sole of Discretion, Slow Food in the UK, Sugarwise, Sustain: The alliance for better food and farming, Sustainable Food Cities Network, Sustainable Food Trust, Traidcraft, UK Food Group, UK Health Forum, Unite the Union, UNISON, University of Cardiff, Geography & Planning & Development, War on Want, Wildlife Trusts.

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