One issue foregrounded this election season has been the need for food security for all and the growing unaffordability of food. We know that food insecurity is deeply inter-connected with poverty, that both of these are impacted by political policies and governing bodies, and that there is potential for much harm to occur if this issue is not addressed.
Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) produced an Election 2023: Food Crisis toolbox and one of their key election asks was for “good food for every child” along with a policy brief on food security. CPAG notes the following:
As the cost of living goes up, food parcel distributors are reporting record numbers of people using the services. People who might have had a financial buffer before no longer do. Something like a big power bill, a school trip, or needing a new tyre means they don’t have enough food on any particular week.
In her interview with Q&A four months ago, Auckland City missioner Helen Robinson discussed the urgent need to address poverty in our populace:
Auckland City Mission also note an increasing need for food support:
Alongside this, Kore Hiakai, the Zero Hunger Collective, prepared three papers for just for the Election about responses to food insecurity. These papers cover:
The ongoing need for food assistance: exploring how government address the increased need after COVID and role of community groups in meeting that need.
Beyond Food Parcels: exploring long-term goals to ensure communities are food secure.
The impacts of government overpayment debt: exploring how government could address the current debt from overpayments (approx. $1 Billion) held by those who have received benefits.
And, released pre-election, documentary maker Bryan Bruce investigated why one in seven Kiwi kids go hungry, yet New Zealand farms produce enough food to feed 30 million people.
Back in 2017, Freerange Press published Kai and Culture: Food stories from Aotearoa. It included a short chapter from me, and a recipe designed to showcase the grim realities families were facing:
Some six years later, seeing this almost exact same image repeated and proudly displayed in a local supermarket as a ‘low cost value meal’ for customers had me undone. We need better solutions than profiteering supermarkets promoting cheap pasta and tomato paste as meals for hungry families.
What we need from all our governing bodies is a commitment to ensure that everyone can afford to eat and for all families to have reliable access to sufficient affordable, nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
This means moving away from tired ideas like tax cuts for the wealthy into thinking creatively about how we can work towards ensuring good lives for everybody. The Greens tax policy is one such approach. You can check out their tax calculator here.
It also means thinking differently about how grow and share food. Te Pati Māori have done some fantastic work on kai sovereignty; their policy has a number of exciting ideas, such as a contestable Community Kai fund, kai sovereignty scholarships, and Mātai Ahuwhenua agricultural innovation all of which would contribute into changes to current food production and distribution approaches.
We need different approaches because dollar bags of cheap pasta and jars of paste made with forced labour ain’t it.
Totally agree! And we need good food not just the throw away pack of 6 buns. We have recently put out a Waiheke Food Charter where we are trying to get everyone on board working towards a complete no waste model! We know Food Rescue is a sticking plaster but it’s really all about the food for most if us!
This is powerful kōrero. Our relationship with food is one of the most important we have. Where our food comes from and how we feed ourselves and our whānau provides a deep vision into our society and how it works. So it makes very little sense that talking about food is so deeply unpalatable for politicians.
Both the Green Party and Labour have national food strategies in their policy manifestos this election, while the Nats only food policy is to introduce a minister for hunting and fishing and Act want to unilaterally remove tariffs on all food brought into NZ (even when that food is produced in ways that is illegal here).
We’re going to have to bring more voices into the conversation to fix our food system, and a food strategy is a starting point for that. It would also offer farmers, fishers, growers and food producers a much longer roadmap that would address the issues with regulations being introduced and then changed with any change of govt.