Creating a National Food Service: Dealing with the coronavirus outbreak.
Below is a consolidation of my personal thoughts about how the creating a National Food Service together might mitigate some of the worst effect of the coronavirus outbreak:
The potential scale of the problem
The UK’s national strategy is to build a ‘herd immunity’ to prevent coronavirus. 60 per cent of the UK’s 66m population would have to contract coronavirus in order for society to build up immunity. Meaning 40m people in the UK will need to catch the coronavirus.
The majority of people affected will be the elderly and vulnerable. It is therefore important that emergency food provision services should begin to prepare to support communities if the worst case scenario does occur and help those who need it most.
The need for equitable food distribution.
The National Food Service is a drive of community groups aiming to build a new public-commons service in the UK. Ensuring food security across all social groups.
A scenario.
One clear scenario is that many people will self isolate and may experience food insecurity as a result. Although it is unclear who and where, the people who will suffer most will be those left without support or care. Precarious workers, vulnerable adults, the elderly. Those without resilient communities in areas of civic isolation, as-well as people tucked away in areas of multiple deprivation. “The people without anybody to bring them soup if they are ill”
A new study also showed that the NHS may be short of 20,000 intensive care beds at the worst point of the crisis — although other sources say the NHS is prepared.
80% of British food imported there are concerns here in the case of a market stagnation. Food banks say they have a shortage of basic items because shoppers are stockpiling as fears grow over the spread of coronavirus. Market logic efficiently solves distribution problems. But only up to a point. It is unclear the support the UK will be eligible for internationally in emergency measures.
“Supermarkets are resisting government pressure to step up home deliveries during the coronavirus pandemic, saying that they simply do not have capacity and that community engagement will better help keep the nation fed.” Saying “The big pinch point is vans”
Our cities are designed to enable individualised living, because of this many people are removed from their local communities. People don’t know their neighbours and the geometries of reciprocal support, the culture of communing prevalent in previous generations is lacking. Essential support like food banks are already beginning to suffer too from lowered volunteer time. Many have large elderly volunteer bases who may need to protect themselves.
The infrastructure we have
In more peaceful times food-sharing and food distribution hubs offer informal social care. Building the geometries of community across the country. These are places like Nottingham Super Kitchens, The Real Junk Food project, Pod Coventry, Brixon Pound, Foodhall, Open Kitchen Social Club etc . Many form part of the Campaign for a National Food Service already.
These serve more than food. Importantly they build trust and relations in the communities, manifesting opportunities for culture and reciprocal aid that would otherwise not exist. It is these social systems of support that are most useful in a time of crisis: Community hubs, common spaces, churches and religious institutions become places for the distribution and galvanisation of people to help each other and society at large.
Working effectively requires a trusting knowledge of each other. Our neighbourhood as a whole. But because of a lack of support for places that heighten community our civic fabric is not standard across the UK. Organising is being done in patchwork with limited effectiveness. We are seeing a rapid escalation in frequency and intensity of Coronavirus cases and it is becoming increasingly clear that no one organisation or entity can solve these alone.
The differences we have
Organisations have separate internal operating systems, needs, and protocols such as communication, decision making. The organisations also range from Gleaning, surplus food distribution, social distribution, social eating, social cooking and household events, farming etc.
Meaning there is a challenge. Normally it takes along build-up time to develop and unify communication systems, decision making, shared practices, language, culture, and ways of sharing resources, revenue and responsibility. But more effective collaboration and coordination between community, groups and organisations of different scales and sizes might become almost fundamental and critical as we move forward.
Unified Incident Command System
Crisis control has rarely been required by community and voluntary groups at the indicated scale in the UK. It would be beneficial to consider a Unified Incident Command System (UICS) between voluntary groups. This enables inter-operational data sharing between trusted parties including information on outbreaks and local area requirements. And might involve a people working to ensure clear and coordinated communication.
A potential project
As a project members of the National Food Service network . Offering support and delivering hot food, medicine and other requirements to people in self isolation. This will help reduce the influx of demand on the NHS and help doctors take care of the most severe cases. It will also allow people to confidently and comfortably take measures themselves to try and slow the spread of coronavirus, even if it is not possible to stop it entirely.
Working together to unify and coordinate a larger network of community hubs and social spaces as-well as the local authorities in a sort of public commons-partnership with the local authorities. This would require mapping those who are self isolating, and organising volunteer support and deliveries for them.
Scaling together — lateral distribution of efforts.
A major issue we face is scalability. We have no idea how large or small this might become, and how flat the bell curve will be. As the pandemic unfolds so does the need to manage and co-ordinate volunteers effectively: at the time of writing we are already witnessing an influx of volunteers, but the bell curve of the outbreak is predicted to occur later in the year. We know cases might exist, but we don’t know when they will or where they will be yet.
Scalability can be defined as an increase providers growing in line with an increase of users. This definition implies we need to strike a relational balance of volunteer mobilisation and training. We need to organise at the right time, at the right points as the uncertain and novel advancements unfold with agility.
Scalability also implies that the means matches the need. So taking an asset based approach, using tools and facilities we already have like bicycles and personal vehicles will aid the ability to deliver food and medicine quickly.
There is also a need for adequate resources. So new partnership systems should help here. “UCL are yet to finish their food systems modelling to confirm, but it looks like the food supply might continue to be relatively consistent, just with changing variety of foods. More fresh waste, less tins”
This may vary depending on how the scenario unfolds, but it is important that food streams continue to match the ability to deliver food, so there needs to be new connections made between sectors to overcome turbulence or novel scenarios.
Volunteer capabilities will need to match the people in need. It is unclear of their geography and how they will need support. So this requires us to minimise blockages and make volunteer participation and training quick and easy. Traditional centralised services, might need to become part of a distributed network. Lateral decision making power to enables scalability to respond to an exponential problem and the geographic dispersion of the problem.
This is where a mutualist solution comes in; what Colin Ward calls the ‘welfare road less trodden’ a co-operative form of citizen led public service to compliment the existing public services like the NHS. “Begin from what from what is local and immediate, should link in a network with no centre and no directing agency, hiving off new cells.” as a distributed set of initiative.
But completely peer to peer operations pose issues the vulnerability of the situation. So voluntary efforts should be channeled through voluntary sector groups who can assure accountability whilst enable autonomy, mass mobilisation — and the growth of multiple self organising groups can be strung together spontaneously.
These groups will need a means of production. So existing volunteer organisations can democratise their means to help and enable voluntary organising overall.
Working safely — division of labour.
But how do we ensure tasks are allocated well in a distributed partnership? Quick and regular communication is paramount between voluntary organisations in the city.
Many of the members might contract the virus at different points in time so it important to identify, limit and prepare for points of failure. Hygienic measures must be heightened with a more strict division of labour than many community groups are used to. As-well as preparing the team for inevitable changes of staff. Never to rely on a single member of the community for the majority of the work.
Provision of information and communication systems
Communication problems are difficult in organising groups who do not have the same systems and processes. A message is effective only if the receiver is ready for it and if the sender is reliable. Large distributed partnerships often have a high noise to signal ratio. This eventually obscures their ability to carry out the core mission. Scaling laterally will always require transparency, but transparency can bring smoke and confusion too as-well as the politics of structural difference. So some mixture of communication is important. We need the security and power of a centralised body to ensure clear information flow and some sense of data security. But we need the power of self mobilising communities. The NFS and interested groups may partner with the public sector on this front.
There are also sensitive data issues to overcome. We may need to share locations and scenarios to allow people to organise quicker — But issues with data and those at high risk or need of support might be sensitive or even kept personal. And how do we create a regenerative culture within the community? ensuring continued support and rewards for the ongoing support in their communities?
The issue regarding insight and discovery.
The government has advised members of the public to individualise the problem, therefore people now face the personal burden and embarrassment of contracting coronavirus. They may not feel comfortable asking for help, because if the haven’t stocked up in preparation it’s their own fault. A key finding of ours from our work with those harmed by universal credit is that they felt they were partly or wholly responsible for their deprivation.
How do we discover people who have self isolated In need of help? Advertise? Ask local authorities to share on the news? We may need a positive campaign for this.
Being anti-fragile in times of crisis
As the pandemic evolves many questions are open, but the major idea is to build an ‘anti-fragile’ system of co-ordinating between ourselves. Something which improves from the shocks of the turbulent, uncertain, novel or unique environment rather than crumbles because of it. We need to feel the pulse with this pandemic, but stay clear and organised as communities. Solving vital problems quickly when other services like the NHS are in need of an undergrowth of support.
The National food service.
In crisis situations we have historically seen systems that resemble the National Food Service. National kitchens, British restaurants are some of the recent historic examples of these. To conclude then, we must structure as nodes within a co-ordinated network to create a National Food Service. Just as many previous generations swung into their own during crisis points.
Hopefully Coronavirus will distant memory in a few months. But for now it gives us a small insight into our own vulnerabilities as a society and indicates why we to create a National Food Service and implies how the importance of existing and growing the NFS in crisis and non crisis scenarios alike.
We urge you to join the national food service network by emailing nationalfoodservicecampaign@gmail.com to work together.
Generally NFS local contacts share the these aims:
- To right to end the injustices of the UK food system
- To create and sustain more community spaces
- To teach people to self organise
- To create and sustain opportunities to cook and eat together
