An article on the website Food Foundation this week, shows how the Covid-19 pandemic has having an effect on food consumption in Britain. From their own survey, they estimate that as many as three million are going hungry, largely as a result of financial insecurity.
The effect of early panic buying is shown by the Food Foundation analysis for spending in March (week ending March 22) showing that March was the biggest spending month form take-home groceries ever seen in the UK. Sales rose by over 23 per cent on the same period last year and there were 93 million additional trips to grocery shops, compared to a year earlier. “In the week ending March 22nd,” the report says, “no doubt in anticipation of lockdown on the 23rd, shoppers made an average of two extra trips and spent £26 more per household compared to the week before.”
“hostile environment” and agriculture.
Some foods will continue to be in short supply as some countries ban the export of fresh food (see here, for example) and supply chains are going to be disrupted. It is worth bearing in mind that of the fruit we eat in Britain, 84% is imported as are 50% of vegetables. Just at the wrong time, the Tories’ “hostile environment” and anti-immigration policy will badly damage British food production because most of the seasonal workers on which agriculture depends just will not be coming.
Clearly families who could afford to do so have been stock-piling for fear of not getting any food. But for the least well-off that hasn’t been an option and the governments late attempts to soften the blows have been too little too late. There is some political lessons to be drawn from panic buying too – it clearly shows that in the early days of the pandemic in the UK, no-one believed a word the government said.
A report on the website Huffington Post, highlighted the growing issue of ‘food poverty during the lockdown. It gave some examples from around the world, this one from Bari, in Italy, in a video circulating on line: “a group of people shouted at police officers stationed outside a closed bank in the city. ‘We don’t have any more food or money. My store has been closed for 20 days now. How am I supposed to live?’ a man said. ‘Please, come home with me and see for yourself. I have nothing left. I need something to eat,’ said a woman.
Not likely to get an adequate food intake
The Food Foundation commissioned a poll by YouGov, reported in The Guardian on March 28, that showed increasing food poverty here in the UK.
“More than 1.5 million adults in Britain say they cannot obtain enough food”, The Guardian report, “Half of the YouGov poll sample reported that they were self-isolating, and 53% of NHS workers were worried about getting food”.
Half of those parents on low incomes whose children are eligible for free school meals, have said “they had not yet received any substitute meals to keep their children fed, despite government promises to provide food vouchers or parcels”. That means, according to the Guardian, that around 830,000 children are therefore likely to be going without an adequate daily food intake.
African Americans in US suffering most
We are being given the daily dose of “we’re all in this together” and we are told that the Covid-19 “doesn’t discriminate”. Perhaps not, but because society discriminates, it means that illnesses and death will be disproportionately shared among the poor and the least well off. Reports coming out of the USA, which is now the world epicentre of the pandemic, show the disproportionate rates of deaths among African-Americans as a result of a greater rate of poverty, overcrowding, homelessness, poor diet and all the other social ills of a decrepit capitalism system. Louisiana reports that 70% of the virus victims are black, despite being only 33% of the population. In Georgia, African Americans, again only 33% of the state population, are hardest hit. In Alabama there is the same story.
Round the clock care
When the final tally is made of the toll of deaths in the UK, it will be seen that here, too, it is disproportionally the disadvantaged, the poor, the overcrowded and many BAME communities that are hardest hit. If you are a “royal”, a millionaire celebrity or a politician, there’s no limit to the support you can get, including rapid tests, luxurious isolation conditions and round-the-clock care if necessary. But if you’re poor, then you have to take pot luck. When it is all over, there needs to be a reckoning, and not just the numbers. As the graffiti said on the wall in Hong Kong – No going back to Normal. ‘Normal was the problem’.
April 11, 2020
