More than one in ten Australians live in poverty, with many relying on government provided support and emergency payments. These payments are insufficient to cover basic costs of living, and as a result, many people are forced to engage with emergency and community food assistance. The aim of this article is to explore the experiences of those who, despite being in receipt of an Australian welfare payment and engaged with the welfare system, rely on charitable food assistance for some or all of their weekly food supply. Interviews were conducted with seventy-eight people and were thematically analysed. The main findings of this study are the significant challenges faced by people who are on very low incomes when navigating the government-provided welfare and non-government charity systems and the insufficiency of the welfare system in providing income to meet basic costs of living.

India’s main food and nutrition security programme, the Public Distribution System (PDS), provides subsidised rice and sugar to deprived households. Using longitudinal data from Young Lives for Indian children (n = 2,944) aged 5 to 16 years, we assessed whether PDS subsidies skewed diets towards sugar and rice consumption, increasing risk of stunting (low height-for-age). Linear regression models were used to quantify additional rice and sugar consumption associated with accessing the PDS, and the association with stunting linked to consumption. Controlling for sociodemographics, accessing the PDS was positively, significantly associated with consumption of rice (30g/day) and sugar (7.05g/day). There was no evidence that this increase corresponded to nutritional improvements. Each 100g increase in daily rice intake was associated with a lower height-for-age z-score (HAZ) and no decline in stunting. Results were robust to alternative model specifications. There was no evidence that receipt of PDS rice and sugar was associated with improvements in child nutrition.

This paper explores how the staff of İstanbul’s food banks perceive the donors and the donations. The paper begins by exploring the literature on food banks; what food banks recover and redistribute; and the role food banks play in managing food insecurity. Next, how these three issues are represented in different models of food banks are discussed: in the non-profit model, the donors are “socially aware citizens” who contribute to the common good by helping to feed the hungry; whereas, for the for-profit model they are “caring capitalists” doing their best to reduce their carbon footprint and eliminate food waste while effectively managing the costs of waste disposal. In the municipal social markets, in contrast, the donors are “prodigal consumers” who cannot make correct resource allocation decisions and waste food as a result. For all the models, the donors are predominantly individuals or households and waste generation is perceived as a consumer problem, whereas in practice the donors are mostly corporations giving away their surplus stock. The paper concludes by underlining that this misperception shifts the conversation on waste generation and management away from production and supply chain problems and disciplines individuals as consumers.

On 25 April 2012, after years of negotiations delayed by halts and setbacks, the Food Assistance Convention was adopted—the latest in a series of agreements that since 1967 have regulated the international provision of food aid. Great expectations have been placed on the adoption of the Convention. In particular it was hoped that the Convention would answer the call for a new system of food aid governance, introduce more effective mechanisms to address world's food insecurity and, ultimately, improve and modernize the rules applicable to food aid. This article provides the first critical commentary of the Convention's text, assesses the strengths and weaknesses of its provisions and considers whether and how the Convention has modified the architecture of international food aid regulation. The article also indicates where amendments to the rules might be needed to make the international regulation of food aid more effective. The article concludes that the Convention is, on balance, a positive instrument that could improve governance and adequacy of food assistance. The Convention is also important for the international human rights discourse on how States can fulfil their obligation to assist countries in need in that it offers guidance on how to meet such obligation in the specific context of the right to food. States should therefore be urged to sign and ratify it.

In the United Kingdom many households are seeing their food security suffer through rising food and fuel prices, economic recession and welfare reform. Household budgeting priorities by necessity tend to be towards expenditures whose default consequences are severe; food budgets are where people can and do make economies. People manage variously on minimal diets, food gifts and charitable support, but the consequences in terms of social wellbeing and nutritional health, while potentially severe, are hidden and individually embodied rather than monitored and addressed by society. This article discusses the potential consequences of these shifts in household food provisioning under conditions of increasing austerity. The challenges posed for social policy are explored, particularly in relation to changes in welfare provision, the increasingly prominent role of the voluntary and community sector and potential devolution of responsibilities to local levels.