Introduction

This edited collection provides the first comprehensive study of the rise of food charity across Europe. This concluding chapter pulls together the findings of all the individual case studies to analyse what comparisons can be drawn regarding the growth of this type of charitable provision across the continent over the last few decades. The aim of this book is to use food charity as a lens through which to examine changing responses to poverty in the context of shifting social policies, and the data provided by the case studies have demonstrated just how important a lens food charity is in this regard.

As this chapter outlines, a comparative study of the rise of food charity across Europe highlights several key things. First, the food charity landscapes in different countries vary widely; although they have common characteristics that can be categorised (see the typology later), this provision is ultimately difficult to quantify. Second, across the cases, there have been particular spikes in food charity provision at times of economic crisis and state welfare retrenchment. Third, regardless of the historical role of the third sector in the various welfare regimes, since the neoliberal wave, charities have come to play increasingly important roles in the provision of care in every country studied, whether in place of traditionally state-provided support or support from the family.

While this book has a particular focus on the social policy aspects of the rise of food charity, the case studies clearly highlight the importance of supply-side factors in the shape and scale of emergency food provision. This reveals how other policy measures – particularly in the domains of agriculture or the environment – may have an impact on social policy as directing surplus food to food charities impacts on the nature, scale and embeddedness of food aid as a response to food poverty. In particular, the case studies demonstrate the significance of the European Union (EU) Food Distribution Programme for the Most Deprived Persons of the Community (MDP) and – after 2013 – the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD) in institutionalising the practice of redistributing surplus food through food charity. The implications of these findings for social justice are profound.