Introduction

This chapter examines how responsibilities for securing citizens’ food needs have been understood and exercised over time in the Netherlands, and how such responsibilities have recently been affected by the emergence of food banks. In order to assess responsibilities for food needs in this relatively rich society, it is necessary to take into account some general circumstances. First, welfare provisions have been diminished due to financial limitations, neoliberal policies and a globalising economy. As a result, income protection has been reduced. Second, people now need more complex bureaucratic skills, as well as financial literacy, to access welfare provisions and to avoid accumulating problematic debt and experiencing the ensuing restrictions on their household budget. Nevertheless, Dutch policy still assumes a theoretical responsibility for guaranteeing a level of income that ensures access to basic necessities, including food. In addition, governmental aid is provided through income measures, discounts on expenses and even refunds on certain large expenses, not through in-kind assistance like that offered by food banks. The Netherlands regards food as a human right but emphasises that this right is secured through existing provisions and services, not through providing food itself.

Nevertheless, due to various complex factors, people are falling below minimum levels of subsistence. Out of solidarity and respect for human dignity, food banks and their volunteers are picking up the slack (Pijnenburg, 2018). The question is how this phenomenon of charitable food aid might reconfigure responsibilities relating to citizens’ food needs.

Hunger brings with it an urgent moral imperative to act. Disputes about who is responsible for dealing with this issue are deemed to be of less immediate concern. The first priority is for some party to step up to the plate to alleviate hunger. Since 2002, food banks have taken on this task in the Netherlands. In effect, they have assumed a certain amount of responsibility for responding to the food needs of families. A private charity organisation assuming such responsibility not only reorders the practical ways in which households in poverty access food, but also transfigures moral understandings of responsibility itself.