Navigating food insecurity and environmental sustainability on a low income: A case study of Sheffield mothers

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The rapid growth of emergency food - particularly foodbanks - in the 2010s (re)established UK household food insecurity (HFI) as a serious social, academic and policy concern. HFI captures people's experiences of compromising the amount or quality of food they eat, anxiety about food supplies lasting, and sourcing food in socially unacceptable ways (eg: charitable food). Quantitative research has linked HFI with poor diets, physical and mental health problems, worse educational outcomes, and social exclusion. Its scale is significant: in the six months to April 2022, 15.5% of UK households reported HFI, nearly double the figure in 2019-20 (8%). The Covid-19 pandemic then both introduced and deepened financial pressures that are currently being compounded by sharply rising living costs. In parallel, practical, political, and social concerns about dietary environmental sustainability also intensified and highlighted food shortages early in the pandemic. Despite their connections, these topics have rarely been explored together.To better understand the related topics of environmental sustainability and HFI, this project will examine low-income food provisioning over three timescales: past, present, and future. Existing research is mainly cross-sectional, so we know little about how HFI changes over the short term, and the role played by environmental sustainability considerations in the everyday (present, RQ1). The influence of people's life histories, particularly childhood experiences (past, RQ2) on both the relevance of sustainability considerations and people's current HFI experiences, is also poorly understood despite its potential to explain why some low-income groups do not report HFI. In parallel, future expectations (future, RQ3) are unknown: this question will explore participants' future expectations of food provisioning, HFI, and sustainable consumption practices.These themes will be examined through a 15-month feminist qualitative study of 15 low-income mothers in 'Greywood', Sheffield. Exploring these themes over time will offer richly detailed insights into women's food provisioning over the past, present, and future while also highlighting dynamics of continuity and change. Researching with mothers reflects the responsibility typically taken by women to plan meals, shop, and cook; in parallel, women also tend to lead on environmentally-oriented domestic behaviours (eg: recycling). Feminist motivations to examine and draw attention to (often overlooked) women's experiences further reinforce this approach. To compare low-income food provisioning from a range of perspectives, male and female members of women's networks will also be interviewed, a novel approach. Local support service representatives will also be interviewed to offer their views and provide background information. Combining in-depth interviews with ethnographic elements seeks to better understand the related topics of low-income food provisioning and environmental sustainability practices, and their health, social, and wider consequences.The project's findings will be of interest and value beyond academia: among frontline services, national and local government, policy-makers, activists, journalists, and the community, including participants. The detailed understandings of food provisioning that will be generated by the project's qualitative approach means the findings will lead to improved understandings of HFI and environmental sustainability practices. Later, research applying the project's design in other geographical locations and among wider groups could guide a longer-term research agenda. The findings will be valuable to inform good practice among frontline services across settings including welfare, health, education, social inclusion, encouraging joint working between stakeholders and across services, and guiding national and local policy.