Project looking at Dannevirke food security

Community gardens like this one are one way food is being distributed to people in the community.

How people can access food in an adverse event is the focus behind a Tararua District Council project in food security.

Co-ordinator Emma Elliott spoke to the Dannevirke Community Board last week about her role researching access to food in the community.

Council applied to the Ministry of Social Development for funding for the project, which came about from the welfare response to Covid-19.

Elliott's role is to research how organisations across the district distribute food to those who need it on a daily basis and in the event of a civil emergency.

Elliott told the meeting the project was "making sure that people have access to regular, sustainable food that is both sufficient in quantity, it's nutritious and it's culturally appropriate".

According to a recent study by the Zero Hunger Collective, there were 15 to 20 per cent of families around the country who regularly couldn't access food.

Elliott said by that figure that suggested between 2850 and 3800 people in the district were in that situation.

As part of her research, she had been talking to people and setting up meetings to get a picture of what community organisations there were and what they did.

She said there was a wide diversity of food distribution organisations, some of which were foodbanks, community support organisations, churches, iwi, youth centres and kohanga reo.

"What's really obvious is that these organisations have a cohesion to them and these people rally together in times of need."

There was also support for things like Open Pantries, Pātaka Kai and community meals.

Elliott said one of the challenges she found in the course of her research was that local organisations were "working in silos".

"So, not only are they competing for ... food and donations, they're also competing for funding."

She said there was a certain lack of trust and finding time for people to come together was difficult.

Another problem she observed was that food rescue, which was surplus food from retailers, came from organisations out of the district.

She said the question was if there was an adverse event in which the district was cut off, would we still be able to access those networks.

Elliott said there was an opportunity for community groups to acknowledge their shared values and build on the connectivity and co-operation to start to work together.

"One of the greater opportunities was to start looking for funding as a joint group, and in fact in July this year we completed our first application to the Ministry of Social Development implementation fund and we've applied to fund some water tanks for our community gardens.

"This was something that, as a district, we could look at together."

Elliott said her next steps were to talk to schools creating food security within their communities via the healthy schools programme.