Dee Woods, food justice policy coordinator for the Landworkers’ Alliance says it how it is. As an activist, she’s busy rustling the political tree as she calls for food system change. Yet she’s frustrated that little is happening, pointing a finger squarely at those in power, from the Westminster bubble to big corporations.
“We have a lack of political will here in the UK. No one is committed. Literally no one. Yes, there are a few MPs and a handful of dedicated civil service servants who are concerned. But the vast majority just don’t care because if they did, then we wouldn’t have so many hungry mouths to feed in this country,” says Woods.
She adds: “Food poverty is a misnomer. The issue is poverty. We have high levels of destitution in the UK, yet we have more than enough food here. It doesn’t help that a large percentage of it is wasted and we only redistribute a very small amount.”
One in six UK households were food insecure in 2024, this was up from just two years previous, according to the charity Trussell; this amounts to over 14 million people. Dee also believes our current food system is a legacy of Britain’s colonial past, where we import cheap foodstuffs from the Global South to mask domestic poverty, which in turn impoverishes farmers locally and skews overseas markets.
“We’re in a fix, where we’ve created this really complex plantation system where we are dependent on others, either coming here, say, to harvest our crops cheaply, or our food is coming from elsewhere. Why do we need to eat certain foods 365 days of the year and have it flown from halfway across the world? It’s ridiculous,” she questions.
Look to Brazil for inspiration
Woods thinks we can learn a lot from the country, which has done an incredible job at prioritising poverty, boosting domestic food production, creating access to healthy produce, supporting family farming, strengthening school meal programmes, and stimulating jobs in the food sector. It’s why Brazil was recently removed from the United Nation’s hunger map, it has the “right to food” hard baked into its constitution, spurring on political action.
“A lot of my work sits within the ‘right to food’ movement for all human beings. In the UK we don’t have anything like that within our national legislation. I remember a peer in the House of Lords telling me: ‘we’re not changing our constitution’,” expresses Dee.
She continues: “Yet having this right in law would allow us to hold the British government to account for violations and failures. Such as the failure to ensure that everyone in the UK has adequate food to eat. At the moment everything is left to the market. This is how our food system has evolved in Britain. The issue is that there’s so much concentration of power being held by so few corporations.”
Dee Woods is in a unique position, since she works across so many different organisations. She is a founding member of the Food Ethics Council and is a trustee at SUSTAIN. She also co-founded the Granville Community Kitchen in Kilburn, London and sits on the London Food Board. When I speak to her, this educator, urban agroecologist and cook is about to head off to COP30, the climate change conference in Brazil. So what keeps Dee up at night?
“The political work is exhausting. But I’m positive. People think we don’t have any power, but actually we have collective power. Because of this, we’ve seen so many things evolve and change at a global governance level, but also at a national and local level, where people are coming together and advocating for their rights,” she states.
Many barriers to access
Access to land is a big issue that Dee is also focused on. Many barriers exist for young people starting a career in farming, especially those with no connections or family active in the sector. High prices and a poor supply of land, low incomes, and access to finance are just some of the issues. These were highlighted in a recent report from the Farmers’ Union of Wales.
“We need money, we need resources, but above all we need land and we also need the right policy framework to support us. For instance, at Granville Community Kitchen, we’ve spent years looking for land to start a community farm hub, because you cannot feed a community on small scraps of land in the city. If you really want to feed your whole community, you need more land,” expresses Woods.
She points out: “The focus should be on promoting more domestic UK production. But one that rules out an industrialised future focused on false technocratic solutions; we need to look at agroecological methods that are regenerative, but also respectful of people, culture, and the environment.”
The impetus for Dee starting the Granville Community Kitchen in 2014 was her own experience with food insecurity and entrenched deprivation in north London. She recognised that turning to food banks wasn’t the answer – community empowerment was. This involved bringing people together to grow vegetables in the urban garden, encourage cooking and cookery skills, as well as sharing healthy, sociable dinners.
Woods now thinks one of the key levers of change is the upcoming, widely anticipated, National Food Strategy and what taxation might do, especially for suppressing the consumption of UPFs (ultra-processed foods). Public procurement is an another lever of change, better policies could promote more healthy food production and consumption in schools, prisons and other public settings. She also believes in the potential of transforming current food banks in to future food hubs.
“How do we harness the energy and enthusiasm of people redistributing food to the impoverished and transform these into food hubs for their communities, where we work with local farmers to grow food, create jobs for young people, and feed families healthily? But it all comes down to money, the political will, and access to the right community spaces, which many don’t have,” states Woods.
She goes on: “We can learn from the Brazilian government and their work. What they’ve done is subsidise small agroecological farms. They’ve also ensured that farmers get a proper price for their produce, whilst also making food affordable and accessible to the people.”
Learning from tried and tested solutions
Dee also thinks British metropolises such as London, Birmingham, or Manchester can learn a lot from other cities in Europe, such as Milan in Italy or Lille in France – feeding themselves through innovative initiatives that promote entrepreneurship in food production and self-sufficiency, particularly in peri-urban areas.
“When we start talking about food production in the UK it tends to be centered around what largely rural regions can offer. But there needs to be more of a focus on urban and peri-urban horticulture. In the past the capital used to feed itself from these areas. We need to reinstate that concept,” points out the food justice policy coordinator for the Landworkers’ Alliance.
“Other cities in Europe are attempting to do that. Why not here? We are seeing initiatives in Bristol, Sheffield, and Cardiff. But they can’t just be research projects for three years and then nothing. We will always need government investment.”
Dee believes that those dark periods during the pandemic could be our guiding light in the future. It was only a few years ago when communities across the country became more self-reliant and found innovative ways to shorten food supply chains – swiftly; that is why she is optimistic.
“I saw glimmers of hope during Covid, where we saw mutual aid come into practice within local areas and where farmers became truly connected with their communities. We saw the public move away from the supermarket system. We saw community-supported agriculture schemes. This shows that it can be done. We can scale things up. We just need commitment from the UK government for long-term funding to support farms and food hubs, education and training, because we’re lacking the skills too. I’m certainly hopeful,” she concludes.
Learn more about the work of the Landworkers’ Alliance here.
What a remarkable, hard-working, inspirational woman! Despite political inertia and overwhelming odds, it is great that she can say she is hopeful.
Susan Harris