It is easy to be cavalier about food poverty - “just buy fresh food,” “just cook from scratch”- until you understand what scarcity actually does: to time, bandwidth, health, transport, cooking facilities, and dignity. Food poverty is not a lifestyle failure; it is a systems failure.
Dominic Watters is a food poverty campaigner whose advocacy is grounded in lived experience as a single parent navigating life on benefits. He has spoken widely about what food insecurity really looks like in the UK today, and has been featured in national and sector-facing media examining food systems, poverty, and inequality.
In conversation with journalist and author Anna Jones, this session offers an overview on:
the real drivers of food poverty in the UK
what forms of aid currently exist — and where they fall short
how food waste, access, and distribution work at cross-purposes, vis à vis food poverty
what more humane and effective systems could look like
This will be an unflinching but constructive discussion about how food poverty is created — and how it might realistically be reduced.
