What can we learn from civil society responses to COVID-19 food supply?

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in food shortages, lockdowns, and restrictions onmovement, which have completely reshaped the food system and the interaction betweenpeople and their food environment. The pandemic has highlighted that while states arestruggling to handle all the impacts of the pandemic, civil society organizations have taken onan important role in filling the gaps and mitigating the shocks from the pandemic. Actionstaken by civil society and the market have shown that the existing welfare structures createdby states are unable to handle the impact of a pandemic when it comes to critical tasks suchas food supply for vulnerable groups.

This report outlines the results from the research project Food for Urban Life and Localities (FULL) funded by Formas (2020-02864). The research set out to learn how COVID-19 response strategies in six cities (Stockholm, London, Wuhan, Singapore, Sydney, and Seoul) have facilitated access to food for vulnerable groups and how new food supply solutions have emerged through social and technological innovations. This report presents the case of each city in turn and pauses on the role of community-based organisations, ad- hoc community initiatives and municipalities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report provides a detailed discussion of local or community-level responses in cities that aim to provide access to food through social and/or technological innovations. The lessons learned are important for the Swedish context in the case of similar events that challenge local access to food. The research collected data through qualitative and quantitative methods, and also made use of the breadth of online data sources in response to COVID-19 restrictions on free movement and travelling. The overall finding is that in situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, local access to food is extremely challenging and cannot be addressed by existing welfare or state arrangements only;civil society organisations and voluntary community organizations (VCOs) step in to fill the gap in public provision; and the stricter the lockdown, the more dependent on civil society response urban areas and communities were.