How COVID-19 impacted surplus food redistribution in the Netherlands: An explorative study

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has been detrimental to food security globally. The Netherlands, despite its advanced stage of development, saw a surge in food insecurity among its most vulnerable citizens. Dutch food aid is managed by private charities and social organisations that often aim to address the problems of food insecurity and food waste by redistributing surplus food that is safe to consume. This paper investigates how the pandemic impacted surplus food redistribution in the country by employing an Exploratory-Descriptive-Qualitative approach. This is done by analysing data from interviews with relevant stakeholders involved in redistributing surplus food in the Netherlands as well as media reports on the topic. Our findings indicate that the interviewed organisations experienced drastic fluctuations in supply and demand. To cope with these changes, rapid organisational and supply chain innovation was observed. Next to this, there seems to have been disproportionate negative impact on smaller charities in comparison to bigger, better established organisations. Based on our findings, we discuss what the future of surplus food distribution in the Netherlands might look like and why changes made during the pandemic must be well documented and carefully analysed.

Food insecurity and dietary diversity among food aid recipients in urban and rural areas at the covid‐19 outbreak: An exploratory study

“…The covid‐19 outbreak was an exceptional situation impacting not only global health, but also food systems (OECD, 2021) and food aid (Esmaeilidouki et al, 2023; Rao et al, 2022), which stimulated social innovation to improve food provision. We have not been able to locate studies on food insecurity of new food aid users in the context of the covid‐19 in high‐income countries (Koyratty et al, 2022).…”

Perspective: Food and Nutrition Insecurity in Europe: Challenges and Opportunities for Dietitians

“…Most studies on food and nutrition insecurity in Europe have sought to provide data about the prevalence and correlates of food insecurity in various populations [1, 63, 84]. However, some studies have discussed the personal experiences and coping strategies of food-insecure populations [85‒87], describing aspects of food aid organizations as the primary response in most countries [88], or identifying food-system issues such as food redistribution [89] or trade dependency [8].…”

Perspective: Food and Nutrition Insecurity in Europe: Challenges and Opportunities for Dietitians

“…Most studies on food and nutrition insecurity in Europe have sought to provide data about the prevalence and correlates of food insecurity in various populations [ 1 , 63 , 84 ]. However, some studies have discussed the personal experiences and coping strategies of food-insecure populations [ [85] , [86] , [87] ], describing aspects of food aid organizations as the primary response in most countries [ 88 ], or identifying food-system issues such as food redistribution [ 89 ] or trade dependency [ 8 ].…”