By Marcus Coetzee, August 2026.
The only honest long-term solution to food poverty is a growing economy with decent employment opportunities. This is a lesson I learned many times over working in Africa.
So many of the social problems I encounter through my work are downstream consequences of economic problems. It’s the same in every country I’ve worked in.
For example, this morning I was helping a Scottish food bank with its strategy – an independent food bank run by volunteers. The charity does excellent work, but it is feeling overwhelmed with the demand for its food and other services. Food banks tackle a need created largely by economic factors, while their ability to function is also largely impacted by economic factors.
There are 638 food support organisations distributing food through 1,008 outlets across Scotland. This figure has stayed remarkably stable since 2019/20 despite rising need. Most of these are independent of the Trussell Trust, which operates 43 food banks at more than 144 venues across Scotland.
Adult food insecurity in Scotland eased in 2024 after spiking between 2021 and 2023 with the cost-of-living crisis. The Scottish Health Survey 2024, published in October 2025, found that 8% of adults had worried about running out of food due to a lack of money or other resources in the last 12 months. The findings revealed that over one-third of adults in single-parent households were worried about having enough food to eat. Single adult households and large family households were also distinctly vulnerable.
Several economic factors are contributing to this problem.
One, food inflation tends to outpace increases in social security payments (‘benefits’). Furthermore, during periods of economic shock such as the cost-of-living crisis, even people with stable jobs may struggle more to afford food. For example, food inflation increased to 19.1% in March 2023 according to the ONS, but it has declined to slightly over 3% on average over the past year. Unfortunately, the Food and Drink Federation expects it to increase to 9% by the end of 2026 due to the knock-on effects of the conflict in the Middle East. (The cost of food is also squeezing my household budget and I’ve had to cut down on other expenses and investments, despite my efforts to live frugally.)
Two, increased unemployment in the household, regardless of the cause, reduces household income and ability to afford food and pay bills. Scottish unemployment has risen sharply from 3.2% in early 2019 to 4.7% in spring 2026, with losses concentrated in low-pay sectors like retail and hospitality – areas where workers already have the least financial buffer to absorb a shock.
Three, the over time fragmentation of households into smaller units decreases total household income, erodes economies of scale and makes a household more vulnerable to economic shocks like unemployment and inflation. Scotland now has the highest proportion of single-person households in the UK, at 37% of all households, up from just 14% in 1961. The Scottish Government’s own data confirms the vulnerability this creates: the cost of living is highest for households with a single, divorced, or separated head. A smaller household also has a reduced ability to care for children, the elderly, and the sick.
Four, the ability of the government to support food banks, and to pay out significant benefits to vulnerable households, all depends on its ability to earn revenue and tax economic activity. I have written previously about where the three tiers of government get their money from and how they might increase the amounts.
Five, individual donations of food and money to food banks depend on individuals having disposable income. When people are under economic pressure themselves and need to tighten their budgets, then donations to charities and other causes tend to decline. For example, the Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN)’s member survey in mid-2024 found that nearly 80% of organisations saw a fall in food donations.
Six, food banks and many of the charities I have worked with in Scotland rely heavily on volunteers. There is a great volunteering culture in Scotland. I often see people (mostly elderly) helping to govern charities and deliver their work. An emerging challenge I’ve noticed in my work, and which SCVO and other sector research has documented, is that volunteering amongst younger people has declined in the traditional sense and is changing in form due to economic and lifestyle pressures. Young people are more likely to volunteer in bursts when they have spare capacity, often preferring digital means of helping and engaging. Sadly, the supply of volunteers has not kept pace with the demand for their help.
Seven, charitable foundations collectively disburse large amounts of money to food banks and other types of organisations. However, they are increasingly finding ways to disburse their grants more broadly in light of increasing demand and funding applications, meaning that individual organisations receive less than they need or have historically received.
You can see that these challenges are all tied into the condition of the economy in some way or another. So how does one deal with the problem of households with insufficient food to eat?
The short-term fix is to provide food support, much like food banks are already doing, along with other emergency household and family support services. This support may include helping a household to apply for all the benefits they’re entitled to within this situation, or linking people with health services. This additional support tends to be delivered by the food banks themselves and by specialised teams such as the Citizens Advice Service and local-authority social workers.
The Scottish government has embarked on a ‘cash first’ strategy so that distressed households have enough money to buy their own food at the supermarket. The worthy ideal is to eliminate the need for food banks, but even the government has acknowledged that this is unlikely to ever happen. It’s much more likely that food banks will simply achieve a perpetual equilibrium determined by their funding, volunteer workforce and need for their services.
The medium-term fix tends to involve helping the household increase its income. This employability activity is more complex and may involve helping people to find work and/or improve their skills so they can access better work opportunities.
The long-term fix involves growing the economy so that it can provide more decent jobs. This benefits people earning wages and salaries, and those who are self-employed and running businesses. It also provides more income for the government to spend on infrastructure, social security and government programmes.
Fixing the economy is unfortunately not easily done. I have written how the trends that undermined Scottish industry are still in play and very much evident in the UK economy. The Scottish government has limited influence over macro-economic factors since these are largely determined by Westminster. It will also require the government to develop and protect multiple competitive advantages, using every tool available under the World Trade Organisation. It must also remove unnecessary constraints, while maintaining ethical standards, and create an enabling environment for business. Unfortunately, the UK government has tended to adopt a more laissez-faire approach over the past century which makes this scenario less likely.
I’ve also written before how it is cheaper to fix problems upstream in an age of austerity, because problems have a tendency to snowball downstream and create multiple catastrophes requiring damage control. This is distracting and costs money.
The medium-term and long-term solutions outlined above will work to alleviate future problems. The lack of these medium- and long-term solutions in the past is part of why today’s problems have manifested. We are downstream of systemic problems that were created over decades, and we are upstream of the problems that our children will experience. Properly fixing problems requires a systems view and an understanding of how to work with simple, complex and wicked problems.
So circling back to the original problem with people needing food banks – the ultimate solution to making food banks obsolete is to strengthen the economy and make it more resilient to shocks and stresses. This is what the government hopes to do. But since this is unlikely, it is much more likely that food banks will continue to exist in the foreseeable future.
Food banks are, in some sense, a monument to the failure of economic policy as much as they are a triumph of community compassion.