Access to food is a human right

For all its admirable achievements in terms of pop-up restaurants, bib gourmands, farmers markets, independent delis, small producers and community market gardens, the truth remains that Glasgow has the highest rate of child poverty in Scotland, with one in three children living in hardship. (Parts of London have the highest rates in the UK, as the gap between the haves and the have-nots continues to widen; it was revealed last week that the UK is the only G7 country where the richest 10 per cent have increased their share of the nation's wealth since 2000.) In another five Scottish council areas, more than one-quarter of children are growing up in families struggling to get by. Some 220,000 or one-fifth of Scottish children are thought to be affected.

What that means is parents going without food so their children have something to eat, resorting to food banks, not having enough fuel to cook a wholesome meal from scratch, and resorting to frozen sausage rolls at 50 for £1 and cheap sugary chocolate bars for sustenance. It's reckoned that for every recipient of a food bank handout, another 10 people live this way - if they're lucky. The number of people who face going hungry in Glasgow is continuing to rise: in September alone, more than 1200 people were fed by four food banks across Glasgow, more than twice the number from the previous year. Of that figure, 797 were adults and 418 children.

If it weren't for food banks, those living in poverty would have no choice but to suffer increasingly poor health, a farcical situation given the billions Scotland receives from exporting top-quality produce to global markets.

That's what made the sight of so many food parcels laid out in George Square following the outburst of violence after the referendum No vote so poignant. Like flowers laid at a shrine, these plastic bags filled with tinned food seemed to signal death, the passing of hope for those needing it most. But they also conveyed something else: an upsurge in social solidarity, a determination not to let those who had engaged with politics for the first time be forgotten. The imperative for change must be seized now.

Pete Ritchie points out that access to good food is a human right under the UN International Covenant on Social and Cultural Rights, and enshrined in Scotland's National Action Plan for Human Rights (SNAP), and that it should be the responsibility of government, rather than charity, to deliver it. Scotland's Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment Richard Lochhead fully supported the conference, entitled Our Common Wealth Of Food. Farmers from India, Malawi and the Caribbean came to share their ideas and experiences of how they adopted some of the changes the Scottish Government hopes to implement with the next phase of the national food and drink policy: Becoming A Good Food Nation. The deadline for responses to its public consultation expired yesterday, so watch this space.

If effecting change seems to have all the pace of a tanker turning in the sea, I do sense the will is there, perhaps more so than ever. It will take a radical cultural shift and a transition to a different socio-economic model to get things moving, though. A key issue is land reform, currently under way. In rural Scotland 432 private landowners own 50 per cent of the private land, meaning half of a fundamental resource is owned by 0.008 per cent of the population. If ordinary people had access to more land for growing food, small-scale farming could thrive and perhaps bring about the birth of community co-operatives, where food grown locally is distributed locally, thus taking control of food back from the supermarkets and the farmers who see it only as as commodity in the global market. Other ideas are extending the NHS Healthy Start scheme beyond age five, getting fruit and veg on prescription, and two-for-one vouchers at farmers markets.

It's good to know that even in the most desperate situation, some people aren't giving up hope.