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To effectively meet their social objectives, humanitarian organizations need to be more innovative and find novel ways to stay competitive. Yet there has been limited focus on innovation by humanitarian organizations. Part of the issue is the lack of new practices and novel approaches that can be used as benchmarks. This study focuses on food banks, a critical hub for the delivery of food in humanitarian supply chains and where the use of innovation seems to be more reported on.

Focusing on resource scarcity, a commonly referenced constraint by humanitarian organizations, the authors study how food and fund scarcity (versus abundance) influence the innovation efforts of twelve food banks in the United States. This study observes variations in behavior before and during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

The authors find that food banks operating in high resource scarcity (food-scarce and fund-scarce) settings focus on process innovations. Food banks operating in low resource scarcity (food-abundant and fund-abundant) settings focus on product innovations. Food banks operating in food-abundant and fund-scarce settings focus on marketing innovations. Food banks operating in food-scarce and fund-abundant settings show the most extensive focus on innovation by relying on imitative innovations. The innovation focus for most food banks switches to process innovation during the COVID pandemic.

The study breaks down resource scarcity specific to food banks by differentiating food and funds, a novel approach to studying scarcity. Findings are novel as they suggest that operating context has a highly differentiating effect on what food banks focus on in terms of innovation. Operating context can lead to focus on process, product, imitative of market-related innovations. Finally, the study is novel because it explores how change in the environmental context due to disruptions can drastically modify the innovation focus of food banks.

This article draws upon our perspective as academic-practitioners working in the fields of food insecurity, food systems, and inequality to comment, in the early stages of the pandemic and associated lockdown, on the empirical and ethical implications of COVID-19 for socio-economic inequalities in access to food in the UK. The COVID-19 pandemic has sharpened the profound insecurity of large segments of the UK population, an insecurity itself the product of a decade of “austerity” policies. Increased unemployment, reduced hours, and enforced self-isolation for multiple vulnerable groups is likely to lead to an increase in UK food insecurity, exacerbating diet-related health inequalities. The social and economic crisis associated with the pandemic has exposed the fragility of the system of food charity which, at present, is a key response to growing poverty. A vulnerable food system, with just-in-time supply chains, has been challenged by stockpiling. Resultant food supply issues at food banks, alongside rapidly increasing demand and reduced volunteer numbers, has undermined many food charities, especially independent food banks. In the light of this analysis, we make a series of recommendations. We call for an immediate end to the five week wait for Universal Credit and cash grants for low income households. We ask central and local government to recognise that many food aid providers are already at capacity and unable to adopt additional responsibilities. The government's – significant – response to the economic crisis associated with COVID-19 has underscored a key principle: it is the government's responsibility to protect population health, to guarantee household incomes, and to safeguard the economy. Millions of households were in poverty before the pandemic, and millions more will be so unless the government continues to protect household incomes through policy change.

In the reduction of food waste and the provision of food to the hungry, food banks play critical roles. However, as they are generally run by charitable organisations that are chronically short of human and other resources, their inbound logistics efforts commonly experience difficulties in two key areas: 1) how to organise stocks of donated food, and 2) how to assess the donated items quality and fitness for purpose. To address both these problems, the authors aimed to develop a novel artificial intelligence (AI)-based approach to food quality and warehousing management in food banks.

For diagnosing the quality of donated food items, the authors designed a convolutional neural network (CNN); and to ascertain how best to arrange such items within food banks' available space, reinforcement learning was used.

Testing of the proposed innovative CNN demonstrated its ability to provide consistent, accurate assessments of the quality of five species of donated fruit. The reinforcement-learning approach, as well as being capable of devising effective storage schemes for donated food, required fewer computational resources that some other approaches that have been proposed.

Viewed through the lens of expectation-confirmation theory, which the authors found useful as a framework for research of this kind, the proposed AI-based inbound-logistics techniques exceeded normal expectations and achieved positive disconfirmation.

As well as enabling machines to learn how inbound logistics are handed by human operators, this pioneering study showed that such machines could achieve excellent performance: i.e., that the consistency provided by AI operations could in future dramatically enhance such logistics' quality, in the specific case of food banks.

This paper’s AI-based inbound-logistics approach differs considerably from others, and was found able to effectively manage both food-quality assessments and food-storage decisions more rapidly than its counterparts.

In the UK, food poverty has increased in the last 15 years and the food aid supply chain that has emerged to tackle it is now roughly 10 years old. In this time, we have seen the food aid supply chain grow at a rate that has astounded many. Recently that growth has been aided by a grant of £20m from a large supermarket chain. It appears institutionalisation is just around the corner, if not already here. It also appears that there is far greater emphasis on dealing with the symptoms as opposed to solving the root causes of the problem. As an opinion piece, this paper reflects on some of the prevalent issues, and suggests some ways forward.

Background: Rising food bank usage in the UK suggests a growing prevalence of food insecurity. However, a formalised, representative measure of food insecurity was not collected in the UK until 2019, over a decade after the initial proliferation of food bank demand. In the absence of a direct measure of food insecurity, this article identifies and summarises longitudinal proxy indicators of UK food insecurity to gain insight into the growth of insecure access to food in the 21st century.

Methods: A rapid evidence synthesis of academic and grey literature (2005–present) identified candidate proxy longitudinal markers of food insecurity. These were assessed to gain insight into the prevalence of, or conditions associated with, food insecurity.

Results: Food bank data clearly demonstrates increased food insecurity. However, this data reflects an unrepresentative, fractional proportion of the food insecure population without accounting for mild/moderate insecurity, or those in need not accessing provision. Economic indicators demonstrate that a period of poor overall UK growth since 2005 has disproportionately impacted the poorest households, likely increasing vulnerability and incidence of food insecurity. This vulnerability has been exacerbated by welfare reform for some households. The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically intensified vulnerabilities and food insecurity. Diet-related health outcomes suggest a reduction in diet quantity/quality. The causes of diet-related disease are complex and diverse; however, evidence of socio-economic inequalities in their incidence suggests poverty, and by extension, food insecurity, as key determinants.

Conclusion: Proxy measures of food insecurity suggest a significant increase since 2005, particularly for severe food insecurity. Proxy measures are inadequate to robustly assess the prevalence of food insecurity in the UK. Failure to collect standardised, representative data at the point at which food bank usage increased significantly impairs attempts to determine the full prevalence of food insecurity, understand the causes, and identify those most at risk.

Background: Evidence suggests that people living in poverty often experience inadequate nutrition with short and long-term health consequences. Whilst the diets of low-income households have been subject to scrutiny, there is limited evidence in the UK on the diet quality and food practices of households reporting food insecurity and food bank use. We explore lived experiences of food insecurity and underlying drivers of diet quality among low-income families, drawing upon two years of participatory research with families of primary school age children.

Methods: We report on a mixed-methods study of the relationship between low income, food bank use, food practices and consumption from a survey of 612 participants, including 136 free text responses and four focus groups with 22 participants. The research followed a parallel mixed-methods design: qualitative and quantitative data were collected separately, although both were informed by participatory work. Quantitative data were analysed using binary and multinomial logistic regression modelling; qualitative data were analysed thematically.

Results: Lower income households and those living with food insecurity struggle to afford a level of fruit and vegetable consumption that approaches public health guidance for maintaining a healthy diet, despite high awareness of the constituents of a healthy diet. Participants used multiple strategies to ensure as much fruit, vegetable and protein consumption as possible within financial constraints. The quantitative data suggested a relationship between higher processed food consumption and having used a food bank, independent of income and food security status.

Conclusions: The findings suggest that individualised, behavioural accounts of food practices on a low-income misrepresent the reality for people living with poverty. Behavioural or educational interventions are therefore likely to be less effective in tackling food insecurity and poor nutrition among people on a low income; policies focusing on structural drivers, including poverty and geographical access to food, are needed.

Extant literature in supply chain management tends to address a portion of the product flow to make food accessible to clients in need. The authors present a broader view of food insecurity and present nuances relevant to appreciate the complexities of dealing with this social problem.

The authors conducted an inductive study to reveal the deep meaning of the context as managers of nonprofit organizations (NPO) define and address food insecurity. The focus was on a delimited geographic area for capturing interactions among NPOs which have not been described previously.

This study describes the role of supply chains collaborating in unexpected ways in the not-for-profit context, leading to interesting insights for the conceptual development of service ecosystems. This is relevant because the solution for the food insecure stems from the orchestration of assistance provided by the many supply chains for social assistance.

The authors introduce two concepts: customer sharing and customer release. Customer sharing enables these supply chains behave like an ecosystem with no focal organization. Customer release is the opposite to customer retention, when the food insecure stops needing assistance.

The authors describe the use of customer-centric measures of success such improved health measured. The solution to food insecurity for an individual is likely to be the result of the orchestration of assistance provided by several supply chains.

The authors started asking who the client is and how the NPOs define food insecurity, leading to discussing contrasts between food access and utilization, between hunger relief and nourishment, between assistance and solution of the problem, and between supply chains and ecosystems.

This study aims to explore how key stakeholders and recipients of local food access programs operate strategically to meet individual and community food needs, enhance experiences of dignity and promote social justice. The study of a fragmented community food system highlights the connections between micro and meso dimensions of food access, illustrating how people work around food system limitations to access food.

Using qualitative in-depth interviews with food assistance managers, workers, volunteers and recipients, this study examines the period before the implementation of a centralized community-based food access initiative in a mid-sized, rural Oklahoma college town with a high rate of food insecurity. This study asks: What are community members’ experiences in a fragmented food assistance system? In what ways do individuals use everyday resistance and workarounds to actively promote experiences of dignity and social justice in food access spaces?

Those involved in sites of community food access build important networks to share information and engage in negotiation and trade to gain access to useful food resources. As forms of everyday resistance, such practices encourage co-construction of dignity and social justice in stigmatized spaces.

This research contributes to literature examining micro- and meso-level community dynamics that inform agency, dignity and social justice in community food access approaches.

Research and interest in food loss and waste (FLW) have increased, but barriers stand in the way of firms engaging in food recovery efforts. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of how firms overcome these barriers.

This study followed a qualitative, field-study-based research design in which 23 decision-makers at food-based organizations were interviewed. Quotes were extracted and categorized to develop a conceptual model of the food recovery process.

The conceptual model that evolved helps to explain decision-making related to FLW across the following dimensions: barriers to food recovery, incentives to overcome the barriers, internal processes for engaging in food recovery and external relationships influencing internal incentives and processes. In addition, the barriers and incentives were divided into operational and managerial issues.

Building on the barriers to food recovery in prior research, we explored the processes that help firms overcome these barriers. The model developed in this study is an important step toward addressing these processes and relationships. It can serve as a foundation for a variety of future studies of food recovery.

With the launch of mobile applications to reduce food waste, this study reviews scholarly articles to answer the questions: (1) What research topics are extensively discussed in relation to food waste mobile applications (FWMA)? (2) How do these applications impact food waste and food poverty? (3) At which stage of the supply chain are digital applications employed?

This paper conducts a systematic literature review of scholarly articles on the topic of mobile applications and food waste to answer three research questions.

The article provides a definition of mobile applications to reduce food waste. Most published studies on mobile applications are from developed countries. Over half of the applications address procurement and consumption along the supply chain. The applications are categorized by food saving method and used in studies on innovation management, platform relations and performance, the supply chain activities impacted and platform acceptance.

The articles and applications analyzed suggest more quantitative studies. A wider range of cases in diverse cultural settings is needed, as well as analyses of the factors influencing the development, performance and market acceptance of platforms.

This study is the first study to systematically review the relevant scholarly contributions related to mobile applications, an innovative practice that helps reduce food waste. It allows making an initial progress report on the research carried out.