Australia must tackle student hunger

Earlier this week Australian treasurer Jim Chalmers reiterated his concerns over rising food prices globally, which are connected to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  

One relatively neglected but crucial dimension of this ongoing food crisis relates to student food insecurity. In Australia, up to 40 per cent of university students were food insecure even before Covid-19 and the invasion of Ukraine. But the political and economic situation has made this a much more pressing issue.

The problem is not unique to Australia. Last week, the UK’s National Union of Students reported that 11 per cent of its members are using food banks and that a third had just £50 a month to spend on all discretionary items (including food) after they had paid for their accommodation.

But food insecurity may be a particular problem for Australian students, partly reflecting the almost wholly privatised nature of food provision on Australian university campuses and the large proportion of relatively vulnerable international students studying in the country.

That said, our research on this issue, carried out during 2020 and 2021, shows that food insecurity is a problem that affects domestic as well as international students. It also affects students at all kinds of universities, including the most “elite”.

Our work suggests an urgent need for government and universities to focus on four areas. First, universities should develop fair and sustainable food policies. The national Fair Food Challenge student movement has been advocating for this. However, while Australian universities have made the “student experience” a central plank of their mission, very few have food policies or refer in their strategy documents to the importance of student food security.

Laudable initiatives to reach out to the neediest students – including through the distribution of meals and ingredients – risk looking like sticking plasters. We need universities to sign up to an approach that makes access to inexpensive, nutritious food on campus the norm for all students.   

Discussion could start from the notion that subsidised food in a permanent university canteen, as provided in many Australian institutions until the 1970s, could have long-term benefits – though is unlikely to be a catch-all solution.

Second, we need more research. There are no extensive studies of student food insecurity in Australia and we know very little about how students use campuses or university-run accommodation with respect to food. This paucity of knowledge urgently needs to be addressed.

Third, we need to involve students in food solutions. Our own research points to the wealth of ideas that students possess about how food environments in universities – and other places – could be improved. A particular strength of students’ perspective is that they often see how issues are connected. For example, in the climate justice movement, young people have refused to focus narrowly on the environment, preferring to show how climate change is integrally bound up with issues of social, economic and political injustice. Similarly, food-insecure students have described how their plight is intimately linked to issues of health, work, study, relationships and housing. We need to foreground this network imagination to devise solutions.  

Another advantage of involving students is that they often think over the long term. Even before the current concerns over rising food prices, there was widespread acknowledgement among students that conventional industrial food regimes are compromising food security, as well as having negative environmental consequences. Listening to young people will prevent us from simply trying to restore previous conditions of relative food abundance and oblige us to think seriously about much more local, sustainable, ethically just and religiously and culturally appropriate approaches to food.  

Finally, we need to integrate poverty and class into university diversity plans as issues underpinning food insecurity. A powerful theme of our research is of poorer students feeling excluded and ashamed when they cannot join their richer peers for meals. We urgently require serious reflection about universities not only as places that reflect class but where class inequalities are created. 

A focus on class inequality would also allow food initiatives on campuses to move beyond student issues. Nutritious, affordable food would be a benefit for all members of the campus community, including faculty, contract staff, professional staff, security and maintenance personnel. And if universities can set an example on these issues for wider society, then the beneficiaries will be many times more numerous still.

Craig Jeffrey is professor of geography, Jane Dyson is associate professor of geography, Sara Guest is a PhD researcher and Gyorgy Scrinis is associate professor of food politics and policy, all at the University of Melbourne.