'Carriers of Hope' is a fantastic local charity which works with refugees to provide them with everything they need and help them feel welcome. Its latest project is to develop a culturally relevant food bank that provides both fresh and familiar food to those families most in need.

To kick-start this project, Warwick Medical School ('with massive thanks to the Food GRP for funding!') has placed a hydroponic garden tower (pictured with growing herbs, salad leaves and Kale) with the charity so that they can start their own indoor garden. It is early days, but fresh foods donated and/or growing so far include fruits, herbs, salads and leafy vegetables. Future plans include a community allotment and garden.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations have declared 2020 as the International Year of Plant Health (IYPH) and have called for organisations to raise global awareness on how protecting plant health can help end hunger, reduce poverty, protect the environment, and boost economic development.

Much of the research in the School of Life Sciences is aimed at improving crop productivity and combating pests and diseases while conserving the environment in order to feed an increasing population.

Each month, for the remainder of the year, the Crop Centre will be presenting a new article to highlight some of this work that relates to IYPH 2020.

More information and to articles

Emma Parkin (pictured left) is passionate about food and its connection to the environment. Therefore in 2004 she took up baking as a career to make bread in an ethical and ecologically responsible way. From originally using premises at Shillingford Organics in Exeter, to then baking in the Real Food Store in central Exeter, she now has her own premises including a bakery and café along Exeter Quay named the Boatyard Bakery & Café (pictured left). During the COVID-19 crisis, Emma has witnessed a lot of neighbouring businesses along the quay forced to close. As bread is a staple food item, the bakery part of her business has remained open but not without canny adaptations in the ways they operate.

PhD student, Becca McGowan from the School of Life Science's, Warwick Crop Centre speaks to Emma to discuss how the business has been rising to the challenge! More information

Professor Jim Smith, from the Department of Statistics and one of the Food GRP leads , is heading a team of researchers from Warwick University and the Alan Turing Institute in developing a fast multiattribute utility decision support tool. This is designed to enable the general public to evaluate the efficacy of different stochastic countermeasure strategies to COVID 19.

One critical issue at the current time is to balance in a rational way the short term health risks to the population - both directly and indirectly caused by COVID 19 against the usually more long term health risks caused by countermeasures. In particular the medium and long term effects of poverty and destitution can be expected to dramatically decrease life expectancy in the general population. The imposition of severe countermeasures can therefore be seen as exacerbating long term health outcomes.

Food poverty - as witnessed for example through the increased use of food banks - has been shown to be one of the more sensitive indicators of how poverty is increasing in the general population. Dr Martine Barons, also a Food GRP lead from the Department of Statistics and Jim are currently using the broad expertise of the Warwick Food GRP to develop simple food measures of poverty and so indicators to determine this and other deleterious effects of COVID 19 to set these against the more immediate health risks.