Abstract
Disasters can impact on the four pillars of food security, namely its availability, access, utilisation, and stability. In the immediate aftermath, initial welfare responses seek to ensure access to food for communities most hard hit by the impact of the disaster. Community members and people from surrounding neighbourhoods, towns, or cities take roles in providing meals and sustenance to survivors. Over time these grassroots initiatives can evolve into more formal organisations and, as they build capacity, shift to incorporate a preventative focus on lessoning the impact of future disaster events on food security and resilience. This chapter provides an exploration of the Food Resilience Network, which emerged in 2013 in Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand, in the aftermath of two significant earthquakes. The authors consider the vision and actions of the collective of food producers, food banks, community coalitions, tertiary education providers, policymakers, and human services involved in responding to food security in the aftermath and recovery from the disaster. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and other global events which have brought heightened awareness of policymakers to the fragility of the food system, the authors examine the longer-term influence of these local food security practices and how they have shifted to enable different community and policy responses. They consider the implications for social workers for engaging with grassroots community disaster responses and their roles in shaping food policy and sustainable food systems.