Universal Basic Income - A tool to eliminate food insecurity?
We all want to eliminate household food insecurity, so are we paying enough attention to the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI) - a regular, unconditional payment to everyone to cover basic needs - as a potentially powerful tool to help us achieve this?
There's been a resurgence of interest in basic income in response to the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. By providing everybody with some basic financial security, basic income has the potential to deliver significant net benefits to our food systems - and society. It could help transform people's lives as well as food and farming more widely.
But basic income is rarely framed in these terms. What is the food security case for basic income? How can we design a basic income that best tackles food insecurity? What other impacts – positive or negative - could introducing a basic income have on the food system?
The Basic Income Conversation and the Food Ethics Council invite you and other experts in the sector to an invite-only roundtable discussion on Tuesday 19th January 2021, 14.00-16.00 (on Zoom). We'll be discussing basic income's potential impacts on the food system to produce a framework for assessing how basic income can best tackle food insecurity. We will also explore whether and how the case for basic income can be built throughout the sector.
This follows recent work on basic income carried out by the Food Ethics Council. Read more: https://www.foodethicscouncil.org/resource/food-policy-on-trial-ubi-a-powerful-tool-press-release/
Sign up to RSVP and the zoom log in details will be sent to your email. We'll send the agenda at least a week beforehand.
Any questions, please get in touch with either Michael Pugh (michael@compassonline.org.uk) or Dan Crossley (dan@foodethicscouncil.org)
