Food Security Infrastructure Framework: The Cases of Leeds, England, and Fresno, California During Covid-19

One’s surrounding political, policy, programme and societal environment can influence many factors of wellbeing and living, including food security. These multiple, varied environmental factors engage and interact with each other to create structures facilitating or impeding one’s ability to be food secure, with Covid-19 demonstrating how swiftly and dramatically these structures can change. This thesis adapts Bartfeld and Dunifon’s 2006 State Food Security Infrastructure framework into a revised theoretical framework of food insecurity in multiple global north contexts through a multi-case study. While originally designed as a mixed-methods case-study thesis, in practice it utilises semi-structured interviews with 23 participants in 2021from two case locations – Leeds, England and Fresno, California – to inform the development of the adapted food security framework. Findings highlight the complexity and interconnectedness of influencing structures onto their food security status during the Covid-19 pandemic, finding nine common themes throughout both case locations, with an additional theme in Fresno. The adapted theoretical framework is presented as a mappable visual framework tool for future research use, while the data from the cases shines critical insight into food insecurity during the Covid-19 pandemic.