In France, urban farms and social groceries offer food and dignity

• In Marseille, many poorer residents struggle to buy food
• Urban farms, social groceries offer a lifeline
• Food scarcity often twinned with other needs

MARSEILLE - On a sunny winter's morning, Etienne Griffaton walked around the Graines De Soleil urban farming project, near Marseille airport.

"It's hard work here, people have to do a lot of different things," said Griffaton. "But I think people are happy to have their hands in the soil."

Graines De Soleil is part of a network of non-profit organisations fighting food poverty around France's second city, Marseille, where around 26% of the population live below the poverty line compared to the French average of around 14%.

Across Graines de Soleil's three hectares (7 acres), 18 employees and around 30 'apprentices' grow fresh produce, which is then sent to grocery co-operatives, restaurants, food banks, and to Colibri, a 'social grocery' in the industrial town of Gardanne, north of Marseille.

The apprentices include recently arrived immigrants and prisoners on day release. Graines, with funding from the state, prepares them for the labour market, French society, or both.

On this day, there is a mix-up with a delivery to Colibri and Caroline Plas, project director with the NGO La Cité de l'agriculture, has been drafted in to help.

"I've actually never been the delivery guy before," said Plas, loading several boxes with cabbages, pears, leeks and parsnips into her car. "But I'm glad we can help."

The COVID-19 outbreak made things worse: as the informal economy was hit by lockdowns and energy prices rose, food aid systems were overwhelmed.

With COVID, "suddenly, food insecurity became so big, nobody could ignore it," said Plas, as she drove to Colibri.

Addressing stigma

La Cité de l'agriculture, along with Graines De Soleil and Colibri, is part of Territoires à Vivres, an umbrella organisation set up to fight food insecurity.

Since the pandemic, collectives like Territoires à Vivres have developed new ways to provide food while addressing the stigma associated with food banks and what critics describe as a paternalistic attitude towards aid recipients.

"With COVID we noticed that the groups working in this field adapted their behaviour ... in order to provide people with the food they needed," said Aïcha Sif, a city councillor and deputy mayor in charge of urban agriculture and food sustainability.

One of the initiatives, spearheaded by Sif and local NGOs, delivered food to families directly. Another saw the development of social groceries like Colibri.

With support from the Catholic Church, Colibri stocks its shelves from urban farms like Graines de Soleil and buys subsidised food from supermarket chains. The staff are all volunteers and each item has two prices.

Its members, typically people living just above the poverty line, pay 30% of the retail price, while others pay a full or 'solidarity' price.

Members include single mothers, retirees as well as immigrants without secure status. They are also "often poor workers who are right on the line despite a small salary, with no help from the state," said volunteer Pascale Michel.

The dignity of choice

Unlike food banks, where people take what they get, Colibri consults its members on what they want to see on the shelves.

"If people can choose what they want to eat, it's for their dignity," said Michel. "They can buy what they want and feel they're not begging."

Emmy Barbier is a single mother with a part-time job. Rising food and energy prices mean she struggles to pay her bills.

"I live alone with my child, in a fairly old home that isn't well insulated. Now it's starting to get cold, we need to heat it. It's the same problem every year," she said.

Another regular is Giuseppe Zammataro, an Italian chef in his 60s. He lives off a small French pension while awaiting his Italian one, which has been held up by bureaucratic issues.

"The food here is good quality and it's not expensive for me," said Zammataro. "The other associations that give out food, like food banks, the quality is not very good. Here I have choice."

Zammataro said when he gets his pension, he will keep coming to Colibri to pay the full price.

"There are a lot of people who need help like this. This shop is a good way to help."

'Food deserts'

In Marseille's central Third District, where the poverty rate is over 50%, members of the Racines social grocery can buy limited quantities of food at reduced prices.

On Fridays, people living in or near absolute poverty can collect pre-prepared food boxes, paid for by the non-profit Groupe SOS Solidarités.

Many immigrant families from the Maghreb and other parts of Africa shop here, including single mothers like Nisrine, who fled Algeria after becoming pregnant while she was unmarried. Now she is undocumented in France.

"Here in France it's very expensive, I need to be careful. I have a three-month-old baby to take care of and so I can't work. (Racines) is very important for us," she said.

Audrey Boyer, a dietician who works with the local government, said nutrition was also a problem in Marseille with obesity a common issue among poor and immigrant families.

"There's not enough vegetables and fresh food, and the infrastructure is not well-equipped for sport and other activities," said Boyer. "You also have violence in the streets, so mothers don't want to go out with their children."

Inequality in Marseille was exacerbated by the pandemic-era collapse of the informal economy, which deprived poor and immigrant families of income.

Councillor Sif is working to increase the land available to urban farming projects and relocalise food production.

"Food scarcity and precarity are a door to other vulnerabilities within these communities," said Sif. "When people get access to food aid, we discover afterwards that they are also in need of many other things - energy, appliances, housing."

Back at Racines, volunteer Hayat is finishing for the day.

A former beneficiary herself, Hayat, who asked to be identified only by her first name, has been out of work for two years after an accident-related disability.

"I want to be useful and active. I want to find a new job, but it's hard with this handicap. Being here gives me some meaning."

(Reporting by Frey Lindsay; Editing by Jon Hemming.)