Mark Woods: Hunger close to home at harvest time

Check the date on that Pease Pudding, blow the dust off that tin of Big Soup, Harvest Festival is fast approaching.

Despite the fact that the closest most of us come to harvesting something these days is the collection of Nectar points, it’s good that our schools keep this traditional moment in their diary.

Without it the vital reality behind the magical appearance of food in front of our youngsters would be even further obscured from their little world views.

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There are songs to be learnt, costumes to be worn and boxes to be filled for those that need them – what’s not to love.

This year though there’s another layer to the harvest story, another factor that a recent survey brought into sharp focus.

A poll of nearly 2,000 teachers saw more than 85 per cent reporting a rise in the number of children arriving at school hungry, with some even admitting to having brought food in from their own homes to help feed members of their class.

Others reported children having been found stealing from the dining hall and even off their friends’ plates.

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The proliferation of food banks across the country in the last few years is the grim backdrop to these disturbing findings.

Frank Field, the Labour MP turned coalition poverty tsar has admitted that politicians have no idea how to cope with the sudden upsurge in food bank use and has called on the Prime Minister to launch an urgent inquiry and with good reason.

In 2008-09 the country’s largest network of food banks, the Trussell Trust, gave three days’ emergency food to 26,000 people across the UK. In 2012-13, that figure had jumped to an incredible 346,992.

There are now over 380 Trussell Trust foodbanks nationwide – and that’s just from a single provider.

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So perhaps, with those figures in mind , we shouldn’t be shocked when we hear that more and more kids are arriving at school with an empty stomach.

But shocking it is, and this harvest festival it just might be that those most in need of a school food parcel are some of the pupils themselves.

Twitter @mark_r_woods