Community development and community food in Lincolnshire, United Kingdom: The limitations of neoclassical economics

ABSTRACT Community development in the UK has moved from private philanthropy in the early 20th Century through welfarism to a ‘marketisation’ in the 21st Century with both state contracts, and market-based performance measures. But neoclassical economics, on which such marketization is based, is an inadequate measure of community development practice as it does not accommodate a range of inequalities, spatial differences, changes over time, market failures and externalities, all of which are at the core of community food projects. Whilst community food projects address market failures, they can use innovative market mechanisms to “cushion” some of these neoclassical economics failings. A number of practical examples is offered, from Lincolnshire UK, of such innovations in relation to community food production, and environmental, food waste, and food poverty externalities.