As food banks seek to bring food straight to patrons’ homes, they are discovering that one of the most difficult aspects of home delivery is planning out the routes that drivers should take. Turns out there’s an app for that. In California, both the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County and…
Food Bank News
With virtually every food bank in the country facing skyrocketing demand, it’s the rare food bank with enough disaster-relief capacity to be able to distribute food outside its usual operating area. Midwest Food Bank, headquartered in Normal, Ill., is an exception. In partnership with the Salvation Army, Midwest expects to…
The discord of farmers plowing under excess crops as food banks struggle to meet soaring demand is one image that Andrew Morehouse, Executive Director of the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, does not have to worry about. Each year, about 40 small farms in the area donate half a million…
As the nation’s most important mechanism for getting people food, SNAP provides access to about ten times the amount of food as all the nation’s food banks. Here are the ways SNAP has expanded during the pandemic, and how advocates would like to see its reach go even further: Emergency…
APRIL 22, 2020 — Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, normal wasn’t so great for the working poor in America. Despite a 10-year recovery, 12 percent of the nation remained food insecure in 2018. The state of affairs was so economically unsustainable that food banks doubled their distribution from 2009 to 2019, to…
At the same time that food banks are mobilizing to feed the millions impacted by the economic devastation caused by Covid-19, many are also ramping up to respond to a flood of calls from people needing assistance enrolling in SNAP. “We typically get about 100 calls a day regarding SNAP,”…
The lowly cardboard box plays a starring role in the USDA’s plan to purchase $3 billion worth of commodities from the nation’s farmers and pass it along to food banks and other hunger-relief organizations. The Coronavirus Food Assistance Program or CFAP, announced late last week, requires wholesalers and distributors to…
The quest for funds is on, as food banks seek to aid millions of Americans stricken by economic fallout from the coronavirus. With donated food slowing to a trickle, demand skyrocketing and the volunteer workforce dwindling, food banks are amping up their appeals to individual donors, while also exploring new…
Eric Cooper, CEO of San Antonio Food Bank, became the public face of the unprecedented need facing the nation’s food banks when he was interviewed this morning on NBC’s Today show, following an epic distribution that delivered a reported one million pounds of food to about 10,000 families last Thursday.…