The coronavirus crisis has put added pressure on SNAP, but there is some good news: greater attention is being paid to the need to make it easier for people to apply for and receive the benefit. The notoriously difficult process of applying for SNAP — involving pages of documentation and…
Food Bank News
Ever since it merged with a restaurant serving free community meals a year and a half ago, Feeding Tampa Bay envisioned that meal preparation would be a bigger part of its future. Suddenly, that future is here. In response to the pandemic, the food bank is now coordinating the production…
At least one recipient of USDA grant money to package and deliver boxes of fresh produce to non-profits via the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program should be well known to food banks, especially those along the Northeast corridor. The Mid-Atlantic Regional Cooperative, with a central warehouse in Philadelphia, Pa., announced this…
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…
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,”…