Food bank Consumption across Ontario has reached record levels, with Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank reporting its largest increase in 41 years since it opened.
According to the Who is hungry report 2024There were 3.49 million client visits to Toronto food banks like Daily Bread and North York Harvest — an increase of 32 per cent from the 2.6 million visits recorded the previous year.
According to the report, one in ten Torontonians uses food banks to make ends meet and more than 120,000 people used food banks for the first time this year. More than half of these new customers come from households with at least one working member.
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In Toronto, visits to food banks have increased every year since 2019, with 935,000 visits recorded that year. The numbers have almost tripled since then, a trend the report describes as “a harsh reality”.
In 2020, recorded visits increased to 1.5 million, followed by 2.12 million visits in 2021. In 2022, 2.65 million people visited food banks, an increase of 53 percent. Finally, in 2023, there were a record 3.49 million visits to Toronto food banks.
This trend is not limited to Toronto. The increase is part of a broader trend across Ontario, where visits to food banks are steadily increasing.
Feed Ontario’s latest report found more than 5.8 million visits to food banks across the province over the past fiscal year, representing an increase of 47 per cent since the start of the pandemic.
Many food bank users are left with just a few dollars each day after paying their rent and utilities. This year, the average left was $6.67 per person per day, compared to $8.01 last year.
The report says the growing demand faced by food banks highlights the growing challenge of food insecurity heading into 2025, and urgent solutions are needed to curb these record numbers, the report says.
© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.