Foodbank Australia says the cost of living crisis is pushing Australians’ need for food relief to unprecedented levels. In 2023, the organisation sourced 51 million kilograms of food and groceries, the equivalent of 92 million meals, for households experiencing food insecurity.
Foodbank Australia CEO, Brianna Casey said food insecurity is now affecting more Australians than ever before.
“It’s touching groups previously unaffected: young professionals and mid to high-income earners are among those being forced to make sacrifices at the dinner table.
“In any other industry, reaching a volume milestone is cause for celebration. At Foodbank, needing to source 92 million meals is a deeply concerning signal of extreme hardship across our communities, and proof positive of the need for the federal government to deliver immediate and significant cost of living relief, including improved funding for the food relief sector to respond to ever-growing demand for food relief in communities we’ve never seen it before.
The national food relief sector - Foodbank, OzHarvest, and SecondBite - outlined five federal budget priorities in its 2024-25 Pre-Budget Submission:
- Increase baseline funding for food relief in line with demand;
- improve natural disaster preparedness and responsiveness;
- adopt a national food donation tax incentive;
- invest in sector capacity building including infrastructure and logistics; and
- support the sector’s educational and skills-training programs.
“We couldn’t do what we do best at Foodbank without the generosity and ingenuity of our partners across the agriculture, production, manufacturing and transportations industries,” said Casey.
Donations of ambient, chilled, fresh food and private label products and personal and household care items are all welcome. By redistributing otherwise wasted products – they may be out of specification, close to expiry, deleted product, surplus or damaged – Foodbank is able feed Australians that would otherwise go without.
Foodbank works with farmers, wholesalers, manufacturers, and retailers who donate food and grocery items and redirect surplus stock so that they can be distributed through Foodbank’s charity network and outlets to those who need it most.
Foodbank’s 2023 annual Hunger Report by found 36 per cent of Australian households are experiencing food insecurity, with 77 per cent experiencing it for the first time.
The report found 3.7 million households went hungry in the last 12 months, which is more than all the households in Sydney and Melbourne combined. That’s an increase of 383,000 more households than 2022.
“We are fast heading towards a reality where more than half the population will know what food insecurity is because they are experiencing it themselves. Almost one in two Australians have felt anxious about accessing adequate food or struggled to consistently access it. In a country where we produce enough food to feed our population three times over, this should not be happening,” Casey said.
