Despite a successful spring food drive, the Red Deer Food Bank is worried about meeting the growing demand for its services in the months ahead.
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ City Wide Food Drive held last month collected 9,450 kilograms of food, but generally 57 per cent of food donated through the year are extras to jazz up a meal rather than the staples needed for food hampers, like rice, pasta, peanut butter and cereal.
Executive director Mitch Thomson said the food bank is incredibly thankful for food drive volunteers and those who donated, but in the first nine months of its fiscal year, which runs from August to July, the food bank has already spent what it normally would over 12 months to keep the food bank open and to purchase food.
"We hate to always have a doom and gloom message, but it a very, very trying time," Thomson said.
"We're grateful for all the contributions people make. We just have to honest and forthright about where we are."
The gap has been growing between cash donations and the demand for food hampers. In the first four months of 2023, a total of 3,934 hampers were provided and $304,241 cash was donated. During those same months in 2024, the number of hampers grew to 4,306 while donations dropped to $234,473.
"We're feeding twice as many people with less food than we did three years ago so we keep dipping into our coffers to try and purchase and support the tremendous number of people coming our way.
"As a community, we'll get through it, but it's a situation that's not gotten better over the last couple of years despite tremendous efforts from individuals, the community and business."
The food bank's food budget is anticipated to be about $40,000 per month for the next few months.
"Anybody that can contribute funds will allow us to purchase strategically. We can stretch a purchase, or get a little more value than the average consumer, because of buying power and because of who we are."
Thomson said a new Statistics Canada report showed that 28 per cent of Albertans are food insecure, an increase of eight per cent from last year.
He said it's rare for governments to contribute to operational expenses, and more needs to be done given the cost of housing housing and the number of people coming to the area.
Traditionally about 33 per cent of food bank users are children, but now it's 40 per cent, he added.