America’s largest food relief group says that food bank usage is up 46 per­cent from 2005. Accord­ing to Feed­ing Amer­ica 1 in 8 Amer­i­cans used food banks at some point last year, that trans­lates to 37 mil­lion Amer­i­cans. Feed­ing Amer­ica is a net­work of over 200 US food banks.

From USA Today, writer Wendy Koch gives us more details from the study.

“This is a cri­sis,” says Vicki Escarra, pres­i­dent of Feed­ing Amer­ica. “Peo­ple need to under­stand that this is Amer­ica, and we’re see­ing this kind of need.” She says the report is her group’s most com­pre­hen­sive study on emer­gency food distribution.

It comes as a record num­ber of Amer­i­cans are receiv­ing food stamps — 33.7 mil­lion last year — and as Pres­i­dent Obama, who has set a goal of end­ing child­hood hunger by 2015, pro­posed in his bud­get Mon­day to add $1 bil­lion annu­ally to school-based food pro­grams.
…

The Agri­cul­ture Depart­ment reported in Novem­ber that 14.6% of house­holds didn’t have enough food at some time in 2008.

Feed­ing Amer­ica based its report on 61,000 inter­views with peo­ple seek­ing food aid and 37,000 sur­veys of food pantries, soup kitchens, emer­gency shel­ters and other pro­grams affil­i­ated with Feed­ing Amer­ica food banks.

More than a third of those inter­viewed said they had to choose between food and other neces­si­ties, includ­ing rent, util­i­ties and health care. The aver­age monthly income of house­holds seek­ing help, $940, is below the $1,214 fed­eral poverty level for a two-person household.

“Our sys­tem is over­bur­dened,” Escarra says. She says com­pa­nies, indi­vid­u­als and the fed­eral gov­ern­ment have increased dona­tions, but food banks are still strug­gling to keep up with demand.

Sourced from: Poverty News Blog