Page 14 - Food&Drink March 2022

BY ASSOCIATION
Australia produces enough food for
75 million people every year – enough to feed our entire population three times over – yet we have a significant hunger problem. Foodbank Australia CEO Brianna Casey
is at the forefront of finding solutions.
Solving Australia’s hunger crisis
WHEN Foodbank released its 2021 Hunger Report it revealed one in six adults and 1.2 million children in Australia went hungry last year. How can this be?
The hunger problem in our country isn’t new. Foodbank has been tracking food insecurity in Australia since 2012 and while the root causes vary, what has been a constant throughout is the diversity of people touched by this issue.
Food relief is not only being sought out by those who are homeless and unemployed, but also working families, refugees, single parents, school leavers, First Nations People and many more.
Covid-19 has helped shine a spotlight on the prevalence of food insecurity in Australia, and just how quickly job security, housing security and financial security can be eroded. In fact, one in three people struggling to meet their food needs are new to the situation.
These people will look back on this period as the toughest time they’ve ever faced and remember what it was like to be forced to decide between buying food or paying the electricity bill, because they couldn’t afford to do both.
For others, the pandemic served only to highlight the harsh realities of poverty and inequality in Australia.
1.2m SUPPLY VS DEMAND Foodbank is now providing
relief to more than one million people per month through a network of 2950 front-line
AUSTRALIAN CHILDREN charities, with Foodbanks
at various points throughout the pandemic.
We would not have been able to maintain our supply in the face of adversity without enduring partnerships and the strong support of those who trust us to do what we do best.
Foodbank works with the entire Australian food and grocery industry – farmers, wholesalers, manufacturers and retailers – plus our invaluable transport and logistics providers, to source fresh and manufactured foods as well as personal and household care items for those in need.
DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH FOOD TO EAT LAST YEAR.
We know that those struggling before the pandemic have been hit the hardest and will find it the most difficult, if not impossible, to even recover to where they were before the crisis.
THE GREAT PIVOT
Not only did Covid affect demand for food relief, but also the way in which relief providers responded to people in crisis.
To borrow one of the most over- used words in the pandemic, Foodbanks right across the country had to pivot from existing models of distributing food relief via a network of thousands of frontline agencies and a small number of client- facing Foodbank hubs, to mobile foodbanks, pop-up markets
and a strong reliance on emergency relief hampers.
CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Covid meant Foodbanks across the country had to pivot quickly on how relief was distributed due to increased demand.
across the country also supporting 2890 schools through highly successful initiatives such as School Breakfast Programs.
In 2021, we sourced 48.1 million kilograms of food and groceries, equating to 241,000 meals per day.
This is a staggering volume of food relief given the supply chain constraints experienced
14 | Food&Drink business | March 2022 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au