There were nearly one million more visits to Toronto food banks this year compared to last, continuing a trend of rising demand that has been seen since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Daily Bread and North York Harvest food banks released their annual ‘Who’s Hungry’ report on Tuesday.
The report found that there were 3.5 million client visits to member food banks from April 2023 to March 2024, which is the highest in the 41-year history of Daily Bread Food Bank.
Food bank visits as measured by the report were up by nearly one million from the previous year and have now risen by 273 per cent since before the pandemic.
“It is unfathomable that the number of client visits to food banks is now higher than the City of Toronto’s entire population,” Neil Hetherington, CEO of the Daily Bread Food Bank, said in a news release accompanying the …