INNOVATION IN FOOD BANKING

The food bank network stretches from coast-to coast-to-coast across Canada and is comprised of organizations of all sizes, along with national partners, all working together with the untied goal of ensuring no one goes hungry within Canada.  

Community food bank locations are the face of the network, opening their doors and providing nutritious food and other critical supports to their communities.  These organization vary in size, however, are all committed to safe food handling, and have the infrastructure in place to maximize the benefit of all donations in service of their communities.

Distribution hubs, located in all regions across the country, receive and distribute thousands of lbs. of food each year through their regions.  These facilities have large storage and refrigeration capacity, along with refrigerated trucks, ensuring all food is received and handled with the highest level of safety, to ensure the valuable product can reach the end clients safely and efficiently in their regions.

Provincial Associations, work with the network of food banks within their province, working with provincial partners to secure and share support and services, allocate the distribution of food and invest in the system for its ongoing enhancement and advancement.

Food Banks Canada, receives and distributes large scale national food donations moving food throughout the country to the distribution hubs for further distribution within their regions.  Through our capacity granting opportunities made possible by our partners, we also invest across the country in infrastructure such as refrigeration, transportation, and warehouse equipment.

The food bank network is also supported by warehousing and transportation partners across the country to allow for the efficient movement of food to all regions in Canada.  These transportation partners include air, train, and road, to ensure every region in Canada can be reached.

All parts of the food bank network, work in sync to ensure product is moved with the highest level of safe food handling processes, to move food safely, efficiently and effectively, to provide the greatest benefit to those in need in communities across Canada.

Food that is available within Canada is not always in a format that can be effectively distributed and utilized by those in need.  Rather than have these items go to waste, within the food bank network, this product is either safely repackaged or transformed into healthy, high quality, nutritious high demand products to serve the food bank clients’ needs

This transformation occurs across the country from small to large scale.  

One example of this work is in Ontario, through the Farm to Food Program.  Working with local farmers, surplus produce was diverted to the Unemployed Help Centre of Windsor (UHC).  Within their facility UHC has a state-of-the-art kitchen facility, the raw donated product is transformed into cost-effective meals, which are then distributed across Ontario to those who need it most.  During the first year, 240,000 lbs of surplus produce was rescued and over 1 million meals were distributed.  Learn More

Another example is Food Banks Canada’s partnership with the For GOOD Foundation.  The For GOOD Foundation works with industry partners to source andtransform the product at no profit and highly discounted rates into good, nutritious food.  Products being manufactured and distributed include a variety of high-quality pantry staples such as peanut butter, rice, pasta, pasta sauce, tuna, canned legumes, and more.  This product is then packaged and distributed to food banks across Canada to provide clients with a consistent source of healthy, high-quality food. 

Data is essential for Food Banks Canada to study and identify the root causes of food bank use across the country and to allow us to develop data driven policy recommendations, empowering us to advocate in a robust and meaningful way.

Food Banks Canada is working with food banks across the country to establish the collection of real time data on food bank usage.  With this centralized data collection this allows us to take a consolidated and regional view of the need across the country and to allow for timely analysis to identify emerging trends early.

Food bank usage is unfortunately on the rise in Canada.  Being able to monitor and understand the driving causes of this need in critical.  Data allows Food Banks Canada to be responsive, and to provide robust actual data to support our policy recommendations, and to share with other academics and government officials, all working together to implement meaningful changes getting at the root cause of food insecurity in Canada, taking steps toward our vision of a Canada where no one goes hungry.