California Food Banks & The COVID-19 Pandemic

In 2020, the California Association of Food Banks’ 41 member food banks responded to an unprecedented demand for food by rapidly redesigning their program delivery models in order to safely increase food distribution and adjust to necessary safety measures. Still, food donations and staffing resources were vastly outpaced by increased demand.

Food donations decreased in 2020. Community food drives and retail donations decreased for more than half of food banks while nearly all significantly increased food purchases.

Even while paid staff increased by 13%y volunteer hours increased by 63% (including state assets such as the National Guard), increases in paid staff and volunteers were still outpaced by increases in food distribution. In order to reach the 1.1 billion pounds of food, or about 917 million meals delivered by CAFB member food banks, operating costs also rose.

Drive-thru y home delivery distributions became commonplace — often meaning decreased opportunity for client choice. In order to meet the moment, food banks had to find ways to distribute food while also ensuring the safety of staff, voluntariosy clients. No longer an option due to COVID-19 safety precautions, farmers market-style “shopping” gave way to pre-packaged boxes of food, and custom online food orders shifted towards a fixed list of items.

Food banks anticipate the effects of COVID-19 on food insecurity to outlast the pandemic, keeping demand dramatically elevated for a long time to come.

71% of food banks expect that their programming and operations will remain changed in some way beyond the COVID-19 crisis.

After the Great Recession, it took nearly 10 years (until 2018) for food insecurity to return to pre-recession levels.