Nova Scotia food banks on the brink as pantry supplies dwindle

Gaye Wishart has a plan to help feed those in need in her Nova Scotia community.

“There’s quite of bit of traffic here in this area,” she says.

Wishart has placed a blue bin at the end of her driveway, hoping to catch the eye of vehicles and pedestrians. All donations will go to the community food pantries in Fairview.

“We really need other people to help us stock these cupboards and so I just put this out yesterday. Just hoping that with this new sidewalk here we might be able to get some donations and there’s quite of bit of traffic here in this area,” Wishart says. “I’m just hoping that I’ll be able to fill the bin every couple of days maybe and take it down to the cupboards.”

Gaye Wishart with her food donation bin. (Source: Jonathan MacInnis/CTV News Atlantic)

Some of those pantries only have a couple cans of soup and some lentils.

It’s the same situation provincewide as finding food for the table continues to be a growing problem.

“There are areas of Nova Scotia that have above levels of food insecurity and it’s no surprise that they have been that way for sometime so areas of Cape Breton, our Indigenous communities, areas around Yarmouth,” says Nick Jennery, executive director of Feed Nova Scotia.

Jennery says their data shows food bank use is up across the board for the third quarter on a row.

From April to June, 36,400 unique individuals were helped, which represents 3.4 per cent of the population. Thirteen per cent of clients were first time users, 34 per cent have children and 22 per cent of food bank users have jobs.

Forty-one per cent of those who have received support on behalf of their household have post-secondary education.

“For me that says that any one of us could find ourselves in a food insecure situation,” Jennery says

Jennery says food banks are able to meet the rising demand, but he’s not sure for how much longer.

“Those frontline agencies are doing the very best that they can, they’re finding the wherewithal, the volunteers to meet that demand, but there is a finite capacity there and I really do think there is a day of reckoning coming that we as a province have to face,” he says.

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