Indiana’s food banks were recently given $300,000 from the Indiana State Department of Agriculture. Locally, the Food Bank of Northern Indiana, which serves Marshall, Starke, and four other counties, was given almost $35,000. Food Finders Food Bank, whose 16-county territory includes Pulaski and Fulton counties, has gotten nearly $28,000. The funding is part of the state budget approved by the Indiana General Assembly.
The need for food assistance has increased significantly with the COVID-19 pandemic. The state’s food bank association, Feeding Indiana’s Hungry, estimates a 40 percent increase in food insecurity during the course of 2020. That means one in five Hoosiers would be at risk of hunger, including more than 400,000 children. The association’s executive director Emily Weikert Bryant addes that food banks are now having to purchase a lot of their food, as donations have decreased.
However, the Food Bank of Northern Indiana’s share of state funding actually went down slightly from last year, while Food Finders’ share increased by $60. The funding distribution was determined using the Emergency Food Assistance Program fair share percentage, which is based on each county’s poverty and unemployment levels, according to a State Department of Agriculture press release.
