North Florida Hunger Facts

Second Harvest North Florida - The Basics

  • For every $1 donated to Second Harvest, we can distribute food for seven meals.
  • Second Harvest North Florida provides important resources to more than 450 member agencies in a 17-county area in north Florida. Agencies include ministries, church pantries, medical clinics, senior citizen centers, after-school programs, summer programs, shelters and feeding sites.
  • Second Harvest is one of 205 Feeding America food banks nationally.
  • Geographically, the area served by Second Harvest represents more than 10,000 square miles, including nearly 3,000 square miles served by the Second Harvest facility on Jessie Street.
  • Second Harvest has largest geographic area of any Florida food bank (counties and miles).
  • Second Harvest provides services in outlying counties through facilities/partnerships in St. Augustine, Gainesville and Lake City.
  • Second Harvest maintains a fleet of 13 vehicles that provide pickup and delivery services for perishable and nonperishable food items. In fiscal year 2013, maintenance and fuel costs were are projected to be $240,000 – a steep increase from 2012.

Overview of the hunger issue in north Florida

  • In 2012, Second Harvest is projected to distribute in excess of 24 million pounds of food into its service area – the equivalent of more than 20 million meals. In 2011, SHNF distributed more than 20 million pounds, 19 million in 2010, 10.3 million in 2009 and 7.6 million in 2008. All told, the increase is more than 180 percent in five years.
  • The numbers above are indicative of demand. They continue to escalate, and Feeding America has projected that 40 million pounds will be required by 2015 to adequately meet the need.
  • Recent studies have given us a grim picture of hunger, nationally and in north Florida:

NORTH FLORIDA HUNGER DATA: From Hunger in America, 2010
(COMPLETE REPORT)

  • 1 in 6 adults experience food insecurity each day in America
  • Nationally, 1 in 4 children don’t know where their next meal will come from
  • Second Harvest provides food to more than 170,700 individuals annually – or an estimated 31,400 weekly.

FLORIDA HUNGER DATA: From Child Food Insecurity in the United States, 2006-08
(COMPLETE REPORT)

  • More than 342,000 individuals in the Second Harvest service area are deemed to be “food insecure” – which means they might not be hungry, but they also don’t know when they will eat again. Of that total, more than 117,000 are children.
  • The fastest-growing population in this food-insecure group is the working poor – households that have working members but can’t make ends meet, often times forced to substitute other bills and expenses for money that would have been used to buy food.
  • In the 17-county area served by Second Harvest North Florida, 136,269 people are in this class of working poor with no access to federal or state benefits and often limited means to buy food (SNAP, WIC, Free lunch at school). Of this number, more than 40 percent of these households have one or more adults in the home who work.
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