In the last six weeks or so, around a third of the clients of the Prince Albert Food Bank have been new to it. (File photo/paNOW Staff)

By Rob Mahon

Rising Food Costs

Inflation sends large influx of new clients to Prince Albert Food Bank

Mar 3, 2022 | 11:43 AM

You’ve almost certainly noticed a rise in your grocery bills as inflation continues to elevate food prices, and a local food bank is noticing it as well. In fact, it’s led to a dramatic increase in people needing their help.

The Prince Albert Food Bank has seen first time users make up as much as a third of their clients over the past six weeks. It’s a massive upswing in that number, and one of the largest their executive director, Kim Scruby, can recall in his time there.

“We started to see an increase about four years ago that was significant,” Scruby said. “There were a lot of first-time users involved, but going by memory that maybe would’ve been about 18 per cent or 20.”

Different factors might be involved in this, but the food bank’s users have generally said the same thing, the rising price of food has brought them there.

“It’s quite sudden,” Scruby said. “The feedback we get from clients is the rising price of groceries and that type of thing. Plus, gas is going up. It’s the overall inflationary situation we’re looking at.”

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According to Scruby, during the intake process the food bank doesn’t ask too many questions as they’re trying to respect their users’ privacy. Lately, however, the new users have been coming right out and telling them it’s the rising cost of food and other necessities that’s driving them there.

“Most of the stats I keep seeing, we’re sort of around six or seven per cent for food inflation,” Scruby said. “Just anecdotally, for myself it’s significantly higher than that and I hear the same thing from most people I talk to.”

Scruby said beef seems to be the area where inflation is hitting hardest, but other food items are rising in price as well. Other items, meanwhile, are simply getting more difficult to find, including some staples of the food bank.

“A lot of our core items, like pasta and that type of thing, it’s more of a question of (being) harder to find,” Scruby said. “There seems to be some supply chain issues involved there.”

Another concern for the food bank is that the rising cost of food might lead to fewer donations. During the height of COVID, with no major food drives, smaller individual donations were critical to them, and now they’re hoping they can put larger drives together again soon.

“For the past two years, we haven’t really been able to reach out and have much contact with the community aside from social media and support from radio,” Scruby said. “So it’ll actually be great to get out and get face-to-face with the public again.”

Scruby added the food bank is sort of an indicator for the local economy, so if demand is rising there it might be a sign times are getting tougher in Prince Albert.

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rob.mahon@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @RobMahonPxP