Feeding South Florida®, the leading domestic hunger-relief organization serving South Florida has seen a 200% increase in demand since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020.

Presently there is a reduction of food boxes provided through the USDA’s Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP), a program created with CARES Act funding. Feeding South Florida’s allocation has decreased from receiving 160 53’ trailer loads of food per week in phase 1, to 110 loads in phase 2, to 60 loads in phase 3, and currently it’s now down to only 14 trailer loads per week in phase 4.

Despite the significant decrease in the flow of food, Feeding South Florida has proudly supported its network of approximately 300 partner agencies, created community drive-thru distributions with its municipal partners, provided family meal boxes through school districts, created a community delivery program with first responders, provided direct home deliveries, opened a state-of-the-art, 5,000-square-foot Community Kitchen at its Palm Beach County headquarters, and more.

From March to today, Feeding South Florida has provided over 138.6 million pounds of food to its quad-county service area (Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties). To put that in perspective, last year during the same time period, Feeding South Florida provided 56.6 million pounds of food. As a result of its efforts to secure and distribute as much food as they can, Feeding South Florida is now the second largest food bank in the United States.

Feeding America food banks, including Feeding South Florida, have shared that at the end of December 2020, the country will experience a “commodity cliff,” which means food banks across the country will see more than a 50% reduction in food supply due to the expiration of the CARES ACT funding, USDA’s CFAP and Trade Mitigation commodity programs.

Throughout the pandemic, Feeding South Florida has seen more than 1.5 million individuals need assistance and more than 45% find themselves seeking food assistance for the very first time in their lives. Despite the drastic reduction in resources, Feeding South Florida will continue doing all that they can to serve every person in need of assistance.

To maintain the same level of output that the organization has seen as a result of CFAP food, Feeding South Florida will need $8 million per month to purchase food – that’s enough for 40,000 to 50,000 households per week.

In addition to monetary donations (every $1 = 9 meals), Feeding South Florida is in need of volunteers to help pack family meal boxes, complete with fresh produce, protein, dairy and shelf-stable items. For more information and food distribution locations, please visit Feeding South Florida’s COVID-19 response web page at https://feedingsouthflorida.org/covid19/