Second Harvest

So what I do find interesting and what we will continue to follow, and I have some follow-ups on this as well.

So it is this announcement that we did get here on its $20 million in funding for Foodbanks Canada and Second Harvest.

And for those who are an avid Real Agriculture listener, you'll know on the CAPI podcast, we had a discussion with the CEO of Second Harvest about There's a few components here that I think bear paying attention to from the agriculture and agri-food side, is that there's obviously an overwhelming need, but part of making a more sustainable food system, food, not farming, food system, is decreasing waste and making the entire value chain more efficient so that we can support some of these things and realistically just just be more efficient at what we do so that we're not wasting as much so that there's just less waste in the system generally speaking um also we know that like food banks canada um some of these organizations have gotten you know just they've had to adapt but they've gotten really good at leveraging um you know the funding that they have into a whole bunch more meals than maybe they used to be able to provide so um does it solve the problem no but we have to address the problem and and i mean as you read out there sean i mean one in five uh what is it that are using or one-fifth of people using food banks um like these are these are fully employed people potentially that are just to tyler's point having a really hard time um affording everything and so sometimes accessing a food bank just helps you know, maybe get through to the next week or to whatever the case may be, trying to get, you know, the kids' lunches filled and those sorts of things.

So this is, of course, part of the broader food security strategy that the federal government is putting together.

And we are now – it was announced in June, the overarching strategy, and these are the food security strategy, and these are all sort of the components that they're starting to put together to fund.

Thank you, Janice.

Toronto Police have made, uh, an arrest in connection with the theft of catalytic converters from trucks parked at the Second Harvest food bank right before Thanksgiving.

This is surveillance video captured from the parking lot of the food bank, captured on Sunday.

Police believe the accused and another suspect, who is still at large, cut a hole in the fence and took the truck parts before fleeing.

He was out on bail and probation at the time of the alleged crimes.

S- and that, the, the vehicles that were targeted do serve a purpose, and when we look at the, the charitable cause that are behind it, the philanthropy efforts, it, it disrupted a business that's sole purpose is helping our own community.

And it's disrupted that, which I think is why it's, it's such an important factor to bring in now, is that we made an arrest so quickly on it, and we can restore some faith back to Second Harvest and the businesses within the area.

I spoke with the Second Harvest staff this morning, and they're very pleased to hear the information that an arrest has been made, and they're looking forward to th- the further investigation and hopefully recovering the items that were stolen.

And then cost is obviously a major challenge because gluten free products can be so expensive.

So we've learned to kind of stretch our resources by building relationships with manufacturers and retailers, looking for sales and bulk opportunities, accepting product donations and working with organizations like Second Harvest.

Yeah, it's amazing what you guys are doing.

So what has made the partnership sustainable? You sort of talked about donations.

We're always happy to have people who want to, you know, join our hamper packings.

It honestly is a lot of fun.

And also if people want to help participate in something we have called our Bread Rescue Program, where we basically try and work with Second Harvest to, we call it, you know, rescuing the gluten-free bread so we can actually bring it to harvest that's a couple ways you can get involved and then I think again just a reminder if you know you're donating food I think it's helpful to you know think about you know some of the things that you would want to receive and what would kind of help you if you were in that position nutritious staples and foods that can form part of a meal are incredibly valuable and big one to that one emphasizes that when you're making a donation or helping us out you don't have to personally feed a hundred families if your contribution you know even is helping just one person have safe food available to them, that matters and makes a difference.

Yeah, I almost envision putting a box together like a mini hamper and putting those different sort of collection of items.

There's a, a big, uh, increase in the number of people accessing our s- our support.

Made worse over the weekend when thieves stole the catalytic converters from vehicles belonging to Second Harvest, the Toronto Food Rescue Program.

The charity says its trucks are now out of service.

Repairs could cost $80,000, money that should go to support like this.

Food banks across Canada are busier than ever this Thanksgiving.

New data from Second Harvest shows ninety percent of nonprofits in its network are seeing a rising demand.

Thirty-five percent of them have had to turn people away due to a lack of resources.

Hernandez is a manager at Toronto's Scott Mission.