Demand for food assistance in U.S. as high as it was during pandemic: Charity

The demand for food assistance in the U.S. is as high as it was during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a non-profit charity.

More than half of the shelves at the Atlanta Community Food Bank, a private charity, are empty, said executives.

Two in five people seeking food assistance in the Atlanta region this year have not done so before, they added.

Debra Shoaf, the organization's chief financial officer, said similar reports are coming across the U.S. "We're back up to pandemic levels," she said.

In some regions, demand is more than even on the starkest days of the pandemic. In central Ohio, the number of households seeking aid has increased by nearly half since last year, the charity said.

In Atlanta, product donations from corporations and farmers have remained largely steady, accounting for more than half of the food distributed, according to the food bank's records. But the ratio of government funding has changed dramatically.

Pre-pandemic government funding provided about 27% of the goods the Atlanta charity distributed.

At the height of the pandemic, in the fiscal year 2021, the government provided nearly 44% but government funds will account for only about 13% this year.

The Atlanta Community Food Bank works with nearly 700 community-based partner agencies that directly distribute food to more than 1 million people estimated to be food insecure due to COVID-19 in 29 counties across metro Atlanta and north Georgia.

Over 11.4 million households collected free groceries in early April, up 15% from a year ago, according to data from the Census Bureau.

"Food banks have been around for 50 years, but this is the first time we are seeing unprecedented high food demand combined with historically low unemployment rates," said Vince Hall, chief government relations officer for Feeding America.

Feeding America is a nationwide hunger-relief charity helping more than 40 million Americans yearly, including 12 million children and 7 million seniors.