image captionCatherine Faroui says demand for food banks is increasing Article information
Staff at Bradford Food Bank said demand for support was increasing but donations were falling.
The Feedo Needo charity operates services in the city's West Bowling area and helps around 800 people each month.
It relies heavily on deliveries from national food waste charity FareShare, which it says is shrinking in size.
FareShare called on charities in need to contact them, but warned that donations were being hit by factors including above-average rainfall, which affected surplus produce.
Project co-ordinator Catherine Faluy has been working with Feed Need in Bradford since the beginning of this year.
She is in charge of six volunteers who run both the food bank and homeless services.
She said: “The demand for food supplies is increasing.
“And we are also experiencing a decline in donations and donations to food banks.
“We have had a large donation from a company called FareShare and they are donating to Feedo Needo as well as other people in Bruford, but it has reduced some of the groceries that we have available. ”
Image source, Catherine Falui
image captionFood donations are a lifeline for charities and the people they support
FareShare redistributes food waste from organizations such as supermarkets and food manufacturers to a network of 8,500 charities and community groups across the UK.
A spokesperson said more than 1,000 charities were currently on the waiting list.
They said: “Furthermore, the UK has experienced record rainfall over the past 18 months, impacting on UK harvests and putting pressure on UK farmers and producers to ship more crops. “We are adding the following.”
“We are working hard to make more of our surplus available to support the charities that provide food. I am grateful.”
We recently launched the King Charles and Coronation Food Project to identify more sources of surplus food.
According to the charity Food Foundation, more than 13 million people (9.3 million adults and 4 million children) experienced food insecurity in January 2023.
This equates to just over 20% of the UK population, or one in five people.