Australia: A new report has revealed that 3.7 million households in Australia have experienced food insecurity over the past 12 months. According to the Foodbank’s annual hunger report, more than 2.3 million of those households were “severely food insecure”, which means that they were actively going hungry, reducing food intake, skipping meals, or going entire days without eating.
The report, based on a survey of 4,342 people conducted in July, noted that, compared with 2022, about 383,000 more households struggled to find food this year.
The major cause of food insecurity was the cost-of-living crisis, with 77 percent of households saying it was the main reason, up from 64 percent in 2022. Other reasons include low-income employment and inadequate welfare payments, with 42 percent of respondents saying that was a contributing factor. 60 percent of all food-insecure households had someone doing paid work.
Ms. Brianna Casey, Foodbank Australia’s CEO, commented that the country was in “the midst of a food security crisis”.
“What we are seeing now is that 77 percent of those experiencing food insecurity are experiencing it for the very first time. They skew towards younger, they skew towards mid- to high-income, and they also skew towards having a job.”
According to Ms. Casey, if the current trend continued, by the end of 2023, half the Australian population would have faced some level of difficulty in meeting their food needs.
“What we’re seeing now is that people are needing at least one and a half, if not two, full-time jobs or equivalent in order to keep up with bills that one job might have looked after before,” the CEO added.
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