Food Stamp Cuts Create High Demand For Food Bank Supplies

The holiday season is approaching in November and December, the time of year when most food banks receive more than half of their donations for the year. The flip side: More people turn to food banks for help during that time, too.

Food banks across the country, stretched thin in the aftermath of the recession, are bracing for more people coming through their doors in the wake of cuts to the federal food stamp program. Food stamp benefits to 47 million Americans were cut starting Friday as a temporary boost to the federal program comes to an end without new funding from a deadlocked Congress...

Food banks served 37 million Americans in 2010, up from 25 million in 2006, according to the most recent numbers from Feeding America, an umbrella organization for 200 food banks nationwide. "Our network is already overburdened with a a tremendous increase in need," says Maura Daly, a Feeding America spokeswoman.

Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, says the cuts will hurt more than 1.8 million Ohioans. "This is taking food off the plate and out of the mouths of our most vulnerable friends and neighbors," she says. She says seniors, children, people with disabilities and veterans will be among the groups hardest hit by the cuts because they are the groups most reliant on food stamps...