Rising rents and high petrol prices are pushing Aussie households into an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis.
Daniel Moorfield, the CEO of relief charity Secondbite, told Yahoo News he’s “never seen anything like it”.
A YouGov survey the group commissioned in April shows an extraordinary 94 per cent of Aussies are fearful of cost pressures.
Of them, 62 per cent said food was their top concern, and 57 per cent feared they would not be able to afford it at some point in the next six months.
Moorfield said the problem is more widespread than most people realise.
“There’s almost a stigma in talking about food insecurity,” he said.
“So many people are struggling, but no one mentions it.”
What can’t be hidden are the long queues of people patiently waiting for free groceries.
Photos taken by Secondbite on Thursday show dozens of people queuing for food in Narre Warren, an outer suburb of Melbourne, and similar scenes have been documented across the country.
Around 140 people turned up in the eastern suburb of Mooroolbark this month, about 20 per cent more than last year, and at least half of them were pensioners.
Producing enough food is not the problem
Australia produces enough produce to feed its population, but supply chain issues result in around 1 billion kilograms of fruit and vegetables being wasted on farms every year.
High transportation and labour costs, low margins for farmers, and unrealistic expectations for produce to look perfect are key drivers that can make it cheaper to plough produce back into the ground.
Do you want to share your cost-of-living story? Contact: michael.dahlstrom@yahooinc.com
Good food is rescued from being thrown out and is redistributed. Source: Supplied
Donations to Secondbite are used to rescue perfectly good food from farms, retailers like Coles, and produce markets that would otherwise be discarded.
It’s then distributed to other charities, which give it away to struggling households as either ready meals or groceries.
$100,000 to fund over 500,000 meals for Aussies
In May, Secondbite received $100,000 from the NSW Minns Labor Government to help it increase its weekly volume of saved food to 115,000kg.
The cash will fund weekend collections at Sydney markets, which will rescue 5,000kg of fresh produce every week, amounting to around 520,000 extra meals a year.
The funding was awarded as part of a $10 million government program to stop good food from being binned, helping both households and the environment.
“When people are experiencing cost-of-living pressures, it feels like an obvious choice to fund charities that repurpose food waste into meals for those in need,” NSW Environment Minister Penny Sharpe said.
Mum’s heartbreaking method to get her kids to school
Most households are failing to keep up with their bills, which are rising faster than wages.
After meeting with other charity leaders, Moorfield said the consensus was that people are choosing between petrol, rent or mortgage payments, and food, and often the latter is the only staple they can cut.
“In every state I’ve gone to, parents are telling their children they’ll eat after they’ve gone to bed, and they don’t actually eat,” he said.
“I’ve heard that story too many times.”
CEO Daniel Moorfield in Sydney as SecondBite received $100,000 from the state government to rescue food.
(Supplied)
He’s heard dozens of worrying stories about just how tight money is, but one story from Western Australia keeps him awake at night.
“I know of a single mum with three kids, who is driving them 2.5km to primary school,” he said.
“She then leaves the car there and walks home, then walks back 2.5km in the afternoon to drive them home again, because she can’t afford to drive the car two times a day.”
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