Auckland City Mission Food Parcel Demand (2021)
Food bank data, while not a precise measure of food insecurity, serves as a barometer of income inadequacy, and poverty more broadly. The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated an existing trend of increasing demand, year-on-year, for emergency food assistance.
The following graph shows the number of food parcels distributed by the Auckland City Mission each year ending June from 2008-09 to 2020-21. In the ten years between 2010-11 and 2020-21, the number of food parcels distributed increased more than five-fold, from 9,239 to 48,679.
Note that the 2019-20 annual figure includes only 4 months of the Covid-19 period (March to June). The following month-by-month breakdown provides a clearer demonstration of the significant increase in demand following the Covid-19 outbreak, beginning in March 2020:
