The Ohio Foodbank Association saw more visitors between July and December of 2024 than any other six month period in its 35 years of operation.
Ohio food pantries averaged between 1.3 million and 1.4 million total visits each month.
"Our system was really designed to try to be an emergency gap filler," said Joree Novotny, executive director for the Ohio Association of Foodbanks. "So if you go back, maybe prior to the Great Recession — we can take ourselves back almost 20 years — we were serving a lot less people, a lot less regularly. They were coming to us when they were in crisis."
"We have many people I talk to who are going through unexpected treatment for cancer, who are losing some wages, using some of that FMLA coverage, for example, to stay connected to their job, but nonetheless have less resources to afford their basic needs."
Twelve regional food banks in Ohio serve families up to 200% of the federal poverty line.
And close to 30% of the population in the state falls within those guidelines.
"Our state-wide charitable hunger relief network, which is made up of 12 regional food banks that serve multi-county areas and provide and supply food to about 3,600 different local providers, food pantry, soup kitchen, shelters in all 88 counties," she said.
Novotny said inflation, labor supply, tariffs and bird flu have continued to stress the food system and families in the state.
"We have many people I talk to who are going through unexpected treatment for cancer, who are losing some wages, using some of that FMLA coverage, for example, to stay connected to their job, but nonetheless have less resources to afford their basic needs," Novotny said. "Those are the kinds of gaps that we're used to filling and we're proud to be here to fill. Increasingly over the past many years, we've also been trying to fill growing gaps in federal nutrition safety nets."
And now Ohio's proposed state budget would cut money for state-funded programs that support food banks by $7.5 million a year. A spokesperson for Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine says his budget proposal calls for funding food banks at their traditional levels but it does not include one-time COVID relief money that was in the last budget.
Novotny said this change will exacerbate the existing issues at food pantries.
“About 20% of all of the food they distribute collectively comes from our state-funded food purchase programs," she said. "And this funding cut would reduce the funding available for those purchase programs by about 23%.”
After two years of this historic demand at Ohio’s food banks, Novotny is concerned for the future of the state’s food security funding.
She said these rising numbers show that Ohio needs to invest more in food security to strengthen national security.
“Ultimately we're very concerned about absorbing any cuts from our state food purchase programs," she said. "And we're also concerned about what it would mean for farmers.”
