Tarasuk Valerie, Dachner Naomi, Hamelin Anne-Marie, Ostry Aleck, Williams Patricia, Bosckei Elietha, Poland Blake, Raine Kim
Department of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3E2, Canada.
BMC Public Health. 2014 Nov 28;14:1234. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-14-1234.
Food banks have emerged in response to growing food insecurity among low-income groups in many affluent nations, but their ability to manage this problem is questionable. In Canada, in the absence of public programs and policy interventions, food banks are the only source of immediate assistance for households struggling to meet food needs, but there are many indications that this response is insufficient. The purpose of this study was to examine the factors that facilitate and limit food bank operations in five Canadian cities and appraise the potential of these initiatives to meet food needs.
An inventory of charitable food provisioning in Halifax, Quebec City, Toronto, Edmonton, and Victoria, Canada was conducted in 2010. Of the 517 agencies that participated in a telephone survey of their operations, 340 were running grocery programs. Multivariate regression analyses were conducted to determine the association between program characteristics, volume of service, and indicators of strain in food banks' abilities to consistently achieve the standards of assistance they had established.
Extensive, well-established food bank activities were charted in each city, with the numbers of people assisted ranging from 7,111 in Halifax to 90,141 in Toronto per month. Seventy-two percent of agencies indicated that clients needed more food than they provided. The number of people served by any one agency in the course of a month was positively associated with the proportion of food distributed that came from donations (beta 0.0143, SE 0.0024, p 0.0041) and the number of volunteers working in the agency (beta 0.0630, SE 0.0159, p 0.0167). Food banks only achieved equilibrium between supply and demand when they contained demand through restrictions on client access. When access to assistance was less restricted, the odds of food banks running out of food and invoking measures to ration remaining supplies and restrict access rose significantly.
Despite their extensive history, food banks in Canada remain dependent on donations and volunteers, with available resources quickly exhausted in the face of agencies' efforts to more fully meet clients' needs. Food banks have limited capacity to respond to the needs of those who seek assistance.
在许多富裕国家，食品银行已应运而生，以应对低收入群体中日益严重的粮食不安全问题，但其管理这一问题的能力令人质疑。在加拿大，由于缺乏公共项目和政策干预，食品银行是那些难以满足食品需求的家庭获得即时援助的唯一来源，但有许多迹象表明这种应对措施并不充分。本研究的目的是调查在加拿大五个城市中促进和限制食品银行运作的因素，并评估这些举措满足食品需求的潜力。
2010年对加拿大哈利法克斯、魁北克市、多伦多、埃德蒙顿和维多利亚的慈善食品供应情况进行了清查。在参与其运作电话调查的517个机构中，有340个在运营食品杂货项目。进行了多变量回归分析，以确定项目特征、服务量与食品银行始终达到其设定的援助标准的能力紧张指标之间的关联。
每个城市都开展了广泛且成熟的食品银行活动，每月获得援助的人数从哈利法克斯的7111人到多伦多的90141人不等。72%的机构表示，客户需要的食品比他们提供的更多。一个机构在一个月内服务的人数与来自捐赠的食品分发比例（β=0.0143，标准误=0.0024，p=0.0041）以及该机构工作的志愿者人数（β=0.0630，标准误=0.0159，p=0.0167）呈正相关。只有当食品银行通过限制客户获取来控制需求时，才能实现供需平衡。当援助获取限制较少时，食品银行耗尽食品并采取措施定量供应剩余物资和限制获取的可能性显著增加。
尽管食品银行历史悠久，但加拿大的食品银行仍依赖捐赠和志愿者，面对机构更充分满足客户需求的努力，可用资源很快就会耗尽。食品银行满足寻求援助者需求的能力有限。
