20 Dollars No Longer Provides 100 Meals

If you’ve been connected with the Food Bank of Central Louisiana for a while, you’ve seen statements like, “$1 provides five meals” or “Every $20 helps us provide 100 meals.” And it was true for a long time – it used to cost our food bank just about 20 cents for every meal provided. Well, it’s sad to say that simply isn’t true anymore.

Higher prices, tariffs, extreme weather, and supply chain issues have impacted food production, driving up expenses for food producers. Corporate food donations are becoming smaller and less frequent as their costs rise. At the same time, budget cuts at the USDA have reduced the amount of food sent to food banks to feed low-income families. In 2025, the Food Bank of Central Louisiana had to purchase more food than ever before to make up for millions of pounds in cancelled food donations.

Everyone knows that the price of food has risen. But other costs that impact food bank operations have also been on the rise, including transportation, utilities, materials, and just about everything else that goes into sourcing, acquiring, moving, storing, sorting, packing and distributing food. When we crunched the numbers this time, we found that it now costs our food bank more than twice what it used to – about 44 cents – to provide the equivalent of one meal (about 1.2 pounds of food) to a food-insecure neighbor.

Your continued support is more important than ever as we work together to ensure no one in our community goes without a meal.