Hamilton Food Share provided its annual update to the City of Hamilton’s Emergency and Community Services Committee, and statistics showed that the food bank network saw 386,524 visits to local food banks and served 492,239 meals.
Hamilton Food Share is the emergency food shipping and receiving hub and emergency food systems coordinator for a network of different agencies across the city.
The organization provides resources to 22 hunger relief programs across the city, including Ancaster Community Services, Flamborough Food Bank, Good Shepherd Food Centres, Living Rock Youth Resources, Mission Services of Hamilton, Native Women’s Centre, Niwasa Kendaaswin Teg, Neighbour to Neighbour Centre, The Salvation Army Hamilton, The Salvation Army Dundas, Stoney Creek Community Food Bank, Welcome Inn Community Centre, Hamilton Jewish Family Services, De Mazenod Door Outreach, Eva Rothwell Centre, Wesley, and Mishka Social Services.
It should be noted that the Hamilton Food Share annual update covers June 30, 2024, to July 1, 2025.
Recent data from Hamilton Public Health suggests that 29.4 per cent of households in the city “experience food insecurity.”
Hamilton Food Share says that the trend has been reflected in visits to food banks, with visits increasing by approximately 50 per cent since 2021.
They warn that, according to Feed Ontario, food prices are expected to continue to increase by as much as four to six per cent in 2026.
The City of Hamilton provides $1.25 million in funding annually to Greater Hamilton Food Share, which was used to purchase 519,301 pounds of food.
Among Hamilton Food Share’s list of “essential food bank staples” is halal chicken.
The organization says that they take a “targeted approach” to food purchasing “to ensure that the most needed and culturally appropriate foods” are available.
City funding supported 15,515 households, comprising 37,721 individuals, 23 per cent of whom were first-time recipients.
In terms of overall numbers, a snapshot of food insecurity from March 2025 shows that there were 18,943 visits that month, with children making up 34 per cent of those visits.
In March 2025, around 615 people turned to emergency food programs for the first time and 26,059 meals were also served.
Hamilton Food Share reportedly distributed over 4.7 million pounds of food over the past year, with the total value of donated and purchased food calculated at over $17.1 million.
The organization says that Hamilton’s food support system is “experiencing a number of pressures,” including rising demand across all neighbourhoods, insufficient storage, refrigeration, and freezer capacity, limited safe loading and delivery space, staffing shortages, and rising food costs.
Hamilton Food Share was also recently named in Charity Intelligence Canada’s 2025 Top 10 Impact list for food banks for demonstrating the highest value created per dollar spent.
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
