In her volunteer roles at the Calgary Food Bank, Jackie Busheikin sees the city’s food crisis up close. She sorts food donations and helps people at the city’s main charitable food hub access support.
Busheikin, a retiree who began volunteering in 2020, encounters a mix of people at the Calgary Food Bank — some who have just lost a job, newcomers facing language barriers and parents juggling the costs of raising children.
“I’m trying to be completely non-judgmental and a welcoming face,” she says. “I like to tell people that there are other people in their situations. They seem to feel like they’re the only ones going through this.”
It can be hard to understand how common hunger is in a place of abundance like Calgary. But more and more people here can’t afford enough food. Calgary’s rising food insecurity is outpacing national trends, spanning neighbourhoods, age groups and circumstances.
Data from the 2023 Canadian Income Survey showed that nearly one in three Calgarians are food insecure, and Alberta has the highest rates of food insecurity among the provinces — including 38 per cent of children living in food-insecure households.
Miriam Bankey, family engagement and evaluation team lead at Brown Bagging for Calgary’s Kids and a member of the YYC Food Collaborative, says the situation is dire. “It’s absolutely unacceptable.”
Food is like nothing else, she adds — it is culture, relationship, family and nurturing. “It’s all these things, and, when you don’t have it, it means something really, really big.”
Across Calgary, organizations are tackling the crisis on multiple fronts. From emergency food hampers to mobile markets, urban farms and policy advocacy, efforts aim both to meet immediate needs and address the deeper causes of food insecurity.
What Food Insecurity Means
“[Calgary is] in a crisis,” says Sundae Nordin, CEO of the Community Kitchen Program of Calgary. The organization has seen demand for its programs grow steadily over the past few years. In 2024, it served 563,057 clients across its four programs — a steep climb from 322,215 clients in 2021.
Nordin points out that it’s easier to skip a meal than to skip paying rent — or to fill the grocery cart with cheaper, less-nutritious options.
“Food will be the first thing that goes out of the budget,” she says. Her organization runs the Good Food Box program, which offers fruits and vegetables at affordable prices. Demand has soared, with the number of clients almost doubling between 2021 and 2024.
Food insecurity is complex but, at its core, it means not having enough food because of a lack of money. Household income is the strongest single predictor of who is at risk of experiencing household food insecurity, research shows.
Experiences range from what Statistics Canada calls “marginal food insecurity” — worrying about running out of food and limiting food selection — to “moderate food insecurity,” defined by skipping meals, to “severe food insecurity,” where food intake is minimal, and people sometimes go days without food.
In 2023, 31.9 per cent of Calgarians — more than half a million people — lived in food-insecure households, up from 24.9 per cent the year before and higher than the Canada-wide figure of 25.5 per cent.
The Calgary Foundation’s 2025 Quality of Life report shows that 44 per cent of parents in Calgary reported they had skipped a meal so their child could eat, while 23 per cent said their whole family skipped at least one meal. Community-based food service use rose from 20 per cent in 2024 to 28 per cent in 2025 — and jumped to 44 per cent among 18-to-34-year-olds.
People with disabilities are also at a higher risk of experiencing food insecurity. Children and working-age adults experience food insecurity at far higher rates than seniors, and female single-parent families are especially vulnerable.
Food insecurity is also racialized, disproportionately affecting Black and Indigenous people. “Working folks who are facing food insecurity are more likely to be female, ethnic minorities and single parents,” says Melissa From, Calgary Food Bank’s president and CEO.
Why Food Insecurity Persists
Renée MacKillop is a project co-ordinator at The Alex Community Food Centre.
“When I started this work 10 years ago, food insecurity in Canada was at four million Canadians,” says MacKillop. “And in these 10 years, that number has more than doubled. That’s a tough thing to wrestle with.”
Many factors contribute to the income problems at the root of food insecurity, says MacKillop: low wages, precarious employment and rising housing costs all make it harder for people to afford food.
The rising cost of groceries has only added more pressure. Between July 2020 and July 2025, Canadian grocery prices rose 27 per cent, and an average family of four now spends about $1,400 a month on food.
Income gaps deepen the challenge. Alberta’s minimum wage of $15 an hour — the lowest in Canada — falls well short of Calgary’s 2024 living wage of $24.45. Even steady employment no longer guarantees food security: in 2024, 27 per cent of Calgary Food Bank users were working full time.
Meeting the Moment
Since Melissa From was appointed as its president and CEO in March 2023, the Calgary Food Bank has doubled its daily reach, now feeding 800 households a day. The organization has refined its focus from addressing hunger and its root causes, to making food accessible to everyone. The switch came after consulting clients, donors and partner agencies — the Calgary Food Bank gives food to about 70 other charities in the city.
“What we heard from those agencies was, ‘You do food, we do root causes,’” From says.
To make food more accessible, the Food Bank is expanding its footprint. A new downtown branch opened last December in the Neoma building, a former office tower converted into a shelter and affordable housing units run by Inn from the Cold and managed by Homespace.
Another major shift, launched in October 2024, gives Food Bank users choice.
“It’s really similar to a grocery store click-and-collect model,” From says. After contacting the Food Bank by phone or online, people book an appointment to receive a seven-day hamper. When they arrive, a volunteer greets them with a tablet, guiding them through a selection of food that fits their culture, dietary needs, health conditions and personal tastes.
It’s a particularly vital change for Calgary’s newcomers, who face a higher rate of food insecurity, given unique barriers to meaningful employment, such as language barriers and foreign qualifications and work experience not recognized in Canada. Data from the Calgary Food Bank shows that 76 per cent of clients say the new choice model better suits their dietary restrictions, and 73 per cent say it better suits their cultural requirements compared to the old model. Choice may sound like a luxury for those in need, but a food hamper full of things that you can’t eat because of your health or religion isn’t helpful, even if you are hungry.
Pre-made hampers remain standard at the Food Bank’s 20 satellite locations, but From hopes that system improvements will soon allow customization there, too. While the Food Bank meets urgent needs, others are reimagining how Calgarians grow and share food. One of those people is Jack Goodwin.
With a background in geochemistry and a curiosity for how science can benefit food systems, Goodwin has been building urban farms in Calgary for the last 12 years. His projects include Land of Dreams, an urban farm in the far southeast connecting Indigenous and newcomer growers and farmers, and Highfield Regenerative Farm, which spans 15 acres in the Alyth/Bonnybrook industrial area.
Goodwin’s latest initiative, Vacant Lots Farm Club, converts empty urban lots into growing spaces for food and flowers, with a focus on well-being and community. Anyone can join for free, sharing in the farm’s work and bounty. The club’s first site is a five-acre lot in the city’s north beside Vivo for Healthier Generations — the lot is currently empty, but slated to become a school.
Across these projects, Goodwin has worked with thousands of volunteers, eager to connect with their communities and roll up their sleeves. While backyards and community gardens offer opportunities to grow food, scaling up makes a difference. People turn their small contribution into a much bigger abundance than they could alone, he says.
Local entrepreneurs are also getting creative. Lourdes Juan started the food rescue foundation Leftovers in 2012 to reduce food waste; in 2024, the organization redirected more than one million pounds of food.
“I don’t think food insecurity looks like what people think it looks like,” says Juan. “I think people would be surprised to know that, in neighbourhoods across Calgary, there are homes that are food insecure.”
Juan also runs Fresh Routes, a mobile grocery store bringing fresh, affordable food to neighbourhoods that need it most, from food deserts to post-secondary campuses. “Fresh Routes was born out of the Leftovers Foundation, with this idea that we need to get more food dignity out there,” she says. Fresh Routes also partners with Indigenous communities, working closely with the Stoney Nakoda Nations, Tsuut’ina and Eden Valley Reserve to offer Indigenous-grown foods in mobile markets.
Most recently, Juan founded Knead Technologies, which provides logistics software for food rescue operations. “I’ve really enjoyed trying to tackle [food insecurity] from an entrepreneurial lens,” Juan says. “Entrepreneurs can be really nimble in how they do it.”
Building Long-Term Solutions
On a Monday afternoon, the Alex Food Centre — housed in a former White Spot restaurant in Forest Lawn — hums with activity. Volunteers in the kitchen prepare for the drop-in family dinner later that day, while others garden outside.
“We are a place that serves maybe 600 community meals a week,” says Darrell Howard, program manager at the Alex Community Food Centre. “A meal might support the people who come through our doors, but it doesn’t solve the issue of food insecurity for them or for others.”
Long-term change depends on policy addressing root causes.
“The good news is we know what works,” says MacKillop. “We know that income-based policy solutions reduce food insecurity.” Both the Canada Child Benefit and the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors have measurably reduced food insecurity.
Through its national partnership with Right to Food, The Alex advocates for a federal target to reduce food insecurity, income-security measures like a permanent Groceries and Essentials Benefit (similar to the Grocery Rebate the federal government provided in 2023), and Indigenous food sovereignty initiatives.
While policy work has been part of The Alex Community Food Centre’s mission since it opened in 2016, MacKillop says more local organizations are starting to see that systemic change is needed to truly address food insecurity. “There’s so much pressure on the sector that I think there’s more interest in policy advocacy, because something needs to change,” she says.
In June 2025, MacKillop helped Right to Food host 150 people from 60 community food organizations across the Prairies in Calgary. Locally, The City of Calgary convenes the YYC Food Collaborative — a network of 56 members representing 44 organizations.
Facilitating the group is part of The City’s larger plan to strengthen Calgary’s food system. Its Food Resilience Strategy, published in 2025 — the first of its kind in Canada — outlines how to build a system that can withstand crises, from extreme weather to pandemics.
The goal is to ensure food is available, accessible, acceptable and sustainable, says Syma Habib, The City’s food resilience specialist. The strategy builds on the federal government’s recognition that food is critical infrastructure, and lays out a framework to keep Calgarians fed no matter what challenges arise.
The YYC Food Collaborative is rooted in one such challenge. Bankey, from Brown Bagging for Calgary’s Kids, says organizations have come together before, but the COVID-19 pandemic was the catalyst for this particular collaboration. When the crisis hit, demand for emergency food access surged and many agencies were forced to pivot their operations. That urgency exposed gaps and vulnerabilities across Calgary’s food system — and it sparked a desire to build something stronger.
The collaborative has stayed active ever since and now has two working groups: one addressing short-term needs, another focused on root causes. Both groups aim to learn, innovate and find ways to work more effectively together.
Conversations across the sector have evolved, too. “We’re talking a lot more about root causes,” Bankey says. “Dignity is part of the common discourse today, and it wasn’t talked about before.”
Those conversations are leading to tangible changes. Agencies are shifting their models and building dignity and choice into how food is shared, says YYC Food Collaborative member Christine Hentschel of Calgary Meals on Wheels.
“I’ve seen a lot of improvement in the sector in the last few years — a lot of ingenuity,” she says.
Both Bankey and Hentschel agree that collaboration is key. Food insecurity isn’t something any single organization or approach can solve, Bankey says. “It’s not going to be one thing.”
The challenge remains immense, but, for the people working in Calgary’s emergency food sector, there is hope. By pairing immediate access to food with advocacy for systemic change, Calgarians are getting at the root of food insecurity and addressing this growing crisis.
Food Insecurity Isn’t a Food Problem
When it comes to hunger in Canada, Dr. Lynn McIntyre is blunt: “Food insecurity is not a food problem. It’s an income problem.”
A professor emerita of Community Health Sciences at University of Calgary and one of the country’s leading experts on the issue, Dr. Lynn McIntyre has spent decades redefining how we understand food insecurity. She’s also a founding researcher at PROOF, a national research program studying effective policy approaches to reduce household food insecurity.
Through years of national monitoring and peer-reviewed research, McIntyre and her colleagues have shown that policy interventions improving the incomes of low-income households reduce food insecurity. Food banks, gardens and other food-based responses may offer other benefits, but they don’t reduce food insecurity.
“This is not something that can be solved by charity,” McIntyre says.
Her recent work, a 2025 paper she co-authored, examines how attention to food access has derailed poverty reduction-focused food insecurity policy. Programs like the Canada Child Benefit, the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors and even temporary CERB payments during the pandemic all led to measurable drops in food insecurity, McIntyre says. She urges Calgarians to demand government accountability on the issue and support local groups helping to reduce poverty, working toward a fairer city of all.
Bottom line: Extra income allows food-insecure households to make choices that improve their food security.
This story was created with the support of the Avenue Community Story Development Fund. The Fund supports the creation of local reporting on issues such as poverty reduction, food security, intimate-partner violence, mental health and addiction, the housing crisis and more. Thank to our partners, including Calgary Foundation for supporting this work. To find out more, or to contribute, visit AvenueCalgary.com/StoryFund