It's easy to assume food insecurity is a problem for someone else, somewhere else. The current data says otherwise.
According to the Foodbank Hunger Report 2025, roughly one in three Australian households — nearly 3.5 million people — experienced food insecurity in the year to July 2025, and 20% of households experienced severe food insecurity, meaning they skipped meals or entire days of eating.
That's a full percentage point higher than the year before. It's not confined to people already doing it tough in obvious ways: almost half of renting households experienced food insecurity, and one in five households earning over $91,000 a year did too.
More recent figures from OzHarvest's 2026 Frontline Report make the trend line clear: 36% of people accessing food relief are doing so for the first time, roughly 350,000 people access food relief services every month, and food charities are turning away an estimated 74,300 people a month simply because supply can't keep up with demand.
Over 70% of surveyed charities report demand has increased, and more than a third say they'd need at least 50% more food just to meet what they're currently being asked for.
This is the exact gap The Mini Farm Project exists to help close — not with more emergency parcels, but with farms that produce food consistently, at scale, for the charities and families who need it.
Sources: Foodbank Hunger Report 2025; OzHarvest Frontline Report 2026; ABC News.
