Feed Nova Scotia

06/05/2026

Happy Pride Nova Scotia! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

This month (and every month) we're proud to stand with our 2SLGBTQIA+ friends, family members, neighbours, staff, volunteers, and community.

While it is well-documented that members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community experience disproportionate rates of food insecurity, q***r food programs across Nova Scotia (including the Lavender Kitchen Program!) and the country are working to break barriers and help people in the 2SLGBTQIA+ community access food support.

Know of q***r food programming in your community? Right To Food Canada is creating a Q***r Food Map that highlights q***r food programs, projects, and resources across the country. You can find out more here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfQtq2QCA6IqMs0Va7ST5S-y_IilMOfAHmCCSqrIMPi6Uqvug/viewform

06/03/2026

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NOVA SCOTIA RECEIVES FAILING GRADES IN KEY AREAS OF POVERTY AND FOOD INSECURITY

DARTMOUTH, NOVA SCOTIA – JUNE 2, 2026 – The 2026 Poverty Report Card released by Food Banks Canada confirms what communities across Nova Scotia have been experiencing for years: poverty and food insecurity remain widespread, affordability pressures continue to grow, and too many people are being left behind.

“This report should be treated as a warning sign and a call to action,” says Ash Avery, Executive Director of Feed Nova Scotia. “Poverty and food insecurity are affecting more households across Nova Scotia and the impacts are falling hardest on people who are already struggling to meet basic needs. This crisis cannot be addressed through incremental change alone.”

The report assesses poverty and affordability across several indicators, including the experience of poverty, material deprivation, poverty measures, and legislative progress.

Experience of poverty, which received a D this year, looked at housing affordability, cost of living outside of housing, access to healthcare, comparisons to last year, and the adequacy of government support. The material deprivation index was Nova Scotia’s highest grade of the year, coming in at a C+. While an improvement from the D- received in 2025, this grade shows that deprivation remains widespread across the province.

Nova Scotia received an F in poverty measures. While social assistance rates are now indexed to inflation, they remain among the lowest in Canada relative to need. Other factors looked at the poverty rate (10.9%), disability assistance as a percentage of the poverty line, unemployment rates (6.6%), and food insecurity (a rate of 26.2%).

“Income assistance rates in Nova Scotia are not adequate to meet basic needs,” says Avery. “People receiving income assistance are living in deep poverty. We know poverty does not exist in isolation. It affects health, housing stability, mental well-being, food security, and people’s ability to participate fully in community life. When income supports leave people without basic stability, the consequences ripple across every social determinant of health.”

The report acknowledges some positive policy measures, including investments in school food programs, housing development, and affordability supports. At the same time, it highlights continued gaps in the province’s approach, including planned reductions to social and employment programs and the absence of an updated poverty reduction strategy.

Nova Scotia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy hasn’t been updated since 2009.

“We are not living in the Nova Scotia of 2009,” says Avery. “Housing costs, food prices, and economic pressures have changed dramatically. A poverty reduction strategy that has not been renewed in more than fifteen years cannot adequately respond to today’s reality. Meaningful progress requires measurable targets, accountability, and action.”

Feed Nova Scotia is calling for immediate action, including:
•Increasing social assistance and disability assistance rates to levels that meet basic needs while maintaining indexation
•Restoring and strengthening employment and skills training programs
•Protecting and investing in targeted affordability and poverty reduction supports
•Releasing a renewed provincial poverty reduction strategy with measurable goals, public reporting, and clear accountability
•Continuing investments in housing, school food programs, and community infrastructure that support food security and stability

Indigenous and African Nova Scotian communities continue to experience disproportionate impacts of poverty and food insecurity. Seniors, single parents, and a growing number of working households are also struggling to afford basic needs, demonstrating that employment alone is no longer protecting many people from economic hardship.

“This is a public policy issue, and it requires public policy solutions. Nova Scotia has the information. We have the evidence. What we need now is action.”

About Feed Nova Scotia:
Feed Nova Scotia is one of 10 provincial food associations in Canada, representing over 130 member organizations across the province. Since 1984, Feed Nova Scotia has been focused on providing high quality, nutritious food to the member organizations, while focusing on creating change at the systemic level. This includes collaboration through grants and community partnerships that focus on food distribution efficiency, community farming education, and advocacy projects.

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05/26/2026

Get your votes in here! https://www.kentwin.ca/charity/voting

There's only 5 days left to vote - help Feed Nova Scotia recieve a $50,000 donation!

05/20/2026

Ever wonder what exactly Feed Nova Scotia does for communities across Nova Scotia?

When you support Feed Nova Scotia, you're supporting programs like these and more, including advocacy work and grant programs. While we'll continue sharing about the behind the scenes, we understand that people might want information now. If that's the case, you can find last year's annual report here: https://feednovascotia.ca/annual-reports/

05/14/2026

We're beyond excited to announce we have been selected as a finalist in Kent Building Supplies’ Golden Giveaway, with a chance to win a $50,000 donation!

Every dollar donated helps Feed Nova Scotia build a food secure Nova Scotia, but since every vote counts this time around, we need your help! Once you’re registered to vote, you can vote one a day all the way until May 31st.

Here’s how to vote for Feed Nova Scotia

✅ Visit kentwin.ca
✅ Register (quick and easy if you haven’t already)
✅ Vote daily and encourage your friends, families, and communities to do the same!

Thank you in advance for your ongoing support of Feed Nova Scotia! We couldn’t do it without you!

Feed Nova Scotia – NS is one of KENT’s Top 10 Golden Giveaway charity finalists, and your daily vote helps decide where the donation goes.

💛 Your vote can make a $50,000 difference.

✅ Visit kentwin.ca
✅ Register (quick and easy if you haven’t already)
✅ Vote once per day for your chosen charity

📅 Voting is open May 12–31

Let’s support compassionate care in our communities. 💚

05/12/2026

If you've ever thought Feed Nova Scotia was a food bank, you wouldn't be alone!

While we aren't actually a food bank, we do support over 130 food banks, meal programs, and shelters across the province through actions like food distribution and capacity building. These organizations also rely on relationships with local farmers and retailers, volunteers, donors of their own, and more to support food insecure Nova Scotians in their communities.

We have over 80 food banks in the Feed Nova Scotia member network and from January to March of 2026, these food banks supported 35,879 people from 14,721 households.

In the past few years, we've seen an increase in the frequency by which households are accessing support, meaning that people are visiting food banks more often than ever before. It's a worrying trend - but it's not surprising. Wages and income supports are not sufficient in Nova Scotia. Combined with high rent, high utilities, and high cost of food, more and more people have no choice but to turn to food support.

You can find the full quarterly access report, along with more food bank usage statistics here: https://feednovascotia.ca/advocacy/key-issues/

05/07/2026

Ever wonder what happens in the Feed Nova Scotia warehouse? Interested in seeing what goes on behind the scenes? On any given day, warehouse staff and volunteers are moving thousands of pounds of food. They're receiving new deliveries, sorting food, building orders, and loading the trucks back up, full of food ready to be distributed to member organizations across the province. It's all in a days work!

Check out this time lapse to see what six hours in the cooler looks like!

05/01/2026

With under 10% of the food consumed by Nova Scotians grown in our province and a lack of built infrastructure to support the processing of farm goods, Nova Scotia is not well positioned to attain food sovereignty as a province.

A food sovereign province is one where people have the right to control local food systems, where community-led production and sustainable agricultural systems are a priority. This includes having access to healthy and culturally appropriate food.

Indigenous communities face many additional barriers, including land theft on unceded territory, intentional disconnect of access to land and food through traditional hunting, fishing, and harvesting practices, restrictions on Indigenous hunting and fishing rights and environmental racism. These causes (and more) restrict access to traditional foods, and as a result, Indigenous food sovereignty.

Black and immigrant communities also face barriers when it comes to food sovereignty. Systemic racism has left African Nova Scotian communities on infertile land that remain without adequate food access, while immigrant communities lack access to both culturally relevant food and the land to grow it.

Priorities such as mineral and other resource extraction may impact food sovereignty, meaning that struggling farming communities and Indigenous communities across the province will feel even more of a strain.

Current community movements focused on food sovereignty include the Land Back movement focused on returning land to Indigenous ownership, advocacy for rights for Indigenous fisheries, and environmental movements. Food hubs across the province are attempting to fill gaps within the food sovereignty realm, while growing programs are supporting equity-deserving communities by strengthening land access and the ability to grow food in order to have greater control over their food systems.

04/24/2026

Wishing all of our volunteers one last happy National Volunteer Week!

We had an incredible week filled with celebrations and fun with our incredible volunteer community! From bingo in the warehouse, to sweet treats and fun superlatives, we loved every minute of it!

We're starting to sound like a broken record, but our volunteers truly are the best part of Feed Nova Scotia, and we're so lucky to have each and every one of them on our side. To all the volunteers out there, be you at Feed Nova Scotia, one of the member agencies, or at any of the other hardworking organizations across the province, happy National Volunteer Week! Thank you for everything that you do! 💙💙💙💙

Please enjoy this last video of some of our volunteers sharing their favourite thing to sort in our warehouse.

04/23/2026

What you get: a delicious, maple-y, onion-y, cheesy burger with fries.

What we get: $2 for every burger sold - but the Tilted Tap Bar & Grill will up it to $3/burger if they sell more than 3,348 burgers this year... Will you help them help us?!

There's still three days left of Halifax Burger Bash so don't miss out on your chance to get some yummy burgers all while supporting Feed Nova Scotia!