Lines grow at food banks across the US ahead of Thanksgiving

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Along with empty streets, shuttered businesses and temporary morgues, food lines have become one of the defining sights of the US’s fight against the coronavirus. Across the country, people and cars have for months been queued up in astonishing numbers to access basic essentials to feed themselves – and in many states, the situation is still deteriorating In an October report, national non-profit Feeding America wrote that “millions of people are newly experiencing food insecurity, alongside those who were experiencing food insecurity before the COVID-19 crisis began.” The gains in food security made since the Great Recession have largely been erased, it says – and groups already disproportionately experiencing hunger, like Latinos, have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic. Hard-hit Wisconsin has this month allocated an extra $10m to the Food Security Initiative, which authorities set up earlier this year to combat hunger and keep food supply chains running; Food Bank of Iowa, meanwhile, distributed more than 2 million pounds of food in October alone. The Trump administration earlier this year set up a programme called Farmers to Families, which was meant to connect produce at risk of spoiling thanks to choked supply chains with food banks and distributors seeing an uptick in demand.