Demand begins to grew as Food Bank launches annual donation drive.

REGINA – The Regina Food Bank launched their 29th annual food drive on Monday morning, which is the longest running, continuous drive in Canada.

The Food Bank will be sending out paper shopping bags in the Sunday paper with instructions on how donations can be made. The bag can be filled with non-perishable food items, and will be picked up on October 17th.

Monetary donations can be made online, and will be used to buy needed food items.

About 8,500 people use the Food Bank each month, but they are beginning to see an increase in demand.

“It’s something that we’re watching carefully because we are seeing growth at a time where we had fairly level numbers for a period of time,” said Food Bank CEO Steve Compton. “So we’ll be watching carefully, make sure we collect those stories, and find out the challenges people are facing.”

Compton added that over the past two to three weeks they’ve received 40-50 new requests for service a day.

Some of the main foods they are looking to collect include pasta, baby food, peanut butter, and canned meat. Last year the food drive brought in over 300 tons of food.