Australian shoppers are facing a crisis in the fresh-food aisles. Iceberg lettuces that cost $2.80 a year ago have doubled, or tripled, in price. Brussel sprouts that cost $4 to $6 a kilogram are now $7 to $14. Beans that cost $5 to $6 a kilogram are now more than double – and five times as much in remote areas. That’s if you can even find such produce. Supermarket shelves for leafy greens are often bare. This is a strong hint as to why prices have risen so much. As well as growers facing higher input costs – in line with pressures pushing up food prices globally – these price hikes are being driven by lack of supply – with crops and stores wiped out by rain and floods in eastern Australia In Toronto, the head of the Daily Bread Food Bank also says requests for aid have spiked as inflation reached a nearly four-decade high. Neil Hetherington says his agency is seeing roughly 160,000 client visits per month - up from about 120,000 per month in January. He says modelling the organization has done with CIBC predicts that to rise to 200,000 client visits per month in December. He says counterparts across the country tell him of similar spikes, with many reporting a 20 to 30 per cent jump in demand. While many of these visitors have been on the margins for years, Hetherington says he's also seeing new faces who otherwise have never turned to food charities, pegging the surge to a confluence of soaring food prices, gas prices, housing costs and ongoing labour uncertainty in some sectors. “We are seeing individuals who are working but their paycheque is not keeping pace with the cost of being able to drive to their place of employment, or be able to feed their children. They are increasingly worried about what they are seeing and (about) being able to put food on the table,” says Hetherington. Back in British Columbia, Andrews says things would be much worse for her without the subsidy for her three-bedroom apartment, which brings rent down to $540 per month. But she says pre-existing financial woes deepened during the pandemic and have only gotten worse in 2022 as inflation also drove up the cost of gas and utilities.