The Food Research & Action Center has identified Bakersfield, located within Kern County California, as the metropolitan area with the highest food insecurity in the nation. That means a lot of people living here don’t know where their next meal will come from. Thousands of those people are children.

Kern County is one of the most fertile food-growing regions on the planet, a place that feeds this nation and the world, yet thousands of our neighbors go hungry because they don’t have access to food.

For decades, the Community Action Partnership of Kern (CAPK) Food Bank has been the nerve center of Kern County’s efforts to push back against hunger. Through the Food Bank’s federal and state contracts and partnerships with local growers, grocery markets and other food suppliers, more than more than 20 million pounds of food is collected every year. That food is distributed across Kern County through direct distributions and the assistance of more than 150 partner agencies and food pantries that rely on food from the CAPK Food Bank to feed their neighbors who are in crisis.

Unfortunately, the CAPK Food Bank has reached its capacity. The main warehouse is filled and it has been necessary to rent several other warehouses to hold and process the food received every day. The Food Bank expansion project will increase CAPK’s ability to feed the residents of Kern County.