By Eric Stock

BLOOMINGTON – There’s more food coming in and more going out than ever before at Midwest Food Bank in Bloomington.

Food bank official say the state budget impasse could be partly to blame. Midwest saw a 13-percent increase (245 to 276) in the number of food pantries and other charities it served in the Bloomington-Normal area last year.

“That tends to be our biggest challenge is how to fulfill the requests we are getting from more and more agencies to come on board,” Hoffman said.

Hoffman said the good news is donations from food producers and the public increased by 25 percent last year from $44 million to $55 million. He said food producers are eager to give to Midwest because it can quickly take the food off its hands and distribute it as soon as possible, with the help of 33,000 volunteer hours, a 10-percent increase over 2014.

“With the government subsidies going down, with the state of Illinois in the straights they are in, a lot of these agencies are losing a lot of their funding, so they are not able to purchase as much food as they’ve had in the past,” Hoffman said.

All Midwest Food Bank offices including Peoria, Morton, Indianapolis, Peachtree City, Georgia. and Fort Myers, Florida gave out $120 million worth of food last year.

Midwest has also send a truckload of bottled water of residents in Flint, Michigan, where there’s a water contamination crisis.

Eric Stock can be reached at [email protected].