On Tuesday Sept. 24th at 4 p.m., Community Action Partnership of Kern, CAPK, is hosting their annual Feed the Need event in partnership with the Kern County Fair. The fair will be accepting canned food donations and will be offering free admission to those who donate six or more canned food items for CAPK’s food bank.  

Feed the Need is their largest food donation event, which delivered 30,000 pounds of food at last years event. Last year the CAPK food bank services delivered over 20 million pounds of food in 2023 and served over 100,000 people. With three months remaining in 2024, CAPK has already doubled the number of individuals served in 2024, with over 200,000 people receiving food from the organization as of this Sept.  

Ernesto Leon, an Outreach Specialist at CAPK explained that because of the amount of people that the organization helps, it really shows just how many people in the community are food insecure.   

“Its bad that more people are relying on us [CAPK] for food as it means that there’s more food insecurity in Kern,” said Leon.  

CAPK relies on a combination of multiple different funding to operate being the largest food bank operation in the entire county, [CAPK] supplying over 200 agency partners—two of which are the Cal State Bakersfield and Bakersfield College food pantries.  

Lastly, Leon mentioned that post-COVID,  the funding has decreased, which has made community donations such as the partnership with the fair more important, and so they are hoping to see the community’s support more than ever before.  

The Feed the Need event starts at 4:00p.m. to 11:00 p.m. The Kern County fair is located at 1142 South P Street Bakersfield, CA 93307.