Food banks are doing a lot of giving this time of year. Missouri’s six food banks and about 1,500 distribution agencies face heavy demand with Thanksgiving and Christmas only a month or so apart. Fortunately, donors remember food banks during the holidays, says state director Scott Baker, and about 40% of the annual giving to food banks happens during that time of year. But he also says that food banks have a lot of people asking for help. Despite the indications that the economy is getting better and more people are returning to work, the demand has not decreased. He says that many of those people are taking jobs that do not pay as well, making it harder for families to make ends meet with the cost of groceries, utilities, and transportation continuing to increase. Baker says that it is not a case of more people asking for help the first time, but it’s a case of people needing help for longer periods of time, which is a situation underlined by a recent USDA report that ranked Missouri fifth in the nation for people food insecurity every day.