Food access and security 

Closing the gap between food and the people who need it  

General Mills works to make more food accessible to people facing food insecurity through donations, philanthropy, employee volunteerism and investments in systems that connect surplus food with communities.

How we act

We combine our resources, partnerships and deep food expertise to improve food access locally and system-wide. We focus on:

• Supporting local solutions that address food insecurity in communities  
• Partnering with leading anti-hunger organizations by donating our food and time  
• Advancing food recovery solutions across the supply chain

Our impact

• More than 50 billion meals enabled since 2019 through food donations and philanthropic partnerships
• In 2025 alone, General Mills contributed 27 million meals through donations

Scaling food recovery

We support solutions that make it easier to recover and redistribute surplus food across the world.  

MealConnect, created by Feeding America and funded by General Mills, is an innovative food recovery platform that makes it easy for food makers, grocers, restaurants, distributors, school cafeterias and trucking companies to efficiently donate surplus food.  

Since 2014, MealConnect has enabled billions of nourishing meals for food insecure people.  

The partners who make it possible

Food banks, community organizations and advocacy groups do the daily work of getting food to people. We partner with organizations that bring both scale and expertise, including:

• Feeding America
• The Global FoodBanking Network
• No Kid Hungry  
• Food Research and Action Center

We also engage with partners like Second Harvest Heartland and The Good Acre to help improve physical and economic access to local food in underserved communities.  

These partnerships increase access to food shelves and food bank programs, strengthen access to Canada nutrition programs like school meals and support small food businesses.  

Together, our partnerships help reach more communities and strengthen access to food where it’s needed most.

Our role  

We have a long-standing history of addressing food insecurity and hunger.  

Our founder, James Ford Bell, was a key figure in arranging food and flour shipments from the U.S. to people in Belgium and France during World War 1. These efforts ultimately saved an estimated 10 million people and are considered one of the largest humanitarian assistance campaigns in world history.  

General Mills is also founding partner of Feeding America, the largest U.S. hunger-relief organization. For more than 40 years, we have contributed more than $43 million to support the Feeding America network, and enabled millions of meals through our food donations.  

We are driven by both the responsibility and the opportunity to leverage our scale for good, actively working every day to support our neighbors in need.