In what is quickly becoming commonplace, a depressed economy and rising prices are forcing many families to turn to already struggling food banks for groceries, reports The Washington Post.

Requests for food assistance in the past year are up 30 percent throughout the nation, said Maura Daly, a lobbyist for America’s Second Harvest, a Chicago group that provides food to nearly 200 food banks. And nationwide, directors of food banks say their problems are multiplying, not only because of an increased need for food assistance, but also because of the increasing cost to provide it.

Officials at the Capital Area Food Bank, in Washington, which helps supply more than 700 hunger-relief agencies in and around the nation’s capital, say their organization’s annual electricity costs have risen 35 percent, to $135,000, in five years.

The increase in fuel prices is also a contributing factor. The Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida, in Orlando, operates eight trucks that pick up and deliver food across the state. At $4 a gallon for diesel fuel, it costs $680 to fill up the tank of one tractor-trailer.

“I’ve been in food banking for 16 years, and outside of disaster-relief assistance, I’ve never seen anything like what’s going on,” said Dave Krepcho, executive director of the Florida group. “It’s the cost of gas, the cost of food, and there’s no such thing as affordable housing anymore.”

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