The cost of groceries took center stage during this year’s election for a reason: Families across the country, including here in Minnesota, struggle to feed themselves as food prices and food insecurity continue to rise.
Visits to food shelves across the state have steadily increased since 2020, highlighting an ongoing hunger crisis. In 2023, Minnesotans visited food shelves a record 7.5 million times, with the number of visits hitting all-time highs each of the past three years.
“Overall, hunger rates continue to rise,” said Zach Rodvold, director of public affairs with Second Harvest Heartland, one of the nation’s largest food banks that distributes more than 100 million pounds of food to community food shelves, meal distribution sites, and emergency grocery pop-ups across 57 Minnesota and Western Wisconsin counties.
“Once we get the final numbers for 2024, it will once again be the hungriest year on record, for the third year in a row.”
To illustrate this point, food security advocates are participating in a SNAP challenge, agreeing to live within Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for a month to demonstrate the difficulty of eating within federal food access programs. SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps, helps low-income Americans buy food. Current SNAP benefits fall well short of need: The average Minnesotan receives just $5.16 per day — not enough to cover even basic needs, given the nonprofit Feeding America estimates the average cost of a single meal in in the state is now $4.23.
“We really wanted to do the SNAP challenge to draw attention to the important role that SNAP plays, but also to remind folks about how tough it is to live on a really limited food budget,” said Sophia LenarCoy, executive director of the Food Group, one of Minnesota’s premier food security nonprofits.
Nearly 500,000 Minnesotans, including children, families, college students, and seniors, relied on SNAP last year to feed themselves — with food insecurity among seniors surging as visits to food shelves by older adults increased by 64%. Additional relief came in 2023 when DFL State Sen. Erin Maye Quade (District 56) authored a bill to provide emergency funding for food shelves. “I’m proud to have passed this bill that will help Minnesotans put food on the table,” said Maye Quade. “With unprecedented surges in food shelf visits, rising food costs, and pandemic-era supplemental nutrition programs coming to an end, I’m grateful to my colleagues for their swift action to help Minnesotans feed their families.”
The bill allocated $5 million in emergency funds to food shelves statewide, responding to skyrocketing demand — with some reporting a 400% increase in visits year over year. The funding came at a critical time, when pandemic-era expanded SNAP benefits expired in March, leaving many Minnesotans without the additional support they’ve relied on since 2020.
“One thing that we are going to work on at the state level is if we can try to increase the minimum benefit for seniors on SNAP. Right now, if a senior gets the minimum benefit, they’re only getting $23 a month, which we know just doesn’t go very far at all. There’s a lot of paperwork, so our senior enrollment rates are low,” Lenarz-Coy said, “But at a broader level, I think what we are really hoping to do is to make sure SNAP at the federal level does not get cut.
“There’s uncertainty on a federal level. There’s even uncertainty at the state level, kind of what’s coming down, what the financial outlook might be. And I think sometimes all of these things can feel too big for us to make an impact or a little bit beyond our control. But the hope that I get, or the optimism that I feel on this work, is that with food we can do this,” she added.
“Minnesotans understand how to do this at a super, hyper-local level. We know how to share food with people in our lives who need it. We know how to support our local food shelves with time and donations,” Lenarz-Coy said. “Those things really matter and make a difference. So I think it’s kind of the time to just keep our sleeves rolled up and do work that matters on a day-to-day basis, which we know is getting nutritious and culturally connected food."”
