https://www.minnpost.com/national/washington/2025/10/hunger-fears-grow-in-minnesota-as-food-shelves-are-overwhelmed/ --- subheadline:
The ranks of the hungry are expected to grow as grocery prices remain high — and could go even higher — and [the federal government a/k/a TRUMP] has cut food stamps and other nutrition programs, including grants that help food shelves in the state. Moreover, the shutdown of the federal government has put the funding of food stamps, and other federal food programs, under threat.
Related: Many Minnesotans already live miles from the nearest grocery store. What happens if it closes?
For example, the Minnesota Department of Health said the state has only “several weeks” of funds for WIC, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children.
According to the USDA’s Household Food Security report for 2023, the latest available, 9.1% of Minnesota households — more than 207,000 households — are food insecure. That report, which tracks hunger across the United States, has been scrapped by the USDA recently.
“These redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous studies do nothing more than fear monger,” the USDA [TRUMP] said last month in announcing the end of the report, which many anti-hunger advocates say measured hunger too conservatively.
According to the last USDA hunger report, the level of food insecurity in Minnesota is lower than the national average, which is 12.3%. But the report indicated that hunger in Minnesota and across the nation is on the rise.
Minnesota’s 9.1% rate of food insecurity among households was based on a three-year average, from 2021-2023. The previous three-year average, from 2018-2020, indicated 7% of Minnesota households were food insecure.
And food insecurity is more prevalent in rural areas [a/k/a MAGA LAND], where it was 16% in the 2021-2023 three-year average, and more than 25% in Black and Hispanic households.
[...]
Preserving dignity
The Community Emergency Service is run by Jamie Dolynchuk, a former Cargill executive who wanted to volunteer for a nonprofit so he could give back to the community.
He said he searched the internet for one that provides social services in the poorest section of the Twin Cities and came up with the food shelf.
Dolynchuk said the numbers clearly show that hunger in Minnesota is on the rise. Community Emergency Service once served 120-130 people a day. But when MinnPost interviewed him recently, that number had hit a high point – 460.
People reserve appointments to visit the food shelf online, but Dolynchuk said they never turn anyone away.
“A typical food shelf gives between 14 and 18 pounds of food for a visit, and most food shelves allow one visit per month,” Dolynchuk said. “CES gives about 40 pounds of food per visit, so like triple the amount, and we allow people to come twice a month.”
An innovation, the food shelf’s refrigerated food lockers, allow working moms to pick up groceries when they cannot make it to the food shelf before it closes. They simply scan a code on their phones and the locker with their order opens.
Community Emergency Service is also helping set up food lockers for students at the University of Minnesota, which Dolynchuk said are expected to be put into operation in February.
While food shelves typically buy their food, Dolynchuk said his operation has adopted a rescue food model. Instead of spending money buying groceries, they invested money in trucks to make daily trips to grocery stores that donate rescue food, especially fresh produce, which makes up about 85% of their supply.
“I think that there is a very big misconception that when you rescue food, it’s the throwaway garbage food from the grocery stores,” Dolynchuk said. “It is absolutely not. The food is fantastic.”
“These people here are good people,” Dolynchuk said. “They’re dealing with so many stresses and challenges in their life.”
Dolynchuk said Community Emergency Service is the most culturally diverse food shelf in Minnesota, with 161 languages and about 95% of the people identifying as people of color.
[...] Like many of the state’s food shelves, the Community Emergency Service receives some of its food from Second Harvest Heartland, a Brooklyn Park-based food bank that serves shelves in 41 Minnesota counties and 18 counties in western Wisconsin.
“We are already at record levels of hunger and things are getting worse,” said Zach Rodvold, director of public affairs at Second Harvest. “We are not able to meet additional demands.”
Second Harvest is funded by private donations and government help. But some of that help has been disrupted, or eliminated, by the Trump administration, which has also imposed tougher work requirements on food stamp recipients intended to result in lower enrollment.
[...]
Rodvold said the program has provided about 4 million pounds of food to food shelves in the state each year.
Second Harvest has developed its own hunger census, which Rodvold said is more accurate — and alarming — than the national survey the USDA will no longer provide.
The latest survey, covering 2024, determined that one in five Minnesota households are food insecure and 26% of households with children are food insecure.
Rodvold had a dire warning.
“The potential of turning from a hunger crisis to a hunger collapse exists with food shelves,” Rodvold said.
It is not as bad as Israeli forced starvation in Gaza, but it appears Trump may be taking starvation lessons from Bibi. (While also seemingly taaking other orders that way.)
If JD had a spine, he'd tell Trump to ease up. These are JD's claimed people who are in need.