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Looking out across Channel One Food Shelf, Virginia Witherspoon couldn’t help but notice that offerings were sparser than she remembered years or even months ago.
Shoppers pushed carts around aisles with shelves of crackers, boxes of mac and cheese and canned vegetables. Beside a row of refrigerators filled with milk, another bank of refrigerated cases had its lights turned off. Inside, the shelves were empty.
“We just don’t have the food and we’re doing our best,” Witherspoon, executive director at Channel One Regional Food Bank, said Tuesday. “The whole thing would have been lit up if you had been here in 2022. That third case would have been lit up full of meat, and we wouldn't have been limiting it.”
Channel One’s predicament isn’t isolated. Nervous times have set in across the Minnesota emergency food network system as a combination of factors are making operations tougher.
Witherspoon describes it as a “perfect storm” of higher costs, growing consumer demand and dropping funding and donations.
“It's really difficult because the need is like we've never seen it before,” Witherspoon said. “This is just the perfect storm of high need because of high grocery prices.”
“Working people are standing in line here because they can't afford their food. Then, on top of that, you've got the decrease in manufacturing donations because of the high cost of food, the cancellation of those government commodity loads,” she continued.
This is all before the latest and most significant wrinkle. The protracted federal government shutdown could force a sudden cut to SNAP, also known as food stamps.
“All of these things are happening at once, and we really need something to break,” Witherspoon said.
This week, the Olmsted County Board offered at least a partial break when it authorized a one-time donation of up to $200,000 to buy food and infant formula.
It could help keep provisions coming.
Olmsted County Board of Commissioners Chair Mark Thein signaled the money isn’t a long-term solution. He asked members of the community to step up.
“We challenge our broader community likewise to take bold action to support their neighbors here in Olmsted County. Without that, some families will go hungry and county funds will fall short as soon as the middle of November,” Thein said.
There are nearly 13,000 people on SNAP in Olmsted County, who collectively receive about $1.9 million monthly in benefits.
Witherspoon still worries about the potential crush of demand in the next few weeks. Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth and Families announced Tuesday that SNAP and MFIP recipients won’t get their November benefits until Congress can reach a deal, although some cash welfare assistance will still go out.
For every one meal that food banks provide, SNAP provides nine of them.
“We don't have the food or the funding to bridge that gap,” Witherspoon said. “So if you do this, we will be turning people away.”
Sara Carlson turned to Channel One when she and her kids faced food insecurity years ago. Now, she serves on the food bank’s board. She said this is an especially challenging moment for Minnesotans getting by with less — or going without.
“It's going to hurt people,” Carlson said. “That's what keeps me up at night, thinking about the people that are facing this reality right now. And it's more people, it's a ton of people. Even just the threat to think, like, in a couple of weeks, ‘I'm not going to have this resource to feed my kids.’”
Channel One will keep serving families. But Witherspoon said without a change in trajectory, they’ll send them off with emptier grocery bags. She said she’s implored lawmakers to end the shutdown — or at least approve SNAP and emergency food assistance.
So far, the message hasn’t broken through.
“I don't know whose fault it is. I don't spend much time thinking about that. I just think about telling lawmakers what the result is of not having staff,” Witherspoon said, “and it's catastrophic.”
MPR News correspondent Catharine Richert contributed to this story.
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