When new people visit Minneapolis food shelf Harvest From the Heart, it is not uncommon for them to cry, overwhelmed by the free, quality food available to them, Director Chris Pangle said.
Pangle said there has been no shortage of new faces lining up outside the shelf’s doors in recent years, and the demand continues to grow.
This November, about 41 million people nationwide, including 440,000 Minnesotans, will not receive their monthly Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, commonly known as food stamps.
A federal judge temporarily ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to release SNAP funding on Friday, ABC News reported. In a statement posted on Truth Social hours after the ruling, Trump said he instructed his administration to ask the court to clarify the legality of releasing the benefits.
Last Monday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced $4 million in emergency state funding to be distributed to hundreds of food shelves statewide. But the loss of federal SNAP funding this November will create a $73 million gap in Minnesota’s nutritional safety net.
Harvest From the Heart, open five days a week, serves between 200 and 250 households a day, Pangle said. Typically, the food shelf sees a demand spike at the end of each month when SNAP benefits run low. Lately, more people are showing up weekly.
“It’s very difficult for people to afford food, let alone fresh food lately,” Pangle said. “Food is that difficult and essential right now.”
Carolina Elizondo, food programs director for three food shelves in East Minneapolis, said it has been difficult to handle the rise in visitors as SNAP-related anxiety grows.
“With our food shelves, we are seeing empty shelves, empty coolers and empty freezers daily,” Elizondo said.
At Joyce Uptown Foodshelf, the SNAP lapse is generating panic unlike anything Director Matthew Ayres has seen in his 20 years working in food relief. Minnesota’s food shelves have already been in crisis for the past year and a half, according to Ayres.
“We’ve been going up a hill for a long time, and we just have a steep part ahead of us,” Ayres said. “If the government reopens tomorrow and everything pans out with SNAP, we’re still in crisis. All food shelves in Minnesota are still in crisis.”
In the first week of October, the shelf hit its annual food budget and is now buying food at a deficit. Joyce lost about 30% of its food supply this year after the federal government paused half of the funding for The Emergency Food Assistance Program in March, which provides free food assistance.
“We have to purchase that food. That’s why we’ve run out of money this year already,” Ayres said. “My anxiety comes from the federal government not providing the same level of support that they used to.”
Joyce received about $70,000 this year from the federal Local Food Purchase Assistance Program, which provides grants to food programs to buy fresh food from local farmers. But the program is not being renewed next year, according to Ayres.
Elizondo said the three food shelves she oversees lost one-third of their funding this year after the federal Emergency Food and Shelter Program was paused in January. The program supplements food purchases, and the grant has been a source of annual support for the shelves.
The number of callers seeking food at Minneapolis’ Joyce Food Shelf has grown so large that Ayres said if he scheduled everyone an appointment, people would only be able to shop once a year. Five years ago, callers could book a visit within the same week.
Eighteen months ago, Joyce stopped taking appointments for new shoppers and shifted to an emergency bag model. Now, about 70% of visitors receive emergency bags, filled with items such as pasta, rice and beans.
In April 2021, the shelf distributed 47 bags. Last Tuesday, it handed out 106 in just six hours.
Food shelf visits across Minnesota have climbed statewide since 2021, according to data from The Food Group and the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families. In 2024, visits hit a record of nearly 9 million.
Joyce is a small food shelf, operating out of a converted house in Uptown with three full-time employees and a network of about 200 volunteers, Ayres said. In the past three years, visits to the shelf have tripled.
“We’re serving more people at a higher cost per person than we ever have before,” Ayres said. “We are at our max. Food-wise, storage-wise, but we’re also at capacity in terms of our emotional ability to deal with this job.”
Food shelves need donations, volunteers and advocates, Ayres said.
“We need people to stand at the Capitol and say, ‘This is crazy.’ We need a better system,” Ayres said.
