02-04-2025
How could so many people in the world's richest nation be without enough to eat?
Photo by Grace Aigner for Minnesota Reformer.
After I retired I started volunteering at a local food shelf called VEAP.
VEAP — Volunteers Enlisted to Assist People — is one of the largest food pantries in Minnesota. Last year it provided over 4.6 million pounds of food to over 250,000 Minnesotans. Almost the entire operation is driven by volunteers: scheduling appointments, sorting donations, and running pantry operations to provide food to customers.
There are almost 500 food shelves across Minnesota, some large like VEAP, and many much smaller. Most depend heavily on volunteers and donations.
Food shelves are supported by larger organizations called food banks — like Second Harvest Heartland and The Food Group. Food banks partner with grocery retailers, manufactures and farmers to source and warehouse food that they distribute to food shelves in communities across the state. They also depend on donations and volunteers.
This is a remarkable system, a credit to the people that put time, energy and money into building and maintaining it.
But right now, it is strained by an incredible increase in demand.
Reliance on food shelves has skyrocketed since the pandemic. The number of people seeking help at VEAP has more than doubled since 2020. According to the Food Group, that reflects the same trend across the entire state. In 2024, Minnesotans made 9 million visits to food shelves.
Food inflation is certainly one driver. And the end of pandemic emergency SNAP benefits in 2023 took away a primary support — a loss of $100 a month for the average family.
A study by Second Harvest Heartland, in partnership with Wilder Research, found that 1 in 5 Minnesotans are 'food insecure,' meaning they don't have access to the food they need, usually because they can't afford it. This includes 26% of families with children and 40% of households of color.
The study also found that food aid — food shelves and/or SNAP benefits — helped more than half of food insecure Minnesotans have enough food to eat. That's great; we know that we can make a difference for hungry families.
But it is hard to read this and not ask: How can there be people without enough food in the richest country in the world?
And be reminded that this is a question we have been asking for decades.
The development of a broad network of food banks and food shelves started to expand rapidly around 1980. By one account, 80% of the food shelves in the U.S. in 2001 had opened since 1980.
Why did our nation suddenly need so many food shelves after 1980? Certainly, the economy was a factor, as late 1970s stagflation gave way to a deep recession in the early 1980s.
But it was also the year Ronald Reagan was elected president and changed the course of American social policy.
With the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960, the U.S. moved toward a more progressive approach to social policy. The highlight of this period was Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and War on Poverty. Even Richard Nixon proposed a guaranteed family income and universal health coverage (although neither was enacted).
Reagan stopped this progress, cutting public assistance and food stamps and other social services.
Progress on advancing social policy has been bumpy ever since. The 'Reagan Revolution' had successfully sold the idea that government was the problem.
Forty-five years later, in our current moment, we can certainly recognize how deeply this message has sunk into the American psyche and how it continues to drive policy debates.
And so, once again, federal funding to fight hunger is vulnerable to cuts.
The federal government has long provided funding to states to support emergency food. It's not a lot of money but has provided a base for the emergency system. Two funding sources have already been cut, a loss of $6.7 million in food intended for Minnesota food banks.
More critically, of course, is SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. Congress is poised to cut over $200 billion from SNAP over the next 10 years. Cutting SNAP at this level would require reducing benefits to families or cutting people completely off SNAP — or some combination of the two.
The result will be more hunger.
The incredible success of the emergency food system — a mostly non-profit, volunteer-driven sector — is not enough to make up for hundreds of billions of dollars.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't try — volunteer, donate, do what you are able to do.
But problems of this scope need public policy solutions and investments.
In the 1980s, conservatives liked to say that President Lyndon Johnson launched a War on Poverty and poverty won.
In fact, by the late 1970s the U.S. poverty rate was half what it was in 1960, before the War on Poverty.
To paraphrase Matthew Desmond from his book 'Poverty, by America,' did we lose the war on poverty, or did we just stop fighting?
Maybe that's why there are hungry people in the richest country in the world.
