Ending Hunger in Minnesota: Food Bank Takes on 10-Year Plan

Minnesota has long enjoyed a reputation of having one of the nation’s highest standards of living, and perhaps overall, its reputation is well deserved. Looking beyond the surface, however, reveals that Minnesota is not immune to ills plaguing the rest of the country.

One example is in the number of underfed in Minnesota: Like the number of underinsured Minnesotans, the state’s share of residents who go hungry is alarming.

According to Minnesota’s Second Harvest Heartland, the largest food bank in the area and seventh-largest in the nation:

*In Minnesota, 380,000 people are food insecure, hungry or at risk of hunger.
*There were more than 1.8 million visits to Minnesota food shelves in 2006, up from 1.7 million in 2005.
*Two out of five seniors will fall below the poverty line–annual income of $9,570 or less–between the ages of 60 and 90.
*38 percent of households using Minnesota food shelves are the working poor–the fastest growing group of food shelf clients.
*Children make up almost 45 percent of those served by Second Harvest Heartland’s member food shelves.

read moreSecond Harvest has just undertaken a 10-year initiative to address the hunger issue in Minnesota. Newell Searle, its vice president of external relations, explained that the organization’s goal now is “to end hunger rather than just fight hunger.”

He explained that “Ending hunger means that there will be enough food available to people in need through enough outlets that no one goes to bed hungry, and no one wakes up in the morning wondering if they’re going to eat that day.”

To meet that goal, Second Harvest projects that within 10 years it will need to  increase food distribution from its current 33.5 million pounds of food per year to 83 million pounds–234 pounds of food per year for each person in need. That amount is in addition to what public assistance, food charities and clients’ own resources provide.

“Once we get to 83 million, we don’t say that’s enough, we’re done,” said Searle. “We have to sustain it after that until such time as people no longer need [supplemental] food.”

Second Harvest will also continue to distribute personal care and hygiene products as well as food.

A Harvard School of Public Health study estimates that the cost of hunger to the U.S. economy is $90 billion annually. “The case that still needs to be made in very clear terms is that unaddressed hunger and unaddressed poverty–we work on the hunger aspect of poverty–affects everybody in the community, not just the people who are immediately hungry, Searle said.” Those costs include increased public spending for police. (“When people don’t have the basic necessities, it does alter their ethical behavior. Public policing costs do come into that,” Searle said). Another additional public expense derives from education dollars spent trying to teach hungry students, who are more concerned with their next meal than with learning.

And those with less purchasing power also have less ability to contribute to the economy.

The study also estimated that unaddressed hunger costs Minnesota about $1.1 billion a year and that hunger could be ended in this country with an expenditure of about $12 billion.

Second Harvest statistics show that 93 percent of the people they serve are U.S. citizens, 78 percent are registered voters, and only 3 percent are homeless. Half of the families visiting Twin Cities-area food shelves have at least one underage child.

“You add this up, and you say, ‘Who are these people?’ They’re our neighbors; they’re down the block. Or next door. They’re not segregated somewhere else; they’re everywhere throughout the whole community,” Searle noted.

Among those communities are suburbs, who saw the fastest increase in food shelf use when the travel and high-tech industries went into economic decline, particularly after 9/11. When the economy improved, the need for food shelves decreased, but Searle says that trend is starting to reverse. He thinks the suburbs may not be immune to the skyrocketing number of home foreclosures: “We haven’t seen it yet because this is so new, but it will not surprise me.I think it’s only a matter of time before we start hearing the stories related to foreclosures. I can’t say we have heard of any yet, but I anticipate that that will be a factor,” Searle said.

Photo: A food distribution line outside Park Avenue United Methodist Church in south Minneapolis