“The price to live here has become so high that it’s forced a lot of people into needing a food bank for the first time.”įurther south, August visits to Helena Food Share rose 70 percent compared with those in August 2021. “Inflation and high housing costs have really changed the playing field for a lot of people,” said Quinn. Visits to the food shelf have risen nearly 150 percent from August 2021 to this past July, and the number of homeless people served at their location has reportedly doubled in recent months, according to Executive Director Jamie Quinn. The Flathead Food Bank in Kalispell has seen an influx of visitors this year amid rapidly rising housing costs in the area, an issue that has hit much of western Montana hard over the last few years. Data from 158 food shelves in the Montana Food Bank Network show that total visits have increased nearly 60 percent this August compared with the same month last year. The Census Household Pulse Survey suggests that food scarcity in Montana has been higher on average than in other Ninth District states. In North Dakota, the Bismarck Emergency Food Pantry reported a similar increase in visitors. Minnesota and Wisconsin are not the only states with food shelves experiencing a surge in demand for assistance this year.įeeding South Dakota, a nonprofit food bank which operates mobile food pantries out of Sioux Falls, Pierre, and Rapid City, reported that the number of visitors to their mobile distributions across the state increased over 30 percent in August compared with last year.

We're doing around 18 to 20 per day now,” Ayres added. “We were doing like five or six emergency bags a day last summer on average. While Joyce Uptown Foodshelf is appointment-based, people can still stop by for smaller emergency bags, which include mostly government commodity food. “We’ve got really low-income shoppers that have always needed food shelves, and now we've got all these new folks, often middle class, that have never had to go to food shelves before but are here now because they’re getting squeezed by high food prices.' “Demand has increased significantly, on dual fronts,” Ayres said. Matthew Ayres, executive director of Joyce Uptown Foodshelf, noted that many visitors this year are first-timers.

However, that changed this year, with total visits through June some 60 percent higher compared with the same period last year (Figure 2).Īt the Joyce Uptown Foodshelf in Minneapolis, a partner pantry of Second Harvest Heartland, the number of people seeking food assistance through August of this year more than doubled from pre-pandemic levels, to over 6,200 visits-almost an annual record with four months of the year left. Visits to Second Harvest Heartland’s partner food shelves were relatively stable from 2019 through 2021. While the pandemic created a lot of hardship, especially early on, it did not spark a significant rise in food shelf visits. Second Harvest Heartland, a Twin Cities–based food bank, which partners with 388 food shelves and meal programs across central and southwestern Minnesota and western Wisconsin, has been on the front lines of distributing food during the pandemic. As a result, many people in the Ninth District have turned to food shelves for help. Inflation has also affected more than just food, and higher overall costs of living have coincided with federal and state assistance programs returning to pre-pandemic levels after a period of strong support. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey data. Food shelf need increases across Upper Midwest and Montanaįood scarcity rates, which measures the share of people who did not have enough food to eat in the last week, have been higher on average in Ninth District states through August of this year than they were last year or even in 2020, according to U.S. “I have been using our local food bank for the first time in 20 some years.” “We eat a lot less protein and have been buying more pasta and rice,” another Montana survey respondent wrote. Survey takers from Minnesota, Montana, and North and South Dakota reported that securing food was one of their top three concerns this summer, and over 60 percent indicated that they have reduced their consumption of food prepared at home or have made substitutions in response (Figure 1). Meal sizes have been cut in half due to cost,” she added. “We also don't eat as much as we once did. In a recent Minneapolis Fed survey of workers and job seekers, a woman from northern Montana said the high grocery prices this year have pushed her family “away from eating fresh foods” and toward eating “boxed and canned foods because they are cheaper.”

Households suffer these higher costs in different ways. Haley Chinander/Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis 2022. Staff and volunteers stock shelves at Joyce Uptown Foodshelf in Minneapolis.

Second harvest food bank