Minnesota families face tougher choices with cuts to food assistance programs

Gloria Cadotte stood in line with her 5-year-old grandson Adrian, wheeling her walker full of cardboard boxes, collecting the onions, carrots, apples and potatoes being distributed at the Waite House Food Shelf in Minneapolis.

Cadotte, 75, has been coming to Waite House ever since it opened in the 1980s, and has seen a reduction in food quantity over time, with fewer options for protein and fresh produce. She needs both in her diet as she awaits kidney transplant surgery.

Waite House isn’t the only food shelf struggling to maintain the quality and supply of its food. A wave of federal funding cuts has strained food shelves nationwide, pushing places like Waite House to rethink how they operate in order to meet rising demand with fewer resources.

In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cancelled $1 billion in funding for schools and food banks to buy food from local suppliers. Of that, $420 million was for the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement (LFPA), which allowed food banks to purchase local produce, increasing their supply of fresh produce and boosting local farmers.

Following pushback, the USDA notified states that it was unfreezing funds for existing LFPA agreements, but said it did not plan to carry out a second round of funding for fiscal year 2025. Minnesota received $4.7 million through the program this year to support local food banks and food shelves. These funds will no longer be distributed.

In May, Minnesota lawmakers passed a bill that included a new state-level LFPA program offering $700,000 to fill in for the federal cuts. Food banks welcomed the support, but said the funding gap remains significant.

The blow to food assistance was compounded when Congress passed Trump’s massive federal budget bill, slashing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides food assistance to low-income Americans.

The changes increased work requirements, removed eligibility for legally admitted immigrants and offloaded a share of the costs to the states. An analysis by the Urban Institute found that the changes could lead 22.3 million families to lose some or all of their SNAP benefits.

“It’s a sneaky way of kicking out people from the program,” said Sophia Lenarz-Coy of the Food Group, which serves 200 food shelves. “It also reveals [the] disparity along racial lines as it will impact the communities who have been historically disinvested in.”

One in 13 Minnesotans received food stamps in 2024, most of them below the federal poverty level, according to a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The report also revealed that more than 52% are in working families, higher than the national average of 38%.

In 2022, the most recent data available, Minnesota SNAP recipients received $246 per month, on average. Undocumented immigrants will be especially pinched because they rely heavily on food shelves and don’t qualify for food stamps.

Higher food prices were already driving an increase in food shelf visits. Last year, Minnesota food shelves saw a record 9 million visits, the Food Group reported, many from seniors and families with children.

The system is breaking down at the moment of greatest need, said Ethan Neal, director of partner operations at Second Harvest Heartland, which serves 41 counties.

Food banks, including Second Harvest, buy and rescue food from local producers and retailers in bulk and sell it to food shelves at marked-down prices. Food shelves buy this food using, in part, LFPA funds, he said.

Food shelves also receive deliveries from the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), which were also cancelled or substantially reduced. The food is distributed to families in need free of cost.

Each of these cogs “has to turn for the larger wheel to move. If you throw a wrench into one gear and it stops, the entire system breaks down,” Neal said.

Lenarz-Coy said 30% to 35% of the Food Group’s supply was hit by the TEFAP fund freeze. She added that the SNAP cuts will cause more people to rely on food shelves with shrinking resources. “Both sides are getting pinched.”

Cory Bell, a father of three in Minneapolis who is trying to start a business and is unemployed, is concerned about the new blow of cuts. He said he feels the pressure “that you got to keep hitting all these different food shelves week after week after week to make sure there’s food in the house. Just in case all of it just comes to a stop at one point, ’cause I feel like that’s how it’s going to happen; they’re not going to warn anybody.”

Bell visited PRISM, a food shelf in Golden Valley that serves 1,800 households a month, with an average of 350 new households every month. At Keystone Community Services’ food shelf in St. Paul, which served 52,000 families in 2024, potential policy changes and a “disaster plan” have been an active conversation for the past six months.

“We are already thinking of how many people we’ll have to turn away when we run out of food,” said Georgi Nguyen, director of basic needs.

About the partnership

This story comes to you from Sahan Journal, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering Minnesota’s immigrants and communities of color. Sign up for a free newsletter to receive Sahan’s stories in your inbox.