Minnesotans made nearly 9 million visits to food shelves in 2024, a record high for the fourth consecutive year. That’s 1.4 million more visits than in 2023 and 2.5 times more visits than pre-pandemic 2019. In February, The Food Group released our 2024 Minnesota Food Shelf Visits Report, which tracks 487 TEFAP-participating food shelves across Minnesota. Broadly, Minnesota saw increased food […] Read more

Smitten for SNAP
With Valentine’s Day around the corner, we’re celebrating with love letters to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps)! SNAP may be at risk in 2025 with proposals coming from Congress that would require billions of dollars of cuts to SNAP through a budget reconciliation process. The Food Group passionately believes […] Read more

Lived Experiences Have the Power to Shape Public Policy
How Individuals and Their Stories Create Community-Informed Solutions We believe that in order to solve food insecurity and hunger, solutions must come directly from the people living closest to the issue. People like Lisa, who is turning her experience navigating the emergency food system in Minnesota into advocacy work that helps others walking in similar […] Read more

A Note From Sophia
As we close out 2024 and look ahead to the new year, I am struck that we continue to live through unprecedented times. Unprecedented. Wasn’t that the most overused buzzword of 2020? And yet I use it now to reflect on this past year as well. When we look at food needs across our state, […] Read more

Creating a More Climate-Smart Food System
Something we think about a lot at The Food Group is how we can embed more climate-smart strategies into the work we do. Sustainable agriculture is not just a buzz word — the farmers we work with through our Big River Farms program see the results of our changing climate in real time, from last […] Read more