Kate Weeks, an assistant commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families, said her department received 674 full truckloads of food from the program last year. The department was prepared for the program to cut funds this winter, but federal officials gutted those funds months early, halting 34 truckloads of milk, eggs, chicken and other food.
“These are critical investments and food needed for the entire food network,” Weeks said.
At the Gethsemane Lutheran Church, which is also known as the Camden Promise Food Shelf, staffers were forced this June to reduce the amount of food that residents could take from 20 items to seven. Some are turned away without food, returning the next day to draw a lottery number marked on more than 100 wooden Jenga blocks.
Due to high demand, visitors to Gethsemane Lutheran Church's food shelf sometimes have to draw lottery numbers.
“We’ve done as much as we can to stay open ... but where we’re at now is if the numbers and if TEFAP food continues on this path, we have to cut hours and days,” Nehrbass said, adding that it would mark the first change in the food shelf’s hours in more than a decade.