(ABC 6 News) – Food shelves across Minnesota saw 8.9 million visits in 2024, the fourth year in a row the state broke that record. Coupled with recent federal funding freezes – food banks are struggling to keep up.

The LeRoy Area Food Shelf serves and area that covers about 1800 people.

“Most of them are working parents that just need that little extra to get through the month,” says the shelf’s director, Beverly Loven. “We have quite a few seniors that we serve also.”

In 2024, the LeRoy shelf served more than 400 families, twice that of previous years.

“Before that we averaged about 200,” Loven says. “So we really took a big jump last year, which of course makes it harder to keep stuff on these wonderful shelves.”

The increase in need isn’t being seen only in LeRoy, as food shelves across the state experienced similar spikes in visits.

Between 2023 and 2024, there were 1.4 million more visits last year than the year before.

Comparing last year to pre-pandemic, 2024 saw 2.5 times the visits 2019 saw.

Jill Westfall, statewide hunger data manager for The Food Group non-profit, points to rising costs as a reason.

“One of the biggest factors we’re seeing and hearing from food shelf participants is that the rise in the price of groceries has really had a huge impact,” she says.

The increase in need across the state comes as food prices for products like meats, poultry, and eggs are surging.

According to the latest Consumer Price Index from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, prices across the board have risen 3% in the last year, with eggs alone seeing an increase of 15.2% in January alone.

Another thing giving food shelves difficulty is frozen funding.

“The Local Food Purchasing Assistance program had a lot of grants that were connecting food shelves to local farmers,” says The Food Group’s executive director, Sophia Lorenz-Coy. “That is currently frozen at the federal levels.”

ABC 6 recently reported on the Channel One Food Bank, which receives 5% of its food and funds through these kinds of grants, and it also has been dealing with an increase in visits.

That makes keeping stock difficult, which is a problem for rural food shelves like the one in LeRoy, which receives most of its stock from the regional food bank.

“When they’re short, we’re short,” Loven says.

And if the Le Roy shelf can’t get product in?

“(Families) go without.”