Shay Scanlan: The University of Minnesota campus and surrounding area has long been a sort of food desert, lacking reasonable access to affordable, nutritious food, such as supermarkets. In 2007, one of the two Harvard Market locations in Stadium Village closed its doors. In 2011, the other followed suit, leaving the area without a grocery store. Over the past 30 years, many of the grocery stores in the campus area have disappeared. Now, there are just two grocery stores on campus, and an assortment of smaller markets. But each is expensive, with prices higher than what one could find at a store like ALDI.

Gimmick Doboszenski: It’s small, and it’s expensive. There’s not really any off-brand stuff, they don’t have a lot of good options.

Shay Scanlan: A recent campus survey by the undergraduate student government found about half of students don’t have cars, and the lack of choice that comes with no car can make grocery shopping both frustrating and costly.

Gimmick Doboszenski: I’ve gone there looking for Roma tomatoes at least twice, and they never have them. There’s nowhere else to shop for vegetables in a large radius. Most of my shopping is at the Dinkytown Target, which I don’t like very much.

Shay Scanlan: The survey found around half of students sometimes go without the essential food items they need because they weren’t available in a grocery store around campus. And students say the impact goes beyond inconvenience.

Gimmick Doboszenski: If I wanted to do a full grocery run, I’d spend, like, 40 or 50 bucks on food.

Shay Scanlan: The campus survey found students who don’t have a car are spending anywhere from 30 to 100 more dollars a month on food. Around half have delayed grocery shopping because they couldn’t get to an affordable store. Leaders from the undergraduate student government say food accessibility doesn’t just have an effect on students budgets, it’s part of a larger issue affecting students overall well-being across campus.

Will Beaumaster: We sent out a survey in the beginning of the year. Just trying to see where students were at, where they were struggling. What kind of food insecurities were they facing? And the data came back really, really surprising. I don’t remember the statistic off the top of my head, but the one that stuck out to me was, “Has it affected- has not being able to get food affected your ability to perform academically?” And it was an overwhelming, “Yes.” Which was, you know, shocking.

Shay Scanlan: That means, for many students, not having reliable access to food is affecting their ability to succeed in the classroom.

Will Beaumaster: It goes to show that this is something that the university should prioritize.

Shay Scanlan: But addressing the issue isn’t so simple.

Will Beaumaster: My idea would be to get the three stakeholders kind of involved. You also have to go through the city, so that involves communicating with, you know, the city. And then the students are the one who benefits from it all.

Shay Scanlan: Any long term solution requires coordination between university leaders, city officials, and the student body.

Will Beaumaster: How this all kind of breaks down is there’s two kind of tracks: There’s some people who really want, you know, a student run grocery store that has no affiliation with, you know, a brand or whatever, that’s run by students, which is one option. And then there’s the other option of where you bring in something like an ALDI or something like that. So that’s kind of the two camps people fall into.

Shay Scanlan: While those conversations continue, some resources are already working to support students facing food insecurity. The University of Minnesota has been attempting to provide students access to fresh, affordable food. Just this April a new small market came to Coffman memorial hall, and it provides basics like eggs or a few assorted vegetables, but pickings are still slim. In the basement of Coffman, the Nutritious U food pantry is the closest thing many students have to fresh and affordable options. To help meet that need, the university expanded its on-campus food pantry, Nutritious U.

Michelle Trump: We know that 1 in 4 college students on our campus is dealing with food insecurity. That means they’re worried about running out of food or they actually have run out of food at least once.

Shay Scanlan: To help meet that need, the university expanded its on-campus food pantry, Nutritious U.

Michelle Trump: In addition to our Saint Paul location and our West Bank location, which is open once a month. And we also expanded our hours. We’re open from 10 to 6, and now we have this new permanent location where we can get about 25 shoppers here. We had 10,251 visitors last fall, which was a 62% increase from the previous fall.

Shay Scanlan: Students can access a range of free groceries and essential items, including halal meat.

Michelle Trump: They can get one bag of produce, which is really unlimited for them on this back table here, and then they can get 9 shelf-stable items, so things like peanut butter, tuna, beans flour, oil, things like that. And then they can get one of each household item. So that’s something new that we’re really expanding this year, too, so things like toilet paper and laundry detergent, soap, shampoo. There’s definitely issues with food access around an affordable grocery store that’s easy to get to especially if you don’t have a car. We know that that’s an issue in our community.  

Shay Scanlan: While programs like Nutritious U help fill the gap, students and leaders say more permanent solutions are still needed. I’m Shay Scanlan and this video was produced by me, Karina Kafka, and CJ Julstrom. For more information on how the university is addressing food insecurity, visit our website.