Lakeville Food Shelf Provides Hungry with Healthy Options

The Lakeville and Eagan Resource Centers are mobilizing the Dakota County community to provide healthy food that doesn’t come in a can for those in need.

“They’re definitely in touch with the community’s need for food,” said Mary Montagne, health promotion supervisor for the Dakota County Health Department.

The department was among the ELRC’s original funders, and has given them approximately $4,000 in state grant funding to support the nonprofit's Garden To Table program.

Garden To Table was recently recognized by the Minnesota State Horticultural Society, when the ELRC received the St. Paul Garden Club Award for excellence in community vegetable gardening last month.

The program helps to fulfill the organization's larger mission of providing food support and community resources and referrals to Dakota County residents.

Garden To Table was founded on the principal of creating a sustainable approach to eliminating hunger. Program participants are given adoptable plots on which to plant a vegetable garden, as a solution to the lack of green space available to clients at home.

ELRC program manager Mary Freeman noted that gardening together cultivates community among clients, and that clients who grow excess produce sometimes donate it to the ELRC food support pantries.

“It helps soothe the soul a little bit,” said Freeman.

Local groups also have the opportunity to become involved with Garden To Table by planting mission gardens. These community vegetable gardens yield produce, which is then donated to ELRC food shelves. Approximately 20 ELRC mission gardens are currently tended by churches, businesses, homeowners, schools and garden clubs across the county.

The ELRC is also partnering with local orchards and farmer’s markets to rescue excess produce to stock the food shelves.

Since it began in the summer of 2010, Garden To Table has grown significantly. In its first year, the program offered 25 adoptable plots. This year, ELRC Executive Director Lisa Horn and Freeman anticipate that 100 plots will be available at several Eagan locations.

In 2011, Garden To Table produced approximately 20,000 pounds of food and served approximately 10,000 households.

The ELRC is not a traditional food shelf that distributes bags of canned goods. The nonprofit's food support pantries are organized like grocery stores, and clients who use the pantries have the same sense of choice and dignity they would have at a supermarket.

Last year, 50 percent of the pantries' inventory was fresh or perishable food. This year, Freeman and Horn hope to increase that number to 70 percent.

“It’s a sustainable approach to eliminating hunger,” Horn said.

will continue to cover the growing need for food shelves in the community.