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The Impact of the 2026 Legislative Session on Hunger in Minnesota

The 2026 state legislative session featured the most closely divided legislature in state history. Still, Second Harvest Heartland worked alongside our food bank and food shelf partners from across the state to secure the following hunger-relief funding and policies that will provide more food and more support for neighbors experiencing food insecurity:

  • One-time funding for the state’s five food banks and eleven Tribal Nations to source and distribute food at no additional cost to hunger relief partners across the state. This funding will allow Second Harvest Heartland to distribute an additional 3.4 million pounds of food.  
  • A one-time funding increase for the Minnesota Food Shelf Program, which doubles the total amount of base funding for the program and supports food shelves across the state as they respond to record demand for food.  
  • Updated egg donation laws to increase the availability of eggs at food shelves by allowing food retailers to donate more of them, for a longer time window, while they are still safe to eat.

We are grateful to our bipartisan bill authors in both the state House and Senate for championing our policy priorities this session, and to the dozens of lawmakers from both parties who helped along the way. (As a sign of this strong, bipartisan support, the bill to update our state’s egg labeling laws passed the House and Senate unanimously!)

We’re also grateful to the Second Harvest Heartland advocacy community, who collectively sent state lawmakers more than 8,200 messages to the Governor and state lawmakers advocating for increased hunger-relief funding—highlighting the power of using your voice to help end hunger in Minnesota!

As we look ahead to the 2027 state legislative session, we encourage you to join our growing advocacy community by entering your email below. When you become a hunger-relief advocate, you’ll receive timely policy updates and action alerts that allow you to quickly and easily message your state lawmakers in support of policies that would help make hunger history in Minnesota. When more people like you speak up for hunger-relief policies, more lawmakers listen—and that’s how change begins.