Dexter Food drive counters food desert

Feeding rural areas in SW MN

The pandemic has created a very tangible problem in underserved communities: hunger.

Food banks are stepping up efforts to meet the growing demand through food drives.

Kimt news three's maleeha kamal covered a dexter food drive today.

On the scene look live: i'm at industrial park in dexter where channel one regional food bank is teaming up with the salvation army for a food drive... folks that came by got one box of protein, one box of dairy and one box of produce.

Volunteers loaded boxes of food into peoples cars one by one.

"one of the big pieces that we are seeing is that its effecting people across the board.

We've seen anywhere from seniors to families with young children.

Major jeff strickler is a salvation army veteran who has served for over three decades..

He's noticed food insecurity has increased during this pandemic and the need is great.

Strickler says that in rural places including dexter access to food can be a challenge.

S "we know that in the county there are some food deserts that's what they are called because there are not a lot of places were you can get much food in some communities.

Some communtities have small food shelves some of those have kind of struggled.

So we thought that maybe we can make a distribution available to help reach some people who cant go all the way into austin for help.

" look live the next food drive will be in two week in austin.

For at the salvation army's last food drive in austin the army ran out of food within 45 minutes?

"* today that was not the case.