In the hallways of the Scott County courthouse, seat of government of Minnesota's richest county, fliers from food shelves tacked on the wall cry out: "Our shelves are empty!"

Among the items "desperately needed," the fliers say: peanut butter, tuna, and macaroni and cheese.

Scott and Carver counties tower over all other metropolitan counties in the rate of growth in the amount of free food being handed out, according to the latest statistics from Hunger Solutions Minnesota, an advocacy group. Dakota ranks third.

The sudden need can be traced to the changing demographics of the suburbs, which are seeing growing numbers of immigrants, and to economic forces, including the sudden weakening in home building and layoffs at Northwest Airlines and other companies.

A good many of those seeking help are "new Americans," immigrants settling into communities such as Burnsville, said Pennie Page Hight, director of outreach for the Lakeville-based Community Action Council.

But many others are not.

The all-their-lives Americans needing help "are not toothless uneducated alcoholics who haven't taken a bath in a week," she said. "It's families with college educations, families who've worked before and have Nintendo at home ... people who come to us in tears, having never had to ask for help before. That is so humbling."

She finds it flat-out "amazing" that her agency has more than doubled -- to 600,000 pounds a year -- the volume dispensed over the past five years.

State Rep. Mary Liz Holberg, a Republican from Lakeville, says she's seen a common pattern: Layoffs at employers such as Northwest Airlines, whose workers then "bought a white panel truck and turned to the housing market, doing tiling or painting. Now that's gone away."

Indeed it has. The Builders Association of the Twin Cities reported last week that the number of building permits in January, at 1,500 just four years ago, sank last month to just 364. Once-rip-roaring Shakopee, with 52 permits issued in January 2005, was down to 15 last month.

That the volume of food dispensed has been able to rise so far, so fast, Hight said, is a tribute to the community. "The Boy Scouts, the schools, the Postal Service -- we have six food shelves and we are able to provide two weeks' food for any family that calls us because of how the community donates."

On the state level, however, advocates also stress that it's an enormous pity that so many people needing help either choose not to get it, or don't know it's there for them through government sources.

"More than 270,000 Minnesotans receive food stamps each month," but "nearly 200,000 Minnesotans are eligible but do not participate," said Jill Hiebert, a spokeswoman for Hunger Solutions.

The hunger exists amid plenty. The U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey released last year found that with a median household income -- half make more, half less -- of nearly $80,000 in 2006, Scott County is the state's most affluent. Carver is third and Dakota fourth. In the 2000 Census, the last to deliver income figures of all of America's more than 3,000 counties, Scott was in the top 1 percent, at 28th place.

But it's partly because of that affluence, advocates say, that suburban counties are often short of other safety nets when trouble does strike -- and the food shelf becomes an early warning signal.

"We emphasize to all staff and volunteers the need of giving people dignity when they do come in," Hight said. "Upper middle class people just don't wake up one day and say, 'Oh, I'm going to call the food shelf.'"

David Peterson • 952-882-9023