By: Ginna Parsons
Joni is a mother of four, with three kids still living at home with her in Saltillo. Sometimes, she’s forced to turn to a food pantry to help ends meet.
“I just use it when I have to have it,” said the stay-at-home mom. “This is the first time I’ve been here in four or five months. If this weren’t here, I’d probably be out begging.”
Joni is one of about 1,200 clients who use the food pantry at St. Luke United Methodist Church in Tupelo monthly. The pantry distributes food boxes every Thursday from 8 a.m. to noon. Clients can visit once a month.
“In the first hour, we probably process 100 clients,” said Jason Martin, director of the pantry and executive director of the Tupelo-Lee County Hunger Coalition. “They’re waiting in line at 6:30 when we don’t even open until 8. I’ve seen them get there the night before so they could get a place in line.”
St. Luke is one of 34 agencies in 12 counties in Northeast Mississippi that depend on the Mid-South Food Bank in Memphis to help provide food for pantries, soup kitchens, shelters and mobile units. The food bank charges a nominal fee, usually 12 cents per pound, for food it delivers to the agencies that need it.
The 12 counties in Northeast Mississippi are Alcorn, Benton, Itawamba, Lafayette, Lee, Marshall, Monroe, Pontotoc, Prentiss, Tippah, Tishomingo and Union.
“In those 12 counties in Northeast Mississippi, there are 66,880 individuals who are food insecure,” said Lakeisha Edwards, director of agency partnerships and programs for the food bank. “Food insecure doesn’t mean they’re hungry. Food insecure means they can’t plan their next meal. They’re not necessarily homeless or out of work. They may be the working poor or in an emergency situation.”
The Pantry of Oxford and Lafayette County serves between 500 and 525 families, or 1,200 people, per month, said director John Kohne, an unpaid volunteer. Fourteen churches in Lafayette County provide food and labor to help keep the pantry afloat.
“The pantry is here to service anyone in need,” Kohne said. “We ask them to come once a month, but they can come more often if there is a need. Primarily we serve the working poor. But I’d say 300 to 325 of our clients are seniors over the age of 65 living on Social Security. They’re just seniors trying to get by.”
Because Oxford is home to the University of Mississippi, the school’s schedule can affect the pantry’s numbers.
“The university has a large amount of temporary employees,” Kohne said. “When the university closes down for a couple of weeks or a month, those people are not getting a paycheck, and they turn to us.”
The pantry, which is open Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., purchases food from the food bank in Memphis, and it also receives free items from the USDA’s Mississippi Food Network in Jackson.
But most of its financial contributions come from individual donors.
“The peak period is during the holidays,” Kohne said. “From the middle of October until after New Year’s, we see 60 to 70 percent of cash donations that carry us into the next year. The generosity of the residents of Lafayette County cannot go without praise. We have such support from the haves for the have-nots.”
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Volunteers with the St. Luke Food Pantry make their rounds loading carts with food to be distributed to recipients.
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INCREASING NUMBERS
In 2018, the Mid-South Food Bank delivered 3,613,369 pounds of food to the 12 counties it serves in Northeast Mississippi.
“That 3.6 million pounds still wasn’t half the food needed to erase the number of food insecure,” Edwards said.
If you look at the 31 counties the food bank serves in Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, that number jumps to 13,516,868 pounds.
“That’s a lot of food – that’s a lot of people,” Edwards said. “The amount of food needed is increasing with the changes to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program laws. People previously receiving benefits no longer qualify for SNAP. At the food bank, we’re always excited to tell our story. People think of those who are food insecure as the homeless, but it’s more working poor and single moms and seniors. It can look a lot different than what people think.”
In Lee County, the number and percentage of people who are food insecure is mind-boggling, said Martin, who has been director of St. Luke’s food pantry since 2013. He pointed to a study released in 2014 called “Map the Meal Gap” that was compiled by Feeding America, the nationwide entity that oversees food banks.
“Lee County was found to have 19.2 percent of the population that was food insecure,” he said. “That means 16,270 people in this county are suffering from food insecurity. The amount of money needed to close the gap to zero in 2014 was $8,490,000. That’s a lot of food.”
The good news is the numbers are getting better. In 2015, the percentage dropped to 17.7 percent and in 2016, it was down to 16.8 percent.
“That’s because more people are getting to agencies, like food pantries, which are there to fill that need,” Martin said. “The tough decision of people who are food insecure is, ‘Do I have enough money to pay utilities, pay rent, buy medicine and buy food?’ They can go to food pantries to get help with the food.”
So while the good news is that fewer people are food insecure and falling through the cracks, the bad news is that food pantries are busier than ever, trying to feed growing numbers with limited resources.
“People want to give to pantries between Thanksgiving and Christmas because it feels good,” Martin said. “But we need them to give year-round. We’re always happy to have donations of canned goods and shelf-stable items, but money goes much farther because we can purchase food in bulk from the food bank. A can of green beans, when it gets to our shelves to distribute, is 22 cents at the most. At the grocery store, even on sale, a can of green beans costs 50 cents.”
At St. Luke last week, the food box available to clients included:
• 4 cans canned chicken
• 4 cans green beans or sweet peas
• 2 cans corn
• 2 cans tomatoes or yams
• 2 cans mixed vegetables
• 3 cans soup
• 2 cans fruit
• 3 boxes macaroni and cheese
• 2 (1-pound) bags dried beans
• 1 box cereal
• Assorted fresh produce and frozen meat, if available
“As you can see, that’s not a month’s worth of food,” Martin said. “That doesn’t mean they can’t go to another pantry and get additional food. They just can’t come to us more than once a month.”
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A volunteer at St. Luke Food Pantry reaches for two cans of sweet peas to help fill a food box for a client.
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YEAR-ROUND NEED
Nettleton’s F.A.I.T.H. Food Pantry, which is open every third Saturday from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., is the largest food pantry that serves Lee County, as well as the hungry in Monroe County.
“We serve around 1,800 clients a month,” said Marolyn Hester, a board member and former executive director.
Hester said the number of clients using the food pantry’s services has been trending upward over the last few years.
“It seems like there is availability of employment, but people aren’t making as much money,” Hester said. “We see clients who are considered low-income, but also those who have fallen on hard times, like sickness, fires or layoffs.”
Hester said several churches in the counties served have the food pantry as a line item in their budgets, but the United Way provides them with their largest grant.
“If it weren’t for the United Way, we couldn’t operate,” she said. “That and the volunteers. We have 100 volunteers working on the Saturdays we distribute, but we also have volunteers working each day.”
Hester said in general, individuals and churches and businesses are very generous during November and December with donations to the pantry.
“But the people who need help in November and December need help in July and August as well,” she said.
F.A.I.T.H., along with several other pantries in Northeast Mississippi, is blessed to have Sam’s, Walmart and the Walmart Distribution Center in New Albany supplement what they’re able to give clients.
“They are always donating meat to us, and if they didn’t give us meat, we wouldn’t be able to give it out,” Hester said. “The distribution center is fabulous to give us fresh produce and bakery items. We’re talking pallets of food – good, good stuff. They’ve been helping us for years.”
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The sign tells volunteers how many cans of corn go into each food box.
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GROUP EFFORT
One type of new client food pantries are beginning to see is furloughed federal workers who have lost their paychecks due to the five-week government shutdown, which ended Friday.
“With the shutdown, our numbers are up,” said Susan Gilbert, program coordinator for social services at the Salvation Army in Tupelo, which serves clients in Lee, Union, Prentiss and northern Monroe counties. “We are more than happy to assist federal employees. All they have to do is bring in their federal ID.”
Martin said St. Luke opened its pantry to furloughed workers for the first time on Jan. 17.
“We only had five come through that day, but that was probably because the word wasn’t out,” he said. “We still collect their data. They might receive too much income to receive assistance, but if they’re not getting a paycheck, they have a need. Even when the shutdown ends, we will still extend services to those people until they receive a paycheck and get back on their feet.”
In addition to furloughed workers, Gilbert said the Salvation Army also serves the elderly on fixed incomes, the working poor and the homeless.
One of the busiest times of the year at the pantry, she said, is the summer, when kids are out of school and home. They’re often bored and want to eat more.
“We see that increase in need for food during the summer at the same time donations are down,” Gilbert said. “People think of us during Thanksgiving and Christmas, but we’re here 365 days a year.”
At First United Methodist Church’s Helping Hands, between 500 and 600 families are served per month, said Bonnie Sisco, who manages the food pantry, which is open every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.
“We have a big cross-range of people we serve,” Sisco said. “The saddest cases are the little grandmothers who, for whatever reason, are trying to raise five or six grandkids. They’re really struggling on a limited income with all those mouths to feed.”
Sisco said frustration sets in, sometimes, when food banks tell them they’re just enabling people.
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Jason Martin, director of St. Luke Food Pantry, breaks down a box while filling the shelves at the pantry on Eason Boulevard in Tupelo.
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“But it is what it is,” she said. “We don’t turn anybody away. There have been cases of abuse and we can’t control that. The ones who abuse it are the ones who have to answer for that. We just try to follow our conscience.”
A typical Helping Hands food box contains staple items, like flour, corn meal, macaroni and cheese, canned tuna, canned vegetables rice, dry beans and peanut butter. Non-regular items, when available, include frozen meats, cereal and toiletry items.
“We’re giving it out as fast as we can get it,” she said. “Around Christmas, we get a lot of donations, but the rest of the year, people don’t think about it. Money helps us most because we can make the dollars stretch more at food banks.”
Sisco said sometimes people want to give something tangible, rather than cash or a check. The staples the food pantry can always use include plastic jars of peanut butter, boxes of macaroni and cheese, canned tuna, crackers and cereal.
“What we need as much as food, though, are volunteers,” she said. “We’re always struggling with volunteers to work on Saturday. But it’s a blessing to be down there.”
Another blessing, Sisco said, is how well all the local food pantries work together.
“We’re all here for the same reason,” she said.
Gilbert echoed that sentiment, saying if a company makes a huge donation of food to the Salvation Army, she shares it with other food pantries.
“One thing I like about Tupelo is there isn’t a bunch of chiefs and just a few Indians,” Gilbert said. “It takes a community to help a community.”
