720,000 Mississippians are having difficulties purchasing food, an increase by 75% from 2018. Charles Beady, CEO of the Mississippi Food Network, says this is in large part due to the economic impacts of the coronavirus as many Mississippians are out of work. He says in 2020 the Food Network has already distributed more food than all of last year. "Last year we distributed 29.7 million pounds of food for the calendar year, so far this year we've distributed over 31 million pounds of food, and we still have three months to go in the calendar year. The numbers speak for themselves," says Beady.
To meet the needs of Mississippians who are facing food insecurity, more churches and organizations opened food pantries to give more options, says Jim Long, CEO of FAITH Food Pantry in Nettleton. He says the demand at his pantry went down for a period of time, but as those churches and organizations closed, his normal client base of more than 800 families has returned. "Because of COVID-19, our number of volunteers has dropped to about 70, and we've had to come up with a different model for giving the food out," says Long. "We now pre-pack all the dry stuff. You can't take the refrigerated stuff out, and the produce won't last, so we have to do it on Saturday morning still."
This is the third round of the USDA purchasing food to provide free food products, but funding is more limited than previous rounds.
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