“As you can see, the shelves are empty,” she said. “We are in dire need of some food. Everything's expensive right now.”
The organization allows people to come to its food pantry every Tuesday and Thursday to receive bags of canned goods, pasta and other food. But shelves labeled for cereal, spaghetti sauce and rice are empty, while baby formula and powdered milk are in low quantities.
“Look around, I mean, everything is expensive right now,” Hennington said.
Bags of food are placed into red and white bins before being handed out to anyone from the community who comes into the food pantry.
“When people come in here, it's not like you and I going to the grocery store and we get all of our favorite things in a buggy,” Hennington said. “These are things that people are needing to survive to make a meal. They are not picky.”
Rachel Travis, who is the community relations coordinator with the Salvation Army of Jackson, agrees.
“One particular lady, she was saying how it's only March, and it's just been really hard,” Travis said. “She expressed that she lost her job last year and she's a single parent. So the pantry has really, really blessed her and her family.”
Inside the Mississippi Food Network's warehouse in Jackson, pallets of food are being organized. Food and goods are distributed to partner agencies, including the Salvation Army of Jackson. Robin Copeland, with the food network, says organizations should have multiple streams of support.
“What we encourage is food drives, resourcing food in the community and letting the community know what they're doing to help meet the need out there,” she said. “We don't think that we live in the United States, and people are hungry, but our neighbors are hungry.”
Recently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cut the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) Cooperative Agreement Program that helped food banks purchase food from nearby farmers. In the past, Mississippi’s Department of Agriculture received nearly $7 million dollars from this program.
Charles Beady is the CEO of the Mississippi Food Network, which previously participated in the LFPA program.
“We're not hurting as such in that regard,” he said. “But certainly the more money comes in, the better able we are to do what we need to do to get food to those who need it.”
