Mid-South Food Bank has shuttered 12 of its mobile food banks in Mississippi as well as dozens of others in Arkansas and Tennessee with the ending of federal COVID-19 rescue funding.
Under the America Rescue Fund Act, the Department of Human Services, Office of Economic Opportunity, awarded $4.3 million to food banks across the country. Mid-South Food Bank added more sites to its mobile food program to reach more people during the COVID lockdowns in 2020.
Interim President and CEO Scott Fortin explained that the cuts are part of the nonprofit’s efforts to spend their donations and funding better. He said some of these sites were redundant as there were brick-and-mortar locations close by.
“We are doing our best to continue to distribute food through the programs that we’ve always had, and while looking at those programs we expanded during COVID to see how they can continue to run but more efficiently” he said.
In all, 49 mobile sites were closed. The food bank’s website has a schedule of all the current mobile pantry locations and times.
The Mid-South Food Bank distributes over 2.5 million meals annually to parts of Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi with 186,550 of them in Mississippi.
Memphis-based Mid-South Food Bank serves 440,000 meals a year. It saw a huge spike in demand during the pandemic. Fortin said that has since decreased. But in general, food banks across the country are reporting increased demand, according to a 2023 survey by Feeding America.
Food insecurity went up after the COVID pandemic, according to a 2023 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the latest available. The U.S. House resolution budget bill passed this week and endorsed by President Trump includes $230 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program (SNAP). If it passes, food banks could be impacted even more.
While nationally one in 10 Americans are food insecure, in Mississippi the number is one in four and the state has the highest rate of food insecurity in the country, according to Uproot Mississippi.
nonprofit food bank with a mission to fundraises to purchase new healthy and shelf stable foods that are delivered to 60 food pantry and soup kitchen partners for free monthly. Credit: Josh McCoy/City of Oxford
Executive director Martha Allen Price of Hattiesburg-based Extra Table, which receives no federal funding, said she’s seen an increase in demand for food since the pandemic, especially with rising grocery prices. She noted that “13.4% of Mississippians are working and still not making a living wage, and so they’re using the food pantry as an emergency source of food.”
Extra Table partners with food pantries to fundraise on their behalf for healthy and shelf-stable foods. Their funding comes entirely through private donations. They work with food pantries in 51 Mississippi counties.
“We provided 1.3 million pounds of food last year to our food pantry and soup kitchen partners,” Megan Burkes with Extra Table said.
Individuals can donate and volunteer directly to Mid-South Food Bank and Extra Table.
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