Arkansas Food Bank strives to fulfill mission in fight against food insecurity
JONESBORO — Like many other states in the impoverished Delta region of the United States, Arkansas snuggles with food insecurity. In fact, the state ranks as having one of the highest rates of food insecurity in the nation. Per Feeding America, the largest hunger-relief organization in the country, Arkansas ranked second only to Mississippi with a food insecurity rate of 17.3 percent in 2019. Even worse, more than 23 percent of Arkansas children were considered food insecure.
And the coronavirus pandemic, which has amassed a nationwide death toll of more than 550,000 people and counting and led to a devastating spike in nationwide and state unemployment rates, only made those food insecurity numbers worse. A Feeding America study released in March estimated that almost 160,000 new Arkansans were food insecure by the end of 2021, or 22.5 percent of the state’s population. One in three children in Arkansas are estimated to currently grow up in food insecure households in the state.
But, those are just the numbers. Behind the endless tables of statistics and graphs, there are actual people. People who need help, and people who make up the organizations that stand ready to help. One of those organizations is the self-proclaimed “foundation in the fight against hunger,” the Arkansas Food Bank. Opened in January of 1984, the Arkansas Food Bank headquartered in Little Rock is the largest of six food banks in the state.
The facility services 33 counties from the southern part of Arkansas to the upper reaches of central Arkansas. A part of Feeding America and partnered with the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance, the Arkansas Food Bank has 450 local partner agencies across the state and, in typical years, delivers more than 24 million pounds of food to the counties it services, per the food bank’s website.
However, 2021 was no typical year. Due to the lingering coronavirus pandemic, the bank distributed more than 40 million pounds of food last year, a 37 percent increase over 2020. While that number is expected to drop this year, the gap between available food and the hungry of Arkansas remains. Communications Director Lea Whitlock attributed the increase of distribution in 2020 to the challenges the coronavirus pandemic brought on.
Normally an organization which works through its partner agencies, the food bank was forced to pack and distribute its inventory of bought and donated foods directly into the hands of Arkansans in 2020 because so many of the food bank’s regular partner agencies were closed. That trend continued in 2021.
“We flipped the way we worked in order to fit the need [the coronavirus pandemic brought on],” Food Bank Chief Executive Officer Rhonda Sanders said.
Using every space available in its massive (and newly-opened) 99,000 square-foot facility to accommodate social distancing and the increased inventory of food the bank received through government programs, the 75 food bank employees took the role that volunteers would take in normal years: packing boxes and distributing them directly into the hands of hungry Arkansans.
“Our staff never went home,” Sanders said. “We turn[ed] our warehouse inventory over in about four to five weeks.”
A key part of the food bank’s focus was mobile distribution centers (MDC). MDCs, or loaded trucks full of boxed food which were taken to central points like the parking lots of stores and distributed to waiting families, jumped by a factor of 10 in 2020.
In 2021, 602 MDCs were organized compared to just 151 in 2020, per Whitlock.
Food Bank Community Engagement Coordinator Daniel Frazier said the
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scale-up of MDCs was a “fight-or-flight” response to the coronavirus pandemic that will remain in place moving forward, albeit at a more manageable level.
Another key part of the food bank’s success in distributing so much food in 2020 was the governmental aid and assistance programs which supplied more food than usual to the food bank’s warehouse in Little Rock. In fact, Sanders said at one point in 2020, the warehouse’s inventory was constituted of 60 percent of food from governmental sources.
“[Federal programs] gave us the engine to distribute 40 million pounds of food [in 2020],” Sanders said.
The sheer volume of federal food aid the facility received in 2020 will surely lead to a drop in distribution in 2021, Sanders said. Accounting for the drop down to about 35 percent of the warehouse’s inventory coming from governmental sources, Sanders said the food bank’s 2021 goal is to distribute 38 million pounds of food, 2 million pounds fewer than the load distributed across Arkansas in 2020.
Goals and numbers are great, Sanders said, but the real emphasis should be on the people.
“I can give you all the numbers in the world, but it’s really about the person [who needs assistance],” Sanders said. “It’s about the family that needs help.” And every Arkansas Food Bank employee has a story which illustrates the breadth of the problem of food insecurity in Arkansas, Sanders said, recounting the story of being out at an MDC and distributing 850 boxes of food in 45 minutes.
Moments after the last box was given away, Sanders said, a young woman pulled up with her family and broke down when she found out there were no more boxes.
The stories aren’t all sad, though. Another family gleefully cheered when they received a jug of milk. Sanders said the children’s mother told her they hadn’t been able to afford milk for three months.
Food bank workers are also aware of how limited some government assistance is.
Sanders said her warehouse staff attempted to live off the same amount of money an average Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipient gets from the program for a week several years ago.
She said her workers were “dropping out like flies” with illnesses due to lack of nourishment.
“Just handing someone a box of food isn’t going to cure [all of their troubles], but it does allow them to use their money to do other things with their lives,” Sanders said.
To fulfill its mission, however, the Arkansas Food Bank needs assistance. And while the food bank receives lots of food donations it will always welcome (food donations in 2020 were valued at some $40 million), monetary donations are the best method to making a lasting impact on food insecurity in the state.
“We want your money because we can do more with it,” Sanders said.
And do more it can. For every dollar donated to the Arkansas Food Bank, 96 cents of it goes to its food distribution programs to buy and deliver food, per Whitlock. And those 96 cents go further than one might think. The Arkansas Food Bank can use a combination of donated and sourced food and the money to create five meals from one dollar. While canned foods and other non-perishable food donations
money the food bank receives allow them to buy perishable items like produce and fresh meat and other crucial nutritional needs for all Arkansans.
“We’ve been blessed to have wonderful [financial] support and we use our money wisely,” Sanders said.
A question which seems to allude Sanders, however, is why Arkansas continues to rank so high in its food insecurity rates. Attributing it as the “million dollar question,” Sanders noted that up until the coronavirus pandemic, the state was making gains, having just recovered from the skyrocketed food insecurity rates which began in the aftermath of the 2008 Recession. With all those gains wiped out in only a year, Sanders said the issue of food insecurity isn’t clearcut.
“Hunger isn’t always a disease unto itself,” Sanders said. “Hunger is a symptom of other diseases.”
Those diseases, Sanders said, include low rates of college education and income, two categories in which Arkansas ranks alongside the worst in the nation.
Despite the challenges and seemingly insurmountable circumstances of food insecurity across the state, the Arkansas Food Bank will keep on its mission, Sanders said. A mission to feed hungry Arkansans and to meet people where they are. A mission to be the foundation in the fight against hunger.
