Knowing that many on a fixed income have to pay someone to drive them to the nearest grocery store, Mari Alyce Earnest was immediately on board when she was approached about helping open a food pantry in Quitman County.
Earnest is an agent with the Mississippi State University Extension Service in Marks. As county coordinator, she oversees the 4-H and family and consumer sciences responsibilities for the county. In these roles, she is acutely aware of her neighbors’ battle for food security.
“Quitman County has been a food desert with the highest food insecurity rate in the state,” she said. The county went without a grocery store for more than five years, with the nearest one more than 20 miles away, but this month a new grocery market has opened in Marks.
Several years ago, when a representative of the Mid-South Food Bank in Memphis came to the Extension office in Marks, Earnest launched efforts to establish a food bank in the community. She helped form a committee that includes herself, area pastors, elected officials and people in the community who know how to get things done. The Delta Mission Outreach Ministry Alliance, operated by a local church, provided access to a back room in the building they had previously used as a community center.
“Since its inception, the food pantry has completely taken over the building,” said Earnest, adding that food is received from Midsouth Food Bank in Memphis, Jackson USDA, Mississippi Food Network, and Helping Hands in Southaven.
The effort is volunteer driven and overseen by a board of directors. There are four distribution days every month with participants receiving a box containing canned goods, frozen meat and dry goods such as pasta and peanut butter.
During any given month, the food pantry serves more than 800 families, or nearly half the county’s population of 6,792.
“Our food pantry is an absolute necessity for our community because we have people who would go hungry without it,” Earnest said.
“Organizing and manning the food pantry takes a lot of time and effort, but it just takes one sweet person coming up and saying how much she appreciates what we’re doing for it to make you feel good and know this is what you are supposed to be doing,” she said.