No state grapples with hunger, proportionally, as much as Mississippi, according to Mississippi Food Network CEO Charles Beady.
In fact, 20.8 percent of households in Mississippi are at risk of hunger, he said. That’s the highest, percentage-wise, in the country.
Beady, speaking Friday at Mississippi State University as the featured guest for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ Charles E. Lindley Lecture series, said the Mississippi Food Network is working with agencies across Mississippi to try to combat the state’s hunger issues. The Mississippi Food Network is the state’s only food bank associated with Feeding America, a nation-wide network of more than 200 food bank locations in almost every state.
The network has an 80,000 square foot facility in Jackson. Last year, Beady said, the Mississippi Food Network delivered more than 21.4 million pounds of food through the roughly 430 member agencies, such as churches, food pantries and other organizations that help in its mission.
While the work is impressive, it pales in comparison to some other food banks in the Feeding America Network that Beady highlighted during his talk.
For example, he said a food bank in Houston, Texas is 308,000 square feet, distributed 96 million pounds of food last year, employs about 180 people and had a $27 million budget last year.
Texas also has 16 food banks, according to a map on the Feeding America website, while Mississippi just has one.
“I’m trying to give you a comparison here,” Beady said. “We’re in a low-resource state. We’ve got $3.6 million. We’ve got 29 people who work for us. We’ve got two tractor trailers — a 24-footer and a 14-footer — that we distribute food through.”
Mississippi’s limited resources can present a problem, especially when coupled with the state’s high food insecurity. Food insecurity, Beady said, happens when someone doesn’t know when or how they’ll get their next meal.
He said that’s compounded by widespread food deserts across Mississippi. Beady said that U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food deserts as areas with a poverty rate higher than 30 percent and more than a third of the population living more than a mile from the nearest grocery store.
Food deserts are peppered across the state, according to a map based on USDA data that Beady presented during his lecture, which included southern Oktibbeha County, west and central Clay county and western Lowndes County. Almost all of Noxubee County, save Macon, is a food desert, according to the map.
“Nearly 600,000 people live in food deserts in Mississippi,” Beady said. “Food deserts don’t just exist in the Mississippi Delta. A lot of people think food deserts are in the Mississippi Delta. There are 19 census tracts in Jackson, Mississippi, our state capital, that are identified as food deserts.”
During a question-and-answer session, Beady also pointed out Mississippi’s hunger problems have, paradoxically, contributed to it being the fattest state in the nation. He said part of that is because people eat a lot of junk food, which is cheap, but unhealthy.
Helen Beady, Charles’ wife, who works with the American Heart Association, said where people live can also play a big role in their health.
“When you start to talk about food insecurity, it’s the conditions in which an individual lives,” she said. “I am from the Delta, and certainly we know that we’re the most food insecure. …ZIP codes, matter, but there’s social determinates for health. Health is where you live, where you work, where you play, where you raise your family and all that.”
Beady said hunger takes a lot of forms, but the Mississippi Food Network does what it can to combat it.
“Hunger in Mississippi has many faces,” Beady said. “Seniors, the young, struggling mothers, mothers-to-be. They’re white. They’re black. You don’t have to be poor in the traditional sense of being poor to not know how or when you might get you next meal. Losing a spouse, losing a job can put you in a situation where you need help, and that’s all part and parcel of why we exist at the Mississippi Food Network.”
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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A map, based on USDA data, shows census tracts in Mississippi that are considered food deserts, in red. Mississippi Food Network CEO Charles Beady presented the map during a Friday lecture at MSU. Photo by: Alex Holloway/Dispatch Staff
