On Wednesday, Arkansas officials announced the recipients of four $10,000 grants to help alleviate the state’s widespread food insecurity problems.

The city of Pine Bluff and the University of Arkansas Department of Agriculture in Jefferson County, Innovative Community Concepts in Pulaski County and McElroy House in Yell County received grants, first announced by the Arkansas Minority Health Commission in December.

The honorees will work to implement a plan to eliminate food deserts and improve access to healthy, affordable food in their communities, said Kenya Eddings, director of the Arkansas Minority Health Commission, during a news conference Wednesday at the state Capitol in Little Rock. Each of the four honorees is taking a different approach to addressing food insecurity in the state.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, food insecurity is a condition in which people have “limited or uncertain access to adequate food.” The Minority Health Commission defines a food desert as communities where “residents must travel more than one mile in urban areas and more than 10 miles in rural areas to obtain a variety of fresh, nutritious foods.”

In 2022, Arkansas had the highest food insecurity in the country, and every county in the state had at least one food desert, Eddings said.

Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders described food insecurity as a “major and growing problem throughout Arkansas.”

“We know there are still weaknesses in the system, and one of the biggest weaknesses that families are falling through is the food deserts in our state,” Sanders said at Wednesday’s press conference. However, the governor said the grants are “a good first step to address this problem.”

Pine Bluff will use its funds to study the socioeconomic factors that affect food deserts in the city, according to a news release from the governor’s office following the announcement. The University of Arkansas Department of Agriculture will “establish and strengthen” community gardens in Jefferson County’s food deserts.

Innovative Community Concepts will develop a series of “mobile pop-up shops” to determine the feasibility of a mobile grocery store in Pulaski County and to gather stakeholders’ opinions on such stores. The pop-ups will be located in the four counties considered food deserts – Precincts 1, 2, 6 and 7.

In Yell County, McElroy House will develop a seed distribution and care program, and will partner with local food bank Sharing and Caring to create raised beds, expand bilingual garden models and develop a bilingual “local food calendar” that will provide information on events where locally grown produce is available, the release said.

“Today, grants start small, but their impact is enormous,” Sanders said.

Arkansas Secretary of Health Renee Mallory praised the four grantees’ strategies as innovative and emphasized the benefits their efforts could bring to their respective communities. At the press conference, she also described the health risks associated with food insecurity.

“We know that people who do not have access to healthy food in their neighborhoods are at higher risk of developing chronic diseases such as heart disease, obesity, diabetes or mental disorders,” she said.

Eddings also said food insecurity among school-age children can lead to lower test scores and more frequent disciplinary actions.

An October report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that 16.6% of Arkansas households surveyed from 2020 to 2022 experienced food insecurity in the past year — the highest percentage in the nation.

LaTisha Brunson, a council member for District 1 in Pine Bluff, called the grant “small but mighty.” After the Super 1 Foods grocery store in her district closed at the end of 2022, the area around the former store became a food desert. According to Brunson, the community’s older residents were hit particularly hard.

“They don’t have a way to eat healthy and have to find ways to get to the grocery store when there was a grocery store literally near them,” she said. “So right now we’re trying to pull all the resources together, connect with the right people and make sure we get another grocery store in our community because that’s really, really needed.”

Democratic Rep. Joy Springer of Little Rock believes the funds will help combat food insecurity in Pulaski County.

“In my district alone there are food deserts, so I’m happy,” she said of the announcement.

Last year, a Little Rock food desert task force unanimously endorsed the idea of ​​setting up a mobile grocery store. Springer described the $10,000 as “seed capital” that will be used in Little Rock to organize the mobile market and find out what residents need.

“Let’s go,” said Springer. “We have to address the situation.”

Information for this article was contributed by My Ly and Joseph Flaherty of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.