Leflore County residents interested in receiving a box full of meat and dairy products and fresh produce will have the opportunity to do so Friday.
Food boxes will be given away for free beginning at 11 a.m. at the Leflore County Agri-Center on Cypress Avenue.
The event is a combined effort by the Mississippi Crisis Foundation, an organization formed last year to help families and communities across the Delta with crises, and Greenwood’s Express Grain Terminals, LLC, which is sponsoring Friday’s giveaway.
Jimmy Horne, marketing director for Express Grain, said Blayke Hester, the Leflore County coordinator for the Mississippi Crisis Foundation and an oil production manager for Express Grain, coordinated the event and asked employees of Express Grain to volunteer on Friday.
Express Grain also made a financial contribution to the Mississippi Crisis Foundation to sponsor the event.
More than 1,000 food boxes, each weighing about 30 pounds, will be given away — one to each vehicle.
Pam Chatman, a former Greenville television news director and co-founder of the Mississippi Crisis Foundation, which launched in August of last year, said the foundation has given away more than 300 million pounds of food boxes throughout 45 counties, including Leflore County, which has had two food box giveaways.
The boxes to be given away this Friday as well as those distributed previously are part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farmers to Families Food Box Program. That program, which was created last summer and is part of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, assists farmers, food suppliers and communities affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The USDA purchases dairy and meat products and fresh produce from food suppliers across the country who lost business from the closure of restaurants and hotels. The USDA then has those products transported to community-based organizations to distribute in food boxes to the needy. In its fifth round of purchases, the most recent continuation of the program, 2.5 million food boxes were invoiced for distribution.
•Contact Gerard Edic at 581-7239 or gedic@gwcommonwealth.com.
