The Rotary Club of Warren met for its weekly meeting Tuesday, July 25 at First United Methodist Church. Rotarian Dixon Platt arranged the program but was unable to present so Rotarian Bob Milton introduced David King of Arkansas Foodbank to the club. King explained his role with the Arkansas Foodbank warehouse here in Warren. The warehouse in Warren is responsible for distributing food to 62 pantries in 11 counties (Ashley, Bradley, Calhoun, Chicot, Cleveland, Dallas, Desha, Drew, Lincoln, Ouachita, and Union) and could add more pantries soon. King has two other employees at the Warren location with one being over the warehouse who loads and unloads trucks and the other being a truck drive to make the rounds to all of these food pantries. The main Arkansas Foodbank warehouse is in Little Rock, while there is only one other location in Arkansas in the town of Lexa. King stated that Arkansas Foodbank, which serves 33 total counties across the state, gets food from Feeding America and most of the food they get comes from Walmart, Kroger, and Sam’s Club. King also mentioned that local farmers donate a lot of produce, which is always in high demand, to the Warren location. He let the crowd know that all of the food they get is measured in pounds, not by boxes or pallets, and that they go through 472,000 to 475,000 pounds of food per month which is more than five million pounds of food per year. King went on to say that 1 in 5 Arkansans don’t know where their next meal will come from and that around 35% of people they serve have jobs but are still at risk of going hungry, so it isn’t just as simple as having a job curing food insecurity. King ended the presentation by answering several questions from club members.
Top photo: Rotarian Bob Milton (left) and David King of Arkansas Foodbank
