When 300 people call the USDA office and leave a message to call Melvin, it gets results.
The Rev. Melvin Stapp, a crusader for free food for his neighbors, said a local effort to get the attention of the USDA met with results on Friday. "We kept fighting until we could get it done," he said.
The move means that a local distribution point for Farmers To Families, a USDA-led effort, is getting the go-ahead for the next phase. A supplier and federal funds have been secured, Stapp said.
The Farmers to Families effort is a project that taps suppliers and transports food to those who need it -- at no cost. Volunteers who help do not financially strap the distribution, Stapp said. Locally, several volunteers from McDonald County drive up to Neosho, get the boxes of food and milk, and then bring them back for distribution at various spots.
Stapp is pastor of Monark Southern Baptist Church of Neosho, which serves as a hub for a food distribution network that ranges from Chicago, Ill., to Memphis, Tenn., to parts of Oklahoma. Locally, food is delivered weekly to the church in Neosho. The church services a 10-county area, including north to Nevada, south to the Arkansas state-line, and south of Monett, Stapp said.
The USDA-operated Farmers to Families project began last year and helped many families stretch their food budgets and fill their kitchen cabinets. Near year's end, however, Stapp believed that the project's funding was running out.
He had no confirmation that the project would continue. He also knew that his neighbors needed food badly during this pandemic when many have lost their jobs.
So he put out a call for multiple volunteers to call the associate director at the USDA office. About 300 people called, each leaving a message for the director to call Stapp. When the director called him, Stapp lobbied for those who need food. The amount of people needing food to feed their families during this pandemic is a constant, he said.
The conversation resulted in securing a supplier to distribute food and rolling the Farmers to Families effort into its next phase. However, this phase will not be the same as in the past, he said. The hub will receive fewer boxes than it used to in Phase 4. Volunteers will have to rotate delivery so people can take advantage of the free food, he said. Food will be distributed to McDonald County twice each week. As of press time, distribution was set for the First Baptist Church in Southwest City and Sims Corner Church in Pineville on Wednesday; on Thursday, volunteers will distribute food at the Church of Latter-Day Saints Church near the McDonald County High School, First Baptist Church in Goodman, Swars Prairie Baptist Church in Seneca and Body of Christ Outreach Ministries in Wheaton.
"We will keep alternating the distribution," he said. "We are trying to target different folks. There are not enough boxes allotted from our supplier to cover McDonald and Newton counties," he said. Still, Phase 5 is a step in the right direction, he said. "We are trying to get more product and more money," he said.
Those who accept a box of food will be asked their name, the number of people in their households, their town and their county. All that information will be compiled for the USDA. "We will do this for the first week, and then on Feb. 1, they will look at all the information," Stapp said. "We are hoping they will adjust upward."
In the meantime, Stapp is asking neighbors to continue to write to their legislators and senators about the need for additional food distribution. "We have to educate the guys who make the decisions," he said.
Neighbors needing food are encouraged to stay in contact with their food distribution point in McDonald County, and also access Monark Southern Baptist Church on social media, he said.