Arkansas continues to be the most food-insecure state in America. On Friday, nonprofit leaders and elected officials gathered in Springdale to announce the launch of a new initiative that aims to address that need. The Arkansas Full Table Fund will provide grants to nonprofits, municipalities and school districts working to reduce food insecurity across the state.
The Walmart Foundation is providing a five-year, $10 million grant to launch the fund. Julie Gehrki is the president of the foundation. She says this investment is about helping families get the food they need today while building stronger and more reliable food systems in the future.
“And it’s an invitation to others to join us. At Walmart, we believe our long-term success is connected to the well-being of the people and the communities we serve. Keeping food affordable, making nutritious choices accessible and using our stores’ pickup and delivery capabilities to make it easier for people to get what they need. It also means making nutrition benefits easier to use and donating safe, unsold food rather than allowing it to go to waste.”
Jessica Ford is the president and CEO of Arkansas Community Foundation. She says that the Walmart Foundation, in conjunction with additional funders Tyson Foods and Cargill, unites public agencies, farmers, corporations and foundations in a common mission. The fund will accept grant applications that fall into three categories: advocate, strengthen and innovate.
“We think that that’s a more systemic approach. It’s both providing support for those organizations that are improving, like SNAP registrations and benefits like that, then supporting current infrastructure and then the innovative side of addressing food insecurity.”
Gehrki says food security is a complicated thing to solve.
“Families need food today, and meeting that need is essential. But if we want to make lasting progress, we also have to ask what needs to work differently so that families don’t keep encountering the same barriers tomorrow. A food bank may need more than food. It needs the cold storage, transportation or technology to get the food where it’s needed. A family may qualify for nutrition benefits but struggle to navigate the process. Strong organizations may be doing important work but lack the connections and infrastructure to work together effectively. It also means looking further upstream, helping create pathways to greater economic opportunity so that over time, families have the resources and resilience to meet their own needs.”
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders says Arkansas’ food insecurity statistics are unacceptable to her. She says it’s something her administration has worked every day to help combat.
“I was proud to make Arkansas the first state in the South to offer free school breakfast to every single public school across Arkansas. And thanks to Sen. Boozman’s work on Capitol Hill, we were able to sign Arkansas up for Summer EBT, and we created the Arkansas Plate and Arkansas Rice Schools Initiative to get healthy, homegrown food on our kids’ lunch plates. We’ll put the same drive behind the Arkansas Full Table Fund to ensure every kid and family in our state has access to the food that they need to thrive.”
U.S. Sen. John Boozman says now is the time to take action like this because there are good metrics measuring what’s going on across the state.
“And sadly, Arkansas is right at the top in all of those metrics in regarding the food insecurity. So we’ve got that problem. The other problem that we didn’t talk about in there is we work hard and we’ve got some really good federal programs. When you look at the uptake, the people that are actually on the programs, even though we have one of the highest food insecurity states in the nation, we have also one of the lowest uptakes of the programs that are provided by the federal government.”
In August, an analysis by Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families showed that about 20,000 fewer Arkansans were participating in SNAP in July 2026 than in October 2025, including more than 10,000 fewer children. The organization says changes made to SNAP by the One Big Beautiful Bill are likely contributors, such as expanded work requirements and restrictions on lawfully residing immigrants’ eligibility.
The Sanders administration has also made changes to what SNAP recipients can purchase with their benefits. In July, the state began to ban the use of funds to purchase soda, candy, juices with less than 50% natural juice and other highly processed foods. Gov. Sanders said the ban was necessary to reduce rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease statewide.
The Arkansas Full Table Fund will support efforts to help qualified people access nutrition programs, strengthen the systems and infrastructure already in place and pilot new ideas. Jessica Ford with Arkansas Community Foundation says she hopes to see nonprofits from across the state submitting grant proposals.
“That includes food banks, food pantries, schools, municipalities, any innovative approach, whether it’s backpack programs or other innovative ways that people are getting food to Arkansans, whether it’s mobile units to rural areas, or I can think of Arkansas Hunters Feeding the Hungry would be a great, innovative approach to helping end hunger. So we’re hoping that these organizations that are working to help end hunger will partner up and apply. I think that’ll be a great strategy if they’re seeking funds from us, is to show that they’re partnering while we’re partnering, and that gives a greater chance to get good funding.”
Julie Gehrki with the Walmart Foundation says she’s excited about the opportunity for grant recipients to work together over the coming years.
“So it’s not just, ‘Hey, you got some money, now you go do this.’ It’s, ‘We’re going to come together. We’re going to look at the data along the way. We’re going to figure out what’s working. We’re going to look at other states and what they’ve learned.’ It’s the real opportunity to think as a system, not just an organization. And we believe that’s a real distinctive approach of the fund in the next five years.”
So with a $10 million grant over five years, what does success look like? Gov. Sanders gives a direct answer.
“I would say that nobody’s hungry in our state. And so that we’re successful in moving Arkansas from the bottom to the top and creating a national blueprint of what happens when everybody comes together, works together and addresses a big need. And so when we get to a place where nobody’s applying for grants and nobody is looking for food to put on their table, then I would call that a success.”
Sen. Boozman says the most important thing for him is getting buy-in.
“What they’re going to be doing, challenging the rest of us to step up, we’re going to make this a priority. And in doing so, that’s really how you get it done.”
Organizations can apply for two-year grants Oct. 1 through Dec. 7, with the possibility of additional funding over the course of the five-year program. Grants will be announced in February.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
