This story from Reasons to be Cheerful is one in a series about the confluence of capitalism, conservation and cultural identity in the Mississippi River Basin. It is part of Waterline and is sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation.

Dorothy Grady pulled at a tuft of green fronds sprouting from one of an array of soil-filled buckets sitting in the driveway of her house. A plump carrot, five inches long and brilliant orange, popped out.

Nearby, a sage shrub grew from another bucket, and scallions crowded a squat grow bag. In about three weeks, Grady would kick off the spring growing season on the land she cultivates around Shelby, Mississippi, including two plots at the now-closed middle school across the street, a small grove of peach and pear trees up the road, and five acres outside of town. She was ready to start planting eggplants, melons, tomatoes and a cornucopia of other produce that would soon end up in the homes of 127 nearby residents. 

Shelby, a few miles east of the Mississippi River, is surrounded by flat, fertile farmland. But Grady’s vegetables and fruit are some of the only crops around that make it to local plates. The vast majority of Mississippi Delta farms are devoted to commodity crops like soy and corn.

Grady is one of almost a dozen local growers supplying produce to Delta GREENS, a collaborative research project that is delivering fresh ingredients to residents of Bolivar, Sunflower and Washington counties with diabetes and monitoring the health impacts. This “food is medicine” project is one of a number of initiatives that are supporting farmers and expanding the market for locally grown produce in this western Mississippi region. The benefits run in both directions: At the same time that community members are getting access to these nutritious ingredients, the small-scale farmers who grow them are getting a leg up.

“What we’re trying to do is build cooperative development amongst the farms,” says Julian Miller, founding director for the Reuben V. Anderson Institute for Social Justice in Jackson, a co-principal investigator for Delta GREENS, and a long-time local food advocate in the Delta region. “Ultimately, we want to be able to give them the capacity to scale and capture the broader market.”

The 200-mile-long Delta region, on the fertile floodplain sandwiched between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, has a rich agricultural history. Once known for growing cotton, today the area is dominated by ridged fields growing commodities that will be processed into animal feed or ethanol.

In the past, many Delta residents cultivated fruits and vegetables, says Miller, yet over time, pressures like farming mechanization and loss of land eroded the practice. Miller, a fifth-generation Delta resident who grew up a few miles away from Shelby, never saw anyone with a vegetable garden. “That tradition was lost, as far as growing your food,” he says. 

Today, despite the abundance of fertile land, very little of it is dedicated to edible crops. About 90 percent of the food people eat in this region is grown elsewhere and imported. “That’s the irony,” Miller says.

And even imported fresh food can be hard to access. As of 2021, 63 of Mississippi’s 82 counties were classified as food deserts, meaning there is no grocery store or option to buy fresh ingredients in the immediate area.

Significant health and economic inequities overlay this region. In Bolivar, Sunflower and Washington counties — where the Delta GREENS study is focused — almost a third of residents live at or below the poverty level. Meanwhile, the rate of diabetes is twice the national average.

This confluence of public health disparities, economic inequity and lack of food sovereignty has fueled an effort to reestablish food-growing traditions, led by growers like Grady. A child of sharecroppers, Grady recalls her family always kept a garden when she was growing up, exchanging veggies and fruits with neighbors.

She has been involved with growing the local food movement in the Delta since the 1990s, when she first started working on farm-to-school garden projects.

In addition to helping establish hundreds of community gardens at schools and churches around the region, she’s also expanded her own growing operation, now supplying her harvests to residents in and around Bolivar County. Last year, the peach and pear trees she keeps yielded about 30 bushels of fruit, which went to local schools and was distributed through produce boxes for participants in the Delta GREENS study.

These weekly produce boxes are helping to address one of the structural challenges of developing the local food system in the Delta, explains Miller: the lack of a consistent market. While many residents are interested in eating more local produce, growers don’t have a reliable pathway to sell to the public. But nutrition- and food-security projects that source produce from local farmers are helping those agricultural businesses scale up.

About 40 miles northeast of Shelby, Robbie Pollard is busy planting and tending to more than 10 acres of fruit and vegetable plants. 

Pollard grew up around farming — his grandfather grew commodity crops. But he says he didn’t know anything about cultivating food until he tried growing his own in his backyard. It turned out to be a calling, he says, and he soon left his job in IT to pursue it full time.

Farming fruits and vegetables is more complex than commodity crops, explains Pollard. For one, it’s more labor intensive — weeding, tending and harvesting by hand. Unlike commodity farmers, who deliver their crops directly to local co-ops, distribution is harder for fruits and vegetables, Pollard says: “We have to find our own markets.”

Pollard has found a range of ways to distribute his produce through his farm, Start 2 Finish, and his associated healthy foods initiative Happy Foods Project. Today, he is one of the main growers supplying for Delta GREENS, as well as similar projects that provide households with regular local food boxes, including another food prescription project, Northern Mississippi FoodRx, in conjunction with the University of Mississippi. This summer, he’ll also be distributing through a mobile market, and he recently started selling through a grocery store with a focus on local products that opened in the city of Clarksdale in May.

Produce prescription boxes have given him a way to steadily expand his farm by reinvesting each year in incremental upgrades. He’s progressed from doing all his work by hand, to having a tiller, then a small tractor. He’s now leasing 46 acres of cropland. Last year, he grew four acres. This season, he put in more than 10, with plans in the works to expand hydroponic and aquaponic capacity. Soon, he hopes to work with other local growers to try a range of different techniques across the acreage.

Tyler Yarbrough, Mississippi Delta project manager for the nationwide organization Partnership for a Healthier America, has worked alongside Pollard on a range of projects building out the region’s local food movement, including some that provide households with produce for a limited amount of time — like Good Food at Home, which has supplied about 500,000 servings of produce to local families through weekly boxes, each household eligible for 12 weeks at a time. Through these shorter-term projects, growers are able to take steps to become more stable, while building a demand for local produce among consumers.

“You can leverage it to bring on the consistency, and to further bring those markets into your orbit,” Yarbrough says.

While produce box models have yielded success, they have the most impact for farmers when they’re paired with other initiatives, according to Yarbrough. What’s key is to give growers flexibility with funding so they can build up over time.

“It can’t just be one thing,” Yarbrough says. “It needs to be coupled with funds for these farmers to actually build their capacity on their farm. It needs to be coupled with connecting all the dots with the market. It has to be a holistic approach.”

Within the Delta region, the local food movement still faces many barriers, according to Natalie Minton, a University of Mississippi researcher who is working with Pollard to study the local food market, and on North Mississippi Food Rx. Growers struggle to find — and afford — workers. And without a reliable market, growing their business is very difficult.

There are also environmental factors. Beyond extreme weather, like drought and severe storms, growers face challenges related to the dominant commodity cropland. Pesticides and chemicals routinely used on commodity crops drift, harming food crops.

Yet, Minton says the roots of change in the local food system are taking hold. The success of farmers like Pollard is showing how specialty farming can be a viable career.

For projects that rely on grants and outside funding like Mississippi Fresh, another major challenge is working with federal programs, according to Miller. Trump administration cuts, including to subsidies that support buying from local producers, are straining local food systems. Delta GREENS is funded through the National Institutes of Health, and Miller says there is uncertainty around whether support will continue. 

Despite the uncertainty, the local food movement in the Mississippi Delta is notable because it is so locally driven, says Marlene Manzo, of HEAL Food Alliance, a food justice coalition that works with groups across the country, including Mississippi Fresh. Manzo says that the growth of the local food supply within the Mississippi Delta shows the power of working at a small scale to make changes that really respond to the community.

“What we do know is building collective power within our communities and in regional systems can really make a large, lasting impact,” she says.

Grady sees a shift happening in the community. She knows more people, including her family members, who are starting to grow some of their own food. One former student is now a chef in a nearby school district. He’s keeping a garden and using the ingredients in the school kitchen.

“The interest of other people wanting to do this kind of work was the greatest reward of it all,” she says.

Elizabeth Hewitt is a freelance journalist based in the Netherlands. She’s interested in how policy-making impacts lives, and likes to write about local solutions to big problems.

School districts in Humphreys County and Yazoo City are one step closer to regaining local control. 

The Mississippi Department of Education on Tuesday disbanded the Mississippi Achievement School District, which consolidated the struggling school districts in 2019 into a single one under direct state supervision. 

The Legislature created the Mississippi Achievement School District in 2016 to target the lowest-performing schools in the state. Yazoo City and Humphreys County, both majority-Black and low-income areas, were the district’s inaugural school systems. 

But House Bill 1696 passed in 2024 — co-authored by Democratic Rep. Timaka James-Jones, who represents Humphreys — dissolved the Mississippi Achievement School District starting July 1, 2025. 

Republican Rep. Kent McCarty of Lamar County, who authored the bill as vice-chair of the House Education Committee, said the legislation was aimed at giving districts more control.

“I hope the extra flexibility allows them to move toward more independence,” McCarty said Thursday. “Eventually, we’d love to see every district function independently without oversight from the department and make the improvements they need to be high-performing districts.”

But that doesn’t mean the districts are fully back to local control. They’ve just separated and become “districts of transformation” — a different, more widespread framework for low-performing schools to improve their student achievement. 

School systems can become districts of transformation if they consistently receive failing grades in the state’s accountability report card. Under that model, those districts have to develop and implement improvement plans. They get support from the state education department and are closely overseen by the agency. State takeovers can mean more teaching observations and frequent classroom visits from administrators. 

Since 1996, school districts have been taken over using the “district of transformation” model 23 times. Four districts currently operate under the model: Holmes, Noxubee, Humphreys County and Yazoo City.

Earl Watkins, who previously managed the Humphreys County and Yazoo City schools as superintendent of the achievement district, will take the helm of the Yazoo City school district, while Stanley Ellis will lead the Humphrey County district. 

The two superintendents will still answer directly to the state Board of Education.

That’ll be the case for at least one more year — both Yazoo City and Humphreys County received “C” marks on their state report card this past school year, so if they receive “C” grades this year, they still need one more consecutive year of that grade or higher to regain local control. 

“With the scores we have, we’re well on the way to the next steps,” James-Jones said. “It really does boost the pride of our community and we have this united goal now. We’re looking forward to our students getting everything that they need to be successful.”

Humphreys, which received a “D” rating during the 2023-2024 school year, made a “C” by two points.

The growth was largely due to higher scores among the bottom 25% of 3rd to 8th grade students in math and English. Both English and math test scores are given extra weight along with any improvements made by students in the bottom 25%.

Yazoo City raised its grade from an “F” through similar means, with math students in the bottom 25% showing more growth from last year. 

Tenashe White, who teaches 8th grade math in Humphreys, gives credit foremost to her students. But she also acknowledges the help of educational consultants and her fellow teachers who helped plan activities that helped students master math standards through play.

“We threw math bowls, science bowls, spelling competitions to kind of open it up more so they can have some fun but also perform on the tests,” White said. “We had different incentives like ice cream socials.”

Ellis started as the Humphreys superintendent Tuesday. He said anyone who’s not focused on teaching and learning will find themselves “out of place” at the district. 

“Our motto is, ‘New day, new direction,’” he said. “This is our opportunity to get a new start.”

The Trump administration has repeatedly denied disaster mitigation funding to states hit by extreme weather events, another step in President Donald Trump’s plan to downsize and phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and lawmakers aren’t sure why it keeps happening.

Since March, states including Oklahoma, Missouri, Iowa and Mississippi suffered severe storms, winds or wildfires and requested assistance through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program at FEMA, which provides funds to help protect against future natural disasters. Unlike the Biden administration, Trump is no longer automatically approving those grants and has denied seven requests this spring, according to Bloomberg, while six requests remain under review.

Oklahoma made one such funding request after March wildfires and winds ravaged the state, killing several people and damaging hundreds of homes, according to the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management. Those fires burned Gov. Kevin Stitt’s farmhouse to the ground.

FEMA approved several Fire Management Assistance Grants in Oklahoma, which help state, local and tribal governments cover fire-related damage costs, but it denied a request for mitigation funding in early June.

“Well, I’m usually on the side of my state, so we’ll wait and see what happens,” Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma said of the funding denial.

Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford said he’d have to see the requests in order to answer questions about the resilience funds. But while disaster aid is often necessary, it’s not simple, he said.

“There’s not a time, obviously, when there’s a disaster — maybe it would be a flood, a wildfire or our famous tornadoes — that we don’t need help from someone,” Lankford said. “But there’s a mixture of private insurance, state funding and federal funding, a formula set up on the federal side, to try to figure out when that actually kicks in. We’ve got to be able to make sure we actually meet that.”

At the beginning of June, the administration denied two requests from Missouri after tornadoes and storms in March and April killed residents and tore up communities.

Sen. Josh Hawley said he had talked to Trump about FEMA grants for Missouri in the past, which he was grateful the president had approved. But Hawley supports his state’s request for mitigation funding that Trump has since denied.

“It’s been a really tough spring in our state for natural disasters. We’ve lost almost 20 people, and all across the state, suffered a lot of damage,” Hawley said.

“We may have to go back and ask for more,” he said of FEMA funding. “We’re not able to do the recovery with what we’ve got.”

Bloomberg reported that Oklahoma received other federal funds it could use in a similar way to the HMGP grants and is not appealing the administration’s decision, but Missouri officials were already putting together an appeal.

In late May, the entire Washington delegation wrote to Trump after he denied aid funding for a November bomb cyclone that hit the state. The letter said the state’s request detailed over $30 million in damages, costs that local governments cannot and should not be expected to shoulder alone, including mitigation funding.

“Washington state’s first responders, local governments, and emergency management professionals have done everything within their means to begin recovery, but the scale of the damage requires federal support through the Public Assistance Program and the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program,” the letter read.

The administration denied the state’s appeal last week, according to The Seattle Times.

The White House said it’s seeing large amounts of funding across the board that haven’t been delegated to any specific project yet, and it wants to decrease that spending.

“The Trump administration is monitoring the approval of HMGP with states’ ability to execute those funds,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “We are working with states to assist them in identifying projects and drawing down balances in a way that makes the nation more resilient.”

The post Lawmakers Don’t Know Why Trump Keeps Denying Disaster Mitigation Grants appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

Between 350 and 400 people showed up to speak up against the Trump administration and its policies on immigration, executive power and more in Oxford, Mississippi, as part of the nationwide No Kings Day protests on Saturday, June 14, 2025.

The post Photos: No Kings Day Protests in Oxford, Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Free Press.

The power to grant a disaster declaration and access to the FEMA assistance programs for states hit by storms lies solely in the hands of President Trump, who wants to scale back FEMA and pass recovery costs to states. State officials say they’re not ready to take on that burden.

The post Uncertainty About Federal Disaster Aid Looms As Storms Roll In appeared first on Mississippi Free Press.

Rural hospitals across the country are shuttering their labor and delivery doors, leaving millions of women – including Mississippians – without maternity care. 

The growing epidemic of closures hasn’t affected Mississippi as much as other states in recent years – but most of Mississippi’s rural hospitals already don’t deliver babies, according to a report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, an organization that focuses on solving health care problems by reforming insurance payments. 

Only one rural hospital in Mississippi closed its labor and delivery unit between 2021 and 2025, the report found. However, the vast majority – 68% – of rural hospitals in the state do not have a labor and delivery unit. Most of the 50 rural Mississippi hospitals not delivering babies never did, or stopped long ago, while four have closed their delivery services within the last 15 years. 

Now, the problem that has plagued Mississippi is spreading across the U.S., where nearly two rural hospitals each month have stopped delivering babies since the end of 2020, and more are announcing closures for 2025. That’s more than 100 rural hospitals in just under five years.

Addressing rural maternity care is key to mitigating maternal mortality in America – which continues to have the highest rate among high-income nations, the report’s authors argued. 

“Over 80% of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable with appropriate prenatal, labor & delivery, and post-partum care,” the report read. “Although improvements in maternity care are needed in all parts of the country to reduce mortality rates, one of the greatest challenges is in rural areas, because most rural hospitals are no longer providing maternity care at all.”

Across the country, less than half – 42% – of rural hospitals currently offer labor and delivery services. 

The study also looked at travel times to labor and delivery units for women using the distance from hospitals without labor and delivery services to hospitals with those services. It found that in most urban areas, the travel time to a hospital with labor and delivery services is under 20 minutes. In rural areas, women face travel times of at least 30 minutes, but often 50 minutes or more. 

At 35 minutes, Mississippi’s median travel time is similar to the country as a whole. 

The rural hospitals that have stopped delivering babies in Mississippi since 2010, according to data from the Mississippi State Department of Health, are: the south campus of Anderson Regional Medical Center in Meridian; the community campus of Merit Health Natchez; Magee General; and Greenwood Leflore.

Despite Meridian being one of Mississippi’s larger cities, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) defines it as rural. 

Authors of the study offered several recommendations to stakeholders, most of which centered around reforming payments to hospitals. 

One of the biggest challenges for small hospitals providing maternity care is that physicians and staff must be standing by 24 hours a day, but are only paid when they deliver a baby – even though rural hospitals may experience many days when there are no deliveries.

Another problem with payment methods, according to the report, is that insurance companies often pay more for C-sections, meaning hospitals and clinicians that support natural childbirth may lose money – even though there have been national efforts to reduce C-section rates, which are highest in Mississippi. 

The report stressed that the biggest problem is not with Medicaid or uninsured patients. The primary cause of overall losses on patient services at rural maternity care hospitals is private insurance companies paying rural hospitals less than what it costs to deliver services to patients. 

“Rural maternity care is in a state of crisis, and more women and babies in rural communities will die unnecessarily until the crisis is resolved,” the report stated. “Federal and state government officials and private employers must take immediate action to ensure that all health insurance plans are paying adequately to support high-quality maternity care in every community.”

Mississippi moms will no longer be able to use Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mississippi insurance to cover lactation services after they leave the hospital. 

The Lactation Network, a third-party biller that allows Mississippians with certain insurance to see non-physician lactation consultants, will no longer accept Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mississippi patients. The network was previously subsidizing the unpaid portion of the claim for these moms’ visits, but it said that it can no longer afford to do so.  

The Lactation Network did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Mississippi Today by the time the story published.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mississippi is the state’s largest private insurer. Lactation consultants and breastfeeding advocates worry the reduced coverage will worsen Mississippi’s breastfeeding rate – already one of the lowest in the country. The loss in coverage could have profound impacts on the health of mothers and children, experts say. 

“It’s such a complex puzzle of how to improve maternal and infant outcomes, but we know that breastfeeding is an integral, foundational part of that,” said Dr. Christina Glick, a retired neonatologist and lactation consultant in the Jackson area. “ … Lack of reimbursement will interfere with delivery of care, which will reduce breastfeeding rates.”

Breastfeeding has been proven to lower the incidence of diseases, infections and depression in both mother and baby. But it’s not always straightforward, and the list of potential challenges is not short: oversupply, undersupply, allergies and sensitivities, problems with pumping upon return to work, milk blisters and a host of other issues. Ninety-two percent of new mothers report having trouble breastfeeding three days postpartum and needing support.

Shay Bequette, a 25-year-old from Hattiesburg with Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance, overcame multiple hurdles to breastfeed her baby, born in January.

“I was struggling,” Bequette said. “I’m the first in my family to breastfeed. And my son was really small … I knew something was wrong intuitively, but I just couldn’t understand because I was producing (milk), but he was constantly crying. I was breastfeeding for an hour and a half on each side and he was still crying like he was in pain.”

Emotions and stakes are high for mothers learning to breastfeed. Moms who struggle to breastfeed often report feeling a sense of failure, while also facing intense pressure to make sure their baby is gaining adequate weight. 

Though she didn’t want to, Bequette considered switching to formula – and says she would have if she wasn’t able to access affordable lactation support. 

“I was losing my marbles, I was crying, I was frustrated,” Bequette said. “My whole family was like, ‘you know, you’re just going to have to switch to formula, obviously it’s not working.’”

Instead, Bequette found Maranda Nybo, an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) based in Pass Christian who expanded her practice to include a once-weekly trip to Hattiesburg. Bequette credits all of her current breastfeeding success to Nybo.

“She saved my sanity, and she saved his life,” said Bequette.

Now, Bequette will have to discontinue her care – and Nybo worries for the future of her practice, where she estimates between 80 and 90% of her clients use Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance.

“Sunday, Monday and (Tuesday) I’ve had 12 moms schedule appointments with me … every single one of them have been denied as of today,” Nybo told Mississippi Today. “All of them, except one, have canceled their appointments with me.”

The Lactation Network announced April 30 that working with certain insurance companies is no longer affordable.

“Historically, nearly 1 in 4 out-of-network visits that TLN covers go unpaid by health plans,” read an April 30 email from TLN to providers. “For a long time, we’ve subsidized the cost of care, hoping these plans would come around and reimburse us for this vital care. But that’s not sustainable — we can’t continue absorbing the costs that these plans should be covering.”

A spokesperson for Blue Cross Blue Shield Mississippi told Mississippi Today the company wasn’t aware of the changes and has no formal agreement with TLN. 

“Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi Members continue to have access to lactation consultation services when they use a Network Provider,” a Blue Cross spokesperson said.

The only in-network lactation consultants currently covered by Blue Cross are physicians, who do not generally operate outpatient clinics focused solely on breastfeeding care.  

While new mothers usually get some form of support while they’re still in the hospital, most breastfeeding problems don’t develop until well after they leave, explained Erin Mattingly, a Jackson-based IBCLC. 

“I hear all the time that parents think breastfeeding is going fairly well in the hospital and then they get home and things fall apart,” she said. “And a lot of that is because during their time in the hospital, for the vast majority of mothers, their mature milk supply has not even arrived yet. So, it’s after the mature milk comes in that they start to have issues.”

After parents leave the hospital, the next appointment is typically scheduled two weeks later with a pediatrician. The majority of mothers who are struggling to breastfeed will give up if they don’t get help in that interim period, Mattingly said. 

Even if moms continue breastfeeding for those two weeks, they don’t always get comprehensive lactation support during the pediatric visit.

Bequette says when she broached the subject with her obstetrician and her pediatrician, each of them referred her to the other for guidance. That’s not unusual, according to Mattingly. 

“Doctors are fantastic at what they do, but they don’t have the same lactation training that lactation consultants have,” Mattingly said. “And in addition to that, they don’t have the time. If they have 10, 15 minutes with a patient, that’s not enough time to observe a feeding, problem solve what could be going on, and create a strategy going forward.”

An average lactation session with Mattingly or Nybo runs between 60 and 90 minutes and costs between $100 and $125 without insurance. 

That may be an affordable out-of-pocket cost to some, but it will put support out of reach for many moms who are already at a disadvantage for breastfeeding. 

“As a private practice, for me this is devastating,” Nybo said. “But it’s also really devastating for the moms.”

The Mississippi Department of Education and public schools in the state could lose over $137 million in federal funds after the U.S. Department of Education removed access to pandemic-era grant money.

The post Mississippi Education Leaders Reeling After Trump Administration Rescinds $137 Million in COVID-19 Relief Funds for Schools appeared first on Mississippi Free Press.

Mass firings and federal cuts have many public health officials in Mississippi watching Washington with growing concern as they prepare for the avian flu. An upheaval in the federal government instigated by the Trump Administration is paralyzing key agencies and offices meant to coordinate and direct a unified national response.

The post As Mississippi Prepares for Avian Flu, Federal Chaos Looms Large appeared first on Mississippi Free Press.