Inside Murray-Calloway County Need Line, there are two growing pyramids of food. Built from cans of vegetables and soup as well as jars of peanut butter, the pyramids represent all of the donations made to Need Line during Hunger Action Month as the organization works to reach its goal of collecting 1,000 cans by the end of September.
“I think we’ve got around 970 cans, so we’re very close,” said Need Line Executive Director Fran Spears.
The locally run nonprofit, which opened in the spring of 1974, offers at least 20 projects out of their office, such as the Backpack Program, Kentucky Prescription Assistance Program (KPAP), money management counseling and Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) Food Drive-Thrus. According to Need Line’s website, the organization receives approximately 5,000 applications for individual and family assistance every quarter.
“Along with collecting cans, we’re also working on making 1,000 meal bag kits,” Spears said.
The 1,000 meal bag kits are a separate Need Line initiative and are not part of Feeding America’s Hunger Action Month campaign. Each bag contains the ingredients and recipe needed to prepare a meal, such as chili or ham chowder. Over the past month, volunteers from across the community, including several local businesses and students from Murray State University, worked to help Need Line reach its goal.
“We made 200 (meal kits) yesterday, and we’re probably going to make 100 today,” Spears estimated.
Feeding America, a network of more than 200 food banks and 60,000 faith-based and charitable organizations that work alongside advocates, policymakers and other anti-hunger partners, launched Hunger Action Month as an annual campaign to raise awareness of food insecurity and encourage action to address hunger.
Kentucky had the highest rate of very low food security in the country between 2022 and 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. An estimated 9% of Kentucky households experienced very low food security during that period.
“We’re seeing more and more,” Spears stated. “We’re seeing around 16 to 20 families a day.”
Derek Williams added, “Before it was probably 12 or 13 a day.”
Williams is the assistant director at Need Line and runs the organization’s social media accounts. He also designed the orange shirts that many employees and volunteers wore this month to raise awareness of Hunger Action Month.
“We kind of did a little play on our logo,” Williams said, pointing out that the design combines the hand from Need Line’s logo with the sheaf of wheat from Feeding America’s logo.
Williams also used Need Line’s Facebook page to highlight groups that donated food or volunteered to assemble meal bag kits. He added a section to the organization’s website featuring food insecurity statistics for Calloway County and Kentucky.
According to the statistics provided on Need Line’s website, Calloway County’s food insecurity rate is 16.4%, while roughly 17.2% of the county's population lives below the federal poverty line. The site lists the county’s child food insecurity rate at roughly 13.8%, or about 940 children.
At the end of the month, Feeding America will release its 2026 Insights Report, an annual survey made up of data collected from people facing food insecurity. In its 2025 report, 79% of respondents reported that they are not as healthy as they would like to be, while 68% reported that they want to eat healthier but could not afford to. In addition, 70% of those surveyed stated that high food costs are the primary driver of food insecurity in the U.S.
Spears said that she was not aware of another nonprofit food pantries, like Need Line, in the area that is open five days a week but said other organizations throughout the community help meet the need. Need Line often works with churches, including Kirksey Methodist Church and First United Methodist Church, which hold monthly food distributions.
“There’s also blessing boxes,” Williams added, referencing the small boxes located throughout the county where community members can easily pick up or donate nonperishable food items and hygiene essentials.
Through a federal program called The Emergency Food Assistance Program (known as TEFAP), Need Line distributes food to eligible households once a month. Spears and Williams noted that they are seeing more people in the area qualify for assistance, and they attributed some of the increased demand at Need Line to recent changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
But Spears noted that, while the need in Calloway County has grown, donations have kept up with demand.
“We just want to thank the people of Calloway County because they are very generous with their donations,” Spears said.
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