HOLT, Fla., May 7, 2025—Letter carriers on their mail routes throughout Okaloosa County and across the nation will collect donations of non-perishable food items left at mailboxes as part of the annual Stamp Out Hunger® food drive Saturday.

This food drive is one of the most important events for the Holt Community Food Pantry which serves families from north Okaloosa.

Food from donations such as Saturday’s drive helps fill the Holt pantry’s shelves and are critical for the program, especially this year due to rising food costs and cuts to federally funded programs.

When the pantry program began in 2004, it served just a handful of families who were primarily Holt residents. During economic difficulties due to COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021, families from Holt, Baker and Milligan visited the pantry. As the program grew, so did the customers. As of last month, 230 families from all parts of Okaloosa County came to Holt looking for food assistance.

The first two weeks of the month, the pantry averages between 130 to 140 families, according to Jackie Tyler, pantry assistant manager. “A lot of people come the first two weeks,” she said. “They come when they think we have the most food. We run out of some food items by the fourth week [of the month].”

Food donations increase during the holiday season. The Rotary Club of Crestview and Tiffany Woodham’s State Farm agency have donated entire Thanksgiving dinners the past few years, turkeys included.

And Crestview High School’s leadership program donates hundreds of pounds of food items during its annual food drive. The pantry sets aside these items in reserve. However, even these are not lasting very long.

“We’re using up donations we got at Thanksgiving,” she said. “Everything will pretty much be gone by the end of the month.”

Last year the pantry served 2,461 families, according to Tyler.

“This year we’ve seen 839 families the first four months of the year,” she said.

Stocking the shelves

To keep the program effective, the pantry relies on a number of sources of food donations:

• U.S. Department of Agriculture—the pantry’s largest donor
• Emerald Coast Food Rescue (formerly Destin Harvest)
• food drives, such as Stamp Out Hunger®
• church donations
• individual donations
• pantry purchases

Every little bit helps. For instance, there are three dedicated individuals who regularly donate breakfast items. 

“It’s enough that it makes an impact,” said Tyler. “We run short on breakfast items such as packets of oatmeal, cereal and fruit cocktail and mandarin orange cups,” items that can be broken out to stretch donations among more recipients.

Because donations increase during the holiday months, the Stamp Out Hunger® food drive focuses attention to food assistance in May to help replenish pantry shelves when people may be focused on other events such as the end of the school year, the beginning of summer and summer vacations.

The May drive is very important to Holt’s pantry. For the past five years, the drive has generated between 2,500 to 3,500 pounds of canned and dried goods for Holt.

Empty shelves

Unfortunately, primary food sources have begun to dwindle.

In May 2022, the Holt pantry began receiving food donations from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Emergency Food Assistance Program through Feeding the Gulf Coast, a subsidiary of the nationwide Feeding America. That year, the pantry received 39,790 pounds of food through the federal government program. This consisted of canned fruits and vegetables, canned meats, fresh fruit and vegetables and meats such as beef, poultry and fish.

In 2023, a full year of USDA support saw 76,816 pounds of food fill the shelves of the Holt pantry. That increased to 86,816 pounds in 2024 and averaged to about 7,234 pounds of food per month.

However, this year, the USDA’s food program has become a casualty of cuts to government spending. The department cut $500 million from the Emergency Food Assistance Program intended to help food banks.

In January, the pantry received 7,400 pounds of USDA food. But the following months, that figure began to noticeably drop to 4,400 pounds in February; 3,100 pounds in March and only 2,500 pounds in April.

This year’s rate of 840 pantry customers every four months could put the Holt pantry at more than 3,000 by the end of December, a rate that is not sustainable, according to Tyler.

Other donation sources are showing the effects of high food prices. Biweekly deliveries from Emerald Coast Food Rescue (formally Destin Harvest) have become thinner. The pantry usually receives meat, vegetables, fruits, bread and pastries, but fewer pallets of food are now the norm.

The pantry has a small budget to purchase food staples to round out what it normally gets from USDA and Emerald Coast Food Rescue.

“We buy peanut butter and jelly every month, regardless” said Tyler, as well as breakfast items such as cereal, oatmeal and grits.

“We’re doing the best we can to coordinate as many donations to augment USDA,” she said.

Stamp Out Hunger®

All this is why Saturday’s food drive is so important to the Holt Community Food Pantry. All food donations stay within the local area, so the Holt pantry greatly benefits from the drive.

Anyone missing the Saturday drive can drop off donations to the Holt Water Works office Tuesday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to noon, at the First Baptist Church of Holt or the Holt Post Office during normal operating hours.

Since launching in 1993, the National Association of Letter Carriers’ annual Stamp Out Hunger® Food Drive has grown into the nation’s largest one-day food drive, helping to fill the shelves of food banks in cities and towns throughout the United States.

Operated by the First Baptist Church of Holt, the Holt Community Food Pantry, located at 521 Southside Dr., is open every Wednesday from 9 a.m. to noon for food distribution.