On the 37th floor of the Simmons Building, Cal McCastlain sits in a conference room in the law offices of Dover Dixon Horne, a room with floor-to-ceiling windows facing north east with the Arkansas delta on the horizon.
By day, he practices corporate and tax law downtown, the suit-and-tie environment a far cry from the farm on which he grew up in the small town of Clarendon. But as anyone who was raised in the delta will tell you, it leaves a lasting impression.
“I always knew I wanted to stay in agriculture in one way or another,” McCastlain says. “In law school, I had one foot in farming and I didn’t know where the other foot was going to end up. I hadn’t formulated a plan, but I knew what I wanted.”
What he wanted was a marriage of the great outdoors and the courtroom, and a lifestyle that granted that alliance. He’s been able to do that with agribusiness as a common thread among much of his 9-to-5 work, but it was that delta influence that then got McCastlain involved in the Arkansas Rice Farmers organization following trade, policy issues and markets in the rice realm.
Then he heard about the Arkansas Rice Depot.
Like many of its kind, the Depot has humble beginnings. It originated in 1984 when a few saw both the need of many and the thriving rice crop in the area. Realizing that hunger is not an issue that can wait, this group purchased rice and started giving it to people in need, free of charge.
Arkansas had never seen anything like it. It was simple, it was effective and it grew quickly. Now the Depot now serves about 9 million pounds of food across the state each year through different pantries and outreach programs.
Now a member of the board of directors, McCastlain found in the Depot a perfect fit for both his professional involvement with the rice industry and his personal ties to it. In the process, his involvement also ignited a new appetite for hunger relief.
Home Fields
“We produce a lot of rice in this state. Rice and the delta are hand and glove,” McCastlain says. If you have that kind of abundance, and right next door you have real hunger, there has to be a way to distribute some relief.”
With this mission at its core, the Depot has various wheels in motion, such as Food for Seniors, which provides everyday items monthly to housebound seniors, and also the Food for Families program, which helped stock local pantries to feed more than 400,000 Arkansans in 2014 alone.
What the Depot is most known for, however, is its Food for Kids program. In 1994, when a school nurse noticed certain students arriving to class sluggish each morning, she did some investigating and learned the only meal many of them ate on weekdays was the school lunch. A horrible realization, it triggered an even worse one about what must be happening between Friday and Monday.
Again, the Depot wasted no time and launched Food for Kids, a pantry that sends food home in kids’ backpacks over the weekend. Now the Depot’s signature program, 40 different states — and most recently Mexico — have replicated Food for Kids in various schools, revolutionizing the way hunger is addressed in the public education sector.
“There is an undeniable need here,” McCastlain says. “Education is the foundation for everyone’s opportunity or hardship. It’s either a good foundation that helps, or it’s a failed one that someone pays for for a long time. If the nutrition piece can have any positive impact on an education, that’s something we will continue working toward.”
Now, more than 30 years after it was born, you could say the Depot has hit its stride. You could pat the team on the back and expect everything to carry on, business as usual.
But that’s just not in their nature.
The Depot began as an efficient method of serving neighbors in need, and that foundation still stands. It may have been the first establishment of its kind, but it’s not the lone soldier on the front lines anymore.
So with a continually evolving world of needs and relief efforts, the question becomes clear: What does the Rice Depot look like in 2015?
Already a step ahead of the game, the board and staff are in the early stages of implementing a new strategy to be much more intentional with their services. With welcomed relief efforts popping up in different areas of the state, the Depot noticed an overlap of aid in some counties, while others remained largely unreached and deep in want. With this new approach, the Depot will shift its focus to those unserviced areas, namely in the delta and especially as it affects children.
“There comes a point when you have to reevaluate. We’re having to make each dollar go as far as we can,” McCastlain says. “We’re not abandoning programs. No one’s leaving a gap. We’re just minimizing a duplication of effort, which will call for us to pull out of areas already being serviced and instead target the areas of biggest need.”
The problem of overlapping — if it can be considered a problem — is one the Depot doesn’t mind having. These organizations are all working toward the same goal, and collaboration is not uncommon. Along with having more hands on deck, this allows the Depot to focus on another nasty threat: malnutrition.
Unfortunately, the cheapest food items are usually ones that come with a hefty price tag health-wise. As it happens, rice is one of the few options that is not only affordable, but filling and nutritious. With the help of dietitians and nutritionists, kids’ backpacks will now be stocked with nourishing foods that reflect the importance of healthy eating.
Previous items were not unhealthy, but the new ones will exhibit the intentionality for which the Depot is striving, both in and out of the classroom. According to McCastlain, the hope is that the impact of this shift is two-fold: that it provides a nutritious meal, but also helps families come to a basic understanding of good food choices and not-so-good choices.
“Our hope, our belief, is that this will have an impact on the overall health of the children participating and, consequently, their performance in school,” Rice Depot President and CEO Kim Aaron says. “As we say, it’s hard to be hungry for knowledge when you’re just plain hungry.”
Although his joining in 2012 makes McCastlain a relatively new addition to the cause, that doesn’t make him any less invested in or excited about the Depot’s work or the people who make it happen.
“I have a vantage point where I can see a lot of very talented people do a lot of good work. From the volunteers to the staff to the board, these people bring a lot of different expertise to reach the same goal. When I see this team, I understand what compassion means.”
That compassion is in high demand, and the crew at the Depot has a surplus of it. And as long as there is hunger, there will be a call for relief, a call they will continue to answer.
On the 37th floor of the Simmons Building, Cal McCastlain stares out the floor-to-ceiling window at a brilliant summer day with a far away look.
“Tangibly, you hope you can move the needle on the need out there,” he says. “Personally, you just hope you can make some kind of worthy contribution.”
With one foot still planted firmly in that rice farming heritage, he looks toward the horizon with resolution.
“I think Arkansas is going to be real proud of some of the efforts going on out there to help some of this unfortunate hunger, and the Arkansas Rice Depot will be right there in the middle of it.”