OAKLAND, Miss. — Grocery store owner Marquitrice Mangham hurries out of the sweltering August heat of the Mississippi Delta and enters her newly opened Farmacy Marketplace.

She arrives about an hour before the doors open at 10 a.m.

It’s a quiet Friday morning in Oakland, Mississippi, except for the occasional screech of tires from semitrucks passing by on Highway 51. Oakland, fewer than 30 miles from her hometown of Webb, is home to about 400 residents, more than half of whom are Black.

Inside the store, Mangham greets and praises her assistant manager, Kini Bradford-Jefferson. She emphasizes that without her, the store couldn’t operate. They laugh, ask each other how they are doing and tidy up the 3,000-square-foot space.

Until April, Oakland had been without a grocery store.

In rural areas, particularly in the Delta, residents face some of the highest rates of food insecurity and unemployment in the state, resulting in poor health outcomes such as obesity, hypertension, and diabetes. These communities have high populations of Black people. They often struggle to attract grocery stores and are overwhelmed by a striking growth of dollar stores.

Around 14% of Americans — more than 47 million people — were food insecure at some point during 2023, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. Census Bureau and Feeding America data.

​​Mississippi had a food insecurity rate of 18%, higher than the national rate.