NC food banks can’t fill the hunger gap caused by federal SNAP cuts, nonprofit leaders say

At Health and Nutritional Development Empowered Education, a Christian-based food assistance program in Spring Lake, there’s been a noticeable uptick in military families seeking help to put food on the table, said Renee Gregory, the program’s leader.

“It has increased treNC food banks can’t fill the hunger gap caused by federal cuts, state and nonprofit leaders saymendously in what people are needing,” Gregory said. “They need food, and we’re right down from Fort Bragg, so back in the past, soldiers, they didn’t need to come get food, but now we have lines and lines and lines of soldiers waiting to receive food as well.”

At the same time that the number of military families coming in has increased, Gregory said, there has been a dramatic decrease in Hispanic families visiting the nonprofit.

“They don’t come at all,” Gregory said. “I think they’re afraid we’re going to turn them in [to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers] or something.”   

Gregory spoke with NC Newsline Wednesday at the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina in Raleigh ahead of a press conference where state Sen. Lisa Grafstein (D-Wake) and several nonprofit leaders discussed federal cuts to food assistance programs and how those cuts will affect families that receive help through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

SNAP benefits help 1.4 million North Carolinians put food on the table.

“We’re in the worst hunger crisis that we’ve seen in nearly 20 years and with SNAP cuts that have been passed at the federal level, we’re going to see that spike in a way that we can’t fill the gap up,” Amy Beros, CEO of the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina, said during an interview with NC Newsline.

Beros said there are more than 600,000 people in the 34 counties her agencies serve facing hunger every day. That number is up from 450,000 people two years ago, she said.

“Our partners are saying that they’re seeing anywhere from a 20% to 50% increase in just the past year of people receiving services and that’s without the cuts that have happened,” Beros said.

She said there’s no way nonprofits can fill the gap created by the budget cuts.

“It doesn’t matter how charitable a community is, we can’t fill a gap that large,” Beros said. “We are asking our state and federal leaders to understand what they’re doing, understand the ripple effects of what they’re doing and the harm it’s going to have to the whole community — not only to people facing hunger, but to retailers, our grocery stores, our healthcare system and the overall health of the community.”

Meanwhile, Grafstein said the federal cuts will devastate low income families already struggling to make ends meet.

“I don’t know how we got to the place where we have to have a press conference about the fact that it’s a good idea to make sure children have food,” Grafstein said.

Ensuring North Carolinians have food security should not be a partisan issue, Grafstein added. “These are our neighbors, there are our students, these are veterans …” she said.

Grafstein said it would cost more than $420 million to continue to provide food assistance to North Carolinians at the current level.

“Don’t trade food security for more tax cuts for the wealthy,” Grafstein said. “The $420 million that we’re talking about is less than half of what you’re [state lawmakers] are giving away in school vouchers.”

Across the country, the Trump administration is cutting a projected $300 billion from SNAP over 10 years.

Tamara Baker, project and communications director of Carolina Hunger Initiative, noted that the state received $11 million for SNAP-ED, a federally funded program that helps people learn to use limited resources to produce and prepare nutritious meals and to grow their own food to improve health and physical fitness.

Baker said the federal budget does not include SNAP-ED funding for next year.

“That investment seeded the community gardens, brought fresh produce to families and seniors and supported local farmers and taught families how to stretch their limited budgets and taught kids and all ages how to cook,” Baker said.

Gregory Jones, a member of the N.C. Child Parent Advisory Council, said he’s benefitted from SNAP as the caregiver for five grandchildren, as a college student and as a child growing up in a working household that “still needed help to put quality food on the table.”

“It was a lifeline,” Jones said. “It didn’t solve every problem but it provided just enough relief to keep us from having to make impossible choices.”

Ahead of the press conference, Neil Harrington, research director at NC Child, said that in 2022 the number of children living with food insecurity spiked by about 4 percentage points. The number has declined but still 1 in 6 children live in homes where they can’t access nutritious, adequate food on a consistent basis, Harrington said.

“Some of it is the inflation that we’ve seen over the past several years coming out of the COVID pandemic,” Harrington said. “We know food prices increased, and that was really hard for families to kind of deal with and that certainly contributed to that spike in food insecurity.”