North Carolina food bank warns it won't be able to meet demand after SNAP cuts
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Volunteers at a Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina pop-up event. Photo: Courtesy of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina
The state's largest food bank doesn't believe it will be able to match the demand for food once the Trump administration's cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid kick in.
Why it matters: The Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina supports free food markets and pantries across a 34-county region from the Triangle to the coast.
State of play: Already, the Food Bank of CENC has seen an increase in hunger in the past year, with more than 600,000 people using its services in some capacity. Two years ago, that number was 450,000, according to the food bank.
- This echoes what food banks across the country are seeing amid rising food costs and the end of several pandemic-era aid programs. In May, 15.6% of adults were food insecure, almost double the rate in 2021, according to recent Morning Consult data.
- And from April 2024 to April 2025, more than half of the food banks surveyed by Feeding America reported seeing an increase in the number of people served.
Driving the news: The "big, beautiful bill" passed by Congress and signed by the president earlier this month includes cuts to SNAP and Medicaid.
- Food banks nationwide are trying to rally support in response to the cuts, Axios reported.
- Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cut a grant program that gave money to food banks to buy produce from local farms, which the Food Bank of CENC used.
What they're saying: "What we believe will happen with these cuts to SNAP is that we will not be able to fill the gap with charitable food," Amy Beros, the president and CEO of the Food Bank of CENC told Axios.
- Beros said last year that 30% of its revenue came from government funding. This year, it anticipates that figure dropping to 11%-12%.
Zoom in: Beros noted that for every one meal a food bank provides, SNAP provides nine, a gap that it can't overcome with charity in its viewpoint.
- Already, the Food Bank of CENC is budgeting that it will deliver less food this year than last year because of government spending cuts, dropping from 115 million pounds of food distributed to 92 million pounds.
- "And that's with increased need" for food, she said. "People are going to receive less, or there's going to be distributions where people will get turned away."
The other side: The White House and congressional Republicans argue that cuts to these benefits help push more people into the labor market and reduce dependence on government assistance, as well as an effort to reduce waste, fraud and abuse, Axios' Emily Peck reports.
The big picture: Beros said the Food Bank of CENC will look toward donations from the community and corporations to help fill the gap in the coming months.
- She noted that some private donors are already stepping up, notably the David & Nicole Tepper Foundation, which donated $10 million to food banks across North Carolina and South Carolina.
- It's also asking the state government to increase its funding of food banks in the state budget. However, Beros said, it doesn't seem like that will happen, if and when a budget is ever finalized.
- "We are still advocating at the federal and state level, but we know we're going to have to come up with community-led solutions on this," Beros said.