The rate of food insecurity across the region now exceeds pandemic levels and is expected to worsen as more federal changes in assistance programs take effect, the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina reports.
In this week’s “State of Hunger” briefing, Food Bank President and CEO Amy Beros said that nearly 630,000 people out of a population of 4.2 million in a 34-county area that includes Pitt County lack the resources to consistently keep food on the table. That is an increase of nearly 180,000 since 2021, Beros said Tuesday.
“I want to begin with the hard truth today that hunger is continuing to deepen across North Carolina,” she said. “One out of every seven neighbors we see at the grocery store or at a waiting room or next to our child in school does not know where their next meal might come from.”
Beros said more than 700 local food pantries and distribution sites, which recorded 7.3 million visits this past year, are reporting increases in visits ranging from 20% to 60% or more.
“They are telling us very plainly that the current pace is absolutely not sustainable,” she said. “These are certainly records that we do not want to be breaking.”
Beros cited rising costs of food, housing, healthcare, utilities and fuel, along with stagnant wages, as reasons many families are seeking help. She said local food pantries have reported they are serving people who work more than one job but still have too little money in their food budgets.
“A single unexpected expense can lead to impossible choices,” Beros said. “That’s the car breaking down, the refrigerator going out. One crisis and you are in need of help. It’s not stories about people failing; it’s a story about budgets that just don’t add up at the end of the month.”
She said nearly 1 in 3 black households and 1 in 4 Latino households face food insecurity, while the number for white households is 1 in 9. In addition to disparities across race, Beros said children, people with disabilities and veterans all show higher rates of food insecurity.
Gov. Josh Stein, who has proclaimed September as Hunger Action Month, said more than 1.7 million North Carolinians face hunger each year. The governor said H.R. 1, a federal budget reconciliation package passed in July 2025, creates challenges for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
According to a news release from the Democratic governor’s office, a federal government move to shift an additional quarter of SNAP administrative costs to states and counties beginning Oct. 1 will cost North Carolinians $85 million a year. Beginning next October, the federal government will no longer cover 100% of the cost of SNAP benefits, requiring states to pay up to 15% of benefit costs.
Beros said changes in reporting requirements and exemptions for parents and caregivers have contributed to a SNAP enrollment decline of 110,000 statewide between September 2025 and August 2026. Nearly 1.25 million people across the state currently receive SNAP benefits.
The White House said last year that the SNAP program had become “bloated” and inefficient and had veered from its mission to provide temporary food assistance to families in need. President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” created additional work requirements to encourage self-sufficiency. Approved changes also require states to pay a percentage of benefit costs based on their SNAP payment error rate beginning Oct. 1, 2027.
“They’re not abstract policy changes,” Beros said. “SNAP literally really puts food on families’ tables, and we know when people lose that grocery support or experience delays like they did last year, they are turning to their local pantries that are already operating either at or beyond capacity.”
Statistics provided by the Food Bank indicate that its network of food pantries provided some 4.7 million meals last year in Pitt County, where more than 30,000 people are facing hunger, including more than 9,000 children. The number of people enrolled for food assistance is nearly 28,000.
“We are among one of the largest networks in the country here in central and eastern North Carolina,” Beros said. “But we are not the federal government. For every one meal provided through our networks, SNAP provides nine. We cannot replace the federal safety net, and the charitable food system was never designed to do that.”
Data from Feeding America showed that food insecurity had risen dramatically prior to federal funding reductions and SNAP eligibility changes taking effect, Beros said.
“So, this is not a forecast of what those cuts might do,” she said. “This is a picture of how serious the crisis has already become before the full impact has reached families and before more of those families have already started turning to help. So, based on the timing of the data and what we are now hearing from partners, this current estimate absolutely understates the pressure communities are experiencing today.”
Beros said new data will harder to come by as the U.S. Department of Agriculture indicated that after January, it would no longer release annual reports on household food security in the United States. The USDA also ended $30 million in annual funding that helped North Carolina food banks and schools purchase food directly from local growers and producers. Both programs were introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic to strengthen local food supply chains and support small-scale farmers.
Jason Stephany, vice president of communications and public policy for the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, said every program that’s reduced or eliminated in Washington, D.C., creates a gap that has to be filled by state and local government or through the emergency food assistance network.
North Carolina’s recently approved state budget provides more than $9 million for food banks — a 50% increase over the last state budget allocation — to use to purchase food from local farmers.
Still, Beros said the state investment cannot erase the larger federal losses.
“These are not just numbers,” she said. “These are our neighbors, and we have to respond with that humanity at the center at all times and make sure we are matching our solutions to the depth of the challenges.”
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