One in every five children in central North Carolina don't know where their next meal is coming from — a problem that’s been growing in recent years as inflation has outpaced wages and as restrictions to food-assistance programs have gone into effect.
In 2021 there were 450,000 “food-insecure” people in the 34 counties that make up central North Carolina, including the Triangle region, according to Amy Beros, president of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina. Today that number has ballooned to 630,000 — a 40% increase in just five years, which can’t be explained by population growth alone.
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“We all know why this is happening,” Beros told reporters during a briefing Tuesday. “We're all living it every day. The cost of food, the cost of housing, the cost of healthcare is all continuing to rise. Utility companies are coming back with higher and higher rate increase proposals. … And meanwhile, wages haven't even come close to keeping up — let alone for our seniors, or our people with disabilities, who are living on very fixed incomes already.”
Inflation has hit goods across the board. But it has persistently affected many food prices. Earlier this summer the price of ground beef was up 20% in the past year alone, to $6.90 per pound on average.
And it’s not just beef. Based on prices as of July, a gallon of whole milk is up 32% since 2020, bread is up 27% and chicken is up 17%. Meanwhile, consumer confidence has fallen to the lowest level in months.
For some, higher food prices means skipping meals. Beros cited an estimate by the nonprofit group Feeding America which found lower-income North Carolinians would need to earn an extra $1.2 billion per year for everyone in the state to afford to eat without outside help.
“Hunger is continuing to deepen across North Carolina,” she said. And because of federal cuts to food aid programs, she said, the situation is expected to worsen.
A number of factors have contributed to exploding food prices, including tariffs and ensuing trade wars that are driving up producer costs, rising energy prices due to wars in Iran and Ukraine and a 2022 outbreak of bird flu that drove up poultry and egg prices.
Officials have also alleged price-fixing collusion by large meat companies. Poultry companies donated millions of eggs to Beros and other food pantry leaders across the state this summer — part of a settlement with Attorney General Jeff Jackson and leaders of other states that sued.
At the same time, the social safety net for families has shrunk.
Republicans in Congress slashed funding to food stamps nationwide, to help pay for more tax cuts as part of legislation backed by President Donald Trump, known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
Trump and other Republicans said food stamp aid under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, was being given to too many people who didn’t really need it. A White House spokesperson Tuesday defended the cuts, saying they strengthened the food stamps program by limiting who could receive benefits, and that the benefit cuts helped pay for tax cuts for others.
“The President is also uplifting every American’s financial situation by passing the largest tax cut in history – which every congressional Democrat opposed – and bringing historic numbers of jobs and investments into our country,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told WRAL.
After North Carolina’s Republican-led state legislature also declined to pick up all the increased costs caused by Trump’s cuts to food stamps — an estimated $52 million, WRAL reported in July — it was left up to individual counties around the state to decide whether to absorb the costs. According to federal data, more than 100,000 North Carolinians lost access to food stamps since those cuts took effect.
The combination of higher prices and less aid has led to more people turning to charity for help, such as the various food banks run by area nonprofits.
Earlier this summer, after the new state budget passed the legislature, Beros called on state lawmakers to restore funding for food stamps next year. At the same time, she also praised them for setting aside $9.1 million this year for food banks across the state, with instructions to use the money to purchase food from local farmers.
That was a 50% boost from what the state gave food banks in the previous state budget, Beros said Tuesday. But it also doesn’t come close to making up for federal cuts, she added, such as the cuts to food stamps, or a separate federal funding cut that slashed $30 million from a program that North Carolina used to use to buy food from local farmers to give to schools and food banks.
“It is an incredible start,” Beros said of the $9 million extra in state funding. “… But it does not make up for what we have seen lost in North Carolina from the federal budget.”
A spokesperson for North Carolina House Speaker Destin Hall, Demi Dowdy, noted that every state budget is a balancing act with finite resources.
“The facts speak for themselves: the General Assembly made historic investments in SNAP, food banks, and the SUN Bucks program while also delivering historic increases for law enforcement and teacher pay,” she told WRAL Tuesday.
Democratic Gov. Josh Stein on Tuesday praised state lawmakers for increasing some other types of aid — including the state’s SUN Bucks program Dowdy mentioned, which helps feed children from low-income families during the summer while school is out and they lack access to school meals. But he also criticized Trump for slashing food stamp funding and repeated his calls for GOP leaders in the state legislature to do more to pick up those costs.
“As grocery bills continue to rise, hunger affects more and more North Carolinians,” Stein wrote in a news release.
WRAL state government reporter Caroline Yaffa contributed reporting