The Daily Populous Saturday March 15th, 2025 day edition
Authored by wunc.org and submitted by Hrekires

The State Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services received a letter from the United States Department of Agriculture earlier this month stating it will no longer receive funding for the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program. The nonprofit Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina is one of seven food banks that receives funding through federal programs like this one.

“Our portion of that would have been $2 million,” said Amy Beros, the nonprofit’s CEO. “But statewide, it's an $11 million impact for the food banks across North Carolina.

She said the $2 million in federal funds the nonprofit would have received would go directly to farmers for the purchase of fresh food that’s then distributed across the 34 counties they serve.

Beros told WUNC there needs to be a call to action.

“Please reconsider this program,” she said. “These are our farmers. These are neighbors across our counties that are in need, and this is going to be a huge impact economically.”

Moving forward, the organization is looking for possible state funds to help mitigate the loss. In the 34 counties that the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina serves, Beros said hunger has been steadily increasing in recent years.

perenniallandscapist on March 15th, 2025 at 03:21 UTC »

Food shelves across the country are anxious because they're expecting, on average, a doubling of people who need help this coming year, and yet are dreading this kind of news that funding will be cut. Where will my fellow Americans go when we've cut the safety nets out from underneath them? The vast majority of people who use our foodshelf aren't foreigners, terrorists, welfare riders, or villians. They're locals who live here, seniors who don't have enough to retire on and feed themselves, disabled people that can't work enough to make ends meet and pay piling up medical bills, all sorts of sad stories of good regular local people falling through the cracks. And this administration is making those cracks bigger and bigger. SHAME. SHAME ON EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM THAT SUPPORTS HURTING AMERICANS.

amginetoile on March 15th, 2025 at 03:17 UTC »

The cruelty is the point. Thanks MAGA for even more hungry North Carolinians.

LawfulGreat on March 15th, 2025 at 03:16 UTC »

It’s always going to be the people that deserve it the least that get the worst of it