With loss of federal dollars, food banks worry about people going hungry

Some Gaston County food banks will have less food to distribute because of cuts in federal funding.

Pastor Rodney Freeman of Mount Zion Restoration Church, which operates Bountiful Blessings Food Pantry, said that he received an email last week about the cuts from Second Harvest Food Bank, which distributes most of the food that Bountiful Blessings gives out.

The email stated that the cuts affect several different USDA programs ― The LFPA Program, which supports food banks and local farmers, the CSFP Program, which gives food boxes to seniors in poverty, and the TEFAP Program, which buys food from farmers to distribute to food pantries. The cuts in federal funding put 20-25% of Second Harvest’s food supply in jeopardy. 

“I think it’s going to be catastrophic,” Freeman said. “We aren’t going to be able to give out as much as we normally give out.”

Bountiful Blessings until recently served an average of 2,800 people a week. Now, they serve more than 3,000, and some people will show up on Wednesday afternoons for food that will be distributed on Thursday mornings. 

“In the last two months, that’s when we saw a tremendous uptick in our numbers,” Freeman said. 

The last time he saw numbers like that was in 2020, during the pandemic, Freeman said.

Mike Fields, chair of the finance committee for Dallas High Shoals Christian Ministry, said that this is the second major cut in spending that he’s seen in recent years. The food pantry serves more than 600 families a week during the two days that food is distributed.

“Some people are in desperate need,” Fields said. “Our primary concern is the people who do not have access to other food. With people on a fixed budget, limited income, with utility bills increasing, rent increasing, it’s a real crimp on their budget.”

“If we have less food comin in, then we have less food going out,” Fields added.

The USDA programs fund around 70% of the ministry’s food budget, and the food bank has already been seeing less meat, produce and dairy products. Fields said he wasn’t sure what the total impact of the cuts will be. 

“It’s going to have an impact. We’re just holding on, praying that it’s not going to be too bad,” he said. 

Gastonia resident Judy Brooks said that she relies on the two food banks because she is disabled and lives on a fixed income. 

“I have to get what I can to make it,” she said. With less food, “I have to eat less. I have to try to save what I can just to get by from month to month.”