An organization that provides millions of pounds of food each year to local residents will have significantly less to distribute because of federal funding cuts to food insecurity programs by the Trump administration.
The Action Pathways Second Harvest Food Bank of Southeast North Carolina is a nonprofit organization that provides meals to people facing food insecurity in Bladen, Cumberland, Duplin, Harnett, Hoke, Robeson and Sampson counties. David Griffin, food bank director for Second Harvest, spoke to Fayetteville and Cumberland County government officials at a joint city-county meeting on Monday about the impact of the federal funding cuts.
Griffin said in Cumberland County 17.8% of residents are food insecure, which is higher than the state average of about 15%. Food insecurity means not having access to sufficient food or food of adequate nutritional value to meet one’s basic needs. The number is even greater among children in Cumberland County, with over a quarter of the county’s youth being food insecure.
“Right here in Cumberland County, there’s 60,000 kids that will go home today and don’t have a meal,” Griffin said. “ … So the need is great right here in Cumberland County.”
Addressing that need may be more challenging this year, Griffin said, as programs under the U.S. Department of Agriculture that funded Second Harvest’s food distribution and purchasing have been slashed by the Trump administration and Department of Government Efficiency. The Emergency Food Assistance Program, a USDA program, helped Second Harvest provide about 6.3 million pounds of food annually to the communities it serves, or 88,000 people monthly. But the USDA has reduced funding for TEFAP by 40% this year.
“So when you take 40% of the food away, then when you’re taking 40% of what we can give to those families and things of that nature,” Griffin said.
In 2024, Second Harvest Food Bank distributed 16 million pounds of food through over 180 nonprofit organizations in the seven counties it serves. In Cumberland County, Griffin said the food bank supplies about 5.2 million pounds of food annually and oversees programs that have been instrumental to feeding the hungry, like Head Start, a federally funded childhood development program.
The food bank’s work in Cumberland County also includes serving food to 10,000 students annually and approximately 1,800 seniors monthly. Second Harvest also previously operated a food bank at the Crown Complex, where they served more than 1,500 individuals in a day, Griffin said.
The Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program, also run by the USDA, provided funding for food banks to purchase and distribute food from local farms. The federal government stopped the program in March, along with the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement program, another USDA farm-to-table program.
Griffin said the end of LFPA has resulted in $1.3 million loss in food purchasing power for Second Harvest and has hurt local farmers who benefited from the program. His organization will have to increase its fundraising efforts to attempt to make up for that deficit, Griffin said.
“The LFPA program was very important not just for the food bank, [but also] for our local farmers,” Griffin said. “And so when you lose $1.3 million, then you have to cut back on how you serve those that you’re trying to serve. And it’s heartbreaking for me and heartbreaking for anyone if you have to say no to a family that comes down. But we do everything that we can to make sure that we serve everyone that comes outdoors.”
Chancer McLaughlin, the town manager of Hope Mills, attended the city-county liaison meeting on Monday. He said his position as a member of the Action Pathways Board of Directors has allowed him to see the impact of these federal programs on community hunger relief efforts. Action Pathways is a nonprofit human services agency and the parent organization of Second Harvest.
“We see it firsthand — when you find out that a lifeblood of these organizations depend on the federal dollars and you’re seeing these grant programs being cut,” McLaughlin said. “ … And so in some of these rural areas, you’re seeing 500 cars pull up. These are your neighbors, these are your friends. And so we’re not talking about someone on a corner with a sign. You’re talking about people that we know that are in situations of food insecurity.”
Cumberland County Board of Commissioner Chair Kirk deViere, who serves on the city-county liaison committee, said the county is taking steps to support local farms that have been struggling as a result of the USDA funding cuts. The board plans to pass a $1 million agricultural assistance fund to help local farmers recover from the federal funding losses and to support farm-to-table initiatives.
“So we understand that there’s a gap that’s happening at the federal level and this is an opportunity to help our local farmers, one, supplement those dollars that were coming from the local purchasing, but also connect those programs back together in a very loose [way] and in a way that local funds help that,” deViere said.
Government accountability reporter Evey Weisblat can be reached at [email protected] or 216-527-3608.
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