North Carolina is one of the nation's top agricultural producing states. And it is also a state where one in seven residents don't have the resources to provide food on their table every day. Today, I'm talking with Amy Beros, president and CEO of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina - the state's largest food bank. Each year, this organization provides 95 million meals distributed through more than 700 partner agencies, food pantries, congregate meal sites, backpack programs. And they do this in 34 counties in the state. In our conversation today, we will explore the policy issues that this food bank and many food banks face. Interview Transcript Amy, I want to ask a really simple question about what got you to this place. So how in the world did you get involved in food banking? Oh, gosh. Well, you know, when I was growing up, I didn't know what food banking was. But I knew that it was our responsibility to make sure that neighbors helped neighbors. So, I grew up volunteering what I know now is a partner agency of the local food bank in my hometown. And as I moved across the country, I found ways to get involved. When I moved here to North Carolina about 16 years ago, I found food banks. I've been working professionally in food banking for a little over 12 years now. But I believe that food is a basic human right, and it has been my life's work to make sure that we're doing everything we can to ensure everyone has what they need. Thank you for sharing that. And I can imagine over the years, as I've also been involved in food banking but on the board side or as a volunteer, that this is a work that we sometimes think it's just about moving food and providing that. However, there's a whole policy framework that, sort of, surrounds and influences and shapes what food banking and what the work of the partner agencies, the food pantries on the ground, what they do. I wonder if you could help make this a little bit more real for us. Could you tell us a little bit about how policy becomes personal in your work? Can you share a moment when that really came true for you? Oh, I think the most recent blinding moment was last year during the government shutdown. Well, one, there's a lot of noise on TV right now, right, and in the media, but you hear of these massive numbers, and we know that our elected leaders are looking at these numbers on spreadsheets. And we see the humans behind those numbers and their stories. And these are thousands and thousands of stories like the ones that we hear about each day. Last year, during the shutdown, a father of five reached out to me and said, "I have five children. I work at the federal prison. I'm missing my second paycheck. For the first time in my life, I don't know how I'm going to put food on the table." Or the SNAP delay and disruption that we had. For the first time in our history during that shutdown, a mother reaching out and saying, "I don't know what to do. I've told my children to eat everything they can at school because I don't know what we're going to have when we get home, if we don't have these benefits." And that's just two stories and one crisis. And so many of our neighbors are living a crisis every day. These systemic issues. And we see those humans and hear their stories each day. And I think that's when it becomes personal. These decisions, one stroke of a pen, impacts food for hundreds of thousands of neighbors. Thank you for sharing that. I teach a class called the Economics of the Public Sector, and we often talk about policies that provide support to individuals. And it can be easy to talk about these policies as if they're just decisions that policymakers make, but there are real people who are dependent on these policies. And when they don't work or when rules change, it has significant implications for how people navigate. And so, I appreciate the work that you all are doing. I want to take a step back and talk about food banking. And while I know a lot of our listeners are familiar with food banking and food pantries, I do know that people kind of mix those two terms up. Amy, would you just tell us, broadly speaking, what's a food bank, and then what are the partner agencies. And how do they relate to one another? Yes, absolutely. Our food bank serves 34 counties in North Carolina. And as you shared, we work with over 700 partners. We work with growers. We work with over 80 local farmers in North Carolina. We work with manufacturers in North Carolina. We work with all of the retail chains to get food out into the community. And we do that primarily through those partners because they are embedded into the community. And what we're really proud of here, and I think something of how food banking has changed, you know, many people still think of a food bank as a dimly lit church basement pantry. And that maybe was food banking 30 years ago. But today it is part of the modern food system. We are a critical piece of infrastructure within the food system as part of the charitable food system. And one of the things that I'm most proud of is we live in North Carolina, this beautiful agriculture state, and over half of what we distribute each year is produce and protein. And that is what neighbors are asking for, too. Because neighbors want the healthy fresh foods, and it's also the most expensive to buy. And food banking today is not just focused on moving calories and getting pounds of food out to the community. It's focused on meals and nutritious meals and how to provide that nutrition education to make meals healthier. To use the types of foods you would get in a food pantry. For instance, I just learned at one of our nutrition demos this past weekend, you can leave the peel on a sweet potato, blend it up, and make it into a pancake. You never notice that you left it on there, but you get so much more fiber. And we're doing these types of trainings to help people make meals more nutritious, make meals go further, too, that they're getting. It's really a holistic approach. It's about being alongside community partners that are embedded into the community that are providing holistic supports like workforce development, job training, housing support. And we're that food portion as part of those agencies and making sure they have the right food and enough food to get out into the community. It's really helpful to hear the ways that food banking is adjusting. This idea you're no longer just this big organization that takes in a bunch of food and then distributes it through, you know, food pantries and what used to be called soup kitchens. But rather you're working with other community partners, you're working with farmers to find ways of moving food, but also providing opportunities and thinking about this almost as wraparound services. Are there other things that are being provided than just meals? I know I've been in pantries where there have been nurses, and there have been other support services like ways to sign up to SNAP. This is a sort of a series of overlapping and intersecting opportunities to help families meet their food needs, but more than that, their sort of broader set of needs. And I think this is a really critical way of understanding that food banking looks different than, like you said, grandmothers working in a church basement. I know that the work that food banks can serve as shock absorbers. When things go down, when things are problematic, food banks are there to sort of meet needs in a real way. We've seen a great deal of breakdown in policies over the last several months, and both at the state and at the national level. What does this shock look like to you and your partner agencies on the ground? It has been a tough year. You know, our budget went from 27% government funding and support to less than 10% in one year just because of decisions that were made in an instant. And there was no feedback structure. And I think that's one thing that I really pride our food bank on is the community feedback. We're constantly trying to engage with neighbors facing hunger, understand nobody knows what people facing hunger need more than the people who are literally experiencing it every single day. We try to ground all of our decisions in what is the community saying they need of us. And I think that is one of the things that's been so frustrating to see the decisions made this past year at the federal level. There's been no feedback. It's just numbers on a paper. And within, you know, a stroke of a pen, North Carolina lost $30 million for food purchased from North Carolina farmers for schools and food banks. And that was just North Carolina. It was one billion across the nation. And we're impacting people facing hunger, we're impacting farmers at the same time, and we have farmers who are saying, "I don't know if I'm gonna keep my family farm open." With SNAP, you know, we have cuts coming this year for SNAP and changes that are going to be detrimental for so many of our neighbors. And the cost shift to the states that are not prepared to take that. There's not a transition plan place. And SNAP is an economic driver. For every one meal a food bank provides, SNAP provides nine. We can't replace SNAP if we lose those meals. There's no possible way for us to charitable food our way out of that. But I don't think people realize the ripple impact of those decisions. So yes, it's going to impact people facing hunger. And eight out of 10 of those people on SNAP are working families, seniors, people with disabilities, our most vulnerable neighbors. And at the same time, we're going to see rural grocery stores close. We're going to see more farms close because for every dollar of SNAP, it means $1.50 to $1.60 back into the local economy. And that's going to be a detrimental effect that we can't turn around quickly. It's going to be long-term health impacts for neighbors because of the loss of this nutritious food and the los
