Tuesday, April 22, 2026
Statement on NC Governor’s Budget Funding Critical Nutrition Programs
Attributable to Lou Anne Crumpler, Director, Carolina Hunger Initiative
The nutrition programs prioritized by Governor Josh Stein in his recommended budget would have major positive impacts on child health and help keep North Carolina out of a food insecurity crisis.
Without funding in the budget for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), more than 1.4 million North Carolinians – about 40% of them children – will lose access to critical food benefits they depend on to buy healthy groceries. The loss of SNAP would lead to historic levels of hunger in our state. SNAP provides 9 times the number of meals as NC food banks. The need to fund SNAP at the state and county level is the result of funding cuts at the federal level.
Losing SNAP would also limit children’s automatic eligibility to receive meals at no cost through school breakfast, school lunch, and other programs. This would leave many families to complete complex applications and income verification to access healthy meals at school. Cuts to SNAP that reduce the number of children certified for free school meals may result in fewer summer and afterschool nutrition program sites being eligible to provide meals, further limiting access to healthy meals, especially in rural areas.
In North Carolina, 1 in 5 children experience food insecurity. The funding recommended to make school breakfast available at no cost to all families would be a crucial step towards ending child hunger in our state. From calmer classrooms to reduced chronic absenteeism, a healthy school breakfast is an educational intervention setting up students for success. Nationally, 88% of parents report school meals help their children do better in school.
The children who are benefiting from these programs today will be leading our state in the future. These programs are critical components of our state’s health, food, and education systems. By funding them, North Carolina will be stronger.
Media Contact: Andrew Harrell, Carolina Hunger Initiative, andrewharrell@unc.edu
About Carolina Hunger Initiative
Our mission is to increase access to healthy meals year-round for North Carolinians. The Carolina Hunger Initiative is a project at the UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention and works in collaboration with the No Kid Hungry campaign. We use programming, applied research, and compelling communications to support policy, systems, and environmental changes that connect people with the food they need. Learn more about our work and the impact of the programs we support at CarolinaHungerInitiative.org.
###