Hunger grips West Virginia coal country amid Trump cuts and rising gas prices

“There’s a decent chance we could run out,” said Likens, who runs the food pantry in Dunlow as director of community outreach for Cabwaylingo Presbyterian Chapel, a small brick church he attended growing up.

“I don’t want them to sit in that line and not get anything,” he said. “But I don’t have a lot of extra food these days.”

Increasingly, the job of feeding the nation’s hungry is falling on the shoulders of everyday Americans like Likens, who have become the last bulwark against hunger in a land of plenty.

Likens and others on the front lines of feeding their neighbors say they face unprecedented challenges brought on by Washington. Food distribution programs are getting less food from federal programs to feed the hungry after cuts by the Trump administration. At the same time, restrictions on food stamps from the Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” have driven up demand, while rising gas prices because of the Iran war have cut into the budgets of households and food banks alike.

The challenges extend far beyond Appalachia. An NBC News survey of 48 of the largest food banks across 35 states and Washington, D.C., found that nearly three-quarters said more people are showing up at their doors over the past year, from workers on their lunch breaks to older adults overwhelmed with medical expenses. At the same time, more than 80% said the food and funding they received through the U.S. Department of Agriculture had dropped and they were struggling with higher fuel costs for transporting food.

In Maine, Good Shepherd Food Bank said the USDA cut the amount of food it received from 13 million pounds to 9 million pounds in one year. A Michigan food bank, Forgotten Harvest, said it’s handing out less food to make sure there is enough to go around: one bag of potatoes instead of two, two tubs of yogurt as opposed to six.

“People are facing multiple hits to their budgets,” said Poonam Gupta, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, a think tank that researches social and economic issues. “It is really difficult to find a way to continue affording a healthy and nutritious and balanced diet when you just have these constant hits.”

Food banks’ struggles started in the early days of President Donald Trump’s second term when officials cut a $400 million Covid-era program to supply food banks with food from local farmers and paused an estimated $500 million in other planned food purchases by the USDA. Funding from Congress for a separate decades-old program to supply food banks with emergency food assistance has increased over the past several years, but many food bank leaders said they’re still getting less overall than during the Biden administration.

Trump also signed into law the new restrictions on who can receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, or food stamps, requiring nearly all able-bodied adults not caring for young children to work, volunteer or go to school at least 80 hours a month. Since the law was enacted, more than 5 million people, including at least 1 million children, have lost their food benefits.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly defended the administration’s policies, saying Trump is “uplifting every American’s financial situation” through tax cuts and efforts to increase jobs and business investments.

“President Trump is strengthening SNAP for the Americans who need it by ensuring these programs are sustainable for future generations,” Kelly said, including measures to “crack down on waste, fraud and abuse.”