DUNLOW, W.Va.— Bill Likens stared down a half-mile-long line of cars that started forming before the sun came up over the Appalachian Mountains.
He had one job: figure out how to feed them all.Some had driven more than 30 miles in aging cars and trucks that wheezed down flood-prone roads through the steep hills.They sat silently as the temperature rose into the 80s, their vehicles turned off with no air conditioning to preserve gas, waiting hours for a few boxes of food.
Aided by a cane, Likens, 51, surveyed the pallets being unloaded off a semitruck that arrived that morning.He counted cartons of eggs and sacks of potatoes to calculate how much each waiting car could get — an algorithm of hunger he is constantly trying to solve.
The line of vehicles started forming early in the morning at a drive-up food distribution in Dunlow, W.Va., on Sept.16.Mike Belleme for NBC News“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.Bill Likens, director of community outreach for Cabwaylingo Presbyterian Chapel, grew ...