Four cans of food gets you in for free.

The food will be donated to the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, which has close to 900 partner organizations. They're reporting a 20 to 30 percent increase in need.

Last year 174,000 pounds of food was collected

"There's always a lot of people depending on us," said Christy Simmons, Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina Public Relations Manager.

"We need it more and more now," said Volunteer Rod Jones, "It's tough, so anything we can do to help people out is a better day,"

Across town at the food bank, many of the shelves are empty.

The hope is the food drive at the fair will refill them but even then they won't stay stocked.

"Don't think that it's just sitting on our shelves, it goes right back to nearly 900 partner organizations that we serve in 34 counties," said Simmons.

Simmons said with the growing demand, this year's event is more important than ever.

"We might be getting the same donations but again our numbers have increased and we would love for new people to have new donors and supporters fore the food bank of central and Eastern North Carolina to kind of help offset that increase we're constantly seeing," she said.

Bringing food to the fair isn't only helping families in need it's also helping families go the fair. Bringing four cans of food for a free ticked, it a lot cheaper than paying $7 to get in the gates.

"I know there's a lot of people in need right now, so we try to help out as much as we can, you know, reach out, that's what it's about," said Donator Calvin Woods.

"We think it's important to donate and to help families who don't have as much as we have," said Donator, Celia Schreiber.