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Maine Has The Highest Food Insecurity Rate In New England. Here's How 1 Food Bank Is Addressing That

Caitlin Troutman
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Maine Public

As many Mainers gather around loaded dinner tables for the most food-centric holiday of the year, others are unsure when their next meal may be.

Credit Caitlin Troutman / Maine Public
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Maine Public

Nationally, the rate of food insecurity is 11.1 percent, the lowest it has been since the recession, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. In Maine, however, 13.6 percentof households are food insecure, the highest rate in the New England region.

“Prior to the recession, our rate of hunger was, you know, below 8 percent.”

Kristen Miale is the president of the largest hunger-relief organization in Maine, the Good Shepherd Food Bank. Good Shepherd distributes food to all 16 counties in the state. Miale points tofindings from the Maine Center for Economic Policy to explain why the state’s food insecurity rate remains elevated, in contrast with the national rate. The report shows that while the state unemployment rate has declined, many middle-class jobs have disappeared or been replaced with low-wage jobs.

“We believe, really, the issue is the changing of our employment situation,” says Miale. “So the unemployment rate, while that has come back to pre-recession levels, those middle class jobs didn't come back. Instead lower wage jobs have come into the state.”

This means that people may be working, but they still have difficulty getting enough food for their households.

And food insecurity may look different than you’d think.

“There really is sort of a range of food security that does encompass both the dietary quality and also the dietary quantity,” says Alisha Coleman-Jensen, a social science analyst at the Economic Research Service of USDA. She says that food insecurity is about a lot more than just hunger on a given day.

“So sometimes food insecure households are relying on low cost foods. They're not able to eat a variety of foods or eat balanced meals, things like that,” Colemand-Jensen says. “The other component of adequacy is just having enough to eat. So sometimes households report cutting or skipping meals and more severe situations, going the whole day without eating.”

Credit Caitlin Troutman / Maine Public
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Maine Public
Doug Boyce volunteers with the Good Shepherd Food Bank

The Good Shepherd Food Bank is working to address the problem of food insecurity in the state through its programs, which include food distribution to more than 400 partner agencies.

“So Good Shepherd is not a pantry. Good Shepherd is the warehouse that serves the pantries.” Doug Boyce, speaking from the Auburn food distribution center, has been volunteering with the food bank for six years.

Boyce first learned about Good Shepherd when he worked with the Hannaford supermarket chain, one of the food bank’s primary donors. He now volunteers full time, mostly at the food bank. And that volunteer support is needed, says Boyce.

“There are a lot of things going on,” he says. “They have a whole fleet of trucks, drivers, a bunch of paid employees downstairs, warehouse staff to pick orders and manage the whole product flow inventory systems and so forth.”

Credit Caitlin Troutman / Maine Public
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Maine Public
Volunteers assemble boxes of food for food insecure seniors in Maine

Last year, the food bank distributed millions of pounds of food statewide and in 2019 opened a second distribution center in Hamden to keep up with demand.

“Through our network of partners we distributed 25 million meals across the entire state of Maine,” says Good Shepherd President Kristen Miale. “We estimate we'd need to be doing probably closer to 34 million meals to be fully meeting the need.”

Miale says that another important component of Good Shepherd’s work, is addressing the root causes of hunger in the state.

“We don't want to keep growing and we don't want to be here,” she says. “We have enough food in this state right now to make sure everybody can eat. And so it's a matter of putting in the right policies and investments in our people, in our economy, to make sure that everybody has access to healthy food.”

Credit Caitlin Troutman / Maine Public
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Maine Public file
In Maine, however, 13.6 percent of households are food insecure, the highest rate in the New England region.

Miale says the Good Shepherd team works to educate Mainers about food insecurity and also to advocate for government policies that address the issue. Policies that Miale says have been effective include expansion of the earned income tax credit and increasing awareness and access to child nutrition programs.

Additionally, “We were definitely pleased to see the minimum wage change go through,” she says. “I don't think you can dismiss the fact that a year after we raised the minimum wage, Maine’s rate of hunger went down for the first time in 10 years. I think those two things are absolutely correlated.”

Still, Miale says, there’s much work left to do.

“We believe ending hunger, really, it's the first step to breaking the cycle of poverty,” says Miale. “And so we will always remain committed to that work.”

Originally published 6:00 a.m. Nov. 28, 2019

Caitlin Troutman is the Digital News and Content Producer for Maine Public. Caitlin worked as a writer and editor for various publications before discovering her love for public media at KCUR in Kansas City. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Literature and Critical Theory from the Oxbridge Honors Program at William Jewell College and the University of Oxford. She joined Maine Public in 2018.