Say “food bank” and most people think of a place where donated canned goods are packed into boxes destined for needy people. Volunteers at Good Shepherd Food Bank, the state’s largest hunger relief organization, do pack food into boxes. But the organization does much more, and as it expands to feed more struggling Mainers, it also seeks to strengthen links between Maine farmers and consumers.
Last year, the food bank distributed 23 million pounds of food, much of it through the 400 partner agencies with which it works. Good Shepherd solicits food donations and purchases food at wholesale prices to feed 24,000 Mainers every week. The organization distributes food from three warehouses: its headquarters in Auburn and smaller facilities in Biddeford and Brewer. Last month, Good Shepherd purchased the former Bangor Daily News printing plant in Hampden to replace the Brewer warehouse, substantially increasing its working space so it can better serve its clients.
Good Shepherd welcomes community members to tour the new facility at 10 a.m. Thursday.
Maine ranks 12th in the country in terms of food insecurity. One in four Maine children doesn’t have sufficient access to nutritious food, so Good Shepherd’s core mission to get high-quality food to the state’s hungry remains vital, but with a new warehouse in Hampden come new possibilities.
First and foremost, the larger space will allow Good Shepherd to distribute food to more of Maine’s hungry, especially in central and northern Maine. With more cold storage, it will also be able to handle more fresh food, much of it from local farmers.
While it is still in the early stages of this thinking, Good Shepherd and several other groups in the region and state have an appealing vision for boosting farming in Maine by creating a food hub. The Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce has begun a feasibility study of the economic development potential of increasing locally sourced food and services. In addition to Good Shepherd, Bangor, Old Town, Orono, the University of Maine, the Maine Farmland Trust and others are participating in this effort.
The basic concept is that if local residents spend more money on local products and services, that’s a boost to the local economy, and it’s money that doesn’t flow out of state.
Many farmers want to sell their produce, meat and dairy products to schools, restaurants and other large buyers. But many aren’t large enough to interest these buyers. Or they don’t have the required facilities to safely process their goods for these markets. Other don’t have the trucks and time needed to get their products to these markets.
Good Shepherd could play a role in bridging some of these gaps. For example, say a school needs a ready supply of fresh potatoes that is well beyond what a single nearby farm grows. Good Shepherd could be the middleman — or find a middleman — to buy and store potatoes from several farms to fulfill this order.
The school doesn’t want whole potatoes; it wants them chopped. With its certified food-safe kitchen, Good Shepherd could provide the place where the potatoes are washed, chopped and packaged for the school.
Its trucks could then deliver the food. Farmers would pay for these services through, at least in part, donated food. Through Mainers Feeding Mainers, Good Shepherd distributed more than 2 million pounds of locally grown food last year. About half was purchased from local farmers; the other half was donated.
Relieving hunger remains Good Shepherd’s top priority, and the Hampden facility will allow it to expand its reach in a region that needs the food bank’s help. But there could also be new community-building opportunities on the horizon.
