Winterport, Maine – Phylis Allen spends his days looking for things. She is looking for potatoes at the Sam’s Club, cheap beets and ginger at Walmart and a local grocery store. She studies the weekly inventory of Good Shepherd, the only food bank in Maine, for good deals on butter and cheese.
Every Monday morning, she buys in three different stores, keeping price lists in her head and remembering what private customers want. During a recent trip to the Sam’s Club, she was looking for affordable eggs.
The diminutive of the director of the 78-year-old pantry found them in a huge cooler. Stretching, it removed two huge boxes from the upper shelf – seven dozen eggs each, $ 21 per box. “$ 2.82 a dozen,” she said. “It’s a good price for eggs.”
The eggs were intended for the neighbor’s closet, the Winterport pantry, in Maine, that Allen has helped to present himself in the past 17 years. Every Wednesday, she and a group of tight volunteers offer 25 to 30 families with bags of food.
Maine has long been one of the most insecure food in New England. The managers’ directors claim that the task of ensuring that people are fed more difficult due to the decrease in food supplies, increasing demand and overwhelming dependence on volunteers, many of whom are retirees with ages in the 1980s.
About one in seven people in the rural county of Waldo, where the neighbor’s closet is located, were not very sure of food in 2023, a rate similar to the state and the national average, according to a associated press analysis of us census office and Feeding America Data.
The American Department of Agriculture will cease to collect and publish statistics on food insecurity after October, claiming on September 20 that the figures had become “too politicized”.
In March, the Trump administration reduced more than a billion dollars of two American agriculture department programs – the emergency food aid program, which provides free food for food banks nationally, and the local food purchasing cooperation program, which provides funds to the governments of states, territorial and tribal to buy food from local farmers.
“I can look at the availability of federal food down every month,” said Allen.
Charitable food networks are also preparing for $ 186 billion in the additional nutrition aid program (SNAP), the Federal Nutrition Program with low income better known as food coupons. In turn, Feeding America predicts that the pantry will see more demand.
Complying issues is the infrastructure by which the United States distributes most foods to those who need help. In Maine, the nearly 600 hunger rescue agencies that obtain free and low cost from the Good Shepherd Food Bank are counting on volunteers. This includes 250 pantry as well as popular soups, senior centers, shelters, schools and programs for young people.
According to Good Shepherd, more than 75% of these organizations count entirely on volunteers, without remunerated staff.
Anna Korsen, who co-chairs the final hunger in the Maine Advisory Committee, said that food puppets are not alone the response to food insecurity.
“If our goal is to end hunger in Maine, which is a high goal, then we are not going to do it thanks to a charity food network managed by volunteers, right?” She said. “It is supposed to be for crisis situations … But what happened is that it is only part of the food system now. It should not be.”
The neighbor’s closet hummed with an activity a recent Wednesday morning, cans stacked in heaps six feet high and collages for children stuck to a cooler.
Keith Ritchie greeted customers – and had a sweet eye to make sure no one took only their just part of limited foods. At 89, he is the oldest worker in the pantry, although Betty Williams, 88, the teasing that is older.
In addition to 17 years of service, Ritchie said: “I only missed twice.” It leads to 20 miles (32 kilometers) in each direction to get the grocery store out and fill the bags with “surprises” – gave articles like scout girl cookies.
“You see a lot of people you know,” he said. “I don’t know anyone, but I don’t need a name. I just look at their faces. ”
Young volunteers can be more difficult to find than affordable eggs. About 35% of the Mainers volunteers – the third highest rate in the country, according to a 2024 report on the Civic Health of Maine. But only 20% of millennials volunteer in Maine, half of the generation X and baby boomers’ rate, according to the same report.
It is not a lack of desire to serve, but obstacles in the way, said researcher Quixada Moore-Vissing, author of the report.
“I would classify it as an outdated and overworked company,” said Moore-Viseing. “The rise in costs of everything, and in particular the cost of housing, means that people have to work more.”
Young volunteers are increasingly looking for what the alliance of non -profit advancement of Minnesota calls for a volunteer “based on events” – occasional efforts without commitment to future changes. About 20% of all volunteers contribute through a mixture of online work and in person, according to an American survey in 2023.
The drop in the number of volunteers and the improvement of occasional commitments can cause serious problems.
The second Harvest Heartland in Minnesota had to divert thousands of food books in early September, because the second largest food bank in the country did not have enough people to sort it and pack it, said the director of volunteer engagement, Julie Greene.
Consequently, the pantry for Minnesota and west of Wisconsin had less food to give.
Greene finds it difficult to fill the inadequacy between the need for volunteer work in person, such as production products and the growing desire for occasional services.
“How can we offer more of these volunteer opportunities to one and in fact, so people get involved with us,” she said, “and continues to do what we have to do to do the work?”
In neighbor’s closet, Allen said that financing cuts are not the most difficult part of his work. It is to keep volunteers, she said, above all, “as they age and have health problems or their families have health problems.”
Food distribution requires muscles – reliable and strong volunteers that can drive long distances in snow and ice to pick up or deliver heavy boxes of food.
A year ago, Allen said to his colleagues: “Find me a piece with a truck.” They had lost a 78 -year -old volunteer when his wife fell ill. Without replacement, they would have no way to collect hundreds of food pounds every week.
By word of mouth, Allen found one: Bryan Maclaren, 67 years old. But just a few months after starting, he needed a knee operation. The staff had to seek a replacement again.
Since March, Maine’s pantry have seen their food from the right shepherd cut in half or more. So far, the neighbor’s closet has something to go around, in part because local residents have donated 5,000 pounds (2,300 kilograms) of food during driving in May. But changes are coming.
At the end of August, Allen received an email from Good Shepherd. Because the demand is increasing, said the food bank, the pantry are low on supplies are now allowed to divert visitors who do not live nearby – a reversal of the longtime food of Good Shepherd for all.
Allen didn’t.
“We will continue to serve everyone,” she wrote in an email at Maine Monitor.
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The data journalist AP Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report.
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This report is part of a series called Sowing Resilience, a collaboration between the Institute for the Network of Rural News of the Institute for Non-Lucrative News and the Associated Press focused on how rural communities in the United States sail on food insecurity problems. Nine non -profit editorial rooms were involved in the series: The Beacon, Capital B, Enlated Latino NC, investigation into Midwest, Jefferson County Beacon, Kosu, Louisville Public Media, Maine Monitor and Minnpost. Rural News Network is funded by Google News Initiative and Knight Foundation, among others.
The Department of Health and Sciences of the Associated Press receives the support of the Department of Science Education from Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
