AUBURN – Though the Good Shepherd Food-Bank is receiving more food and money, ending a slump that left some shelves bare earlier this year, leaders of the statewide charity are worried.

Regionally, food banks are seeing a steady decline in donations of food from meat packers, produce sellers and grocery store chains. It could happen here, too.

“We’re in this downward trend,” said Rick Small, executive director of the Auburn-based charity. “We’ve seen the trucks return (following the spring slump), but we believe it won’t last.”

The biggest worry is that the food bank might be forced to raise prices to its 566 member charities: soup kitchens, food pantries and homeless shelters across Maine.

Good Shepherd charges its members 16 cents per pound for mostly high-quality food that is trucked in daily from companies such as Hannaford, Shaw’s, Barber Foods and Wal-Mart. The pennies per pound help keep the lights on in the Auburn warehouse, pay the salaries of the staff and operate a smaller warehouse in Brewer.

Typically, the donated food is either surplus stock or in damaged packages. Volunteers sort through the food, salvaging what they can.

In the past fiscal year, which ended on Saturday, the food bank took in about 10.9 million pounds of donated food.

Any drop in food donations will cost money.

When the shelves at the food bank get too bare – or if the variety of food gets too unbalanced – the food bank buys food to fill in.

“It’s cheaper than retail, cheaper than wholesale, but it’s a lot more expensive than free,” Small said. The added charge is passed on to the charities.

Monetary donations to Good Shepherd have risen about 10 percent in the past year, but the amount of food that the food bank had to buy last year rose by 49 percent.

“It’s not a minor event,” Small said. “It’s not a crisis, either. We’re thankful for every donation.”

Much of the squeeze is because grocers and food makers are getting increasingly efficient.

Where pallets of food were once shipped to stores on a hunch that a need might arise, computer tracking of sales has allowed big companies to ship goods after the need is created.

It means less waste for the grocer and less food for Good Shepherd. And it’s not just in Maine.

The Manchester-based New Hampshire Food Bank is trying to truck in food from as a far away as Tampa, Fla., in an effort to meet its needs.

Executive Director Melanie Gosselin said she’s growing desperate.

“Our distribution is up by 45 percent and our inventory is down by 45 percent,” she said. “The scales are pretty tipped against us.”

Nationally, the problem is uncertain.

A spokesman for Second Harvest, a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks, said the donations fluctuate across the country, from areas like Maine with little food production and a sparse population to Chicago, which is considered “food rich” by the organization.

The demand is rising everywhere, though.

A report released in February by Second Harvest found that food banks served 25 million people last year, up from 23 million people only four years earlier.

The Good Shepherd Food-Bank added about 30 new charities this year and many existing agencies have stepped up their work to serve more people, Small said.

It made it particularly scary this spring, when the food bank’s usual four-month supply fell to three.

In June, just weeks after Small, an ordained minister, took the job as director, there were 300 pallet-sized empty spaces in the food bank warehouse.

He doesn’t want to see the problem return.

“There are more hungry people all the time,” Small said.

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