AUBURN – The Good Shepherd Food-Bank is distributing more food than ever to Mainers, about a million pounds more this year than last.

It may not be enough.

The demand for food from soup kitchens, pantries and shelters is growing faster than the supply, said Rick Small, Good Shepherd’s executive director.

“I don’t know what’s driving it,” Small said Tuesday. “The need is increasing faster than anticipated. I don’t have hard facts, but I can describe what I’m experiencing.”

Shelves that ought to be overflowing with pallets of food are empty. In some cases, the food never makes it to the tall warehouse platforms. It is scooped up by a steady stream of volunteers, each trying to feed the hungry. Good Shepherd distributes food to more than 620 agencies across the state.

This ought to be a time when the agency could relax a bit. Donations of money have been going well – $1.2 million in the past year, up more than $300,000 – and the food’s been coming in, Small said.

As it has been for more than two decades, Hannaford continues to be the biggest donor of salvage food, Small said. Several tractor-trailer loads arrive every week at the Auburn warehouse, where it is sorted by volunteers.

Other businesses make substantial donations, too. Among them is Wal-Mart, which brings food from its Lewiston distribution center. The retail giant also has held fundraisers for the food bank at several area stores.

“Wal-Mart has really stepped up,” Small said. “They’ve really come on board.”

More hungry people

This year, the food bank worked with agencies to recalculate distributions. Rather than counting the number of people they feed, a sometimes misleading number, they began to count meals.

The result: The food bank supplies about 1.5 million meals each month.

“We shouldn’t be in a position where that many people need food,” Small said. “And it’s getting worse.”

The Associated Press reported recently that food pantries across the Northeast have seen growing demand. Good Shepherd’s counterpart in upstate New York, the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York, cited a 30 percent rise in visitors.

The average family of four is spending $7 to $10 extra a week on groceries alone, according to a retail consultant cited in the wire report.

The Good Shepherd Food-Bank plans to respond to the demand by dramatically increasing the amount of food it distributes.

By 2012, the Auburn-based charity hopes to hand out more than 14 million pounds of food, an increase of 4 million pounds over the past fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30.

“That’s a pretty lofty goal,” Small said. “That curve is a scary one.”

To get there, the food bank plans to boost its efforts to gather donations of food and money. Agencies that use the food bank pay about 16 cents per pound for donated food.

“It should be more,” Small said. For every penny an agency spends on the food, Good Shepherd pays another penny for the food’s handling and storage.

Small is reluctant to raise the cost for the agencies, though.

“We try to be the place they can afford,” he said.

The aim is to make up the difference with donations. Every check, no matter how small, is needed, he said.

Now and then, Small calls folks who donate to thank them for their gift. He recently called a woman to thank her for a $5 check. She apologized that it wasn’t more.

“Don’t ever be sorry for what you donate,” he told her. “Do you know what that did?”

It bought 24 meals.