Maine child food insecurity remains highest in New England, latest data shows

But as Maine’s population has grown, the year-over-year rate of growth in child food insecurity has slowed. 

“Food insecurity touches every community in Maine,” Heather Paquette, president of Good Shepherd Food Bank, said in a statement. “These numbers represent our neighbors — children, older adults, working families, veterans and people doing everything they can to make ends meet. While the data show the scale of the challenge, they also reinforce the importance of continuing to work together to ensure everyone in Maine has reliable access to the nutritious food they need to thrive.”

Because of delays in federal data reporting, data for 2025 and 2026 isn’t expected to be available for several years.

In 2024, the number of overall people in Maine who are food insecure surpassed 200,000 for the first time.

And while the rate of overall food insecurity has not changed significantly in recent years — growing from 10.5% in 2021 to 14.5% in 2024 — the number of Maine residents who are considered food insecure has grown by more than 50,000. 

The statewide numbers put Maine just above the national average of 19.5% of children and 14.4% of people overall who were food insecure, according to the report.

Within Maine, Washington County has the highest rate of overall food insecurity at 18.8%, followed by Piscataquis County with an 18.1% overall rate. 

Androscoggin County had the highest child food insecurity rate at 26.3%, closely followed by Washington County at 26.1%. 

Food insecurity is compounded by the increasing cost of food, which because of inflation and other factors has continued to rise since the data in the report.

The average cost of a meal in Maine in 2024 was $3.92, a 16 cent increase from the year before. 

The report found that food insecure households reported that they needed an additional $23.60 per person each week to pay for enough food. Over the course of a year, that leaves all of Maine’s food insecure households $151 million short of what they need for food costs. 

Just under half (46%) of food insecure Mainers in 2024 were estimated to be above the income threshold for federal food assistance, which means that while they have limited or uncertain access to adequate food, they are ineligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 

The USDA has canceled its Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement, one of the data sources Feeding America uses in its food insecurity analysis. That change did not affect the 2024 data, but may not be available for 2025 or future years. 

But Feeding America plans to incorporate alternative data and research in its future reports. 

The delay in data means the report can’t show the impact of recent changes to government food assistance programs during President Donald Trump’s second term. Last year, Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which reduced benefits by restricting what factors can be taken into account when determining a household’s allotment, capping future program funding increases at the rate of inflation and imposing stricter work requirements. 

It also requires states to pay for portions of SNAP, which had exclusively been funded by the federal government since it began many decades ago. How much each state has to pay will depend on its payment error rate — a measure of how often households receive too much or too little in benefits.

Maine’s payment error rate of more than 10% in 2025 means the state would be responsible for 15% of SNAP benefit costs, or $50 million per year, beginning in 2028.

Last session, the state Legislature worked to address some of the federal changes. Lawmakers passed a law helping immigrants who have been cut out of the federal SNAP program to maintain access to state-funded food assistance, and approved funding through the budget to decrease the state’s payment error rate in an attempt to reduce the amount of cost-sharing Maine is responsible for in future years.

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