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The food bank that serves all of North Dakota and Clay County, Minn., served 11 percent more people last year compared to 2024. 

The Great Plains Food Bank is North Dakota's only food bank and provides food to pantries, shelters and directly to people in need throughout the state. It served more than 167,000 people in 2025 — about one in five people in the region.

Inflation is a major reason for the increase in need, said Stacie Loegering, who serves on the group’s board of directors. 

"I think the things we're hearing are just (an) increase in rent, increase in grocery costs,” said Loegering, who is also executive director of the Emergency Food Pantry in Fargo. 

“I think the other thing of note, at least in my experience, has been more senior citizens reaching out,” she said. According to Great Plains, seniors made up about 15 percent of the people the group served last year. Children made up 39 percent.

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Loegering said during the COVID-19 pandemic, new programs and groups stepped in to help feed people. Many of those have since gone away and food pantries are filling back in the gap. 

“It was churches, a lot of drive-ups, organizations who didn't typically help with food, stepped up for about those three years,” she said.

About a third of the Emergency Food Pantry’s food comes from the Great Plains Food Bank, which is a part of the national Feeding America network. The rest comes from the local community, including donations from nearby grocery stores. Most other North Dakota food banks rely more heavily on the food bank, Loegering said.

“Great Plains provides somewhere between that 70 and 80 percent, if not more, of food to most of the pantries,” she said. “We just have some of that capacity that maybe some of the other smaller food pantries, especially in rural areas, might not have.”

Loegering said people in rural communities are sometimes particularly in need because of the lack of options at local grocery stores and proximity to food pantries. 

“The bigger areas of the larger cities around North Dakota have those extra resources where there's more than one place where somebody who's in need of food would be able to go to,” she said. “Some of the rural areas, it may be one time a month where a person has that extra little boost option to be able to get extra food above the things that they're buying at the grocery stores.”

The organization’s truck drivers drove more than 217,000 miles last year to deliver food across the region, according to early figures from its annual report, which is set to be finalized next month, according to a spokesperson. In total, the food bank distributed almost 15 million pounds of food in 2025. 

“In our region, we feel we're supposed to take care of ourselves, we're supposed to take care of our families,” she said, “and sometimes, financially, it's really difficult for people to do.”

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The Great Plains Food Bank serves all of North Dakota and Clay County, Minnesota. It served about one in five people in the region and a total of almost 15 million pounds of food last year.

North Dakota food bank served 11 percent more people last year than in 2024

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