Feed NB’s New $9-Million Funding Deal: What It Means for New Brunswick’s Food Banks

Feed NB is not a food bank. It is the provincial organisation that buys, stores and moves food to the food banks and community kitchens that hand it out — which is why one funding decision about one non-profit lands on 68 front doors at once. Here is what the province announced on June 8, 2026, what the money is for, and what it changes for the agencies at the end of the chain.

What is Feed NB?

Feed NB sits one step upstream of the food bank in your town. It collects and stores food, then distributes it to 68 partner agencies across New Brunswick — a mix of food banks and community kitchens. What it buys is not handed straight to a household; it moves through a member agency first.

That structure is why provincial money routed through a single non-profit reaches so many communities at once, and why the size and the predictability of that money are operational questions rather than accounting ones. Feed NB’s executive director, Stéphane Sirois, told CBC that food banks and community kitchens in the province together see about 50,000 visits a month, and that some had been cutting the volume of food they hand out.

Feed NB also buys from New Brunswick producers. Sirois said about a dozen provincial farmers take part in a program that sells their meat and produce into the food-bank supply, and that the organisation buys local beef and pork.

What did New Brunswick announce, and how much funding is involved?

On June 8, 2026, at Feed NB’s warehouse in Moncton, the province announced a three-year funding agreement worth $9 million in total. The money comes from two departments — Health, and Social Development — and runs through to 2029, in amounts that rise slightly each year.

The 2026-27 figure is not all new money: $458,000 of it had already gone to Feed NB earlier in the year. Health Minister John Dornan said the province built the new model on the increasing emergency amounts it had been allocating anyway, and then spread that total across three years. “Instead of waiting for there to be an emergency amount that we knew was coming, we anticipate that and put it there for the three years,” he said.

The province has funded Feed NB in varying amounts since 2021, on what Dornan called an emergency basis, in response first to the pandemic and then to inflation. Dornan said the province will reassess the agreement in three years to see whether it still matches demand.

“There is a recognition that we’re in a crisis in the food banking network, and we needed predictable, stable funding.”

How will the 68 partner agencies use this funding?

Sirois said the money goes toward purchasing and distributing more food, and better food, for the 68 food banks and community kitchens Feed NB serves. “We want to make sure that everyone that needs help, that they don’t just eat mac and cheese and tomato soup,” he told CBC. In practice that means more fresh meat and produce alongside the boxed and canned goods agencies already hand out.

The shape of the money matters as much as the total. Committing to a farm contract early in the season is only possible if next year’s budget is already known — Sirois said Feed NB tries to make those commitments early in the year so growers know what to grow. A three-year envelope lets the organisation renew those contracts and, he said, focus on supporting smaller farms across the province.

How does this fit into New Brunswick’s broader food-security picture?

A provincial cheque to a distribution non-profit is one layer. Under it sit the agencies people actually walk into. Our guide to the food banks in Saint John covers what to bring on a first visit and how to check current hours, and the Fredericton farmers market guide covers the buying end of the same provincial supply chain.

Above it sits federal money. The Local Food Infrastructure Fund paid for the freezers, shelving and vehicles that let organisations like these hold and move donated food. Every stream of it is now closed, which is part of why a predictable provincial commitment carries more weight than it did five years ago.

If you would rather see the infrastructure than read about it, the Saint John food map page collects the New Brunswick end of it, and the rest of our policy and food-security coverage sits in Food News.

And if you are a New Brunswick food business rather than an agency — a caterer, a small producer, a community group that cooks at scale — licensed production space is its own constraint. You can rent a commercial kitchen by the hour instead of building one.