The generous people who run Maine's food pantries and soup kitchens say they're seeing far too many new faces these days.

Those faces belong to hungry people. They're families and individuals who, at a time of high energy and food prices, can no longer make ends meet. And while food pantries will hold their doors open to almost anyone who shows up, their ability to fill the growing need for food in Maine is being severely tested.

Last year, we published an editorial series about hunger in Maine. At the time the series appeared -- late July -- food pantry volunteers and staff were seeing record numbers of people coming through their doors. Among them were working Mainers whose paychecks couldn't cover the costs of supporting their families. It turns out that Maine was experiencing the fastest growth rate of hungry people in the country.

Now, one year later, reporter Scott Monroe has gone back to those food pantries and, as he reported in Monday's newspaper, things aren't any better.

That's not surprising, but it's still dismaying.

Last month at the Fairfield Interfaith Food Pantry, manager Nancy Marcoux said 14 new families came to the pantry for food; this month, 10 more new families showed up. Said Dick Willette of the Sacred Heart Soup Kitchen in Waterville: "You better believe we're scratching. ... We're not completely broke yet ... but we certainly don't have any extra."

Mark Swann, head of Portland's Preble Street, which operates a food pantry and soup kitchen as well as a homeless shelter, told MaineBiz, "We're basically screwed. We have 50 percent less food, 75 percent less money and 35 percent more people to feed. It's not good. We are trying desperately not to cut food."

There's bad news on another front: Maine's only statewide anti-hunger organization, "Partners in Ending Hunger," closed its doors this summer after a 25-year run. That means there's one less voice in the state to advocate for Maine's hungry.

On the positive side, first lady Karen Baldacci and anti-hunger activists from across the state are working to put together a summit this fall on hunger and poverty.

They'll have a lot to talk about.

We'd encourage summit planners to stay away from the obvious, which includes entreaties to the public to donate more cans of food from their kitchen shelves. Likewise, fundraising events help publicize the problem, but they're expensive to produce and offer only a one-time fix. While charity is a wonderful thing, charity can't solve the problem of hunger. If it could, we wouldn't have a growing hunger problem.

Hunger, instead, will be solved by a variety of long-term measures to increase the economic status of Maine's workers, retirees, veterans, children and families. Those measures include better education, better health care and better jobs in a more robust Maine economy.

As summit planners sit down to figure out what to focus on, we'd suggest concentrating on those measures that, while not particularly sexy, offer the biggest bang for the buck.

As we've editorialized before, those measures would include expanding free and reduced-price school breakfast to the entire population of Maine children who are eligible for the program. The Legislature did pass a notable, but modest, expansion last session; given the increased hunger in the state, the school breakfast program is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get more food to more people.

Likewise, getting food stamps to the remaining population of Mainers eligible for them, but who aren't getting them, will help.With newly expanded eligibility rules, this should help a bit, though food stamp benefits are hardly extravagant.

And finally: We need to get assertive. Go around to the state's food pantries and you'll find two kinds of nice people -- those who give out the food and those who get the food. Both sides of this act of charity find it hard to be anything other than grateful for the good that's being done.

Yet it would not be uncharitable if these people moved their battle to city hall, state capitals and Washington. It is a shame and a disgrace that in the beginning of the 21st century, the richest country in the world cannot feed its citizens. In other times of national crisis -- the Depression, the Civil Rights era -- people got what they needed by recognizing that it would take a national response to solve their problems and engaging in direct, relentless action that went beyond the bounds of politeness.

So: Hunger is growing. Food pantries are strained to their limits. Mainers can't afford to heat their homes, gas up their cars, pay for their prescriptions -- and eat.

Sounds like time to call this what it is: A crisis. It's time for presidential candidates, those running for Congress and for the state legislatures to take up this problem and deal with it, in a nonpartisan and constructive way.

"What do you propose to do about hunger?" should be a standard question for every candidate.

Charity alone isn't going to cut it anymore.