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Updated: August 25, 2025 From the Editor

Editor's note: Putting the ‘process’ in food processing

By Peter Van Allen

It’s long been noted that while Maine grows and/or harvests many of the foods that end up on restaurant tables, they are often processed elsewhere.

For many years, lobster that was harvested in Maine waters was sent to New Brunswick, Can., to be processed and frozen (for later use in lobster rolls, for instance). Wild blueberries picked Downeast were sent to Michigan to be dried for use in products like chocolate bars. Cattle and chicken raised in Maine were sent out of state to be slaughtered.

But that’s now changing, as Aroostook County-based correspondent John O’Meara reports. In Aroostook County, John talks to a potato chip maker and a meat processor. He also talks with a grain processor in Skowhegan and a tortilla maker in Scarborough.  

Deputy Editor Renee Cordes and her husband, Mainebiz contributing photographer Jim Neuger, spent several days in Greenville. Renee writes about the worker shortage in the Moosehead Lake area, while Jim offers Mainebiz readers a photo essay about the historic ship Katahdin.

And back in Bangor, Senior Writer Laurie Schreiber met with some entrepreneurs moving into the downtown.  

A note on the use of ‘northern’

In this issue of Mainebiz we tiptoe around a delicate matter by calling this the “Bangor and Northern Maine” focus, treating it as two distinct areas.

I think most people in Bangor would not consider themselves in “northern Maine.” If you talk to many people in the Portland area, they refer to Bangor as northern Maine. We may be guilty of that at times in Mainebiz!

Yet looking at a map of Maine, Bangor is not even in the center. It’s in the southern half of the state.

To be on safe ground, it seems fair to refer to Aroostook County and Piscataquis County as northern Maine. We always try to keep in mind it takes nearly six hours to drive from Kittery north to Fort Kent (and Bangor would not even be the halfway point, going south to north).

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