Local Food Local Rules

“Love Your Farmer” Benefit Pig Roast

For updates and background information on the We Are All Farmer Brown effort read Saving Seeds #12 at www.SavingSeeds.wordpress.com. (Click newspaper image on right.)

More information can be found at:

Due to a poor weather forecast tomorrow’s State House rally and ‘Drop the Farmer Brown Lawsuit’ petition delivery is being postponed. Stay tuned for the alternate date.

If you haven’t already signed the petition to Gov. LePage calling for the State of Maine to drop its lawsuit against Blue Hill Farmer Dan Brown you can sign it below or at www.savingseeds.wordpress.com.

FOOD FOR MAINE’S FUTURE NEEDS YOU TO JOIN OUR CALL FOR GOVERNOR LEPAGE TO DROP THE LAWSUIT AGAINST FARMER DAN BROWN

Sign Food for Maine’s Future’s petition here

Help Food for Maine’s Future deliver the petition to the Governor at 11am Thursday, January 12 at the State House in Augusta!

January 3, 2012

Governor Paul LePage
Office of the Governor
1 State House Station
Augusta, ME 04333-0001
governor@maine.gov
(207) 287-3531

Dear Gov. Paul LePage,

We, the undersigned, call on you and your administration to withdraw the lawsuit against Blue Hill farmer Dan Brown of Gravelwood Farm. Recent rule changes by the Maine Department of Agriculture – including poultry processing and raw milk sales – are making criminals out of hard-working Mainers who are growing and processing food to share in their communities. Now the Department of Agriculture and State of Maine are suing a man milking one cow and selling jams, pickles, and other prepared foods from his farmhouse kitchen. If successfully pursued, this lawsuit will have a chilling effect on Maine’s growing local food movement and the promise of real economic development in our rural communities. Shouldn’t Maine’s small-scale, diversified farms and cottage businesses have the same opportunities generations before us had, without the threat of lawsuits or armed raids as we are witnessing around the U.S.?

In addition:

*Dan Brown’s farmstand sales for which he is being sued are all legal under the Local Food & Community Self-Governance Ordinance passed nearly unanimously at Blue Hill’s town meeting April 4, 2011. Five towns in Maine have passed this and similar ordinances, inspiring others in Vermont, Arizona, California, and Utah to adopt ordinances and resolutions that encourage “local rules for local food”. Once again Maine is leading the nation, finding creative solutions to complex problems. Yet rather than being celebrated, our five pioneering Maine towns are being treated as though the Ordinances do not exist. Through this lawsuit the State of Maine is attempting to undermine our time-honored town meeting process and the Maine Constitution Article IV Part Third Section 21 by usurping local decision-making and direct democracy.

Continue reading →

The following letter was sent to the National Family Farm Coalition by Maine Agricultural Commissioner Walter Whitcomb in response to NFFC’s request for the Commissioner and State of Maine drop the charges against Farmer Dan Brown.

http://localfoodlocalrules.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/whitcomb_nov_response_nffc.pdf