This post contains links and opening paragraphs to two articles focusing on the fight for the right to food sovereignty and local, community self-government in Maine. One of the articles was written and published in the Bangor Daily News, March 9th of 2016; the other in The Center for Media and Democracy in what appears to be sometime in 2011.

Brief commentary by Community Rights US director Paul Cienfuegos: Many communities in Maine have been challenging Maine’s state government’s claim for years that the State has the legitimate authority to preempt Maine’s individual communities from passing their own Food Sovereignty ordinances, which many of them have already passed. These are not technically Community Rights ordinances but still very provocative and exciting to watch, as the political battle continues to unfold. One of the forms of fierce push-back coming from these communities is a new state law, LD 783, which would propose an “Amendment to the State Constitution To Establish a Right to Food”. This is a continuing story worth monitoring.

Maine towns declare food sovereignty, claim ‘home rule’ trumps state, federal regulations, by Julia Bayly

FORT KENT, Maine — As far as Sedgwick resident and locally sourced food advocate Deborah Evans is concerned, everyone should have the right to choose their own food, whether it’s from the farmer down the road or from the local supermarket.

In 2010, when she said state and federal agencies passed laws curtailing what local farmers could sell directly to customers, she and a group of local food supporters in Hancock County drafted Maine’s first food sovereignty ordinance. MORE…

Local Food and Self-Governance Ordinance, published at the Center for Media and Democracy

Local Food and Self-Governance Ordinances, first drafted in four towns in Hancock County, Maine, are town ordinances establishing local food governance in response to increased federal regulation via the “Food Safety Modernization Act.”[1] Residents who drafted the ordinances in 2010 and 2011 feared that the new law, which President Obama signed on January 4th, 2011, could shut down cottage producers of jam and pickles made from backyard garden produce and church pot lucks without these local ordinances to protect them.[2][3]  

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